The proper actions in life

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I know my last article about the spiritual diet choice was a bit heavy, but that was only the tip of the iceberg.

When I first got involved in spiritual life I was told that “everything animate and inanimate that is within the universe is controlled and owned by the Lord and that one should therefore accept only those things necessary for himself, which are set aside as his quota, and that one should not accept other things knowing well to whom they belong”.

But, it’s the material world and change is not easy. So, let’s put all into perspective.

A living being who lives in the material world has four defects:

He is certain to commit mistakes.

He is subject to illusion.

He has a propensity to cheat others.

His senses are imperfect.

So, a person with these four imperfections cannot deliver perfect knowledge.

Since God is all-perfect, there is no possibility of His being subjected to the laws of material nature, which He controls. Yet, both the living entities and inanimate objects are controlled by His potency. When He speaks through His written word in scripture, it is perfect.

The elements of nature – earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and ego – all belong to His inferior, material energy, whereas the living being, the organic energy, is His superior energy.

Both of these energies are emanations from Him, and ultimately He is the controller of everything that exists. There is nothing in the universe that does not belong to either the inferior or superior energy. Therefore, everything is His property.

Because the Supreme Being is the complete person, He has complete and perfect intelligence to adjust everything by means of His different potencies.

He is often compared to a fire, and everything organic and inorganic is compared to the heat and light of that fire.

Just as a fire distributes energy in the form of heat and light, He displays His energy in different ways thus remaining the ultimate controller, sustainer and dictator of everything. He is the possessor of all potencies, the knower of everything and the benefactor of everyone. He is full of inconceivable opulence, power, fame, beauty, knowledge and renunciation.

Given all that, one should therefore be intelligent enough to know that except for God, no one is a proprietor of anything but rather a caretaker. More on this later.

In adherence to only accepting those things that are set aside for us as our quota, we should be satisfied with those things and we should always consider to whom those things we possess actually belong to.

Take for example, where you live. It is made of earth, wood, stone, cement and so many other material things.

If we think in terms of the opening paragraph we must know that we cannot produce any of these building materials ourselves. We can simply bring them together into different shapes by our labor and a laborer cannot claim to be a proprietor of a thing just because he has worked hard to manufacture it.

In modern society there is always a great hassle between the laborers and the capitalists. This hassle, unfortunately, has taken an international shape putting the whole world in danger.

People face each other in enmity and growl like cats and dogs. Spirituality cannot give advice to cats and dogs, but it can deliver His message to humanity through bona fide spiritual masters. But, that in itself poses another dilemma: charlatans. Who is bona fide and who is not? That’s a long subject for another time.

The human race should not quarrel over material possessions. One must be satisfied with whatever privileges are given to him by the mercy of God.

There can be no peace if we long for what the other guy has or if someone or some country claims ownership over the resources of nature, which are entirely the property of God. If this cannot be seen, all the property they claim to be their own is simply stolen God’s property. Consequently, they will be liable to punishment by the laws of nature otherwise known as karma.

Right now the world is overridden with God wannabees, all striving to rule the world and possess nuclear weapons.  If the ownership and proprietorship of God is not recognized, these bombs will eventually go boom and all will be destroyed.

Human beings are not meant to quarrel like cats and dogs. They must be intelligent enough to realize the importance and the aim of human life.

Cats and dogs can kill other animals for food without incurring karma. But if a man kills an animal for the satisfaction of his uncontrolled taste buds, he is responsible for breaking the laws of nature and will pay his dues, be it in this life or the next.

The standard of life for human beings cannot be applied to animals. The tiger does not eat rice and wheat or drink milk, because he has been given food in the shape of animal flesh. Yet, among the many animals and birds, some are vegetarians and some are carnivorous, but none of them will transgress the laws of nature; therefore, there is no question of karmic reaction for them. 

Human life and human life alone is a life of responsibility.

It is a fallacy to think that simply by becoming a vegetarian one can avoid transgressing the laws of nature. Vegetables also have life, and while it is nature’s law that one living being is meant to feed on another, for human beings the point is to recognize the Supreme Lord.

Thus, one should not take pride in being a strict vegetarian. Animals do not have developed consciousness by which to recognize God, but a human being is sufficiently intelligent to know that God’s instructions to them are out there and should endeavor to find them. 

Just as a policeman says when writing out the ticket while you are saying you didn’t know you were supposed to not do something, “Ignorance is no excuse for the law.”

If a man neglects his spiritual duties, his life becomes very risky.

The human being is therefore required to recognize the authority of the Supreme Lord and become his devoted servant. He must offer everything other than that having a face and a mother and a chicken’s menstrual cycle to Him and engage in doing everything for Him.

The reasoning behind this is as follows: vegetables, fruits and grains have life. We kill them to eat them. If we offer these foods to God first, out of love, he will remove the sinful reaction (karma) of the killing and allow us to eat those foods that have been purified of all karma. In addition, the offering allows us to get closer to Him and to relate to Him in a variety of ways.

The root of karma or sin is deliberate disobedience of the laws of nature through disregarding the proprietorship of the Lord. Disobeying the laws of nature or the order of His instructions brings ruin to a human being.

Conversely, one who is sober, who knows the laws of nature, and who is not influenced by unnecessary attachment or aversion is sure to be recognized by God and thus become eligible to go back to Him when they leave their body. This is the purpose of the human form.

No one wants to die and everyone wants to live as long as he or she can drag on.

This tendency can be seen not only individually but also collectively in the community, society, and nation as well.

There is a hard struggle for life by all kinds of living entities and various scriptures in the world say that this is quite natural.

The living being, the soul, is eternal by nature. Due to his bondage in material existence he has to change his body over and over again. This process is called transmigration of the soul or karma-bandana – bondage by one’s work.

The living entity has to work for his livelihood because that is the law of material nature. If he does not act according to his prescribed duties, he transgresses the law of nature and binds himself more and more to the cycle of birth and death in the many species of life.

Other life forms are also subject to the cycle of birth and death, but when the living entity attains a human life, he has the opportunity to get free from the chains of karma.

Karma, akarma and vikarma are very clearly described in the Vedic literature. Actions that are performed in terms of one’s prescribed duties are called karma. Actions that free one from the cycle of birth and death are called akarma. And, actions that are performed through the misuse of one’s freedom and that direct one to the lower life forms are called vikarma. Of these three types of action, that which frees us from the bondage to karma is preferred by the intelligent.

Ordinary men wish to perform good work in order to be recognized and achieve some higher status in life in this world or in their conception of heaven, but more advanced individuals want to be free altogether from the actions and reactions of work. Intelligent individuals well know that both good and bad work equally bind one to material miseries. As such, they seek that work which will free them from the reactions of both good and bad work.

When one realizes the authority of the Supreme Lord, which is the essence of all revealed scripture, it is to be understood that he has attained the stage of positive knowledge. In this purified stage the modes of nature – goodness, passion and ignorance – cannot act, and the individual is able to work on the basis of akarma. This work does not bind one to the cycle of birth and death.

Factually, no one has to do anything more than render loving service to God. In the lower stages of life, however, one cannot immediately adopt the activities of loving service, nor can one completely stop fruitive work. A conditioned soul is accustomed to working for sense gratification for his own selfish interest, immediate or extended.

An ordinary man works for his own sense enjoyment. When this principle of sense enjoyment is extended to include his society, nation or humanity in general, it assumes various attractive names such as altruism, socialism, communism, nationalism and humanitarianism. While these “isms” are very attractive forms of karmic bondage, to alleviate them, one should make those actions God-centered.

There is no harm in becoming a family man, or an altruist, a socialist, a communist, a nationalist, or a humanitarian, provided one executes those activities in relation to the God-centered conception.

It says in the Vedic literature that God-centered activities are so valuable that just a few of them can save a person from the greatest danger – that being thrust again into the evolutionary cycle of birth and death among the 8,400,000 species of life.

If somehow or other an individual misses the spiritual opportunity afforded him by the human form of life and again falls into the evolutionary cycle, he will be considered most unfortunate. Unfortunately, due to defective and imperfect senses, one cannot see that this is happening.

The wise, saintly persons advise that being so engaged, we can wish to live for as long as possible. Otherwise, long life has no meaning. A tree lives for hundreds and hundreds of years, but what’s the point of living a long time like a tree, or simply breathing like bellows, or banging out kids like rabbits and dogs, or simply eating like pigs? A humble, God-centered life is more valuable than the hoax of a life dedicated to temporary sense gratification.

When altruistic activities are executed in the consciousness of God-centeredness, understanding your essence, what your true purpose in life in the human form is, and knowing we are all brothers and sisters with the same Father, they become a form of karma-yoga – offering the fruit of one’s activities to God.

Understanding your essence can be compared to driving a car. The car is the vehicle; you are the driver. Similarly, with the body, the body is the vehicle and you, the eternal spirit soul within, is the driver. If we were our bodies what is missing at the time of death? The spirit soul.

If you can understand that then you need to know that there are two choices in life. One, is to do anything to please the body’s senses, which usually results in futility and frustration. Two, you can please you by nurturing a relationship with God and endeavoring to please Him. That does not mean that your senses will not be pleased. That aspect will just not be the end in itself because you will have a higher purpose and everything about you will be pleased.

And even though these God-centered activities may be half-finished, they still benefit the individual because they will guarantee him a human form in his next life so he may continue on his journey up the spiritual ladder.

Human life is distinguished from animal life due to its heavy responsibilities. Those who are aware of those responsibilities and who work in that spirit are called godly persons. Those who are neglectful or who have no information of those responsibilities are the direct opposite.

Intelligent human beings must always remember that the soul obtains a human form after an evolution of many millions of years in the cycle of transmigration.

The saintly persons compare the material world to an ocean and the human body is compared to a boat designed to cross that ocean. The saintly teachers, or bonafide spiritual masters, are compared to the expert navigators, or boatmen, that enable one to cross the ocean.

The lower species of life have the same intrinsic desires that the human form does. They all want to eat, they all want to sleep, they all want to procreate, and they all want to defend their turf.  Their economic necessities are as important to them as ours is to us. The difference is that the lower forms are governed by the laws of nature and bear no karmic reactions, where the human form is always given a choice and his actions always produce a reaction.

There is a good example of this: the other day I driving my vehicle on a busy highway when I noticed a dog crossing the highway. He did not look both ways. He did not stop when a car approached. He just went for it. Fortunately, he made it across alive because all the drivers had the choice to stop, swerve, or kill it.

So, why is a human given a better life than that of the lower species? Or, why is a high government official given better facilities than that of an aid? The answer is that the highly placed officer has to discharge duties of higher nature. Similarly, the duties that the human beings have to perform are higher than those of animals, who are always engaged in feeding their hungry stomachs.

Yet, our modern soul-killing civilization has only increased the problems of the hungry stomach. When you talk to a polished animal in the human form and ask why he takes no interest in self-realization, he will say that he simply wants to work to satisfy his stomach and those that he is connected to and that there is no need of self-realization for a hungry man.

Yet, the laws of nature are so cruel, that despite his denunciation of the need for self-realization and his endless desire to work hard to fill the stomachs of him and his family, he is always threatened by unemployment.

We are given this human form of life not to work hard like beasts of burden, but to attain the highest perfection in life.  And yes, some feel that that perfection is a big house, a fancy car, expensive toys and an endless array of sense gratification. Yet, it is all summed up so perfectly by Mick Jagger when he shouts, “I can’t get no satisfaction!”

What happens if you embark upon the road of God-centered self-realization but you don’t make it in your lifetime? Those sincere efforts do not go unnoticed and the opportunity is afforded one in their next lifetime to either take birth in a family on the path of self-realization, or in a respectable or financially sound family to make it easier to continue on that path. In other words, you will have the opportunity to pick up where you left off.

But what about those that make no attempt whatsoever, who want to be covered by illusion, or are too materialistic and too attached to sense gratification and material enjoyment, or simply make a show of religiosity to achieve name and fame? A lower form awaits you next time around and the evolving, transmigrating process begins again.

The bottom line is that as human beings we are not meant to solve the economic problems of a house built by the ocean during low tide, but for solving the problems of the material life we have been placed in by the laws of nature.

That begins with some basic realizations. First and foremost, the Supreme Person resides next to us, the spirit soul, in our heart. This makes our bodies a sacred temple. If we utilize and understand that blessing and sincerely ask Him to allow us to know about Him, He will put us in contact with His living representative.

A simple analogy is this: we see an attractive male or female and we want to get to meet and know them. Is it easier to just walk up to them and say you want to be with them, or is it easier if a common friend can introduce you to them?

It is no different to develop a relationship with God. It just takes sincerity. It might take a while but it will happen.

The question is, how do I begin this journey? The answer can be found throughout Psalms in the Old Testament. For example, there are so many verses that say to take shelter in His name.

Let’s look at that for a moment. God, is a title. But what do His names mean? Jehovah means the All-Mighty One; Eli means The Dearest Friend; Abba means The True Father, Krishna means the All-Attractive One, Allah means The All-Compassionate One. He has millions of names all relating to different aspects of His personality. 

Our job is to find out how we want to relate to Him and, like Psalms says, “take shelter in His name”. That means saying, singing, or chanting His names always. It also says that “God is non-different than His name”. So, when you make His name audible, He is with you in your presence.

A very simple mantra, like I previously said, is: Gopala Govinda Rama Madana Mohana. Just chant it in any tune you like or silently in your mind, it will connect you to the Guy.

There is one more piece of info you should know about. There’s a passage in the Bhagavad-Gita-As-It-is that puts the material world in its proper perspective.

It says that the duration of the material universe is limited but the duration of the spiritual world is eternal. Lord Brahma, God’s representative, spends one day in the material world, which equates to four ages: the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze age and the Iron Age, which we are in right now.

The Golden Age is characterized by virtue, wisdom and religion, with practically no ignorance and vice, and it lasts 1,728,000 years. People can live to be 100,000 years old.

In the Silver Age, vice is introduced and it lasts 1,296,000 years and people can live to be 10,000 years old.

In the Bronze Age there is an even greater decline in virtue and religion, with vice increasing even more. The Bronze Age lasts 864,000 years and people can live to be 1,000 years old.

In the Iron Age, where we are now for the past 5,000 years, there is an abundance of strife, ignorance, irreligion, vice and crime, with virtue being practically non-existent. This Age lasts 432,000 years and people, if they are lucky, can live to be 100 years old, yet they are dying way before that.

After the demise of the Iron Age, the four ages begin again. But the question is, why are we here in the first place? Understand that God is the ultimate enjoyer. Seeing that, we became envious. So, He created the material world for us to, if you’ll pardon the expression, “enjoy”.

In the material world no one is free from the process of birth, old age, disease and death. But, there is a remedy. If one turns to God, he or she can return to the eternal spiritual world or can come back in the human form and pick up where they left off and still attain the spiritual world.

Imagine if you spend your life as a human eager to participate in the killing and eating of the lower forms, it might take thousands of years before you obtain a human form again and what would this world would be like then when you do? 

Now, it really sucks and people are dying in their 50s. Imagine what it’s gonna be like here in 400,000 years. You’d be lucky to live until you are a teenager.

I absolutely know that many of you are thinking, “This guy is so full of shit”. But I’m not. In 1975, my life changed immensely. After a divorce and leaving an expensive house in the suburbs, which I left behind, I wound up in Hawaii on a whim and doors opened up like crazy after I embarked on the spiritual road. Not necessarily overabundant, but always enough to get by, by the blessings and graciousness of the Guy upstairs.

Have faith!

Namaste.

Sources: (All Scriptures)

Sri Isopanisahd

Bhagavad-Gita As It Is

Srimad Bhagavatam

Hesh Goldstein
When I was a kid, if I were told that I'd be writing a book about diet and nutrition when I was older, let alone having been doing a health related radio show for over 36 years, I would've thought that whoever told me that was out of their mind. Living in Newark, New Jersey, my parents and I consumed anything and everything that had a face or a mother except for dead, rotting, pig bodies, although we did eat bacon (as if all the other decomposing flesh bodies were somehow miraculously clean). Going through high school and college it was no different. In fact, my dietary change did not come until I was in my 30's.

Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.

After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a "plastic" community would be an understatement.

Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.

I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, " let's become vegetarians". I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, "okay"! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.

So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, "The Little Kitchen".

Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.

I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I'll elaborate on that in a minute.

But right now, back to "The Little Kitchen". Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.

The owner said to me, "Let's make a deal. You do our tax return and we'll feed you as well". So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.

But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, "Hawaii". Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called," Mr. Natural's". I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at "Mr. Natural's." To make a long story short, that's exactly what happened.

So, I'm working at "Mr. Natural's" and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle - it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka'anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.

Since I was the new guy, and didn't really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that's exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.

I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.

Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I'm asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn't thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, "You expected anything less"? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, 'enchilada's at "Natural's" tonight'. I never had to cook anything else.

A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That's when they found out I was an accountant and "Down to Earth" was born. "Down to Earth" became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.

In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD's that would call in asking for my credentials.

My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.

I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii's premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She said," If you want to be with me you've got to stop working on naked women". So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.

Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a "chicken" or "egg" or "fish" or "pig" or "cow" was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.

The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.

Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.

For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.

Namaste!