Please bear in mind that what you are about to read will leave you with mixed reactions. Nonetheless, it is truth born from the Vedic literature from India dating back hundreds of thousands of years.
All of us, when we, in our spiritual bodies (the soul), were residing in the spiritual world, which, by the way, begins where the material dimension ends.
In the spiritual world the Supreme Enjoyer carries out His pastimes.
We, who are reading this, were there. Because of the desire to enjoy as God does, He gives us a material body and enables us to descend to the material world to fulfill that desire.
For those of you curious as to the size of the true, spiritual entity that you are, you are 10,000 times smaller than the tip of your hair. And yet, you drove vehicles as small as a microbe and as large as dinosaurs.
So, we come here and despite the frustrations, hardships, miseries, and traumas that we face, we trick ourselves into thinking we are masters of our universe and enjoying.
For you that believe that you are indeed the “Supreme Enjoyer”, I wish you the best.
For you that want to get the hell out of Dodge, there is a way.
Being encased within a temporary material body “enjoying” repeated birth, disease, old age and death lifetime after lifetime, as I said, there is a way out.
The millennium we are living in is made up of four ages: the golden (satya) age (yuga), the silver age (treta yuga), the bronze age (dvapara yuga ) and the iron age (kali yuga).
There are some interesting facts about these four ages that you should know.
In satya yuga, the lifespan was 100,000 years, human virtues – peacefulness, self-control, austerity, purity, tolerance, wisdom, knowledge, compassion, forgiveness, patience and religiousness – were at 100%, the method to reconnect with god was meditation, where sitting in meditation, given the lifespan, could easily be 100 years, and the length of satya yuga was 1,728,000 years.
In treta yuga, the life span was 10,000 years, human virtues were at 75%, the method of reconnecting with God was offerings to Him and the length of treta yuga was 1,296,000.
In dvapara yuga, the lifespan was 1,000 years, human virtues were 50%, the method of reconnecting with God was deity worship and the length of dvapara yuga was 864,000 years.
In kali yuga, the lifespan is 100 years, human virtues are at 25%, the method of reconnecting with God is to sing His names and the length of kali yuga is 432,000 years.
So, the total length of the current millennium is 4,320,000 years. And yet we come back over and over and over again.
As you may have guessed we are 5,000 years into kali yuga and as this age progresses it will get worse.
You can already see people dying in their 50s and 60s. At the end of the age an old person will be 20 years old, people into spiritual life will have to hide as they will be the only ones with any semblance of human virtues and all others will feel threatened by them and want to get rid of them.
As a side note, in the Bible I believe it was Jacob that lived to be 600 years old as he was on the cusp of treta and kali yuga.
In this age it’s gonna get worse. There will be overt population reduction; food supplies will be controlled by large, dominating corporations; demise pills will be introduced; pulling the plug on hospitalized seniors will be standard operating procedure; affordable medical care for seniors will be non-existent; new untreatable diseases will flourish; families will diminish in importance; born babies will be killed cause mommy can’t handle it; cancer cures will be suppressed; the purpose of sex will be diverted from creating families to strictly pure enjoyment only; homosexuality is strongly encouraged; and Big Brother (government) will have access to your every move.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg and it’s all happening right now.
So, the question is, do you want to stick around or do you want to get out of Dodge as soon as possible?
Remember, in this age, reconnecting with God is accomplished simply by singing His names.
Different people throughout the world relate to God by His different names, which all relate to different aspects of His personality.
The Jews call Him Eloi, The Supreme Friend, or Abba, The Supreme Father.
The Jehovah Witnesses call Him Jehovah, The All-Mighty One.
The Muslims call Him Allah, The All-Compassionate One (too bad they are clueless about compassion).
The Hindus call Him Krishna, The All-Attractive Person, Govinda, The One Who Gives Ultimate Pleasure, Gopala, The Protector of the Cows, Ajita, The Unconquerable One and many, many more.
I’m sure if you do your own research you can come with thousands of His names that you might be able to relate to. But the point is that in this age of kali, which means the age of chaos, quarrel and confusion, the way to get back to where we came from is to constantly say His names be it in song, quiet speech, or constantly in your mind.
Remember, He is in your heart and He is ever most that close for you to relate with Him.
And at the time of death, if you have the good fortune to say or think about Him, He will take you back.
What’s coming down to road otherwise, is a real nightmare.
One last thing. We all know how weird the Hare Krishna’s are. They hawk flowers and books on the streets, they look like something out of the ever-distant past, and they are obnoxious as hell, but what they chant has incredible merit.
In researching the “Hare Krishna” mantra, I found it’s meaning.
Hare relates to the energy of the Lord
Krishna is God, The All-Attractive Person
Rama means One that gives pleasure to those that serve and worship Him.
So, all together, the mantra:
Hare Krisna, Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare
means, Oh Lord, oh energy of the Lord, please engage me in Your loving service.
And just for the record, I am not a “Hare Krishna”.
This is another reason why all life is so very important. Unless one is an aggressor, we cannot participate in the indiscriminate taking of life.
Another way to reconnect is to offer what you eat to Him. But there’s a catch. He will not accept anything that had a face or a mother, eggs (the chicken’s period) or alcohol because it dulls the senses.
If God orchestrated the transmigration of the living entity back to the human form so he or she could have the opportunity to go back home, how could He accept an offering that basically restricts the living entity from attaining a human form?
So, by offering plant based foods and milk products (if you don’t mind ingesting liquid fat) you are probably wondering how do you avoid the karma associated with the killing of the plants?
Easy! Because you offer it to Him, He removes the karma. The more you do this, the more you’ll only want to eat what He will accept.
The human form is the springboard to the spiritual world. But what about the lower forms? What about the cows, fish, chickens, ducks, pigs or whatever you eat? How do they ever get the chance to get to the human form when they are slaughtered simply to give some insane pleasure to your tongue.
What happens with the lower forms that are slaughtered is that they must take rebirth in that same body until they can leave it naturally. And having their throats slit or being beaten to death is not natural. And you that partake have to bear in that karma and suffer the imminent reaction – taking birth in a lower form until you eventually make it back to the human form when the same crap happens all over again, unless you do something about it.
Was I right about the mixed reactions? Hell yeah! Nonetheless, it’s all reality and the true essence of vegetarianism.
Aloha!
Bhagavad-gita-as-it-is
Chaitanya Charitamrita
Sri Isopanisad
PS: here’s a mellow meditation to chill you out. Lay down and relax. As you take a deep breath, in your mind say Gaur-ra-an-ga very slowly. As you exhale, say Gaur-ra-an-ga as a whisper until you run out of breath. Then do it again Do this for at least 5 minutes and you will not believe how you feel. Gauranaga is one of God’s names. It means, the One with the Golden Glow.
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!
