Q.
What are some of the spiritual benefits that we can get from being
a vegetarian?
M.
Spiritual benefits! I'm glad you ask in this manner because that means
you only concentrate or care about spiritual benefits. Most people
would care for health, diet and figure, when they talk about the vegetarian
diet.
The spiritual
aspect of a vegetarian diet is very clear, on violence, "Thou
shall not kill." When God said to us, "Thou shall not kill,"
Hes did not say "human beings." Hes said "all beings."
Didn't Hes say that Hes made all animals to befriend us, to be helpers
to us? And didn't Hes put all the animals in our care? Hes said, "Take
care of them, rule over them." And when you rule over your subjects,
do you kill your subjects, eat them, and become the king only, no
one else is there? (Laughter)
So now you understand
when God says that we must do it, there is no need to question Hirm.
Hes says very clearly, but who understands God, except God? We have
to become God in order to understand Hirm. I invite you to be Godlike
again, be your Self, be no one else. To meditate on God doesn't mean
you worship God; it means you become God. You realize that you and
God are one. "I and my Father are one." Didn't Jesus say
so? And if He says that He and His Father are one, we and His Father
are also one because we are also the children of God. He said that
what He does, we can do even better. So we might be even better than
God, who knows? Why worship God when we don't know anything about
God? Why in such blind faith? We must know first what we worship,
just like you must know who the girl's that you're going to marry
before you marry her. Nowadays, it's modern. We don't marry by blind
dates anymore, so why should we worship God in all blind faith? We
have the right to demand God to appear, to make Hirmself known to
us. We have the right to choose which God we like to follow.
So now you see,
it is very clear in the Bible that we should be vegetarian. By all
scientific reasons, we should be vegetarian. By all health reasons,
we should be again vegetarian. By all economical reasons, we should
be vegetarian. By all compassionate reasons, we should be vegetarian.
By saving the world in spirit, we should be vegetarian. It is stated
in some research that if the people in western America would eat vegetarian
once a week, we could save sixteen million people every year. So be
a hero, be vegetarian. By all reasons, (all laugh, and clap) even
if you don't follow me, you don't practice the same Method, please
be a vegetarian for your own sake, for the sake of the world.
"But why vegetarian?"
you would ask me. Vegetarian is just because the God inside us wants
it. Killing is against our principle of not wanting to be killed.
We ourselves don't want to be killed. Or we ourselves don't want our
things stolen, for example. Now if we do that to another person, it
means we are against ourselves and that makes us suffer. Everything
that you do against yourself makes you suffer. You cannot beat yourself.
You shouldn't starve yourself, for example. Same thing, we should
not kill, because that is against the principle of life. That makes
us suffer, so we don't do it. It doesn't mean we limit ourselves in
that way. Our life will not be limited in this body, but extended
to the life of the animals and all kinds of beings. That makes us
grander, greater, happier and limitless.