OUR BELOVED MASTER, YOU WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT FOOD, AND NOW IN THE WEST FOOD IS A BIG CULT. IT'S ONE OF THE THINGS COMING IN AS A BASIS OF SPIRITUALITY. YOU SAID IF WE'RE NATURAL, WE'LL KNOW WHAT TO EAT AND WHEN TO EAT, BUT NOW WE ARE OUT OF TOUCH WITH OUR CHILDLIKE NATURE. ALSO, MANY RELIGIONS SAY THAT THE FOOD YOU EAT DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO ONE'S SPIRITUAL PATH. IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN TELL US ABOUT FOOD AS A GUIDE FOR THE WEST?

Below bits and pieces of this wonderful lecture

It is the other way round: food cannot make you spiritual, but if you are spiritual your food habits will change. Eating anything will not make much difference. You can be a vegetarian and cruel to the extreme, and violent; you can be a non-vegetarian and kind and loving ....

....
So I say to you, if you become more meditative you will become more and more vegetarian automatically.
You need not bother about it. And only if this happens, that through meditation vegetarian food comes into you not through mind manipulation, it is good ....

.....
So someday there is going to be a scientific discovery that some body changes will help you to absorb directly, and then fruit will not be needed. In the future -- and I think not very long, fifty years -- science is bound to discover it.
It has to be discovered, otherwise humanity is going to die because food will not be possible. And birth control is not helping, nothing is helping; the population goes on growing. Some way has to be found so food can be dropped and direct absorption of cosmic rays becomes possible.

....
Why is so much sex needed? Because you are tense, sex becomes a release.
Your tensions are released through it -- you feel relaxed, you can go to sleep; if you repress it, you remain tense. And if you repress sex -- the only release, the only possibility of release -- what will happen? You will go mad.
Where will you release your tensions then? You eat food; it is needed by the body, and the body rejects only things which are not needed. Whatsoever you are eating is somehow needed by the body. If you are taking animal food, if you are taking non-vegetarian food, your mind, your body, your whole being is violent. And it is needed. don't change it otherwise your violence will have to find another channel .....


Character is secondary, behavior is secondary, the essential you is the primary thing. Don't pay too much attention to what you do, pay much attention to what you are; being should become the focus, and doing should be left to itself.
When being changes, doing follows. Anything more?

OshO

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You say: HE LOVES YOUR VEGETARIANISM, BUT FEELS THAT THE _EXPRESSION OF LOVE THAT HAPPENS SO OPENLY AND SPONTANEOUSLY AMONGST YOUR SANNYASINS AMOUNTS TO NON-VEGETARIAN CANNIBALISM.

Vegetarianism is the only thing that traditional people can easily appreciate in my commune, hence I am thinking to drop it! My reasons are totally different from their reasons: my commune is vegetarian purely for aesthetic reasons -- it is ugly to kill.

It is just an aesthetic approach. I have no religious antagonism towards non-vegetarian food, because the soul is never killed -- that's what all these religions say.
The logical conclusion will be: then non-vegetarian food is not a religious problem at all.
You are simply separating an animal's body from his soul -- making his soul free of the body, helping his soul to be released from the body.
That is the logical conclusion of all their so-called immortality of the soul.
If the soul is immortal then why be so worried about killing? Then there is no problem. The soul will find another body somewhere maybe a better body, a younger body, more vital.
But many people, particularly Indian vegetarian people, the Jainas and the few brahmins -- and he is a Punjabi Saraswat brahmin, one of the topmost brahmins of India -- they can appreciate the vegetarianism of my commune, but their reasons are different. In the new commune I have the idea that it should be optional, because I don't want to be associated in any way with tradition. If only this thing is there for the traditionalists to enjoy, I will drop that too.
So tell him that if he is alive he will come to know... My people come from non-vegetarian countries and they are suffering immensely. Now, my aesthetic sense says I should not make them suffer so much. Protecting the animals and killing my own people does not seem to be right! They are suffering from many diseases simply because of vegetarian food.

Their bodies are accustomed to non-vegetarian food, they have been brought up with that, and the sudden change of climate and the sudden change of food is such a drastic change that it disturbs their whole balance. So in the new commune it will be optional: those who want to be vegetarian can be vegetarian, those who want to be non-vegetarian can be non-vegetarian.
And then there will be nothing left for the traditionalists to appreciate! I want to destroy all the bridges. Tell him that I am thankful that ne reminded me of it.

OshO

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