And most important of all. How does it affect our ability to understand spiritual subject matter?
Meat is in the material mode of ignorance. There are different modes of nature that influence us. There are goodness, passion and ignorance. Meat is in the mode of ignorance. When I eat meat, that puts me under the influence of the mode of ignorance. The mode of ignorance is dull, dark; sleep is in the mode of ignorance, etc. So it puts me under that influence.
In the mode of ignorance I have very little interest in spiritual subject matter. And even if I have interest, it’s very difficult to understand. I’m blocked, I just can’t understand it. I can’t understand the higher levels of spiritual knowledge. So it keeps me at a certain point spiritually. I just can’t go beyond that.
Whereas the opposite is true with the vegetarian diet. If it’s a proper vegetarian diet, it’ll be in the mode of goodness – very uplifting, very awake, very clear. So I can understand much higher spiritual truth. That’s, again, very, very important, the most important.
There was a great spiritual master and he made two statements. It was in America in the time of the Vietnam War. That’s when America was involved in this war in Vietnam; anyway, it was not a good situation. And he made a statement, “As long as there are slaughter houses in places like Chicago…” In America Chicago is a peak slaughter place. They ship cattle there from all over and slaughter them – big meat production. So he said, “As long as there are slaughter houses in places like Chicago, there will also be slaughter houses in places like Vietnam.”
And he also said, “As long as they eat meat, they cannot understand this higher spiritual truth.”
So, again, it’s all connected. Our life is very affected just by what we eat.