When
we are talking about the media, it comes down to this question: do they create
the consciousness of the people or is the consciousness of the people merely
being reflected by the media?
The
fact is that practically everyone watches TV and reads the newspapers;
therefore, the media is in a position to influence. They are just as much
leaders of the society as the politicians, schoolteachers, priests, etc.
Sometimes,
when I write letters to the editor or various other editorials, the newspapers
do not print them because it goes against their advertising dollars. Yet, those
who run a newspaper have great influence and are in a very responsible
position, but nonetheless portray things that will benefit them.
The
importance of what we hear from others and what we ourselves are speaking
should be appreciated. What ever I hear or read will have the effect of
confusing and entangling me more and more in materialistic life or it will have
a liberating effect. Therefore, we must be very careful.
In
this light, then, practically everyone in society is acting as a leader or a
guru to others. Even the person who says “you don’t need to follow anyone;
just go on your own” is teaching. His teaching is that you don’t need a
leader or a guru. What this usually means is that you just end up hearing
anyone’s and everyone’s opinion.
Not
wanting to hear from anyone because I’m afraid of being misled is a sign of
complete paranoia. And, acute paranoia is actually another symptom of this age.
The
media is responsible for this to a great extent. By continually showing us how
this madman is trying to start a war; this mad man is eating his followers;
this madman is raping women or this madman is knocking off cops, we started
seeing everyone as a madman and we walk around full of fear.
Actually,
people are too scared to even walk anywhere. The perfect example is Los
Angeles, where people don’t walk anywhere. They drive around in their cars all
shackled up and they run to their doors and lock them. Then they try to remain
alone, but this is not the solution, as it will not make us happy.
There
is really no way I can live in the world without hearing from someone; without
accepting someone as an authority; so it comes down to a question of who should
I hear from?
Everyone
is telling me something different: my parents are telling me this; the
psychiatrists are saying something else; some guy is saying something else
again in a newspaper article. It means, then, that I have to be a little more
thoughtful. I have to analyze the character and motivation of those I am
hearing from.
Of
course, if you’re lazy, this makes it difficult. When everyone is saying
something different, it means I have to make some effort to find out the truth.
It’s much easier to say everybody’s got his or her own truth and I don’t need
to worry. But the fact is, there is Absolute Truth and only when I am fixed up
in harmony with that Truth will I be secure and full within myself and able to
benefit others.
Anyone
in a position of influence must be responsible for those he is influencing.
This is a question that could be asked of the media: do they really care for
those they are influencing?
I
am always surprised how politicians are so eager to give leadership to others,
how the media are ready to editorialize everything. Yet, if they were to
examine their own lives, they would see that they are not happy; they don’t
understand the purpose of life. What effect, then, will they have on others? It
gives solid meaning to that old saying that the blind cannot lead the blind.
The
responsibility of a leader is to lead people to a higher level of
consciousness. And he must teach by his own example. His duty is to take a
stand for the protection of society even if it makes him unpopular.
This
is dangerous because the people in turn are followers of the media. The media’s
business is catering to people’s senses. They are not interested in doing good.
Their main interest is to create markets and make a buck. This is their motive.
By catering to people’s senses, they are able to gain control.
The
media, thinking they are the real leaders of society, makes it very difficult
for someone else who is wanting to do good to others, and try and reach people
through the media.
Although
the media has undisputed power to influence people’s decisions and they are in
control of the public mind, unfortunately they are for the greater part without
any conscience.
Society
is becoming more and more like animal society. Instead of helping people
advanced toward an understanding of themselves and their relationship with God,
the media and people in power are taking everyone into animal existence not
only here in now, but in the future also.
When
this gross body is finished, then according to one’s mentality, nature towards
another kind of gross body. What we do, see, and hear now affects the mind or
subtle body, and the subtle body in turn forms the nucleus for the kind of
gross physical body that we take on in the next life.
The
connection between the gross senses and the subtle material body is a science
that must be understood. It can be seen that while the media and advertising
people may not fully appreciate this science, they are aware of how it works
and they use it to control people’s minds and exploit them.
Due
to their own lust for material gain and following, they do not use their power
to good effect. They want a society of animals because animals are easier to
control and exploit than intelligent people. This, for example, is the whole
strategy of advertising. Excite people’s gross senses and they will buy your
product.
Another
important effect of the media at present is that instead of bringing people to
gather, they have built walls between people.
The
word “media” comes from the word “medium” which means transparent like a window. The media is
not meant to get in the way of communication between people. It is meant to be
neutral like a tape recorder.
The
editorial column is actually the correct place for the editor’s particular
viewpoint or angle on things. As soon as the media begins distorting things,
then it no longer qualifies as a medium for anything. It will not be possible
for people to communicate in this way. My words might go through a reporter’s pen, but if
his pen is like a butcher’s knife, cutting out this and that, changing things
around, then he has failed to communicate what I am saying. Instead, he has
presented his own ideas.
Reporters
may make only small changes that seem unimportant; but that, plus the tone or
vibe of their language, go to create a certain kind of picture in people’s
minds. This is the danger when people in the media start taking the liberty to
twist the truth.
People
are always feeling alienated from everyone else in society. They are already
small and powerless in the face of the powers that be. The media should not
increase this. They should give people a chance to express what they are really
seeing and feeling. But instead, they increase paranoia and separation. They
create the feeling of “us” and “them”.
During
the Vietnam War, all the magazines and newspapers like to present the Vietcong
as some kind of monolithic, evil force. People didn’t even know they were people, let alone South Vietnamese
people who were fighting against the existing government.
They
used blanket terms like “the Reds” and then, of course, they had to
revise their terms later when there was a split between the Russian and Chinese
Communists. In fact, there were people in the nation who tried to suggest it
was just a ploy by the Communists to make “us” think they were not
one force. The media created in people’s minds the idea of vague terms, of
conspiring demons – “all you Reds are alike, all you hippies are alike,
all you cults are alike”, etc.
Media
tends to be stuck with this disease of generalizing. And usually they plead
innocence out of stupidity: “We didn’t even know there was a difference
and even if we did, we couldn’t explain it to people because the people are too
dumb. They don’t want to know all of that. You’ve got to keep it simple and
talk down to them. It’s easier just to label everyone as a member of this team
or that team”.
Reading
the newspaper is like reading the sports page. People picked the page just to
see which side is winning, whether it’s the Arabs, the Jews, the Catholics, the
Commies, or this or that. And there are two kinds of sports pages: local and
international. Some games are played with guns, some with words, some with
political power, etc. Everything is seen like a baseball game or a soccer match.
If
they were to give a less superficial coverage of the things going on, the ideas
involved, it would make things too complicated. You would lose the effect of
the game vibe. People might not pick up the paper anymore. It would no longer
be an easy spectator sport, our team against another team, us against them. It
becomes a whole deeper thing. People have to start thinking.
It’s
easier for the media to encourage team spirit and get people jacked up on that
feeling. That way they will buy their newspapers and magazines to see if their
team is winning or if the bad guys are taking over we’re coming up the block.
For this reason, the media are always looking for a new angle or conflict, a
new game that people can identify with.
So,
it shows that the media’s interest is generally on the basic animal level. They
consider only the animal instincts – eating, sleeping, having sex, defending,
violence, and fear. They don’t understand that we are all on the same team and
that there is no need for animosity.
We
are all spirit souls, parts and parcels of the Supreme. Team spirit springs
from the pack mentality of animal life. It does not spring from any spiritual
tendencies of the soul.
In
many ways, the media is not even in control of itself because it is controlled
by the advertisers, and even the writers are stuck because they are having to
write in a very limited space and they cannot get very deep.
Why
are people not interested in hearing are presenting serious ideas or
philosophy? Because they have become too attached to material sense
gratification. Even though they can be explained to them in very simple,
scientific terms, that they are not the body, and how being bound up in the
material body is a suffering condition enter natural position is being that dominated
part and parcel of God, they cannot understand. In the ancient text, the
Bhagavad-Gita, it states:
“In the
minds of those who are too attached to sense enjoyment and material opulence,
and who are bewildered by such things, the resolute determination for
devotional service to the Lord does not take place”.
In other words, ignorance is bliss! So a
person in that condition of being too attached to sense enjoyment does not want
to be in knowledge because the truth will take him away from thinking “I
can only enjoy myself if my senses are fully pleased”. If they separate
themselves from the body, they think there is no purpose in life. A person who
is attached to sense enjoyment wants to remain in illusion so he or she can
continue trying to be Master of the world.
As soon as we begin talking about us being
spirit soul, the servant of God, a person thinks, “Hold on here, what are
you trying to get me into”? Nobody wants to be a servant. Everyone wants
to be a master. They want to be glorified. They want the recognition. And if
you go to a party when you get all spiffed up and think you the belle of the
ball and everybody pays attention to the other guy and not to you what happens?
Enviousness! And it’s this enviousness that makes it so a person does not want
to hear about his true identity because then the only conclusion remaining is
that his natural function is to render service to God.
Namaste!
Sources:
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!
