Different people identify themselves in different ways and
according to how they identify themselves, they see a different purpose in
life.
For instance, the vast majority of people identify
themselves to be the body. They believe, “I am matter and that’s my identity.”
And what would be the purpose of their existence? To enjoy.
Enjoying not only sensual pleasures but also feelings,
sentiments, intellectual stimulation or even pseudo-spiritual pleasures, which
are all centered around themselves. This is what most people in the world today
perceive as their purpose in life.
Now this isn’t just philosophy in the sense that it has very
practical effects in many, many different fields. For instance, people’s
materialistic viewpoint – the way people identify themselves as the body and
the way that they perceive the purpose of life as sense enjoyment – serves as
the springboard of various social problems. So, lets just take one social issue
– abortion.
Abortion is one very obvious, external activity with
far-reaching social consequences and which has so much to do with real life.
Abortion is actually an offshoot or result of people’s perceiving the purpose
of life in a particular way. That being that the goal of life in individual
sense enjoyment.
There are all kinds of arguments but let’s just look at a
couple. Say a child has a physical deformity and in today’s day and age,
doctors are able to detect deformities in the child while still in the womb.
So, people who see the purpose of life as being sense
enjoyment should logically kill the kid. Why? Because having such a child will
get in the way of their individual enjoyment. They would feel that all the
extra time and care devoted to the kid could be an embarrassment to them.
Imagine what would happen if their friends came over and saw such a child with
a deformed face or body? They might feel funny and might not want to visit them
anymore and then they would lose them as friends.
The point is that if the kid gets in the way of their
enjoyment it might be better to kill it asap. Even in cases where the child in
the womb has no physical deformities and is quite healthy, people opt out to
kill it because that child will get in the way of their enjoyment. They feel
that they won’t be able to go out and enjoy as often as they want to because
they would have to care for the child.
So, rationalizations come into play. “If we have this baby
he’ll be unwanted and won’t be happy in life.” Or, “we’re not going to love him
as much and this will hurt him.” Or, “he won’t be able to to enjoy life so much
because he’d get depressed having all these feelings that his mother and father
don’t love him so for his sake it’s best to kill him. We don’t care for
ourselves, but we’re simply thinking of the CHILD! How would you like to be
unwanted?”
But the fact is that most of feel unwanted because not
everybody wants everybody. For example, you’re in a crowded beach resort during
the summer and you wish all those people weren’t there. Or, you’re driving
during rush hour in bumper to bumper traffic and you hate all the people in the
cars. No matter what, we always experience that people don’t want people in one
way or another.
If we accept the reasoning that unwantedness is a valid
excuse for abortion, then we should all be killed because we must be suffering
so much because we’re also unwanted.
This basically is the stage where materialistic societies
are coming to. Their whole platform in life is that the purpose of existence is
enjoyment and unwanted people will not be able to enjoy themselves and will
have no real reason to exist. Kind of sounds like the philosophy of Bill Gates
and the Rockefellers.
Somehow or another, the conclusion arrived at is that
letting such unwanted people continue existing is really mean and cruel and the
starting point is the kid in the womb who should be killed because they’re not
wanted.
Why not take that logic a bit further and apply it to the
kids that are one or two years old? Hell, if they’re not wanted shouldn’t they
be killed? It’s the same stupid logic so what’s the difference? The
justification is if a person is not wanted shouldn’t they be liquidated for
their own good?
Today, this idea is on the front burner especially in
connection with abortion and the euthanasia of old people. Old people are also
unwanted because they get in the way at home and become a burden to the people
they live with. Watching TV is really hard with them coughing all the time, or
when there are houseguests and they hobble around and ruin the whole lively
spirit of enjoyment, or if there’s a party going on and grandpa rolls in on his
wheelchair in his pajamas and drooling. Oh, the embarrassment. And then the
fact that they can’t go to the bathroom by themselves and the have to be waited
on continually.
In the US and other affluent nations, people are gradually
edging out the aged into old age homes. And as soon as that happens they feel
relief. But, that’s short lived as soon as the bills for the old age homes
start rolling in. Then the search for the “demise” pill starts.
Who else can we target? What about crippled people or blind
people or autistic people? What value to society do they have? None! So, let’s get rid of them and we can
enjoy more.
In animal breeding it’s called culling. Simply eliminate the
animals with poor traits and breed those with the desired traits. Now, they
want to “cull” humans and it goes on every day.
Some people think, if you ain’t white, you ain’t right. The
Americans don’t want the Russians and the Russians don’t want the Americans.
The Chinese don’t want the Vietnamese and the North Koreans don’t want the
South Koreans. So, they kill who they don’t want.
They don’t see a child in the womb or an old person or a
crippled person as a living entity and the certainly do not see them as
children of God who should be respected and loved. Rather, they see and judge
them on the basis of their use – whether or not I or society can utilize them
for the purpose of sense gratification.
Personally, I couldn’t care less if nobody wanted me or if everybody hated my guts. As long as I can please God, as long as God is pleased with me, I really don’t care if I’m unwanted or not. In fact, I’d think something was wrong if everybody wanted me. If everyone wanted me I would feel I was doing something wrong or that I was a diplomat or a politician.
In any case, it is a perverted idea that the purpose in life
is enjoyment and that to be to enjoy, I need to be wanted. Such a perverted
idea is the cause of so much misery in the world.
The real purpose of life is not individual sense enjoyment.
If we understood that we are not the material body but the spiritual living
force within the body and we are all children of God, we could appreciate that
the real purpose of life is not to seek temporary superficial bodily enjoyment,
which is so temporary and unsatisfying, but the real purpose of life is
developing our love for God and tasting the joy in serving Him.
The problem is that people are trying to be the Supreme
Enjoyer, but they are never joyful. They consider the purpose in life to be
enjoying themselves. But, in spite of endeavoring and experiencing so much
sensual pleasures in the world, they end up miserable and empty. On the other
hand, those who do not see their purpose in life as individual enjoyment but
working for the enjoyment of their Best friend, the Supreme person, they alone
experience actual joy.
So, a person who is trying to work for his own happiness
does not become happy. But a person who is not concerned about his own
happiness and is instead concerned with pleasing God, does indeed experience
true happiness. So, if you want it, you can’t have it; but if you want the
Supreme person to have it, then you have it automatically. It sounds odd and
it’s a paradox but it’s true and the evidence is there.
In America, for instance, practically nobody is happy. Oh,
there’s a few people who are happy because they have some sort of spiritual
happiness. In other words, the people who are happy are happy because they are
not concerned with their own happiness but are concerned with pleasing and
serving God.
But the vast majority of people who are trying to struggle
to enjoy themselves and be the enjoyers are not happy. And the symptoms are
there – high suicide rates, a widespread and serious drug problem, including
those on legal drugs, etc. The symptoms are there and you can tell a tree by
its fruit.
So, now we find millions of children killed in the womb
every year simply because of the predominant philosophy of the materialistic
way of life determining who lives and who dies. And, who comes to the save the
day? Not Mighty Mouse but Planned Parenthood!
But, a person who is God conscious understands that they are
a servant of God and so is the child in the womb or the old guy in the
wheelchair.
The reason for existence is not to become a worldly scholar
or a great politician, scientist, billionaire, or to reap fame and glory. This
is not the purpose of life. If it were, then only those people who can become
great or who are enjoying material life to the fullest should exist. Then
should it follow that those living in the Third World should be killed?
If a person believes that the purpose of life is enjoying
the senses, there there could be all kinds of reasons why there should be
abortion and other senseless acts. If the purpose of life is sense enjoyment,
why not kill the Catholic priests because they are not supposed to be enjoying
all these sensual pleasures? Oh, I guess an exception could be made for the
pedophile Catholic priests. Abortion and euthanasia has absolutely nothing to
really do with achieving the real purpose of life.
The solution to the practical problems such as the killing
of babies and old people is not simply legislation although that must be there
also, the business of leaders must be to protect the innocent.
More importantly, there must be an actual change in the way
we view ourselves and our relation with others and God. We have to experience a
change of heart and a change in our view of the purpose of life.
We must understand that we are the spirit soul, part and
parcel of the Supreme Soul, and our eternal function and duty is to render
loving service to Him, then we can change our relationship with others.
Experiencing this truth will enable us to change society’s exploitive nature.
It’s time to clearly see the “driver” of body rather than
just the body. Doing this will enable us to realize we are not matter or
temporary. The vehicle has a beginning and an end. The driver is eternal. As
such, we are not meant to be the center of enjoyment, but our natural function
is to render loving service to our Supreme Father. Understanding our real
identity will actually serve as the solid foundation for an ideal society which
is peaceful, loving and non-exploitive.
Aloha!
Sources:
Philarchive.org/archive-NOBQAA
Krishna.com/abortion
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!
