[ramakrishna] Digest Number 740

[Guest guest]

Namaste, " Satya " .

About your question on vegetarianism. I think the moral issue of taking

life is indeed of little use as grounds for being a vegetarian: as you say,

carrots and peas have life. But the higher up on the food-ladder one eats,

the more suffering one causes to the organism victimized. The mammals have

a much more highly developed nervous system than fish, for example, so we

can be pretty sure that their slaughter is a more pain-inflicting process.

There is also the matter of what flesh food does in the human system. This

may be questioned too, on scientific grounds, but the Gita and other

writings by yogis tell us that the qualities of what is ingested and

digested can come to be absorbed--especially over time--by the eater.

Some modern experiments bear out the fact human life is shortened by meat

consumption, especially the animal fat. Moreover one can make a trial for

oneself. Many who have had the meat habit from childhood have given it up

and felt lighter and better and healthier for it.

Your reaction is welcomed.

Yogeshananda

[Guest guest]

With respect to the inquiry about akasha, in this digest 740, from William

Plant:

" the akashik record " is an expression used by Theosophists and some others,

to refer primarily to the collection of all the past experiences of (I

suppose) the whole human race. Somebody gets something out of the akashik

record. C.G. Jung would probably call it the Collective Unconscious, and

Vedantists, the Cosmic Mind. The use of the word akasha isn't really very

appropriate to that.

Akasha in the Hindu or Vedanta vocabulary is the name of one of the primary

elements of the creation, the first to be manifested in Prakriti, nature.

It is difficult to describe in terms of Western science, but one can say

that in a space of total vacuum, though there would be no air there, akasha

would be present; so in many ways " space " is a better translation than

" ether " .

 

 

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Swami Yogeshananda

Vedanta Center of Atlanta

2331 Brockett Road

Tucker, GA 30084 Ph: 770-938-6673

yogeshananda

http://www.vedanta-atlanta.org/

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