I was a meat eater from my childhood. Though I hail from a family of “Brahmin” in India, which should not eat met at any cost. My family had picked up occasional meat eating from the time of my grandfather. Fish on a regular basis and goat meat once in a year, considered permissible after a careful analysis of the scriptures. By the time of my father, who was earning well and considered meat a delicacy, we were regular voracious meat eaters. My siblings and I were raised well fed with good amount of meat as essential animal protein. We did enjoy those too, and used to wait for the day we eat meat, like a drug addict wait for his dose of shot. The peaceful feeling after the food, and the overpowering sleepiness was attributed to the benefit of eating meat.

Eating goat meat was a costly afire those days, so we resolved to a more economical alternate and started eating chickens too. In addition, we started a poultry farm in our backyard. We got aplenty of eggs in the process, and my mother learnt how to make cake and pudding out of those. Those were the best meat eating days of my life.

Cows were sacred and we cared for those to a great deal. As a Brahmin family, we had to keep them strictly to worship and care for them. In the return, they gave plenty of milk for our family and few more families in the neighborhood. The extra milk and egg we produced started giving a few extra incomes, which we strictly spent on the care of the animals. For example, on the medicine to the cows, to increase milk production so that the calf gets plenty to drink, and on the benefit of the chicken to increase their growth rate.

We kids had a great bond with the animals and used to play with them a lot. There was strong bond with the calf, which used to become extra active in our presence. A roster from our chicken farm also became part of our game, and used to run around with us. We cared for few stray dogs and they were part of the gang too. We along with the kids in our neighborhood and the animals were a team.

Then came the day when the calf, which by then had grown to half its mother’s size, was considered big enough to be sold. There was great justification for that decision. The cowshed was not big enough, and the cow was carrying, so the calf had no use in the household. My younger brother for some stupid reason had objection to his friend calf being sold. He was inconsolable. It took a couple of days of teaching to explain him the reality of life. The deal was done, money changed hand and a sensitive side of my younger brother was sold. The only two who could sense it and were in mourning silently were the cow and the calf. Then the time came for the friendly rooster to be in our plate. Though my brothers refused to eat the rooster meat, his objection to killing had reduced as he had started learning the truth of life, may be more than what we had taught him.

The meat had its own effect in our life. The unnecessary violence, lost sensitivity towards each other, a constant state of anger, an uncanny fear for life, resolving to petty methods to cling on to dear life, indulging in sensual pleasure and the lost sense of right and wrong, was not uncalled for. I when managed to earn a good deal of money and was proud of that went a step further, and brought in more sensual pleasure into my life; like more verity of meat, liquor, cigarette and company of woman to complete it.

I was rich to some extent and enjoying all kind of pleasure. When I was at the peak of my pleasurable life, came a great calling from my soul. The detail of which I have narrated in another article of mine: The Divine Truth.

The first visible transformation happen to me was being Vegetarian. I went through the withdraw symptoms similar like drug addicts go through. I succeed being a complete vegetarian after several attempts. The withdrawal symptoms were like weakness, depression, irritation, a strange feeling of lack of nutrition etc. Initially I consulted few nutrition specialists who suggested vegetarian alternates that could provide even more protein and nutrition. I was told that to get equal amount of energy as meat provides, I have to increase the quantity of my diet to several times and must have food more often. Then I was eating vegetarian food like an herbivorous animal almost all the time. That led to many health complications and frequent stomach problems. I was in constant lookout for a solution to it.

Once I was in company of a saint by name Mr. Nagraj of age 65 in the outskirt of Bangalore. I was working with him in his field and was discussing my ordeal in becoming vegetarian. He gave me a different prospective of diet, which solved my problem forever.

He gave me the example of the wood furnace they use in the kitchen. He uses a wood furnace occasionally for cooking food. The wood furnace takes only couple of wood to generate required fire. In addition to wood, it requires sufficient space for air to produce optimum heat. If you stuff the furnace with too much of wood, it will not produce optimum heat and lead to problem. With this narration, he advised to ear only when I am hungry and only half stomach every time.

He went a further to narrate what is the right fuel for the furnace. With the purpose to generate energy, the right fuel is which burn easily, completely and produces maximum energy without living behind too much of poisonous residue or fume. That makes tar, plastic, fat, oil, and much other as completely non-usable fuel.

Every cell in the body is a furnace, which produces its energy to function. It burns the fuel we supply to it and produces energy. After the energy is produced, it cleans the furnace, removes the residue in order to makes it ready to take more food to burn when more energy is needed. Cell being an living organism with its own intelligence, does responses to the amount and type of fuel that it receives.

If too much or too rich food reaches the cell beyond its capacity to burn, then the cell makes alternate arrangements. It stores the food in adjacent to the cell as fat. It replicates itself faster producing more furnaces to burn food faster. It adds more cell to accommodate the food, in an uncontrollable state it can develop cancerous growth. In addition, it discards most of the food and fat into the bloodstream. The excess amount of food caused severe problems for organs in the body. So it is required that our food intake to be of moderate quantity and only when needed.

Then the question of which kind of food or fuel is good for the cell arises. As we said earlier, the cell needs food, which has high amount of energy and very less residue. Here comes question of vegetarian or meat food. To understand this we need to understand the source of energy and the nature of residue or byproduct.

The primary source of energy on this planet is sun. All king of fuel on this planet has its sources of energy traced back to sun. Even the energy in the fossil fuel has come from sun. Therefore, the energy in the purest form always comes from sun. The energy from sun is always direct and without any residue. The second source of energy is plants, that derive energy from sun and preserve energy in it along with some more residues. Then the animals that consume that energy from plants and use them for their physical activity. There is always a certain amount of energy left in the cell as long as the animal is not starved to death. There are animals evolved to derive energy from various level of source, i.e. either plant or animals. Their body has evolved through thousands of years to process that kind of energy source and manage the residue.

Human being from thousands of years has evolved to take food of very pure form derived from plants. Human body being the most delicate in the entire animal kingdom is the proof of that. The cell, the organs, and the blood vessels, teethes and the bone structure are quite delicate in comparison to other animals, even in comparison to the herbivorous animals.

So what is the suitable food for human beings? In my opinion, it is fruits. Fruits stores a significant amount of energy directly from sun with very little residue, which can be excreted very easily from body. The pulps of fruits meant to be eaten so the seeds can be carried far. It causes no harm to any organism.

Let’s look at the poisonous residue that our food can leave behind and what is the effect of those on our body and mind. Animals based on their dietary need carry certain amount of stimulants, and catalyst in their cell to digest the food and remove the residue. Those stimulants and catalysts are poisonous. For example, a lizard body is extremely poisonous for human. Those catalyst and stimulants are poisonous to varying degree for human body. A vegetarian from birth would fall ill if he or she consumes meat for the first time. However, the regular eaters become used to the poisonous effect of it, and develop a craving for it like drugs. The slow poison in the meat in long term has serious physical and mental consequences.

If you have taken a strong dose of antibiotic at any time in your life, you would have experienced nausea, deliration and lack of sense of judgment, irritation, and an uncanny fear. On the physical side you would have felt laziness, sleepy, tiredness and body ache. The elements in the meat cause the similar effect on human body and mind. On long-term use, it has devastating consequences. The mind being in the constant state of threat creates very strange emotional reactions to deal with it. The body also reacts to the changing food habit and causes change to the DNA to adapt to the food habits, causing serious mutation in human species, towards being lower animals.

Why human evolved to such a delicate structure. What purpose the evolution serves by making such a delicate species. If we go by principle of survival of the fittest we are the most unfit in the entire animal kingdom. To understand this we have to understand the evolution.

The evolution has evolved to the soul. That is the biggest achievement of the evolution. Human being is the most successful in the animal kingdom and achieved great marvels in history of thousands of years due to the soul. With the rising of the soul, the civilizations have flourished and with rejection of the soul, civilizations have perished. A soul is beyond mind, so mind cannot understand it. Soul has its own subtle, distinct and powerful voice. A human being cannot hear it in the presence of a noisy and painful mind and body, struggling to survive in the presence of poisons.

The divine truth, the supreme power of soul is something that I have heard of from my grandfather and father in our childhood. They through strict rituals and teaching, as specified by rules, passed on the knowledge to us as their duty. They never dared to add or subtract a bit from it, or to make their own interpretation to it. Those teachings had only great entertainment value for us at that time, and we used to listen to those for hours with great interest.

With the rise of the soul, however every word of it became very clear. The meanings of every word in those messages deciphered automatically through the language of the soul. As if, the message was from one soul only meant for another soul. The mind was only a messenger in-between, it served only the purpose of memorizing it, protecting it zealously, owning it without understanding it for hundreds of years through tradition.

If your endeavor is to uncover your soul, being vegetarian is your first step. For people who are interested to know; after being vegetarian, I lost weight. I would be considered underweight in the western scale. However, my energy level has increased tenfold, and all my chronic ailment disappeared. I do carry more weight and go on longer trekking then people much younger and bulkier do. I experience a tremendous level of mental peace and alertness.