Meditator's Food
Question: " BELOVED OSHO, WHEN YOU WERE TESTING YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT BY SMOKING, DRINKING ALCOHOL, AND HAVING SEX, DID YOU TRY EATING FISH AND MEAT? DOES A VEGETARIAN DIET HAVE A REAL VALUE FOR OUR CONSCIOUSNESS, OR IS IT OPTIONAL, LIKE SMOKING?"
Osho
It is not optional. Before enlightenment, it makes you gross, destroys your sensitivity, does not allow you to feel the life that surrounds you. It keeps you blind to the fact that just for your taste, you are killing living beings. Their bodies may be different, but their spirits are not different from yours.
Just think of cannibals. Has any cannibal ever become enlightened? Fortunately, it has not happened. If it had happened, the cannibals would have eaten that enlightened man first, just to have a little taste of enlightenment.
There is not much difference between cannibals and the people who eat meat and fish; they are all killing living beings. And the person who can kill should not expect his heart to become compassionate, full of love.
So before enlightenment, eating meat will prevent you from experiencing the light, experiencing your being. It is not optional. After enlightenment, it is optional, but no enlightened person can eat meat and fish. Not that by eating meat and fish his enlightenment is going to disappear -- enlightenment cannot disappear, whatever you do.
But the enlightened person becomes so sensitive, so aesthetic, that the very idea of killing somebody just for the few buds on your tongue is simply idiotic.
Before enlightenment it is absolutely not optional. After enlightenment, it is optional, but no enlightened person can manage to eat meat or fish.
I have tried, but I could not succeed. Fish... I cannot even stand its smell. To think of myself, even in imagination, eating fish, seems to be absolutely impossible. Meat has been placed before me, but I could not touch it. The very idea that life has been destroyed.... And enlightenment is all for life; it cannot accept death just to have a little taste. So it is optional but impossible.
I know many of you are brought up in families where meat and fish are normal, routine. You have been conditioned from your very birth to think that God created all these animals for you to eat. And I don't know why He created you -- for the animals to eat?
Gurdjieff jokingly has proposed a theory -- because Mohammedans, Christians, Jews, all believe God created animals for man to eat.
The problem I posed to you was also put before Gurdjieff, that if everything is food for somebody else -- one animal eats another animal, that animal is eaten by another animal, and so on and so forth -- finally there is man. For whom is he food? Or is he an exception?
Gurdjieff was a remarkable man. He said, "Man is also food. He is eaten by the moon." His disciples could not think what he was talking about, but he had many proofs in his favor.
More people go mad on the full-moon night, than on any other night. More people commit suicide on the full-moon night than on any other night. More people commit murder on the full-moon night than on any other night. More people have become enlightened on the full-moon night than on any other night. There seems to be some reason behind it. On the full-moon night, man's psychology, his body, are all affected by the moon. The people who commit suicide... perhaps the moon has better ways of finding its food than you have.
The moon need not come to you with a gun or with an arrow, but in a subtle way its rays come as death to many people, through suicide, murder. Those who somehow escape become mad. And enlightenment is the ultimate death, because the body will be dissolved and the soul will never be reincarnated into any other body. The moon has eaten the enlightened man completely, not leaving even a trace behind.
Gurdjieff was simply joking, but he made it very clear that you should not think yourself exceptional. Otherwise, when you kill a lion, it is a game. And when a lion kills you, then? Nobody calls it a game. In a game both parties are equal. Sometimes one party is victorious, sometimes the other party is victorious, but the game remains a game. When man kills animals, it is a game. When animals manage somehow to kill a man, this is disaster.
You have been brought up in families where you never gave a single thought to what you were eating. Whatever you were given from the beginning, you accepted. You became accustomed to it. That is one of the reasons why the greatest number of enlightened people happened in India, because that is the only country which is vegetarian. In India also there are non-vegetarians, but from non-vegetarians not a single man has become enlightened. The case is similar in the West.
It hurts your conditioning, but the truth is that Moses, Elijah, Jesus, are nothing compared to Gautam Buddha, Vardhamana, Mahavira, Shankara, Nagarjuna-no, just nothing. Their flowering, their height....
The distance between Jesus and Gautam Buddha is so big for the simple reason that these people -- Jesus, Moses, Elijah -- are all gross, they are not sensitive enough to become enlightened. And because they could not become enlightened, they could not preach vegetarianism to their following. If they had become enlightened, the first thing to teach to their followers would have been vegetarianism.
Smoking is a different matter. It does not kill anybody. At the most it can take two or three years off your life. But it is your life, you are not killing anybody else. You are simply settling for seventy years instead of seventy-three. This is purely your personal business. Enlightenment cannot be affected by taking the smoke in and throwing it out. It is just silly, it is nothing like sin.
Alcohol can disturb before enlightenment, because it can make you more unconscious -- that's its whole purpose. Your consciousness is burdened so much with anxieties, worries, anguish, that you take a drink and feel good because your consciousness goes to sleep.
Hence, before enlightenment, any kind of intoxicant is absolutely to be dropped. It affects your consciousness and drags it downwards towards darker realms of unconsciousness. And the whole effort of the seeker is to pull the darker parts out into the light, so this is just the reverse process. But after enlightenment you are free. There is no problem; now no intoxicant can make your consciousness drop from the height it has reached.
You can enjoy intoxicants if you like, there is no danger. But ordinarily, all the enlightened people in the past have not used intoxicants after their enlightenment.
... ... ...
OSHO
From Death to Deathlessness - Discourse # 5
Osho
It is not optional. Before enlightenment, it makes you gross, destroys your sensitivity, does not allow you to feel the life that surrounds you. It keeps you blind to the fact that just for your taste, you are killing living beings. Their bodies may be different, but their spirits are not different from yours.
Just think of cannibals. Has any cannibal ever become enlightened? Fortunately, it has not happened. If it had happened, the cannibals would have eaten that enlightened man first, just to have a little taste of enlightenment.
There is not much difference between cannibals and the people who eat meat and fish; they are all killing living beings. And the person who can kill should not expect his heart to become compassionate, full of love.
So before enlightenment, eating meat will prevent you from experiencing the light, experiencing your being. It is not optional. After enlightenment, it is optional, but no enlightened person can eat meat and fish. Not that by eating meat and fish his enlightenment is going to disappear -- enlightenment cannot disappear, whatever you do.
But the enlightened person becomes so sensitive, so aesthetic, that the very idea of killing somebody just for the few buds on your tongue is simply idiotic.
Before enlightenment it is absolutely not optional. After enlightenment, it is optional, but no enlightened person can manage to eat meat or fish.
I have tried, but I could not succeed. Fish... I cannot even stand its smell. To think of myself, even in imagination, eating fish, seems to be absolutely impossible. Meat has been placed before me, but I could not touch it. The very idea that life has been destroyed.... And enlightenment is all for life; it cannot accept death just to have a little taste. So it is optional but impossible.
I know many of you are brought up in families where meat and fish are normal, routine. You have been conditioned from your very birth to think that God created all these animals for you to eat. And I don't know why He created you -- for the animals to eat?
Gurdjieff jokingly has proposed a theory -- because Mohammedans, Christians, Jews, all believe God created animals for man to eat.
The problem I posed to you was also put before Gurdjieff, that if everything is food for somebody else -- one animal eats another animal, that animal is eaten by another animal, and so on and so forth -- finally there is man. For whom is he food? Or is he an exception?
Gurdjieff was a remarkable man. He said, "Man is also food. He is eaten by the moon." His disciples could not think what he was talking about, but he had many proofs in his favor.
More people go mad on the full-moon night, than on any other night. More people commit suicide on the full-moon night than on any other night. More people commit murder on the full-moon night than on any other night. More people have become enlightened on the full-moon night than on any other night. There seems to be some reason behind it. On the full-moon night, man's psychology, his body, are all affected by the moon. The people who commit suicide... perhaps the moon has better ways of finding its food than you have.
The moon need not come to you with a gun or with an arrow, but in a subtle way its rays come as death to many people, through suicide, murder. Those who somehow escape become mad. And enlightenment is the ultimate death, because the body will be dissolved and the soul will never be reincarnated into any other body. The moon has eaten the enlightened man completely, not leaving even a trace behind.
Gurdjieff was simply joking, but he made it very clear that you should not think yourself exceptional. Otherwise, when you kill a lion, it is a game. And when a lion kills you, then? Nobody calls it a game. In a game both parties are equal. Sometimes one party is victorious, sometimes the other party is victorious, but the game remains a game. When man kills animals, it is a game. When animals manage somehow to kill a man, this is disaster.
You have been brought up in families where you never gave a single thought to what you were eating. Whatever you were given from the beginning, you accepted. You became accustomed to it. That is one of the reasons why the greatest number of enlightened people happened in India, because that is the only country which is vegetarian. In India also there are non-vegetarians, but from non-vegetarians not a single man has become enlightened. The case is similar in the West.
It hurts your conditioning, but the truth is that Moses, Elijah, Jesus, are nothing compared to Gautam Buddha, Vardhamana, Mahavira, Shankara, Nagarjuna-no, just nothing. Their flowering, their height....
The distance between Jesus and Gautam Buddha is so big for the simple reason that these people -- Jesus, Moses, Elijah -- are all gross, they are not sensitive enough to become enlightened. And because they could not become enlightened, they could not preach vegetarianism to their following. If they had become enlightened, the first thing to teach to their followers would have been vegetarianism.
Smoking is a different matter. It does not kill anybody. At the most it can take two or three years off your life. But it is your life, you are not killing anybody else. You are simply settling for seventy years instead of seventy-three. This is purely your personal business. Enlightenment cannot be affected by taking the smoke in and throwing it out. It is just silly, it is nothing like sin.
Alcohol can disturb before enlightenment, because it can make you more unconscious -- that's its whole purpose. Your consciousness is burdened so much with anxieties, worries, anguish, that you take a drink and feel good because your consciousness goes to sleep.
Hence, before enlightenment, any kind of intoxicant is absolutely to be dropped. It affects your consciousness and drags it downwards towards darker realms of unconsciousness. And the whole effort of the seeker is to pull the darker parts out into the light, so this is just the reverse process. But after enlightenment you are free. There is no problem; now no intoxicant can make your consciousness drop from the height it has reached.
You can enjoy intoxicants if you like, there is no danger. But ordinarily, all the enlightened people in the past have not used intoxicants after their enlightenment.
... ... ...
OSHO
From Death to Deathlessness - Discourse # 5