BKs on the Devil's Unholy Food (again)

From the BKWSU's Global Functioning: Customs and Systems

It is interesting for me to see "vegan" come up on the agenda. My experience of the BK leaders is that they were anti-vegan and applied social pressure on vegans to conform and eat dairy. It avoids stating clearly that BKs are not allowed to eat food cooked by non-BKs, even if it is their own mother's or grandmother's. According to this advice, such food is the Devil's ... "Ravan's food".

ln days of the 'Western Brahma Kumari Order', anyone considering bodily healthy from the point of diet was accused of "Food Bhakti" and body consciousness ... the worst sin for BKs. Only 'BK Raj Yoga, more Yoga and better Yoga' were projected as being of any value and cultural and personal prejudices, and hot, oil, sweet & milky Indian food, ruled. It was fine to become sick, weak, obese, constipated, lose one's teeth and contract diabetes ... as long as one was "Remembering Baba".

There were a few personal and center rebellions against this, and it was a bit of a long and hard won battle ... by BK standards ... both at a center level and at a Madhuban HQ level. It would not have happened had a few Western BKs not stood their grounds and faced the opposition of the leadership. More of which I can say if requested.

But a few questions ... "10. If the BKs are concerned about living a life of non violence, why aren’t they vegan?"

Their answer avoids the question ... a 'cop out' in other words. Surely this is misleading because very, very little milk is produced from "non mechanized system of farming". 99.9& of BK milk comes from industrial slaughter milk facilities. On "Happy Cows", no doubt a relative of "Happy Meat", I suggest dairy cows willingness to lactate is for other simpler reasons ... a Pavlovian Response. The BKs are into Hindi myth territory here. Obviously 'touchie-feelie' New Age farms are not "typical" nor does the BKWSU buy or recommend only ethically sourced milk ... it should. If it *must* take dairy products, it should have its own cows wandering around the Global Retreat Center.

A "typically" mechanized systems of dairy farming' involves considerably amounts of killing and suffering. 50% of calves (male) are killed almost immediately. Milk cows are exterminated at a highly premature age after being exploited ... and both are part of the economics of the larger meat industry. If you take dairy, you are supporting it.

There is more suffering in a pint of milk than a pound of steak.

"11. Non-fertilized eggs are sold in the markets these days. What is the problem about eating them?

Of course, here the issue would not be of taking away life, as it is with ordinary eggs. It’s more about the sulfur in eggs."

This seems an awfully strange, weak answer ... Eggs contain about 150 to 180 mg per 100 gm, yet, e.g.

Dried whole milk 230 to 250 mg per 100 gm (used in Indian sweets)
Cheeses contain 230 to 250 mg per 100 gm
Brazil nuts 290 mg per 100 gm
Peanuts 260 mg per 100 gm (roasted 380)
Dried apricots 160 mg per 100 gm
Dried peaches 240 mg per 100 gm

There are no BK laws against those and other high sulphur foods. I have never heard BapDada mention anything about 'low sulphur diets', so what is the logic in this? What is the sulphur threshold? (e.g. cabbage and spinach have 90 mg).

8. What is the reason behind all the rules around the kitchen?

On the physical level everything is vibration – atoms vibrate, cells vibrate – and to have physical health there needs to be coherence and harmony between all cells, atoms and molecules. We have to see the body as a whole and approach it holistically. Eating processed, overly spiced, over cooked or fried foods, for example, disturbs that harmony.

On the level of cleanliness and vibration, the environment affects what we eat even as we cook it. In the kitchen, food is exposed to the vibrations of the utensils we cook with, the atmosphere of the kitchen, and the mood of the cooks, themselves. This is the reason for keeping everything very clean in the kitchen, and for offering Bhog and giving drishti to the food (which purifies it). A non-vegetarian diet holds the energies of the violence with which the animal was killed, which explains why we are vegetarians.

Regarding the mood of the cook: if any food carries the label of ‘my’ or ‘I’ on it – whether the cook is a stranger or a Brahmin, it becomes food that belongs to Raven. Meaning, if anyone involved with that food has the feeling, ‘I bought this food, I cooked the food, this is my food, etc,’ it becomes unholy food. Anyone who eats food from Raven will certainly have some kind of problem, sorrow or disease further down the road.

This is why we are careful about eating food mixed with attitudes that are not reliably right. In a Brahmin household or center, cooks have the attitude of a trustee, and the awareness of cooking in Baba’s vibrations. ‘I am cooking for my Baba; it belongs to Baba’. We offer Bhog so that in case there is any other kind of attitude, it is burned away and the food becomes God’s food. It is offered by God for the body that belongs to God. With this attitude, we eat the food. Such food, coming from God promotes health and harmony.

9. Why does Baba need us to be vegetarian?

A fundamental principle of the soul is non-violence and the Law of Karma that would have us tread softly on this planet. I love the principles of non-violence. Once Jagdishbhai was explaining that the people who buy animals and drive them to the slaughterhouse, etc. are all involved in the karmic chain of violence against that living soul. It’s not just the one who eats it. Think of all who handle the meat, from the beginning to the end. Each one is involved in that karmic story, that violence. From that perspective, the Law of Karma is the real reason for being vegetarian. People who are into “saving the whales” are doing a great thing, but these people won’t generally be vegetarian. A kind of “disconnect” exists in people’s values.

Regarding vegan principles – taking milk does not involve violence towards the animal but nevertheless we would respect vegan principles. Interestingly, as a kid I hated eggs more than meat! It’s like the soul carries those sanskars from past vegetarian births.

There is definitely a connection between meditation and vegetarianism. The meditative state of awareness is the sum total of all aspects of life. Many BKs are innocent – they think, well now, I’ll just sit down and meditate. But it’s not really about that one half hour of meditation; it’s about how you’ve spent the other 23 ½; it is about how you are living your life. Inaccurate use of money, inaccurate food and drink, low standards of behavior and lifestyle choices – these all have a huge effect on the soul’s ability to let go of the body and connect with God. Each little building block has its own part in releasing the soul and allowing it to go to God. If we are involved in even a little bit of that karmic chain of meat eating, a subtle karmic account is created that doesn’t allow the soul to go beyond. All these subtle things add up until there is quite an account.

This is why Baba always says, “Children, follow Shrimat.” Shrimat is not a set of rules but a system of living on this planet without violence. It takes a lot of wisdom to be able to do this. It also keeps us from creating more karmic debts. Deep knowledge and Yoga is for settling our debts, which is what we really want. This is why Brahma Baba’s life was so incredible. Each and every action had wisdom behind it. His life teaches us how to live, how to dance the beauty of life.

10. If the BKs are concerned about living a life of non violence, why aren’t they vegan?

In nature, there is a beautiful symbiosis between plant kingdom and animal kingdom. For example, plants produce fruit and vegetables with juice, colors, fragrance, so that animals or birds or humans are attracted to the fruit and eat it. Plants produce fruit for the animal world and in return, animals take the seed of that plant inadvertently or consciously and plants it somewhere else, thus contributing to the vegetable kingdom. In this there is no violence. There is nature’s symbiosis.

In the same way, cows receive protection and sustenance from human beings and in return cows are happy to give milk to the human beings who look after the cows. In a typical non mechanized system of farming, the cow is happy to secrete milk when the familiar person comes to milk the cow.

11. Non-fertilized eggs are sold in the markets these days. What is the problem about eating them? What about garlic and onions? What’s wrong with them?

Of course, here the issue would not be of taking away life, as it is with ordinary eggs. It’s more about the sulfur in eggs. There are great articles on this, about how sulfur crosses the blood barrier and goes straight into the brain, damaging brain function. It is a poison. Eggs are very high in sulfur. The same applies to onions and garlic; they are also very sulfurous.

Another aspect here is that eating a lot of meat thickens the blood. Onions and garlic are blood thinning elements, so if you are a big meat eater the garlic and onions act like an antidote. This is why health benefits are claimed, and steak and onions is a classic meal and they go well together. But if you don’t eat meat than the negative elements of eating onions and garlic do not bring any benefit at all.

12. Article on the Toxic Effect of Garlic

(Source: lecture by Dr Robert [Bob] C. Beck, DSc., given at the Whole Life Expo, Seattle, WA, USA, in March 1996)

The reason garlic is so toxic, is that the sulphone hydroxyl ion penetrates the blood brain barrier, just like DMSO, and is a specific poison for higher life forms and brain cells. We discovered this much to our horror, when I was the world's largest manufacturer of ethical EEG biofeedback equipment. We'd have people come back from lunch that looked clinically dead on the encephalograph, which we used to calibrate their progress. "Well, what happened?" "Well, I went to an Italian restaurant and there was some garlic in my salad dressing!".

So we had them sign things that they won't touch garlic before classes or we were wasting their time, and money and my time. I guess those of you who are pilots or have been in flight tests... I was in flight test engineering in Doc Hallan's group in the 1950's.

The flight surgeon would come around every month and remind all of us: "Don't you dare touch any garlic 72 hours before you fly one of our airplanes, because it'll double or triple your reaction time. You're three times slower than you would be if you'd [not] had a few drops of garlic." Well, we did not know why for 20 years later, until I owned the Alpha-Metrics Corporation. We were building biofeedback equipment and found out that garlic totally desynchronizes your brain waves.

So I funded a study at Stanford University and, sure enough, they found that it's a poison. You can rub a clove of garlic on your foot - on the sole of your foot - and you can smell it shortly later on your wrists. So it penetrates the body. This is why DMSO smells a lot like garlic: that sulphone hydroxyl ion penetrates all the barriers including the corpus callosum in the brain.

Any of you who are organic gardeners know that if you don't want to use DDT, garlic will kill anything in the way of insects.

Now, most people have heard most of their lives that garlic is good for you, and we put those people in the same class of ignorance as the mothers who at the turn of the century would buy morphine sulphate in the drugstore and give it to their babies to put them to sleep.

If you have any patients who have low-grade headaches or attention deficit disorder, they cannot quite focus on the computer in the afternoon, just do an experiment - you owe it to yourselves.

Take those people off garlic and see how much better they get, very, very shortly. And then let them eat a little garlic after about three weeks. They'll say: "My God, I had no idea that this was the cause of our problems." And this includes the de-skunked garlic's, Kyolic, some of the other products.

Very unpopular, but I've got to tell you the truth. It is interesting that if you consume garlic it affects your reflex times and energy levels. It's also interesting to note that the countries that are renowned for garlic consumption - Greece, Italy, etc - also shut down in the afternoon for siesta!

Dr. Bob Beck also found in his research on human brain function in the 1980's that garlic has a detrimental effect on the brain and researching this further he learned that many Yoga groups and philosophical teachings caution against the use of garlic and onions as they are known to interfere with meditation practices. Some aware individuals have actually described themselves as experiencing "brain fog" after having garlic.

Bob Beck was an interesting character but not a mainstream scientist by any means. He is a favorite of the Alternative Medicine/Conspiracy Theory worlds and, I think, a doctor of physics not food, diet or medicine. He was an electrical engineer.

Might the people of the Mediterranean not have siestas in the afternoon because it was too hot to work and a good time to rest after lunch? It sounds more likely to me. Look at Chinese, Japanese and Koreans ... they all eat garlic and work 12 hours a day non-stop.

I don't mind if you don't want to eat onions and garlic. Imagine the smell if 20,000 onion and garlic eating BK Indians were all in Shanti Bhavan together ... I just think heading off into pseudoscience is unusual for the BKs, and risky.