When an animal is being eaten, you are taking in all the sadness, the aggression and other emotions of this animal

Sankhya Yoga

Chapter 2, Verse 63

 

krodhād-bhavati saṁmohaḥ 

saṁmohāt smṛti-vibhramaḥ 

smṛti-bhramśād buddhi-nāśo 

buddhir-nāśāt praṇaśyati

 

Anger leads to bewilderment, from bewilderment comes loss of memory, and by that the intelligence is destroyed; from destruction of intelligence, one perishes.

 

When anger arises in the heart of man, it deprives him of his power of discrimination. He is unable to think, so he will not heed the consequences of whatever he does in a fit of anger. He doesn’t realise what he is doing. When the anger grows, one’s memory starts to get confused, and when the brain starts to get confused, one loses all control. One forgets about relationships; one forgets about everybody around. One also forgets what one has to do, or not to do. In this state, one is unable to plan; one doesn’t have any determination. One loses all reasoning. When one doesn’t control the senses, one is reduced to this state. And when a man is reduced to this state, it becomes easy for him to abandon the path of duty, the path of dharma. It becomes easy for that person to lose himself in different paths.

 

A person who has anger also has qualities such as harshness, violence, greed, and stupidity. His mind is always focused on doing evil behaviour: he is always wanting to harm people. This is wickedness. When a person is angry and can’t control himself, he reduces himself to the state of existence where he has no chance of being reborn as a human. He lowers himself to the level of the animal species or he is born in a very low, infernal degree of the creation.

 

Here Lord Krishna says to Arjuna that if someone doesn’t take advantage of this human life to realise and attain God-Realisation, attain the Grace of God, or receive His Vision, this life is wasted. Krishna says that if this animal-like quality arises in the mind of a man, he will become like this animal. This includes how you think, all the food that you eat, and the food which we were talking about earlier, the food of the senses. People are so attached to what they eat! People are so attached to how they think! People are so attached to what they do in their actions! If they have not profited in this lifetime to attain God’s Grace, in the next life, they will be born as an animal. 

 

In this life, God has given them a human body to attain Him; but they have refused the Grace of God, they have refused the gift of God and this is a great sin. People who eat meat, who can’t let go of meat, in their next life, they will surely be re-born as the animals which they have eaten, because it is a curse to eat animals. If there is one thing that can degrade a person, it is a curse which one puts on oneself. If one doesn’t have the chance to renounce all these things, one will be reduced to the state of animal existence. 

 

It is asked in the Upanishads, “regarding the meat eaters, with what attitude do they eat meat?” This is very important. When an animal is being eaten, you are taking in all the sadness, the aggression and other emotions of this animal. When you are putting the meat inside of you, you are also taking in this karma of the animal. You are putting this inferior state inside of you. So in your next life, you will be born again to burn this karma. You will be born in the group of animals that you have eaten the most. But, of course, God is merciful: He will always allow you to remember – because animals also can have the perception of realising that they should change. Even if you have reduced yourself to this degraded state, God is with you. He will give you an experience to remind you. He will say, “You don’t need to do this. You don’t need to go to the infernal regions. You don’t need to reduce yourself and ruin yourself like this.”

 

In this lifetime itself, you can attain God. This is mercy. God loves you! God cares for you! God incarnates! God traces your life and makes everything possible for you to realise Him! But He can’t force you to do it. He shows you the way to come to Him, through His Love.

He says, “I am waiting for you! Please come, realise, awaken! First do your effort, control yourself! I will help you.”

 

Lord Narayana told a story to Maha Lakshmi. “There is a story I will tell you, Devi, about how the sacredness of the Self, the knowing of the Self is very important. I will tell you the story of Deva Sharma. Deva Sharma was born in Shampur and had a great desire to have the knowledge of God. He had this deep desire, so he prayed to Me, ‘Please send me to the right person who will help me get out of this mundane life, so that I can realise myself and attain the perfection of life.’ 

 

“One day, Deva Sharma had a visit of a brahmin, a sage. He offered some prasad to the sage and said, ‘Please, reverend sir, tell me, who can guide me so that I can fully surrender to God? Who can guide me so that I can control my senses and my mind can fully focus on the Divine?’ The sage said to him, ‘Go to a certain village and there you will meet your Guru. On the outskirts of the village, there is a Guru by the name of sage Nithyananda. Go to him! He will give you Enlightenment and will free you from the illusion of this life.’ So Deva Sharma started on his way to the village. 

 

“Meanwhile in this village, there was a shepherd who had a goat. Every day the shepherd would take the goat to graze in the field. One day as he was going to the field, a tiger jumped out of the forest and roared terribly! But when the tiger jumped in front of the goat, instead of eating the goat, he just looked at it, got scared and ran away. Then the goat was walking very proudly, ‘Din din dun dun.’ The shepherd was shocked and thought, ‘What happened? Why?’ He went to his Gurudev, Nithyananda Maharaj, and revealed to him all that had happened and asked, ‘Why was this? Normally a tiger would eat the goat or would eat me, but it didn’t do anything. It ran away, frightened.’ Of course, with his inner vision, the sage could see the past lives of the goat, and tiger, and the shepherd. Looking into this vision, he said, ‘Ah! The tiger got frightened of the goat because in its last life, this tiger was a handsome man and this goat was a terrible witch. In that last life, the witch had eaten him! The tiger was going to eat the goat, but then saw that it was the witch who had eaten him before. Fearing that also in this life the goat would eat him, he ran away. Due to the witch’s bad karma, she had been reduced to being a goat.’

 

“Some days later, Deva Sharma arrived at the ashram looking for his Guru. He sat in the ashram waiting to speak to his Guru who was there reading the Bhagavad Gita. Then, the shepherd came to the ashram bringing his goat with him. The shepherd also sat there listening the Bhagavad Gita and it was like this every day. The shepherd would bring the goat there, because he knew that his goat had been a witch and thought that it would be good for the goat to hear the Bhagavad Gita. Hearing the Bhagavad Gita would purify the goat. So he brought the goat to listen to the Bhagavad Gita to free it from its pitiful state in this sub-human species – which was due to the goat’s past karma. 

 

“One day the tiger also came to the ashram, scaring everybody. The Guru called to it and said, ‘Hey, come here!’ He patted it saying, ‘Sit here!’ He started reading the glory of the Gita to the tiger. So all three of them, the shepherd, the tiger, and the goat were sitting there, listening to the Bhagavad Gita. Then the Guru revealed to them who they had been in their last lives. He said, ‘You shepherd, were a brahmin, you had the knowledge. But you just practiced it mechanically. As you didn’t apply this knowledge inside of you, you have been reduced to being a shepherd. You used to be very wise and learned, but it was only for your personal gain. Since you were always running after personal gain, you were born here, poor and miserable.’ And the other two, you know who they were in their past lives.

“So the Guru advised the three of them, ‘Concentrate and listen with deep faith to the Gita. And try your best to change.’ The eyes of the tiger and the goat started to shine and whenever they listened to the Gita, there was no enmity between them: they had reached that state of perfection. Even if in their last lives they had not reached it, by the Grace of the Lord, by hearing the Gita, they came to this point of Realisation. So finally they attained salvation, all three of them.”

 

Here Lord Krishna says to Arjuna, “Don’t waste life! Take every opportunity! Don’t be stupid! Don’t be silly! Don’t let this negative quality take control of you. You are the Atma, you are the Great Observer. You are far better than all this! Don’t go into your  

weakness. Arise!”

Bhagavad Gita