srikant

bhaktajoy, the excerpts you included were very enlightening; I found the site link good too.

Yes, that was a mistake on my part; thanks for clarifying.

Your answer to the first question makes a lot of sense, esp as I recently heard at a lecture that earth or bhoo-loka provides the best platform to attain Godhead. The spiritual planets have too much opulence to allow continuous meditation on the Supreme, whereas the hellish planets have too much misery to allow anyone to dwell long enough in peace on anything let alone meditate. Our planet thus provides an appropriate mix. For the second portion, the discussion at the link you sent is very interesting. I am really happy that so many knowledgeable people are discussing this recent question I've been having. Haribol, prabhu.

Was spking to a Greek who works at the same place where I do, he does to some extent believe in vegetarianism. However, he thinks that it's OK to eat eggs that are unfertilized! Hence he says research is being carried out to determine externally which eggs are unfertilized. How far will people go to justify their misplaced eating habits!

Interesting. However, thinking about it, the Christians and other religions that don't seem to have (or at least they claim so) strong principles on avoiding meat may actually be doing it in ignorance. For instance, while chatting to a Russian on the IskconDC site, I realized that in Russia, the only community that derides meat-eating is ISKCON!! Which may cause someone to surmise that maybe being associated with Vaishnavism is a step on the way to spiritual realization; since no other religion has such clear concepts on the whys and hows of spiritual life... As far as the arguments for all the meat-eaters are concerned and the occasional stupid question that inevitably comes up "so why do u kill plants?", I'm now equipped with facts from admin J.N.Das' detailed post titled "Isn't the killing of plants also violence?" at: http://www.indiadivine.com/ubb/Forum11/HTML/000044.html

Prabhu, I found both links useful and informative. Am going through them. I however couldn't find these specific aspects: 1) Once an entity, say, attains the impersonal bhramhajyoti or one of the spiritual planets for that matter, does that entity then have the chance to attain Goloka? 2) After attaining Goloka, is there a chance of falling down again? I believe the reason we are here is because at some point of time, we have been envious of Krishna as the supreme personality of Godhead.

I have been wondering about a few concepts about Goloka, metioned by Srila Prabhupada in Introduction to SB. Somewhere I remember reading that all things on this planet are entitites that are struggling for existence, and going through different lives, and this includes the trees, plants, and even rocks. If that is so, what happens at the end of Kaliyug (227,000 yrs from now) when the world is supposed to be destroyed and recreated? Does it mean that only mankind will remain (all other entitites having been finally promoted to mankind), and what of those remaining, are they simply accepted to Godhead or maybe the impersonal brahma-jyoti? Or are they simply allowed to continue the process once the world is recreated.

My idea so far (based on inputs from Srila Prabhupad's comments in BG) is that one of the main signs of Krishna consciousness is that one is steady through everything one does, giving it all up to Krishna. Here is one of the relevant verses I could find (there are more that relate to how one should remain steady through happiness and sadness, maybe someone else could pull that up). 5.8, 5.9 naiva kincit karomiti yukto manyeta tattva-vit pasyan srnvan sprsanjighrann asnan gacchan svapan svasan pralapan visrjan grhnann unmisan nimisann api indriyanindriyarthesu vartanta iti dharayan TRANSLATION A person in the divine consciousness, although engaged in seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving about, sleeping and breathing, always knows within himself that he actually does nothing at all. Because while speaking, evacuating, receiving, or opening or closing his eyes, he always knows that only the material senses are engaged with their objects and that he is aloof from them.

I looked at the PETA website, and it seems that they indeed do a lot, for instance, the anti-fur campaign. They've recently implored, quote, "Tell Companies Not to Support Appalling Abuse of Indian Animals" at http://www.peta.org/alert/automation/AlertItem.asp?id=379 (I don't know if alert links stay valid forever). The gist is that animals in India are being tortured a lot before slaughtering, and hence the move to stop buying leather etc from Indian companies! Disturbing... On another note, I've always wondered whether Christians eat meat because their religion permits it. Recently, I spoke to a Christian lady, and she claimed that somewhere in the new testament it is advised to eat meat, and her reason was they stay healthy because of meat-eating. I also had the oppurtunity to ask a Muslim, and he said that the Koran recommends which animals to eat and even describes how to bleed them to death slowly. I don't know if these can be true. Does anyone have authentic information?