Kṛṣṇa's Request

The third reason applies particularly to those who want to advance in love of God, or Krsna consciousness. In Bhagavad-gita Lord Krsna advises that we eat only food first offered to Him in loving sacrifice. He says that if food is offered with love and devotion, He will actually eat it with His unlimited, all-pervading eyes and ears, without actually removing it, as it is offered on the altar with suitable prayers. Offering food in this way forms a purifying link with the Lord through devotion, and Lord Krsna instructs that if one subsists only on the purified remnants of such offerings (Krsna prasada), his whole existence becomes sanctified, and he advances surely in Krsna consciousness.

In Bhagavad-gita Krsna specifically requests that "a leaf, a fruit, a flower or a little water" be offered to Him, and similarly the Vedas instruct in other places that milk products, fruits, grains, vegetables and sugar are the foods to be offered and eaten. Thus, a devotee automatically becomes a vegetarian, since he accepts only Krsna prasada. Others, who do not care to accept this reasonable process, but who instead go on gratifying their tongues with the products of slaughter and misery, can be assured that in the future they themselves will become more and more bestial, losing entirely the quality of mercy and being themselves slaughtered in hellish conditions, even birth after birth.

These, then, are some of the more salient reasons offered in the Vedic scriptures why gambling, intoxication, illicit sex, and animal slaughter and meat eating should be shunned by everyone. Basically, each of them results in future individual suffering and the breakdown of society, and, at the same time, each disqualifies one from experiencing his eternal, blissful spiritual life in direct touch with God. One cannot free his eternal self from material illusion if he engages in any of these practices, even if he practices some religious or yogic process, because such activities root us in material consciousness.