Interview with
Dr. Gabriel Cousens
3. Is nutrition a step towards a conscientious life? Nutrition is an important step toward a conscientious life. The word “conscientious” is well chosen. In the research on longevity, the longest study in the world, which includes 1,500 people over 80 years-old, found that the most important psychological characteristic for longevity found in children was conscientiousness. The word “conscientious” denotes an approach to life where people were persistent with their health habits, organized, prudent, and focused on healthy lifestyle. Conscientious eating and living are associated with longevity and the ability to transcend the fivesense bio-computer mind.
4. What other benefits are there to eating conscientiously?
by Marcela Tobal
1. Why are so many people suffering from diabetes?
Conscientious eating also helps the ecology. Animal agriculture uses 75% of the world’s water and contributes significantly to carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. Animal agriculture also contributes to the majority of nitrogen in the atmosphere, which is up to 300 times more warming than carbon dioxide. Animal agriculture uses 10 to 29 times more energy than plant-based agriculture. A vegan diet plays a particular role in healing the world and returning us to the Culture of Life and plays a key role in the healing of diabetes.
Diabetes is a symptom of a world out of balance. In dramatic terms we can say that it is a symptom of the “Culture of Death” where competition, profit, money, control, power, and pharmaceuticals dominate. This culture’s diet is junk food, white flour, high fructose corn syrup, and white sugar, all of which activate diabetes. It is the result of us moving away from the Culture of Life where soul, spirit, oneness, and cooperation are at the center. The Culture of Life is a culture where we have organic, whole, real food grown with values that support ecological living and the evolution of human consciousness. Because we are not following the Culture of Life lifestyle, we are instead stuck in the Culture of Death consciousness and have created a lifestyle that brings on Type 2 diabetes as an outcome.
5. Could a vegan diet change the world?
2. What do you propose to solve this problem?
6. Why do you use the term “living” food?
Return to our natural, holistic, organic ways, which infuse meaning and value into our lives. Place the soul and God at the center of our lives rather than power, money, sex, and control. Return to these natural ways and eat a diet that supports health, wellbeing and the elevation of consciousness. When our five-sense bio-computer mind is jammed with junkfood, pesticides, herbicides, genetically engineered food, and pharmaceuticals, we cannot transcend it to experience the truth of the Divine that lies beyond the mind. When we return to our natural ways of living and eating organic vegan food, we then heal and upgrade the five-sense bio-computer mind and are able to transcend it. 42
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A vegan diet protects us because it is lower on the food chain. It brings a moral and ethical understanding to our cuisine because it avoids cruelty to animals. It sets a positive tone in the world, having the potential to feed the world and rid humanity of starvation. A vegan diet improves our ecological status by healing the planet. It has the potential to bring peace to the world because it calms and quiets the mind. Because of the resources that veganism spares it ensures the likelihood of fewer wars and conflict over resources. It is a diet that helps elevate spirit. When we observe the enlightened beings in many traditions, they are not killing and eating animals. For many reasons a vegan diet is the diet for the future and evolution of humanity.
I use the term “living food” to draw attention to the fact that food in its whole form contains more energy than when it is cooked. In Dr. Breckman’s study with mice, he fed mice the same food, cooked and raw. On the raw food the animals had three times the endurance. Living food refers to the energy existing in the raw, whole food as opposed to stored food, which has lost its energy after it has been harvesting. Living food is fresh, organic and non-GMO.
7. Is organic nutrition fundamental to good health?
Organic, whole living food brings the highest quality of health. It provides an unbroken wholeness and all the unknown factors that are destroyed through heating. The Max Planck institute in Germany has shown that cooking food destroys 50% of the protein. Other research shows that cooked food contains 60% less vitamins and minerals and up to 95% less of the phytonutrients. Organic nutrition is not only unbroken, but it has also been shown to be much healthier because pesticides, herbicides, and GMO’s are so detrimental to health. Organic food is grown in healthy soils and therefore contains more nutrients especially if it is raw.
8. How did you get involved with nutrition? In 1975, as a holistic physician, I received shaktipat from Swami Muktananda. I disappeared into the Nothing and as I returned into the Something, a little voice rang out and said that I should learn to eat and live in a way that supports the kundalini (spiritual energy). I took that seriously and began doing research on it. I was able to work with thousands of spiritual seekers both in the U.S. and in India. Over time it became very clear that a vegan, organic, live-food diet was the most powerful diet for spiritual life and helping us to become a superconductor for the Divine. Once you have mastered your diet, which takes some time and experience, then diet is no longer your focus. It is simply your lifestyle. As a physician it has been a big part of my life’s work to bring this knowledge to the world. All of this is addressed in my first book, Spiritual Nutrition and the Rainbow Diet, which I have since rewritten as Spiritual Nutrition, and my books Conscious Eating, Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine, and There Is a Cure for Diabetes.
9. How does one know if one is eating well or correctly? The optimum diet needs to be geared to one’s personal constitution and age. I will be speaking about this in the workshop. This is a diet composed of
organic, 80% live-food, mineral rich, and low-glycemic, and needs to be tailored to an individual’s metabolic type. It is important that every diet provides proper hydration. When we are eating correctly we have an unbroken level of energy and mental clarity throughout the day, a great sense of wellbeing, of wholeness, of joy, and of love. We have a great sense of passion in our everyday lives. This is the result of proper diet.
10. What is a spiritual athlete? I use the metaphor of a spiritual athlete because this was my background. I was the captain of an undefeated college football team (American football, not soccer). I was inducted into the football hall of fame, and was also a collegiate tennis player. To be a good athlete one must be focused on living and eating in a way that allows for an optimal athletic expression. In the same way, for spiritual life, whatever the tradition, there are certain things that bring you into an optimal spiritual state of a quiet mind. In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras he writes that, “Yoga is the stilling of the activity of the mind, so that we can transcend the mind.� What is needed for this is the Six Foundation: These are 1) Eating a healthy diet – vegan, live-food, organic, uniquely tailored to your constitution, mineral-rich, low-glycemic, and high-hydrated. The diet must be made with love, and
consumed with temperance, meaning don’t eat too much. Additionally, I recommend fasting at least seven days twice a year. 2) Perform pranabuilding exercises such as yoga asana, chi kung, tai chi, or ecstatic dance daily. These exercises build life-force in the body. 3) Engage in service and charity. 4) Seek out a spiritual teacher for inspiration and guidance. See God equally in all things and understand that we are all one with the Universe. 5) Practice meditation, prayer, mantra, and chanting. 6) Finally is the awakening and unfolding of the spiritual energy (kundalini), which usually occurs through transmission from a liberated being. I have personally been empowered as a vehicle for this transmission of kundalini by my guru in India. During this workshop we’ll have an opportunity to experience that. Spiritual mastery requires this level of conscientiousness. It is good to eat and live in a way that supports the evolution of spiritual consciousness. For more information visit drcousens.com. Marcela Tobal, is the director of the Tree of Life, Dr. Cousens Raw, Vegan Retreat center in Sedona, Arizona. She will be a panelist during the Infinite Wisdom Conference along with several local practitioners which include South Florida’s Leading Detox Doctor, Dr. Etti - Dretti.com. See ad on page 49.
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natural awakenings
November 2013
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