When you are in fear you also release poisons in the body. Those poisons are helpful; they help you to either fight or take flight. Sometimes it happens that in anger you can do things which you could never have imagined you can do. You can move a rock which ordinarily you could not have even shaken, but anger is there and poison is released.

In fear, people can run so fast that even Olympic runners will be left behind. Just think of yourself running and somebody is behind you with a dagger to kill you with. You will do the best you can do, your whole body will be geared to function at its optimum.

When you kill an animal there is anger, there is anxiety, there is fear. Death is facing it; all the glands of the animal release many kinds of poisons. Hence the modern idea is that before killing an animal, make him unconscious, give him anesthesia. In modern butcheries, anesthesia is being used. But that does not make much difference, only a very superficial difference, because at the deepest core where no anesthesia can ever reach, death has to be encountered. It may not be conscious, the animal may not be aware of what is happening, but it is happening as if in a dream. He is passing through a nightmare.

And to eat meat is to eat poisoned food. Avoid anything that is poisoned on the physical plane, avoid anything that is poisoned on the mental plane. And on the mental plane things are more complicated. If you think you are a Hindu, you are poisoned; if you think you are a Mohammedan, you are poisoned. If you think you are a Christian, a Jaina, a Buddhist, you are poisoned. And you have been poisoned slowly, so slowly that you have become attuned to it. You are addicted to it.

You have been spoon-fed from the very first day; from your mother’s breast, you have been poisoned. All kinds of conditionings are poisons. To think of oneself as a Hindu is to think of oneself opposed to humanity. To think of oneself as German, as Chinese, is to think of oneself opposed to humanity, is to think in terms of enmity, not friendship.

Think only as a human being. If you have any intelligence, think only as a simple human being. And when your intelligence grows a little more you will drop even the adjective human; you will think of yourself only as a being. And the being includes all – the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the stars and the birds and the animals.

Become bigger, become huge. Why are you living in tunnels? Why are you creeping into small dark black holes? But you think you are living in great ideological systems. You are not living in great ideological systems, because there are no great ideological systems. No idea is ever great enough to contain a human being; being-hood cannot be contained by any concept. All concepts cripple and paralyze.

Don’t be a Catholic and don’t be a communist, just be a human being. These are all poisons, these are all prejudices. And down the ages you have been hypnotized into these prejudices. They have become part of your blood, your bones, your very marrow. You will have to be very alert to get rid of all this poisoning.