Dialogue on Vegetarianism - XIV

Anjali: Swamiji, you take insulin for your diabetes and it is made from animal substance.Swamiji: Food is medicine. Medicine is not food. For medicinal purposes you are allowed to take. Even in Ayurveda itself there are preparations which are non-vegetarian that are considered. For tuberculosis and other diseases some non-vegetarian preparations are recommended. So that is a medicine. So, the Swami can get insulin injection from the pig's pancreas!Anjali: So, you have no choice.Swamiji: No choice! Because artificially it cannot be made.Anjali: Some of the world's great scientists have been non-vegetarians.Swamiji: Yes. And among the greatest thinkers and scientists also they have discovered for themselves, unfortunately much too late in life, that vegetarian food is better, that the quality of thinking is better. That is why Einstein later on, became a pure vegetarian. Bernard Shaw—a pure vegetarian. We don't say being non-vegetarian will make you dull but it would have been.... (better vegetarian)?Anjali: What I mean is that the West has produced all these people whereas we vegetarians have not produced any scientists as such.Swamiji: A lot of difference. Their research is on the grosser side, the outer world. Here the development is on the subtler side, the within. Our research has been subjective. For knowing the subtle, the mind has to be that much more precisely perfect.