Even if the greatest things happen, you will miss it. Sensation is the outermost layer of who you are. This is what Yoga always insists. This beautiful process is happening at your mealtime every day. The Yogic intention is always to receive it from the higher aspects of your life.
When children want to eat and talk at the same time, the first thing we teach them is, "Shh, no talking when you are eating." Because this speech has to come out, food has to go in – how can you do both at the same time? When I have to speak, something has to come out of my mouth. And within twelve to eighteen hours, the food must be completely out of the system. You never open your legs and sit in front of food, consecrated objects and human beings who are of a certain power within themselves because that will bring a wrong kind of energy into your system.
Eat with Your Hands
When you do not touch the food, you do not know what it is. For that reason too, it is very important that before you go to bed, the food you have eaten has moved out of the stomach. It will leave you very strong. It is important that your legs are crossed when food comes in front of you. When there is a consecrated space, that means there is a powerful energy which has the possibility of transforming you. All creatures are aware of this, but human beings are using their intellect to decide what they should do. Even the excretory process from the intestines does not happen efficiently because the waste material will keep coming to the colon at different times instead of at once.
If the colon is not clean, you are asking for problems. Tomorrow, it may not need that much. But if you look at how your body feels when there is food in the stomach and how the body feels when the stomach is empty, you will see your body and brain work best when your stomach is empty. No one else but you has used these hands, so you can be sure how clean they are right now. Bondage is on many different levels, but the foundation of all your bondage is your body, so that is why you work with the body.
Digestion Matters - Eat According to Your Age and Activity
What you call as your body and your mind is a certain accumulation of memory. When food appears in front of you, hold your hands upon the food for a few moments to feel how the food is.
If you are over thirty-five years of age – unless you are an extremely physically active person or have some medical issue – two meals a day would definitely be healthier for you. If you have a dog at home, even he refuses to eat on certain days.
So when you sit in any space where you think there is power and energy, you always cross your legs and sit because you want to close the lower part of the body. If this includes at least 20 to 30 minutes of light physical activity – such as simple walking – your system will largely be healthy. All kinds of past imprints have formed tendencies and those are compulsive. No outside elements except air and water should enter the system too often because it will loosen the integrity of the system in terms of sensitivity. If you want to keep yourself very sensitive, it is important you do not open your body to anything and everything that comes your way. That is not going to get us anywhere. This will also lead to various kinds of health issues. Someone who does not know how to swim well enough may drown but why would people choke on food? The main reason why they are choking is because they are talking so much when they are eating. You want the upper part of your body – above Anahata – to be exposed to this. Every animal is aware of this. If a woman eats a mango, the same mango will go into her and become a woman. With the fork, you do not know who has used it, how they have used it, and for what. We do not want to enhance our survival processes; we want to enhance other dimensions of life. If it happens between two people, we call it passion. That energy must always come to you from the highest possibility that you can receive.
All your survival instincts, self-preservation, are in the lower three chakras – manipura, swadhisthana and muladhara. Why does this mango go into me and become a man and not a woman or a cow? It is essentially because of memory, a specific kind of memory that is there in my system.
Another dimension is that if you go to bed with a full stomach, it puts pressure on other organs in the abdomen. All they have to do is wipe it with a tissue and it looks clean. The idea is that you are very hungry but you wait for two more minutes. You must eat well, but you should not be eating many times. This is what you call devotion. Something that was a plant, a seed, an animal, a fish or a bird, just merging and becoming a human being is a clear demonstration of the oneness of the existence and of the hand of the Creator in everything that is. On these two days in the month, known as Ekadashi, which is the eleventh day after the full and new moons, it is best to have only light food or to fast entirely. Cancel Anytime.
One level of what the spiritual process means is that you bring a certain sense of integrity to your body and mind. If you have not eaten for three days, you understand that.
Eating food is a demonstration of the oneness of the existence.
If you want to function at your full potential, be conscious and eat that kind of food where within 1.5-2.5 hours, your stomach bag becomes empty and the food material moves to the intestine. The reason why Yogis or those who are in sadhana eat only once or twice a day and nothing in between is because they do not want to open the body for anything.
But suppose you eat just two big meals a day and nothing in between (like we normally do in the ashram), or if you are too active you may eat a fruit in between, then your colon will always remain clean. This is essentially because you can receive anything that comes towards you in many different ways. If you go by that, it means you have decided not to evolve. But people are closing their eyes and folding their hands for the invocation. If I do these two things at the same time, things can go wrong. If it happens much more indiscriminately, we call it compassion. We have identified certain days of the lunar month when digestion is not at its best. If the colon is not clean, you cannot keep your mind stable.
In Indian traditional medical systems such as Ayurveda and Siddha, it does not matter what a patient’s ailment is, the first thing they will want to do is purge your digestive system because most of your problems may be due to an unclean colon. Physiologically, this inertia is like an acceleration towards death.
Because of the education systems that people go through, we have given too much significance to our thought. I am saying, “Just wait two minutes” – it will definitely leave you stronger.
Taking away that compulsiveness in the body is crucial. This is not to take away the pleasure of eating. You do not want to sit with your legs open in front of a consecrated space because that will attract a totally different kind of energy towards you which could be detrimental to you. Digestion happens but transformation of one life into another will not happen as well because the memory is becoming weak. If a cow eats the mango, it goes inside a cow and becomes a cow.
When to Eat
Wait for Two Minutes Before You Eat
Not eating when you feel like eating is one part of sadhana, so that you take away compulsiveness for food, or for anything for that matter. It is very essential that we survive, but surviving better than someone is not a life goal. You no longer need that much food because your vertical growth is completely over. He will eat some grass, puke it out and do his own cleansing for himself. This is the ultimate goal of the spiritual process. If you want to fast, you have to prepare psychologically and physiologically, so that you can effortlessly go without food. You may be healthy and capable of digesting what you eat, but the body will not be able to transform the mango into a human being with the same vigor. This is what you call love. The body will adjust itself to this slowing down, but if you are conscious about how you eat and what you eat, you can adjust it more sensibly. We do not realize such a simple thing. Obviously I cannot do these two things at the same time. This is the greatest pleasure that a human being knows, that in some way something that is not you is willing to become a part of you. It is a waste of time because whatever you do, you are not going to survive forever.
No Talking While Eating!
Only when I came to United States for the first time, I saw that everywhere in public places – particularly in schools and those summer camps where we used to do programs – there were notices instructing what to do if somebody chokes on food. If you do this for some time, every cell in the body will have the education as to what it likes and does not like.
Chew Your Food Twenty-four Times
In Yoga we say, “If you take a morsel of food, you must chew it twenty-four times.” There is a lot of science behind this, but essentially, your food gets pre-digested in your mouth and will not cause dullness in your system. If food is not good enough to be touched, I do not know how it is good enough to be eaten! Also, the cleanliness of your hands is entirely in your hands, whereas the cleanliness of a spoon or fork is not necessarily in your hands.
Above all, when you use a fork, you do not feel the food. 1 Pay Attention
Eating should not be a routine. Let’s say I eat a mango. Food is also a very powerful thing.
Why is it that if I eat a mango, one part of it becomes my skin and it comes to the same skin tone? You do not suddenly find one mango-colored patch on the hand. Less than that means you are causing trouble to yourself. If you chew twenty-four times, the information of that food gets established in your system and every cell in your body will be able to start judging as to what is right and not right for you – not in terms of the tongue but about what is appropriate for the whole system. If food is constantly being processed in your digestive system, a certain amount of energy is naturally allocated towards that, so both your brain and body will not function at their best. If you are eating more, you are burdening the system unnecessarily. In the Yogic system, we say there must be a minimum of six to eight hours between one meal and the next. If something appears on my plate and I just feel it, I know what to eat and what not to eat without having to taste it. If you go to bed with food still inside the stomach, it generates a certain level of inertia in the system. Death is ultimate inertia. You do not want to break the pattern and explore new possibilities.
Food is something very basic and simple but still, how you handle this aspect makes a lot of difference. The way people are eating today, keeping the colon clean is going to be a big challenge for them. If it happens with a larger group, we call it love. The food we eat transforms into the body depending on this memory. Anahata is the meeting point. If you maintain this simple awareness, you will experience much more energy, agility and alertness.
Sit in a Cross-legged Posture on the Floor and Eat
In the Yogic culture you are always asked to cross your legs and to not stretch your legs in the direction of an energy form. So if you keep eating through the day, the cells retain impurities for a longer period, which creates various problems over a period of time. If you are very hungry and food is exposed to the entire body, this is not good for you.
Mind and Body Function Best on an Empty Stomach
You may think that eating something through the day will help you be more active. The longing to break away from all this and go beyond is in vishuddhi, agna and sahasrar. It is the keenness and intensity of our attention which can take us from one dimension of living to another. I cannot understand why anyone will choke on food. The mango gets into me and becomes a man. The true joy of eating is that you are conscious of some other life willing to merge with your own life and become you. Our attention is the greatest thing we have, not our thought. Try to do this with everything that you are compulsive about – just wait for two minutes. Food is a very fundamental thing.
Eat with Gratitude
One must eat, but we must eat relishing the nourishment of what the food offers and with gratitude of what it means to our life. Today, the body needs this much food, so you eat that much. If you feel a little hungry or tired, a fruit in between should take care of you. In Yoga, we say that an unclean colon and psychological disturbances are directly connected. It is economical, eco-friendly, and you will be healthy. There is food in front of you, you want to gobble it up. By integrity, I mean when your system is not consolidated in a certain way, if it is loose, it becomes incapable of experiencing anything.
Gautama the Buddha went to the extent of saying, “When you are very hungry and you are badly in need of food, if you give away your food to someone else, you will become stronger.” I am not going that far. The body does not consume so much energy from that point. If that is not possible, at least a five-hour gap is a must. Because there is such a strong memory structure, whatever I put in, the memory will make sure it becomes this person, not some other person.
As you age, this ability of the body to integrate food starts to reduce because your genetic memory and evolutionary memory become less capable of transforming whatever you consume. Two Meals a Day and No Snacking in Between!
When the digestive process is happening in the stomach bag, the purification of the body on the cellular level almost shuts down. Based on this, many other aspects of life become compulsive.
Many of you might have suffered this torture when you come to the ashram: it is the meal time, you are really hungry and you come to the dining area.
Dinner Time and Bed Time
There must be three hours after the evening meal, before you go to bed. Ekadashi was built into your system. If it happens in its ultimate scale, we call it enlightenment. It will not kill you. My hands are the first level of knowing the food. You have decided that you do not mind living in the pattern. If you can maintain this, you will live very well. It is because of this memory – or you can call it information – that this body has taken its shape.
Keeping your legs crossed whenever you see a powerful form is very important. You must observe. If that is not possible for you, go on a fruit diet.
Fasting on Ekadashi
It is good to fast once in a way, but if you forcefully go without food, this may cause damage to the system. All we have to do is just enjoy the food and eat quietly.
Whether it is lust, passion, devotion or ultimate enlightenment, it is all the same, just on a different scale. Your body and mind are a composition.
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