Loneliness
April 28, 2016
Love your Body
April 28, 2016

Love and Eating

          If  you are in a very loving and flowing relationship you will not eat too much, you will never need to diet. Love fills you so much that there is no need to go on stuffing yourself with all kinds of junk. If there is no love you feel so empty. That emptiness hurts, you want to fill it with something. And why do you choose food? — because love and food are associated psychologically.

 

The child got both food and love from the mother’s breast simultaneously. Whenever the mother was loving she was willing to give her breast to him, and whenever she was not loving, angry, she used to pull the breast away from him. And the mother’s breast was the first contact with another’s body.

 

It is not strange that all the painters, sculptors, poets, are so obsessed with the female breast. It seems absolutely unbelievable that for millions of years painters have been painting the female breast, sculptors have been wasting their whole life cutting stones, marble…. If you have been to Indian temples like Khajuraho, you cannot believe it.

 

Thirty temples are still there. There must have been hundreds more because there are ruins. But even these thirty temples… just one temple is unbelievable; to think of thirty will make you giddy. In just one temple, if you start counting how many naked women are sculpted, you will be at a loss. You will have to start again and again because thousands are on each pillar, on each wall, everywhere; not a single inch is left unsculpted. And such huge breasts, which are just imagination — such huge breasts don’t exist, cannot exist. The woman has to stand up with that much weight! And Khajuraho is not the only place. In India there are thousands of temples all around: Puri, Konarak, Ellora — beautiful sculpture, but from a sick mind.

Why do all these painters, great painters of the world, go on painting the breast?  Somewhere they have been deprived, somewhere the mother was not loving. And more or less every child has been taken off the breast before his time. Only in aboriginal societies is the child given the mother’s breast as long as he wants; and those are the only societies where nobody is obsessed with breasts. They don’t have any paintings of breasts, they don’t have any sculptures of breasts, they don’t have any poetry, no songs, nothing. The breast does not enter their imagination at all.

 

Because of the breast, love and food become associated deep down in the mind. So whenever you are not being loved you start eating, stuffing yourself. When you are loved that stuffing disappears by itself, there is no need. Love is such a nourishment, such a subtle, invisible nourishment, that who bothers about chewing gum? cannot believe that human beings are chewing gum. Has the whole earth gone mad? Chewing gum cannot give you any nourishment, but it must be doing something, something psychological. Perhaps it is a breast substitute, that you go on using your mouth.

 

The animal eats like man; every animal has its chosen food. If you bring buffaloes in the garden and leave them, they will eat only a particular grass. They will not go on eating everything and anything — they are very choosy. They have a certain feeling about their food. Man is completely lost, has no feeling about his food. He goes on eating everything and anything. In fact you cannot find anything which is not eaten somewhere or other by man. In some places, ants are eaten. In some places, snakes are eaten. In some places, dogs are eaten.

 

Man has eaten everything. Man is simply mad. He does not know what is in resonance with his body and what is not. He is completely confused.

 

Man, naturally, should be a vegetarian, because the whole body is made for vegetarian food. Even scientists concede to the fact that the whole structure of the human body shows that man should not be a non-vegetarian. Man comes from the monkeys. Monkeys are vegetarians — absolute vegetarians, If Darwin is true then man should be a vegetarian. Now there are ways to judge whether a certain species of animal is vegetarian or non-vegetarian: it depends on the intestine, the length of the intestine. Non-vegetarian animals have a very small intestine. Tigers, lions — they have a very small intestine, because meat is already a digested food. It does not need a long intestine to digest it. The work of digestion has been done by the animal. Now you are eating the animal’s meat. It is already digested — no long intestine is needed. Man has one of the longest intestines: that means man is a vegetarian. A long digestion is needed, and much excreta will be there which has to be thrown out.

 

If man is not a non-vegetarian and he goes on eating meat, the body is burdened. In the East, all the great meditators — Buddha, Mahavira — they have emphasized the fact, not because of any concept of nonviolence, that is a secondary thing, but because if you really want to move in deep meditation, your body needs to be weightless, natural flowing. Your body needs to be unloaded; and a non-vegetarian’s body is very much loaded.

 

Just watch what happens when you eat meat: when you kill an animal what happens to the animal when he is killed? Of course, nobody wants to be killed. Life wants to prolong itself; the animal is not dying willingly. If somebody kills you, you will not die willingly. If a lion jumps on you and kills you, what will happen to your mind? The same happens when you kill a lion. Agony, fear, death, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness — all these things happen to the animal. All over his body violence, anguish, agony spreads. The whole body becomes full of toxins, poisons. All the body glands release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And then you eat the meat — that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released. The whole energy is poisonous, then those poisons are carried in your body.

 

And that meat which you are eating belonged to an animal body. It had a specific purpose there. A specific type of consciousness existed in the animal’s body. You are on a higher plane than the animal’s consciousness, and when you eat the animal’s meat your body goes to the lowest plane, to the lower plane of the animal. Then there exists a gap between your consciousness and your body, and a tension arises, an anxiety arises.

 

One should eat things which are natural — natural for you. Fruits, nuts, vegetables — eat as much as you can. And the beauty is that you cannot eat these things more than is needed.

 

Whatsoever is natural always gives you a satisfaction, because it satiates your body, saturates you. You feel fulfilled. If something is unnatural it never gives you a feeling of fulfillment. Go on eating ice cream: you never feel that you are satiated. In fact the more you eat, the more you feel like eating. It is not a food. Your mind is being tricked. Now you are not eating according to the body need, you are eating just to taste it. The tongue has become the controller.  The tongue should not be the controller. It does not know anything about the stomach.  It does not know anything about the body. The tongue has a specific purpose to fulfill: to taste food. Naturally, the tongue has to judge, that is the only thing, which food is for the body — for my body — and which food is not for my body. It is just a watchman on the door; it is not the master. And if the watchman on the door becomes the master, then everything will be confused.

 

Now advertisers know well that the tongue can be tricked, the nose can be tricked.  And they are not the masters. You may not be aware: much food research goes on in the world, and they say if your nose is closed completely and your eyes closed, and then you are given an onion to eat, you cannot tell what you are eating. You cannot tell onion from apple if the nose is closed completely because half of the taste comes from the smell, is decided by the nose, and half is decided by the tongue — and these two have become the controllers. Now they know: whether ice cream is nutritious or not is not the point. It can carry a flavour, it can carry some chemicals which fulfill the tongue but are not needed for the body.  Man is confused — more confused than buffaloes. You can not convince buffaloes to eat ice-cream. Try!

 

A natural food… and when I say ‘natural’ I mean that which your body needs. The need of a tiger is different; he has to be very violent. If you eat the meat of a tiger you will be violent, but where will your violence be expressed? You have to live in human society, not in a jungle. Then you will have to suppress the violence. Then a vicious circle starts.  When you suppress violence, what happens? When you feel angry, violent, a certain poisonous energy is released, because that poison creates a situation where you can be really violent and kill somebody. The energy moves towards your hands; the energy moves towards your teeth — these are the two places from where animals become violent.  Man is part of the animal kingdom.

 

When you are angry, energy is released — it comes to the hands and to the teeth, to the jaw — but you live in a human society and it is not always profitable to be angry. You live in a civilized world, and you cannot behave like an animal. If you behave like an animal, you will have to pay too much for it — and you are not ready to pay that much. Then what do you do? You suppress the anger in the hand; you suppress the anger in your teeth — you go on smiling a false smile, and your teeth go on accumulating anger.

 

I have rarely come to see people with a natural jaw. It is not natural — blocked, stiff — because too much anger is there. If you press the jaw of a person, the anger can be released.  Hands become ugly. They lose grace, they lose flexibility, because too much anger is suppressed there. People who have been working on deep massage, they have come to know that when you touch the hands deeply, massage the hands, the person starts becoming angry. There is no reason. You are massaging the man and suddenly he starts feeling angry. If you press the jaw, persons become angry again. They carry accumulated anger.

 

These are the impurities in the body: they have to be released. If you don’t release them the body will remain heavy. Yoga exercises exist to release all sorts of accumulated poisons in the body. Yoga movements release them; and a yogi’s body has a suppleness of its own. Yoga exercises are totally different from other exercises. They don’t make your body strong; they make your body more flexible. And when your body is more flexible, you are strong in a very different sense: you are younger. They make your body more liquid, more flowing — no blocks in the body. The whole body exists as an organic unity, in a deep rhythm of its own. It is not like noise in the market, it is like an orchestra. A deep rhythm inside, no blocks, then the body is pure. Yoga exercises can be tremendously helpful.

 

Everybody is carrying much rubbish in the stomach, because that is the only space in the body where you can suppress things. There is no other space. If you want to suppress anything it has to be suppressed in the stomach. If you want to cry — your wife has died, your beloved has died, your friend has died — but it doesn’t look good, looks as if you are a weakling, crying for a woman, you suppress it. Where will you put that crying? Naturally, you have to suppress it in the stomach. That is the only space available in the body, the only hollow place, where you can force it.

 

If you suppress in the stomach… and everybody has suppressed many sorts of emotions: of love, of sexuality, of anger, of sadness, of weeping — even of laughter. You cannot laugh a belly laugh. It looks rude, looks vulgar — you are not cultured then. You have suppressed everything. Because of this suppression, you cannot breathe deeply, you have to breathe shallowly. If you breathed deeply then those wounds of suppression, they would release their energy. You are afraid. Everybody is afraid to move in the stomach.

 

Every child, when born, breathes through the belly. Look at a child sleeping: the belly goes up and down — never the chest. No child breathes from the chest; they breathe from the belly. They are completely free now, nothing is suppressed. Their stomachs are empty, and that emptiness has a beauty in the body. Once the stomach has too much suppression in it, the body is divided in two parts, the lower and the higher. Then you are not one; you are two. The lower part is the discarded part. The unity is lost; a duality has entered into your being. Now you cannot be beautiful, you cannot be graceful. You are carrying two bodies instead of one — and there will always remain a gap between the two. You cannot walk beautifully. Somehow you have to carry your legs. In fact, if the body is one, your legs will carry you. If the body is divided in two then you have to carry your legs.

 

You have to drag your body. It is like a burden — you cannot enjoy it. You cannot enjoy a good walk, you cannot enjoy a good swim, you cannot enjoy a fast run — because the body is not one. For all these movements, and to enjoy them, the body needs to be reunited. A unison has to be created again: the stomach will have to be cleansed completely.

 

For the cleansing of the stomach very deep breathing is needed, because when you inhale deeply and exhale deeply, the stomach throws all that it is carrying. In exhalations, the stomach releases itself. Hence the importance of pranayam, of deep rhythmic breathing. The emphasis should be on the exhalation so that everything that the stomach has been unnecessarily carrying is released. And when the stomach is not carrying emotions inside, if you have constipation it will suddenly disappear.  When you are suppressing emotions in the stomach there will he constipation because the stomach is not free to have its movements. You are controlling it deeply; you can’t allow it freedom. So if emotions are suppressed, there will be constipation. Constipation is more a mental disease than a physical one. It belongs to the mind more than it belongs to the body.

 

But remember, don’t divide mind and body, they are two aspects of the same phenomenon. Mind and body are not two things. In fact to say ‘mind and body’ is not good: ‘mind-body’ will be the right expression. Your body is a psychosomatic phenomenon. Mind is the subtlest part of the body, and body is the grossest part of the mind. And they both affect each other; they run parallel. If you are suppressing something in the mind, the body will start a suppressing journey. If the mind releases everything, the body also releases everything. That’s why emphasize on catharsis very much. Catharsis is a cleansing process.

 

These are all austerities: fasting; natural eating; deep, rhythmic breathing; yoga exercises; living a more and more natural, flexible, supple life; creating less and less suppressed attitudes; allowing the body to have its own say, following the wisdom of the body….

 

When the body is pure, you will see tremendous new energies arising, new dimensions opening before you, new doors suddenly opening, new possibilities. The body has much-hidden power like healing itself. Once it is released, you will not be able to believe it, that the body carried so many things in it, and so close.

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