Shauch, purity. means purity about food. purity. about body, purity about mind — three layers of purities. And the fourth, which is your being, needs no purity because it cannot become impure. Your innermost core is always Pure, always virgin, but that innermost core is covered with other things which can become impure — which become impure every day. You use your body every day; dust collects. You use your mind every day; thoughts collect. Thoughts are just like dust. Living in the world, how can you live without thoughts? You have to think. Body collects dust, becomes dirty; mind collects thoughts, becomes dirty. Both need a good, cleaning bath. It should become a part of your style. It should not be taken as a law; it should be just a way of living beautifully.

And if you feel pure then other possibilities immediately open because everything is linked with everything else; it is a chain. And if you want to change life always start from the beginning.

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.

A natural food… and ‘natural’ 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.