While hungry, why not meditate a little? — there is no hurry. While hungry just close your eyes and meditate on the hunger, on how the body is feeling.

You have lost contact, because our hunger is less bodily, more mental. You eat every day at one o’clock. You look at the watch; it is one — so then you feel hunger. And the clock may not be right. If somebody says, “That clock has stopped at midnight — it is not functioning. It is only eleven o’clock,” the hunger disappears. This hunger is false, this hunger is just habitual, because the mind creates it, not the body. Mind says, “One o’clock — you are hungry.” You have to be hungry. You have always been hungry at one o’clock, so you are hungry.

Our hunger is almost ninety-nine percent habitual. Go on a fast for a few days to feel real hunger, and you will be surprised. For the first three or four days you will feel very hungry. On the fourth or fifth day you will not feel so hungry. This is illogical, because as the fast grows, you should feel more and more hungry. But after the third day you will feel less hungry, and after the seventh day you may completely forget hunger. After the eleventh day almost everybody forgets hunger completely and the body feels absolutely okay. Why? And if you continue the fast…. Those who have done much work on fasting say that only after the twenty-first day will real hunger happen again.

So it means that for three days your mind was insisting that you were hungry because you had not taken food, but it was not hunger. Within three days the mind gets fed up with telling you; you are not listening, you are so indifferent. On the fourth day the mind doesn’t say anything; the body doesn’t feel hunger. For three weeks you will not feel hunger, because you have accumulated so much fat — that fat will do. You will feel hunger only after the third week. And this is for normal bodies.

If you have too much fat accumulated, you may not feel hungry even after the third week. And there is a possibility to accumulate enough fat to live on for three months — ninety days. When the body is finished with the accumulated fat, then for the first time real hunger will be felt. But it will be difficult. You can try with thirst; that will be easy. For one day don’t take water, and wait. Don’t drink out of habit. Just wait and see what thirst means; what thirst would mean if you were in a desert….

You know only by your tongue, and that tongue is very deceptive. That tongue has been serving the mind so long it is no longer serving the body. The tongue can deceive you; it has become a slave of the mind. It can go on saying, “Go on eating — it is very beautiful.” It is not serving the body anymore; otherwise the tongue would say, “Stop!” The tongue would say, “Whatsoever you are eating is useless. Don’t eat!”

Even the tongues of cows and buffaloes are more body-rooted than your tongue. You cannot force a buffalo to eat any type of grass — she chooses. You cannot force your dog to eat when he is ill — he will immediately go out, eat some grass, and vomit. He is more in contact with his body.

First one has to become deeply aware of this phenomenon of the body. A revival of the body, a resurrection, is needed — you are carrying a dead body. Then only will you feel, by and by, that the whole body with all its desires, thirsts, and hungers, is revolving around the heart. Then the beating heart is not only a mechanism, it is the beating life, it is the very pulsation of life. That pulsation gives contentment and bliss.