Fasting……right amount of food and the right quality of food has to be practiced…OSHO

Sannyas has to be a real break away. A loving surrender to the new....

Fasting......right amount of food and the right quality of food has to be practiced...

 

One sannyasin came and she told me that she has been fasting and now her whole body, her whole being, is disturbed — tremendously disturbed. Now the stomach is not functioning well. And when the stomach is not functioning well, everything is weakened, the vitality is lost, and you cannot be alive. You become more and more insensitive and dead.

 

But fasting is important. It should be done very carefully; one should understand the functioning of the annamaya kosha — only then. And it should be done under proper guidance — the guidance of one who has moved through all the phases of his annamaya kosha. Not only that — one who has gone beyond it and who can look at the annamaya kosha as a witness. Otherwise fasting can be dangerous.

 

Then just the right amount of food and the right quality of food has to be practiced; fasting is not needed.

But this is important because this is your first body and, more or less, people cling to their first body; they never move to the second. Millions of people are not even aware that they have a second body, a deeper body, hidden behind the first sheath. The first covering is very gross.

 

The second body Patanjali calls pranamaya kosha — energy body, electric body. The second consists of electric fields. That's what acupuncture is all about. This second body is more subtle than the first, and people who start moving from the first body to the second become fields of energy, tremendously attractive, magnetic, hypnotic. If you go near them, you will feel vitalized, charged.

 

If you go near a man who lives only in his food body, you will be depleted — he will suck you. Many times you come across people and you fee] that they suck you. After they have left, you feel depleted, dissipated, as if somebody has exploited your energy. The first body is a sucker, and the first body is very gross. So if you live too much with the first — body-oriented people, you will feel always burdened, tense, bored, sleepy, with no energy, always at the point of the lowest rung of your energy; and you will not have any amount of energy which can be used for higher growth.

This type, the first type, the annamaya-kosha-oriented person lives for food. He eats and eats and eats, and that's his whole life. He remains in a way childish. The first thing that the child docs in the world is to suck air, and then to suck milk. The first thing the child has to do in the world is to help the food body, and if a person remains food addicted, he remains childish. His growth suffers.

 

The second body, pranamaya kosha, gives you a new freedom, gives you more space. The second body is bigger than the first; it is not confined to your physical body. It is inside the physical body and it is outside the physical body. It surrounds you like a subtle climate, an aura of energy. Now in Soviet Russia they have discovered that photographs can be taken of the energy body. They call it bioplasma, but it exactly means prana. The energy, elan vital, or what Taoists call chi, it can be photographed now. Now it has become almost scientific.

 

OSHO