:: HEALTH ::

HABITUAL HUNGER

JATHARAGNI, is what Hindus call the fire of hunger. The real hunger will grow with the passage of time but if it’s a false hunger, it will disappear after sometime.

Osho says, “Every day you take your food at one o'clock, then at one o'clock every day hunger comes. That hunger is psychological. Then you will not feel fire in the stomach; that is just because of the clock. The clock says it is one o'clock, then the mind says, "Now the time has come to be hungry." Immediately you feel a hunger. This is a projection. This is a false hunger. And if you wait for half an hour, it will disappear automatically. How can a real hunger disappear so easily? The real hunger will grow more and more. The fire will become more and more fiery in the stomach. You will start feeling pain in the stomach, a burning sensation all over the body. You will feel feverish. The body needs satiety, the body is demanding; energy is needed. But if it is a false hunger, it will disappear. When the clock has moved to two o'clock, the hunger disappears.”

Watch! Feel really hungry, and then eat. Watch! Feel really sleepy, and then sleep. It will take a few months to settle because the whole civilization, culture, society, education, they have all helped to push you from the right path. The right path is always natural -- the logos.

“So first try to be more and more sensitive about your body. Listen to it; it goes on saying many things, and you are so head-oriented you never listen to it. Whenever there is a conflict between your mind and body, your body is almost always going to be right more than your mind, because the body is natural, your mind is societal; the body belongs to this vast nature, and your mind belongs to your society, your particular society, age, time. Body has deep roots in existence, mind is just wavering on the surface. But you always listen to the mind, you never listen to the body. Because of this long habit contact is lost.

You have the heart, and heart is the root, but you don't have any contact. First start having contact with the body. Soon you will become aware that the whole body vibrates around the center of the heart just as the whole solar system moves around the sun. Hindus have called the heart the sun of the body. The whole body is a solar system and moves around the heart. You became alive when the heart started beating, you will die when the heart stops beating. The heart remains the solar center of your body. Become alert to it. But you can become alert, by and by, only if you become alert to the whole body.

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 may 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.

Lawrence of Arabia has written in his memoirs: "For the first time in my life, when I was once lost in the desert, I became aware of what thirst is -- because before that there was no need. Whenever my mind said, 'Now you are thirsty,' I took water. In the desert, lost, no water with me and no way to find an oasis, for the first time I became thirsty. And that thirst was something wonderful -- the whole of the body, every cell, asking for water. It became a phenomenon." If you take water in that type of thirst, it will give you a contentment that you cannot know just by drinking through habit.

So I say to you that Mahavira, and people like Mahavira, have known the real taste of food. You cannot know it... because for three months Mahavira would fast, then he would go begging. And he would go begging only when the body would say so, not the mind. When the body would say, "Now I am exhausted completely," and the hunger gripped the whole body and every cell of it asked, then he would go begging. He would not listen to the mind. He must have tasted food as no one has ever tasted on this earth. But Jainas think completely differently; they think that he was tasteless, they think that he had no taste. My feeling is, only he knew what taste is, and he knew it with his whole body, his whole being.

You know only by your tongue, and that tongue is very deceptive. That tongue has been serving the mind so long it is no more 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 any more, 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.”

Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi
# 12, Only Knowing Remains

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