WHAT TO EAT AND DRINK?
YOUR SYSTEM HAS TO ADJUST ITSELF FOR MORE REFINED FOOD AND DRINKS
People on the spiritual path have to have specific observances. I recommend a book by Swami Vivekananda called “Raja Yoga”, or I have done two tapes on Raja Yoga (UK 1978 – 03 & UK 1978 – 04), which you could purchase and listen to. A person on the spiritual path has to have specific observances.
There are movements in the world that will tell you that if you want to be initiated or join their movement, you must not smoke, you must not eat meat, you must not drink, you must not – something else which men and women do. They make it conditional upon you. In our movement, we do not enforce these things because if a person has been eating, say, meat for ten, fifteen, twenty years, fifty years, hundreds of years, it would be hazardous, and any doctor will tell you that it would be perilous to withdraw from that just immediately. The system is so used to that. But as you go on with your meditational practices and as the system becomes more refined, your need for grosser foods will become less and less. So here, you do not force yourself into things because as the system becomes more sophisticated, you will want more refined foods and drinks, whatever you have.
When you have reached the stage where you have gone beyond it all, you become a law unto yourself. Then you can do anything you like, and you will not have any effect whatsoever. You are beyond it all. So, it is effortless. I would advise those contemplating vegetarianism that if you eat meat three times a day, which many people do, bacon and eggs in the morning, steakburger for lunch and at night some kind of stew, something like that, then cut it down a bit. If you eat meat seven times a week, cut it down to six, and later on, cut it down to five or four. Cut it down slowly because food affects a person’s thinking.
FOOD ALSO CONTAIN THE THREE GUNAS
Food also has the Gunas. That is a different subject, and we have a whole catalogue of audio files where the three forces of nature, “Tamas, Rajas and Sattva”, are explained. Tamas is inertia, Rajas is the activating force, and Sattva is the pure force of the Light. These three elements control the entire material universe, from the subtlest to the grossest. Food also contains these three forces. In grosser foods, you will find Tamas more dominant; in finer foods, you will discover Sattva, the purity and refined aspect of the material universe more dominant. So, the grosser the foods we ingest, the grosser our bodies and thinking could become.
EVERYTHING CONTAINS LIFE
After all, what is the human body? The human body is nothing but food. That is all what it is. The human body is nothing but food. The human body is composed of food. Food has formed all these muscles, blood, bones, etc. As we go on in our meditational practices and become more refined, our need for Tamasic food, grosser foods will become less and less. Some people go to extremes, such as “Oh, this is Tamasic food, so I must not touch it” and things like that. They go to such extremes that they would even harm their bodies, and overnight changes are no good. So, see how you feel. As you go on, the needs become less, and you will eat purer foods.
Some Indian scientists had discovered a heartbeat in a cabbage. So, everything contains life. Some forms of life are of a lower developed stage in the scale of evolution, and naturally, animals are of a higher stage in evolution than the plant stage. So, we sustain life by consuming life, and when our systems become refined, and we can consume that which is of a lower evolutionary stage, by all means, that is good.
When you reach beyond all this, beyond the laws of opposites and even beyond that which is beyond life, you can be in the world and yet not of the world. When that stage is reached, you have the licence to do anything you like, for there will be no attachments no impressions created on the mind that will perpetuate happiness and unhappiness.
YOUR CHOICE, LET THE CHOICE BE GOOD
So, in our organisation, we leave it entirely to the meditators. You have to walk on your own feet. I can only show you the path to unfoldment. The choice is yours. Let the choice be good, wholesome, wholesome that leads to wholeness; then we have life. We enjoy life when we become one with the Father. Is that not nice to become one with Divinity?
Christ ate fish, and he drank. He had a good old time of it, the old boy. But remember, he was in complete control of all nature. He was. He dined with the Pharisees in the Inns and the Innkeepers, etc., but he was not affected. He was still one with his Father. How far are we?
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1980 – 13