Education is certainly one of the best means of preparing the consciousness for a higher development. There are people with very crude and very simple natures, who can have great aspiration and attain a certain spiritual development, but the base will always be of an inferior quality, and as soon as they return to their ordinary consciousness they will find obstacles in it, because the stuff is too thin, there are not enough elements in their vital and material consciousness to enable them to bear the descent of a higher force.
To eat through greediness and a passion for food is something completely different from studying the different tastes and knowing how to compare them, combine them and appreciate them.
How does fasting produce a state of receptivity?
It is because usually the vital being is very closely concentrated on the body and when the body is well fed it takes is strength from the food, and it is one way… it is obviously almost the only way; not the only one, but the most important in the present conditions of life.. but it is a very tamasic way of absorbing energy.
If you think about it, you see, it is the vital energy which is in either plants or animals, that is, logically it is of an inferior quality to the vital energy which should be in man, who is a slightly higher being in the gradation of the species. So if you draw from below you draw at the same time the in conscience that is below. It is impossible to eat without absorbing a considerable amount of in-conscience; this makes you heavy. coarsens you; and then if you eat much, a large amount of your consciousness is absorbed in digesting and assimilating what you have eaten. So already, if you don’t take food, you don’t have all this in conscience to assimilate and transform inside you; it sets free the energies. And then,as there is an instinct in the being to recuperate the energies spent, if you don’t take them from food, that is from below, you instinctively make an effort to take them through union with the universal vital forces which are free, and if one knows how to assimilate them one does so directly and then there is no limit.
It is not like your stomach which can digest only a certain amount of food, and therefore you can’t take in more than that; and even the food you take liberates only a little bit, a very small quantity of vital energy. And so what can remain with you after all the work of swallowing, digesting, etc.? Not much, you see. But if you learn. and this indexed is a kind of instinct, one learns instinctively to draw towards himself the universal energies which move freely in the universe and are limited in quantity.. as much of these as you are capable of drawing towards you, you can absorb – so instinctively when there is no support from below which comes from food, you make the necessary movement to recuperate the energies from outside, and absorb as much of them as you are capable of doing, and sometimes more. So this puts you in a kind of state of excitement, and if you body is very strong and can bear being without food fora a certain length of time, then you keep you balance and can use these energies for all kinds of things, fas for example, to progress, to become more conscious and transform your nature. But if you physical body doesn’t have much in reserve and grows considerably weak from not eating, then this creates an imbalance between the intensity of the enemies you absorb and the capacity of the body to hold them, and then this causes disturbances. You lose your balance, and all the balance of forces is destroyed, and anything at all may happen to you. In any case, you lose much control over yourself and become usually very excited, and you take this excitement for a higher state. But often it is simply an inner imbalance, nothing more. It sharpens the receptivity very much. For example, precisely when if you breathe in the odor of a flower it nourishes you, the perfume nourishes you, if gives you a great deal of energy; but otherwise you do not notice it.
COURTESY: SRI SRI AUROBINDO
