FOOD & Freedom

One evening, Gupta, sensing full well our western sensibilities, ran animatedly into the dining room as we waited with forlorn anticipation for dinner. "Good news, sahib! Change of menu!" Our hopes soared. "Today sahib, instead of rice, dahl and chapati we can have dahl, chapati and rice." It might have seemed like a cruel joke but Gupta was just trying to alleviate our resignation to the situation, with his slightly warped sense of humor. For the first time in my life I had a direct perception that for most people on this planet food is a fuel rather than an indulgent luxury which is the true situation of most of us eating a western diet. While most people in the world have too little food and are concerned to a great degree with simply finding it, we in the West for the most part have the opposite experience of having problems with food derived mostly from having and consuming too much of it.

Perhaps because of a fairly strict English upbringing I have never had much time for people with neurotic food fads and likes and dislikes. It is clear to me that all food is intrinsically good for the organism. This is not to say that the body cannot be healed or energetically altered with carefully designed diets and selected food inputs. "You are what you eat" is obviously true. If you eat a lot of meat you will tend to be more aggressive. If you follow a strictly vegetarian diet you will tend to be more passive. But there is a huge difference between not liking something, based on conditioned reflexes, and the conscious choosing of a particular food or diet regimen to realign an organism that is out of balance.

Proper health and well being and the right intake of food, which receives so much erroneous coverage in the West—also needs to be examined in tandem with the proper elimination from the body of toxins and waste—in order to maintain good health and longevity. In the West too little attention is placed on the correct elimination of substances and too much attention put on fanciful intake arrangements.

A lack of attention to the build up of fatty substances, cholesterol and toxins which occurs even with a "good" diet is undoubtedly detrimental to bodily health and well being. And edible foodstuff is not the only kind of food the organism needs. A person can live for about 45 days without taking in edible food but only for about three days without water. Without oxygen one can live for barely three minutes. Without "impressions" or psychic food the organism will die in seconds. Experiments with isolation tanks have shown that when a subject is denied all sensory perception madness and even death will ensue in moments. The human organism is a complex ecological construction existing in a remarkably designed environment in which everything is interconnected.

In religious orders and spiritual communities many different approaches to right working with food can be observed. Consistent with most religions is the ritualistic use of food in feasts as well the temporary denial of food intake for healthful and spiritual purposes by means of fasting. In Christianity and Islam it is well known that intelligent fasting can lead the human organism to higher states of perception once the initial discomfort of abstaining from food is overcome. Fasting is an extremely effective way of eliminating the toxins and residues that accumulate around internal organs in the same way that plaque builds up around the teeth if brushing and flossing are omitted. Without a break from intake vital organs like the liver and kidneys eventually become weakened and diseased, requiring medical intervention. Conditions like diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cirrhosis of the liver are clearly brought on in part by severe imbalances caused by a lack of sensible or informed behavior with regard to food intake and waste elimination as well as the right physical exercising of the organism itself.

Food and right approach to intake has special implications for those interested in personal evolution, never mind simple good health. Chief amongst the opportunities is working to get free of likes and dislikes about different foods. Being a slave to imaginary likes and dislikes brought on by associations or conditioning undoubtedly limits one’s freedom of action with regards to the intelligent intake of appropriate food stuff. Inner freedom comes about through disciplined behavior. Higher states and the availability of sensitive energies for our inner development are strongly influenced by what we eat and how we eat. Saying a grace or a prayer before a meal is a ritualistic means by which we can come into a heightened state of awareness and thereby eat more consciously. There is evidence that by becoming more self aware food is absorbed and digested in a finer way.

Conscious breathing exercises are known to assist the metabolism in burning up harmful waste products in the stomach and intestine. Moderation in eating is clearly a wise rule. The eastern custom of eating sparingly at most times but enjoying an occasional feast is obviously more healthy than constant over-eating. It always amazes me upon returning to an American airport from an overseas trip how many severely overweight people one sees.

Having traveled and lived in India for almost a year, I flew back to the West via London and shortly thereafter took a plane to Washington DC where I was to start a new job. My brother lived there and he picked me up at Dulles International Airport. I had been back in the West for less than a week. On the way home his wife called him in his car on his cellular telephone and asked him to pick up some milk. We pulled in at a Safeway and he asked me to run in and get some milk. In theory, running into a supermarket was something I could handle but I’d been away for a while even though I had grown up in the West. "No problem," I said, as I ran into the supermarket to be greeted by an utterly clean and sanitized environment with weird muzak playing in the background. Facing me was a huge mountain of apples. What was strange to someone coming in from the real world of day to day life in the "Third World" was how perfect these apples were as well as the complete absence of flies or other insects buzzing around the pile, such as one would find in the marketplaces of the East. I was in state of shock. I did my best not to let on to the zombies wandering around the market with their carts. Eventually I asked an employee where I might find some milk. "Aisle seven," came the response. I found aisle seven only to be faced with an enormous refrigerated cabinet full of cold boxes. "Milk" I reminded myself. There in the serried ranks were boxes labeled "2% milk," "1% milk," "non-fat milk," "buttermilk," "half and half," "cream" and so on... I stared anxiously and for a moment did not know what to do. Suddenly, I felt an arm on my shoulder. It was my brother. "Are you all right?" he asked. "You’ve been gone half an hour and I was worried." "No," I said. "Please let’s get out of here." He grabbed a box and we left.

In Delhi we had rented a relatively comfortable house. We used to take turns getting up at four a.m. when our daily supply of "milk" was delivered. In the Third World milk comes in a bucket and it is warm and fresh—not pasteurized, homogenized or bastardized. It is milk. A boy delivered it and we took turns decanting the cream off the top of the warm brew. Milk comes from cows in India, not from a box. I have heard stories of children in inner city ghettos who have little contact with nature and the countryside being asked at school where milk comes from and their responding with no awareness that milk is an organic substance that comes from cows. Instead they are under the impression that it comes from a factory and is packed in boxes.

Ecologists and other scientists are beginning to understand the interdependency that exists between all forms of life on this planet of ours. They speak now of biodiversity in an attempt to alert humanity to the fact that each and every species has a special function in the overall well being of the planet. As we all know certain things are out of balance, largely caused by unconscious human activity. The growth, harvesting and preparation of food for human consumption is a part of this ecology which in modern times has become mechanized and separate from daily life. We know that the heavy use of pesticides and other manmade chemical toxins on our food is dangerous yet we seem powerless to stop this poisonous industry. Powerful vested interests have recently tried to beat the "organic" industry at its own game; genetic engineering tries to make perfect apples or tomatoes, but this unnerves even the most insensitive consumer. A potentially positive and healthy relationship to food is mired in ignorance. Yet there is plenty of intelligent information available amidst all the hype and nonsense. The intake of food by humans is part of a much larger ecological process that merits serious study.

I lived once in a community that in its own way tried to develop holistic methods of living based on an agrarian way of life. Community members also followed an eclectic variety of "spiritual" teachings in an effort to live healthy and abundant lives. When we gathered together for meals we would say a grace, which I would like to record here as I consider it to offer many clues to healthier physical, emotional and mental attitudes about food: