How You Eat Is As Important As What You Eat

The process of eating and digestion, which turns food into human flesh and bone, is not a simple process. But though everybody is doing it, most people do not experience it. When I eat, I never talk because this process is such a big experience, not necessarily in terms of taste, but in the way something that is not you is becoming you. On a daily basis, it is extremely important that you take food in with a certain respect. You will see that you will eat a quarter of the food that you are eating right now, and you will still be fine.

I have seen this with my great-grandmother. She lived to be 113 years of age. In the morning, they would give her breakfast, which she would take and feed to the ants, small animals and birds. Almost two-thirds of the food would be over before she started eating. People at home would scold her, “If you throw all the food, what will happen to you. You will die!” All the people who were advising her died, but she did not. She outlived her husband, children and a few of her grandchildren. When she gave away her food, she would be sitting there with tears flowing. She was so blissful that the ants were eating. When people scolded her, “You are not eating anything. What will happen to you at this age”, she would reply, “I am already full.”

This was not a psychological or emotional feeling, it was real for her. When the ants ate, she ate. Her sustenance came from this every day and she was well nourished. She lived to 113! That is proof enough, Nobody can argue with that.

If you were to actually experience this fabulous process of eating, where a vegetable, fruit and whatever else is turned into a human being, what a blissful experience it would be. But most people just eat like a cow chews upon the cud, and then swallow it. That is not the way to approach the food that you eat.

If you do not have reverence for that which sustains and nourishes you, it will go into you and affect you in various ways. Do not underestimate the intelligence of life. Do not think the madness going on in your “bone box” is the only intelligence. That is the lowest form of intelligence. Everything else in the existence is super-intelligent.

For example, did it ever happen that when you put an apple seed into the soil, a pear came out because the soil made a mistake? No. It is the same soil that turns into an apple or a pear, but a mistake has never happened. Soil is very intelligent. Life is intelligence. In the very air that you breathe, there is a phenomenal amount of intelligence.

You have to approach food in a certain way because it is going to become you. This is just like getting married! I know that has become very ugly these days, but marriage essentially means you are making another person a part of your life. You are trying to include another life. Societies have always emphasized that marriage should be conducted with a certain sanctity. I would say eating has much more sanctity than marriage. Your daily meal has much more sanctity than all your prayers because if you do not eat for five days, you will not ask for God, you will ask for food.

If you do not know how to be reverential towards that which constantly nourishes you – the food that you eat, the earth that you walk upon, the water that you drink, the air that you breathe – you will not know the beauty of life. You will live, but you will not know how every little thing can be utterly beautiful. Every little thing in your life can be overwhelmingly beautiful if you approach it in the right sense. For many people, their marriage has become the most beautiful thing in their life. But for many other people, marriage has become the ugliest thing. The same is true with every aspect of your life. Everything can become the most beautiful aspect of your life or the ugliest aspect.

Food can become extremely ugly if you do it in a compulsive way. But the same food, if you approach it in a certain way, what a beautiful thing it is!