Fasting: A different perspective!

Disclaimer: This article is not meant to hurt anyone’s religious sentiments. I am just strongly guided to share this intuitive knowledge that has come me. Let’s just open up our eyes to a possible different perspective.

Fasting is a beautiful way to raise your consciousness, to take care of your health, to preserve precious energy for spiritual growth. But this is for people to whom this comes naturally. Those who have naturally overcome their interest in food. Some are meant to grow via fasting, some via service to others, some via bhakti or devotion etc. For this other category let’s look at fasting from a different perspective.

I have seen many people whose craving for food increases after fasting, especially long, intense fasting. Some long to eat certain foods after the fast is over and feel satisfied only after this wish is fulfilled. Kindly note this is a case with few and not all. Kindly recall the last time you observed a fast and you really had to control your cravings. Now what happens in this process. You have observed a fast to clear away your negative karma. But when you are under a fast and you feel cravings for food or are unable to keep away thoughts about food, then ‘in thought’ you have broken the fast. And you end up incurring negative karma for breaking the fast. So, in effect, in an effort to clear karma, you have incurred more karma. That is the nature of karma. If you look at it from a very minute perspective then most of the time you are trying to clear karma, you end up incurring more karma. That is why it is so difficult to clear karma and it takes innumerable lifetimes. Sometimes you are better off not trying to clear karma and just be where you are and at least do not incur more karma. Be aware of this trap!

Religion says that you fast, you renunciate and you will reach higher states of consciousness or at least that is the belief. But based on my recent intuitive insights, the deep inner knowledge says that it is actually the other way round. You reach the higher consciousness levels and automatically as a side effect your cravings will subside, your need for belongings will reduce (you will renunciate) and you will relate less to your body. These are supposed to be the natural side effects of reaching higher, growing spiritually higher.

When you first try to control your cravings or renunciate (without raising your consciousness), you are suppressing your wish. And remember a wish can only be suppressed and not killed. It will always come up in a different form and usually with more intensity. And this will become a vicious cycle which is extremely difficult to break. The only way to kill a wish is to fulfill it! But some will argue that once you fulfill one wish another will arise and another and another. That is again another vicious cycle.

But there is a way to break this vicious cycle! The correct way to go about is to raise your consciousness first and all of the rest automatically follows. No effort required. All automatically falls in place. Like Osho says, don’t fight with the darkness. It does not work. Switch on the light and darkness is automatically driven away.

Now let’s look at why the concept of fasting or intense fasting may have come up. When a soul grows spiritually very high, the urge for intense meditation automatically comes in. There have been cases of many saints and sages practicing intense meditation in harsh conditions. Even Jain tirthankaras have meditated extensively for years before they could attain nirvana. Now, what happens during long lasting intense meditation is that your soul reaches higher consciousness levels. Some souls will leave their body and reach higher dimensions from where pure authentic knowledge and Truth can be accessed from the actual source. So that, what you receive is pure knowledge and Truth and not something that has been misinterpreted after centuries of passing down to next generations. In such cases the soul has temporarily left the body (yes! At very advanced levels this is possible) and hence there is naturally no need for the body to eat, which naturally results in long-term fasting, without suppression of wish and creating a strictly avoidable vicious cycle.

Similar explanation can be given as to how these saints live in freezing Himalayan cold without sufficient clothing. Because with intense long-term meditation either you have temporarily left body. Or at a certain higher level of consciousness your focus on your goal is so high that all energy of the individual is diverted to this goal and the soul automatically withdraws its energies from sensory organs. All the energies are concentrated at spiritual growth and accessing higher knowledge and the Ultimate Truth. Hence your senses become immune and you may not feel the cold. Like when you are involved in something you really enjoy, you do not experience the fatigue! Also, there are certain siddhis which may be attained by these saints and sages which gives them control over regulating their body temperature.

So in a nutshell, a better way is to first raise your consciousness levels and let other drama unfold automatically. With this route, the changes that will come in will be more permanent, since these will be natural without involving any suppression of wishes and urges.

Again, this goes only for those who find it difficult to control their cravings during fast. For others to whom fasting comes naturally without any suppression of urges, my utmost reverence and respect to them. I bow down to them a million times!