Ways to Health
He who is self-disciplined, of firm resolve with mind and intellect dedicated to the higher Self by whom the world is not agitated and who does not agitate the world, who is free from joy, envy and anxiety, he is dear to Me.
—BHAGAVAD GITA, 12:14-15
F or progress in any field, self-discipline is essential. Life cannot go on without discipline. To win a soccer match, you have to have a captain and have to play your game in accordance with his scheme. You have to play fullback or be the goalkeeper if that position is allotted to you. You can't be roaming about all over the playing field, or you are sure to lose the game.
If a young man subjects himself to drastic disciplinary measures, including regular hours of sleep, controlled diet, and strenuous exercise to train for winning a trophy in sports, everybody understands. Self-discipline is necessary for winning a race. But when somebody talks of discipline in day-to-day life, many people find it unnatural. They think that not having regular hours of sleep, exercise, and work, and eating what one likes whenever one likes, is more natural and certainly more fun.
110 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
But that sort of irregular, erratic style of life only weakens the body and invites disease.
Just observe nature. There is discipline in the orderliness found everywhere. The planets are disciplined, and maintain their proper order and relationship as they revolve at tremendous speeds. The seasons are disciplined, and come in time. Day and night maintain their own disciplined sequence. Likewise the growth of every living thing follows its own order.
Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita that moderation and discipline are essential in life for health, happiness, and success. What he says about yoga is true for all aspects of life: It is not for the man who overeats, or for he who fasts excessively. It is not for he who sleeps too much or for the one who keeps awake most of the night. Let a man be moderate in his eating habits, his recreation, his activity, and in sleep and wakefulness.
One should have disciplined reverence for the seers, teachers, and sages. A man needs straightforwardness, harmlessness, physical cleanliness, and sexual purity. Speech, too, must be disciplined. One should always say something that is kind and beneficial, never anything that causes pain. As the saying goes, "The tongue is not steel, but it cuts." These disciplines give a person strength, whether for yoga or for any line of action and achievement.
Most, if not all things worth achieving, require disciplined action over time. You cannot build anything worthwhile in a haphazard way. Everyone accepts that training for excellence in sports requires strict discipline. The same is true for excellence in any work or profession.
Discipline Harnesses Our Energies
There is a well-known image in Indian tradition that symbolizes discipline and the need for it: the image of the chariot, pulled by a team of horses and guided by the charioteer. The horses symbolize the senses. The roads they travel are the avenues of desire. The charioteer is the mind, the inner man.
When a man lacks discipline and discrimination and his mind is uncontrolled, the senses are unmanageable like the wild horses of a careless charioteer. But when he has self-discipline, his senses are like the well-controlled horses of a masterful charioteer. The man who has sound understanding and a controlled, disciplined mind is the one who reaches the end of the journey successfully.
The mind can also be compared with a mighty river. Unharnessed, it can be the source of floods and can create havoc and misery. Once under control it can generate electricity for millions and irrigate vast areas of land through a network of canals.
The Sanskrit word used for discipline by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras is tapas, which in its primary sense means that which generates heat or energy. Tapas means the practice of self- discipline and control of our physical appetites and passions, by which we generate energy and direct it to the achievement of right goals, ultimately toward union with the Self or Atman.
Self-discipline is not something grim or horrifying, like lying on a bed of nails or other such austerities. All that is unnatural. The result of such austere practices is to weaken the body and sense organs.
What is discipline? It is:
— bringing order into your life
— overcoming laziness (tamas)
— not letting passions (rajas) rule your behavior
— exercising watchful, intelligent control over thoughts and actions
— persistence and perseverance
— regulating daily life (diet, exercise, rest) wisely for health and success.
Once the mind is disciplined and organized, once you have negative thoughts and emotions under control and your mind is dominated by positive thoughts, you can make use of the tremendous untapped potential that human beings naturally
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have. Then you can do anything that is useful for the community; nothing seems impossible any more.
Creating Time
The US President, Bill Clinton, remarked in one of his speeches that every successful journey is guided by fixed stars. Any plan of action in any field must be based on sound, fixed principles, which must include discipline, simplicity, and responsibility.
If you have the capacity to work and you work with discipline and devotion, you will find all the time you need. A lazy man has no time, but a busy man finds time for everything. When you are disciplined and devoted to your work, and not concerned about the fruits of your actions, you are contented, free, and happy.
When you sharpen a knife, you have to put it at a particular angle on the sharpening stone, otherwise your knife will be blunted instead of sharpened. If you play the sitar in the right way, plucking the strings with precision, soothing music flows. Performance of right action in any field requires discipline. You
Some Thoughts on Discipline
Running away from a situation is never going to help. A mind that has equanimity can face any situation and find a solution.
If you fall down, get up and brush the dust off your clothes and keep on. A temporary setback is not defeat.
“There is no question of failure either in the short run or in the long run. It is like traveling on a long, arduous road. Of all the innumerable steps there is only the last step which brings you to your destination, yet you will not consider all your previous steps as failures, including the steps you took when you had to turn back to bypass an obstacle. Each step brings you nearer your goal, but you have to be always on the move. Learning, discovering, unfolding is your eternal destiny .' 7
—Nisargadatta Maharaj
have to train your wandering mind to become one-pointed.
Then, with discipline and devotion, it is amazing how much you can achieve.
One of the great scriptures of the Indian tradition, the Yoga Vasistha, contains an eloquent and convincing argument by Rishi Vasistha on the value of self-discipline and self-effort for growth, success, and spiritual development. If you haven't already read it, I quote extensively from his teaching in Chapter 5.
9
From food all beings are bom , and having been bom , they grow by food. Food is that which is eaten by all beings , and also that which in the end may eat them.
—TAITTIRIYA UPANISHAD
At a dinner party one should eat wisely and not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
—SOMERSET MAUGHAM
S uresh is an old friend. We were together in school and in medical college. Then we joined the Army Medical Service together. For a number of years we were in Pune at the same time, and now we both live in Delhi. He and his wife Shakuntala also have two sons, born about the same time as our two sons, Deepak and Sanjiv. Both their boys are brilliant and are doing extremely well.
Despite the fact that our way of life has always been somewhat different, Suresh and I get on very well with each other. He has always been a happy-go-lucky man, full of life and laughter. He is very social, and likes evening parties. He loves good food, though he never overeats.
Suresh was a bit upset with me for some time because whenever he would ask us over for an evening party, I would make one excuse or another, as my wife Pushpa and I are not ond of late nights. Delhi social life is awful in this respect If you invite a few friends for a get-together over dinner, they usually start arriving after 9 p.m. and keep on coming to the door even after 10. Cocktails and drinks go on till 11 or 11:30. It is quite late when food is finally laid on, and you cannot realistically hope
to get back home till well past midnight. That lifestyle does not suit us.
Some time ago we finally accepted Suresh's invitation to his beautiful house in south Delhi. There were about twelve or thirteen couples, including some familiar faces. All seemed to
be enjoying the evening, and Scotch whisky was flowing freely all around.
Abnash Chandra was sitting next to me. I had been seeing him as a patient for the past two years. Chandra is thirty-eight years old. He is obese, has a potbelly, and looks much older than his chronological age. He has been treated for high blood pressure and angina, and had undergone balloon angioplasty about two months prior to the dinner party.
The procedure was successful, and his angina had disappeared. Now free of pain, Abnash apparently thought he had a new heart and that he could once again abuse his body just as he liked. He forgot all about the guidelines he had agreed to follow regarding his diet and drinking. He was in a good mood, sipping his whisky and munching potato wafers, salted cashew nuts, and mutton kebabs—precisely the items I had told him not to indulge in because of his obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and angina.
Abnash Chandra's brother had been admitted to the hospital for a liver disease that was due to alcohol abuse. Abnash explained to me that he expected his brother to have a problem like that. "The problem with my brother," he said, "is not that he drinks too much but that he doesn't eat good food. I consume about the same amount of alcohol but I eat well, and before I go
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to an evening party I take a thin slice of bread with a thick layer of butter. Then I know the whisky won't go to my head. I can have my drinks as I like, and I know my liver will be fine."
Abnash did not have an apparent problem with his liver, yet. But the problems with his heart were very real. Nevertheless he was indulging in his idea of fun—eating and drinking neither realizing nor caring, at that moment, that his behavior could hasten the formation of a clot in the narrow arteries of his heart and bring on a heart attack.
Less is More
Abnash's overindulgence is completely typical. All around the world, whether we eat at home or in a restaurant, people who can afford to do so consume enormous quantities of food. And yet many studies have been conducted, both on animals and humans, which conclude that individuals who consume fewer calories live longer than those whose caloric intake is high.
A normal mouse, for instance, lives for about thirty months before dying of old age. But according to Dr. Akhouri A. Sinha, Professor of Genetics and Cellular Biology at the University of Minnesota, if its caloric intake is increased significantly, its lifespan shrinks to twenty to twenty-four months and it is likely to experience a variety of diseases and other health problems. Conversely, mice whose caloric intake is reduced will live an average of thirty-six months, in generally good health.
Studies with human subjects support this research. For instance, men who weigh less than 65 kg (about 143 lbs, or 10 stone, 3 lbs) live longer than men who weigh over 95 kg (about 209 lbs, or 14 stone, 13 lbs). Overeating, it seems, saps a person's vitality, ruins his health, causes diseases, and in the end kills him.
Michio Kushi and Stephen Blaur in their book, The Macrobiotic Way (1985), quoted from Sugar Blues , by William Dufty (Warner Books, 1975) that “Sugar is poison, you should not let it enter your house let alone your body. It is more lethal
than opium and more dangerous than atomic fallout." That may sound frightening, although everyone knows how much better and lighter one feels when one stops eating cakes, pastries, and sugary sweets and switches to a diet consisting mainly of whole
grains, fruits and green vegetables. What has modern scientific research to say about it?
Researchers, as reported by Time magazine in an article “Can Science Slow the Aging Clock?" (January 20, 1997), say when sugars bond with proteins, they attract other proteins that form a sticky weblike substance that stiffens joints, blocks arteries, and clouds clear tissues like the lens of the eye leading to cataracts. The same reactions occur in diabetics but more rapidly. It is possible that as the cells of non-diabetics metabolize
sugars, the same glycosylation process might take place. It is only much slower.
The glycosylation process is like the free radical process and, according to Dr. Robert Butler, Head of the Research Center of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, it is a natural process of metabolism of sugar that keeps us alive but also leads to aging and can cause disease.
Inside the mitrochondria of cells during normal metabolism, oxygen is split into unstable oxygen singlets. These unstable oxygen molecules are known as free radicals. They help normal metabolism but in excess amounts they go on the rampage and injure and damage normal tissues and the inside lining of the blood vessels and DNA. In due course this can cause premature aging, coronary heart disease, cancer and other degenerative diseases like cataracts and arthritis. Oxygen is a life-giver but can also hasten aging, cause disease, and kill.
One way to reduce excess sugar metabolism is to take less sugar—maybe take unprocessed sugar in smaller amounts and not take refined white sugar at all, as by refining and bleaching all the protective enzymes, minerals, vitamins, and tracer elements are taken away—and give the body cells fewer nutrients to process and metabolize in the first place.
Studies have shown that rats whose caloric intake is 30
118 YOUR LIFE IS IN YOUR HANDS
percent lower than that of a control group tend to live 30 percent to 40 percent longer. In humans that would translate to a spartan diet of just 1,400 calories a day in exchange for thirty extra years of life. The rat experiment can, probably, not translate into humans but George Roth, molecular physiologist with the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Maryland, suggests that individuals who consume fewer calories have better prospects of survival. Eating less processed food will also result in a slower metabolism, leading to improved rates of survival. In Japan, the number of persons aged 100 years or more these days is around 7,400 but you rarely see a fat centenarian.
The answer in the present state of our knowledge seems to be that for healthy and longer life one should eat less sugar, especially refined white sugar, avoid refined carbohydrates, have fewer total calories per day and have plenty of fresh fruits, green vegetables, and sprouts that are rich sources of antioxidants, capable of neutralizing an excess of harmful free radicals. This way you can add years to life and life to years.
As gerontologist Leonard Hayflick points out, we should be careful not to think of the overfed mice, who correspond to the way most people live and eat, as normal; the mice on the restricted diet, he says, "are merely being allowed to reach the limit of their lifespan. It's overfeeding that kills the control group."
The physical body of man is born from food consumed by his parents. It is maintained and nourished by food consumed by himself, and ultimately the physical body of everyone goes back to the earth to become food for others.
The vital force of life (prana) comes to our body through food as well as air. Prana expresses itself as vitality in the body.
In the right amount food is a blessing, but overconsumption is a cause of disease and death. The more we eat, the more quickly we disappear from this world. One who has self-control and eats as much as required, not as much as he wants, who regulates the expenditure of his energy and vitality and avoids undesirable dissipations, is the one who lives a healthy, happy life to the full extent of his lifespan.
Advantages of a Vegetarian Diet
The fifty trillion cells in the human body are ceaselessly decaying while new cells are growing in their place. To maintain that continuous “Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh" process of creation, preservation, and dissolution in our body, the right nutrients are constantly required. These can best be obtained from a vegetarian diet ot natural foods. It is now known that a vegetarian diet is protective against heart disease. Dr. Dean Ornish, the American physician who conducted landmark research on treating heart disease with diet, exercise, and meditation, says that people who eat a low-fat, low-cholesterol vegetarian diet have low blood pressure, low blood cholesterol levels, and low rates of heart disease. Many anthropologists, Ornish points out, believe that our ancestors were primarily vegetarians, and that our teeth and intestinal tract were designed "for the slow digestion of high-fiber plant foods," rather than to digest meat.
Dr. T. Colin Campbell of Cornell University, who has long been studying diet in China, states that "we are basically a vegetarian species and should be eating a wide variety of plant foods and minimizing our intake of animal foods. The higher the intake of animal products, the higher the risk of cancer."
The American Dietetic Association has made the following strong statement about a vegetarian diet:
A considerable body of scientific data suggests positive relationships between vegetarian lifestyles and risk reduction for several chronic degenerative diseases and conditions, such as obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, colon cancer, and others . .. Vegetarians also have lower rates of osteoporosis, lung cancer, breast cancer, kidney stones, gallstones, and diverticular disease.
Paradoxically, the incidence of heart attacks is rather high among vegetarians in India. The reason seems to be that Indian vegetarians eat a lot of deep-fried food, such as samosas and pakoras, which have a lot of hidden fat. Also, the oil used for
cooking these foods is used many times and becomes oxidized. Oxidized oil is very harmful; it can aggravate atherosclerosis and has been associated with the formation of free radicals, which contribute to cancer, heart disease, and other serious health problems. By contrast, the vegetarian diet that is emerging in the West is less greasy. Western fast foods (hamburgers, fried potatoes, etc.) are in a way like the Indian vegetarian deep-fried junk food.
Whether in India or anywhere in the world, once people experience some degree of affluence, they tend to give up the traditional, simple, wholesome and sattvic diet of whole grains, beans, legumes, fresh fruits, and green vegetables and opt for a diet rich in meat, processed cheeses, oils, fats, and refined carbohydrates and sugars. Much of this nowadays is in the form of fast foods. Now that we know that eating the right vegetarian diet is a preventive measure against heart disease, it is tragic for us to go on permitting a steep rise in the incidence of heart attacks due to the food we eat.
In the Bible (Leviticus 7:23-25) God admonishes Moses: “You shall eat no manner of fat, of ox, or of sheep or of goat . . . for whosoever eateth the fat of the beast. . . shall be cut off from his people." This must have been good, practical advice, for “Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died and his eyes were not dim nor his natural force abated.” (Deuteronomy 34:7)
Animals Have Feelings Too
Like humans, animals have feelings and emotions. When they are used for medical research, even in the best laboratory conditions, with controlled temperature and music piped into the rooms (and animals love music), invariably harmful biochemical changes are produced in their bodies. This happens even before the experiment, when the animals are being held in confinement.
When an animal is slaughtered for food the chemical reaction is far more intense. The pain and fear felt by the dying
creature cause powerful biochemicals such as adrenaline and noradrenaline to be released into the bloodstream. These chemicals—which cause reactions in the animal, such as a rapid heart rate and muscles tensed in the face of danger—then become an integral part of the meat consumed by humans, and they affect our physiology. Over a period of time our pulse rate, blood pressure, and tranquility of mind may be adversely affected.
I believe our minds may become easily agitated if a nonvegetarian diet is consumed repeatedly. Eating meat may make us more irritable, ready to fight on the slightest pretext. And in course of time, the brain may be robbed of some of its inherent power of creative thinking.
Could this be why, in ancient India, the brahmins—the learned men, thinkers, teachers, writers, poets—were generally not meat eaters, but were prescribed a pure, sattvic vegetarian diet? Only the kshatriyas, the soldiers and fighters of battles, were allowed to eat non-vegetarian food.
Certain physical features can be observed in animals because of the eating habits of their species over millions of years. Look at the eyes of a tiger or even a cat, and see how ferocious a look it has. Now compare that with the eyes of a herbivorous animal such as a cow, a deer, or a horse. How calm and innocent it looks! Man's eyes are more like the cow's or the deer's. Beautiful, they reflect the tranquility of his mind and the love in his heart.
It is obvious from this comparison, from the shape and functional anatomy of our teeth, specifically the incisors and the grinders, and from the anatomy and physiology of our digestive system, enzymatic system, and intestines, that man is by nature designed to be a vegetarian. But if we adopt a non-vegetarian diet and continue to eat like carnivores, over time we are sure to develop the looks, teeth, and anatomy of these animals and become ferocious like them. Perhaps in another million years, we will return to the jungles.
The evolution of a species takes a long, long time. We are very highly evolved, but we are killing innocent fellow beings.
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There seems to be little hope for man to survive for long in our present condition. The devolution, the biological and moral degeneration of our species, seems to have already begun due to many factors, including our eating habits.
Tips for Healthy Eating
The food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe are transformed into our bodies. Healthy food, eaten in appropriate ways in pleasant circumstances, creates good health for body and mind. Food that is unhealthy for us, eaten on the run in unsuitable surroundings, lays the ground for disease. If you follow these common-sense guidelines for eating, your meals can contribute to your health and well-being.
* The food you eat should not be tasteless and insipid. It should be tasty, attractive, and properly cooked. Use fresh food whenever possible, not packaged, stale, or leftover food.
* Eat whole grains. Glue is made by mixing water and white flour. If you eat food made of white flour in any form, it tends to get stuck in the walls of the large intestine and does not get entirely eliminated. This waste product is poisonous if it remains in the gut for any length of time, and is the cause of diseases including cancer of the colon. Eating whole grains, such as whole wheat, will not only help regulate your blood sugar and serum cholesterol, but will also result in complete evacuation of the bowels—no constipation—and in this way many diseases can be prevented.
* Don't eat when you are feeling emotionally upset. When you are depressed, anxious, or irritated, your digestion is less effective. Then what is eating you up becomes more important than what you eat.
* Pay attention when you eat. Every time we take food is a holy occasion. If you eat throughout the day, nibbling here and there, watching TV . . . then you are not paying attention to this very purposeful, solemn event.
* Be thankful. Say grace before you eat. Someone may say, "I
work hard all day earning my daily bread. If I don't do that, I won't get any food. So why should I give thanks?" It is true that you earn your bread by your work. But don't forget, our Lord makes the sun shine, the rivers flow, and the rains fall. Not even a blade of grass can grow without His grace. So to speak (or quietly think) a few words of gratitude is an expression of the art of gracious receiving. Asking for His blessings will help you eat with a quiet, peaceful mind.
* Fasting about once every week gives a rest to your digestive system and increases immunity. You may take some fresh fruit juice two or three times on your fast day.
Remember, the food you eat is going to be you. So be sure to choose fresh, nourishing, sattvic food. Tamasic (dull) persons tend to eat food that is tamasic: badly cooked, stale, or leftover. Rajasic (passionate, highly active) people relish food that is rajasic. sour, salty, or spicy. Only sattvic (pure, good) persons have a natural affinity for food that is pure and fresh, and which increases vigor, vitality, and joy.
We can all consciously choose foods that will increase sattva in us. Traditionally, that means not just foods that are fresh and pure, but specifically milk, ghee, almonds, fresh fruit (particularly oranges), and rice. Dates, honey, mung beans, coconut, and wheat are also considered among the most sattvic foods.
* Have a broader perspective. The food on your plate is not merely some rice and vegetables, it is part of the great fabric of the universe. Food, the Upanishads say, is Brahman: "All beings here are born from food, when born they live on food, on deceasing they enter into food." Brahman, the supreme, is the changeless substratum upon which all changes take place. Food is ever changing. Food is you, me, and all living beings. That is why eating is a holy occasion.
* Don't stuff yourself. Never reach a stage in eating when you feel your stomach is completely full. You will feel happier and healthier if you stop eating before that.
In the olden days, when people had to work hard and be physically fit just in order to grow, gather, or capture their food,
there was little malnutrition and probably little heart disease. In the modern age, there is a virtual epidemic of heart disease, and two very different types of malnutrition exist in the world.
Despite food now being very plentiful, many people still suffer from malnutrition because they do not get sufficient calories, protein, and vitamins. But there is another kind of malnutrition, particularly common among well-to-do people, and this is because of eating too much.
Nature did not design our bodies to consume the large quantities of fat, sugar, and refined carbohydrates characteristic of the modern diet. Man has been eating fruits, nuts, and roots for thousands of years; even farming is a recent development. If our metabolic capabilities are overloaded with cakes, pastries, samosas, jalebies, parathas, poories, we must expect to pay the price in the form of heart disease and other illnesses sooner or later.
The problem is that the affluent don't eat to appease their hunger. More often, they eat for pleasure, for emotional reasons, or to satisfy social obligations. This is not the way to eat.
Before going to a particular social event, decide in advance what, and how much, you are going to eat. If you can't resist the pressure of the host and end up eating more than you require or feel you should eat, you are punishing yourself. If this happens to you regularly, then you should cut off or minimize your social engagements. What good is the pleasure of social events if it leads to disease?
We can share meals with friends, and it is good to take pleasure in what we eat, but we should be careful to eat in a way that will build our health and sustain a long creative life.
The Ethics of Our Food Choices
If Americans were to reduce their meat consumption by only 10 percent it would free land and resources to grow over twelve million tons of grain annually for human consumption, instead of for animal feed. This would be more than enough to
adequately feed every one of the sixty million human beings who
starve to death or die of one of the hunger-related diseases each year on this planet.
Our hunger for wholeness
“If we are touched by images of men, women, and children that we have seen starving for food, it is because they are a reflection of our own need. They are a reminder not only of that part of us that is hungry, but also of that part of us that needs to give in order to be whole."
—JOHN ROBBINS, in May All Be Fed
This shocking statistic is an example of the impact our eating habits have on the life of our planet. But these habits are being actively promoted by powerful commercial forces, as the American writer John Robbins explains in his book, May All Be Fed: Diet For A New World. The huge and powerful meat-producing industry, allied with friendly political forces, vigorously promotes meat consumption. Thus these interests are largely responsible for causing the more affluent people to suffer from heart attacks, osteoporosis, and other diet-related diseases, while at the same time the world's poor are deprived of a basic human right—having ample, wholesome food.
Millions of acres of land are being used to produce grain for animal feed, rather than food for direct human consumption. It takes sixteen pounds of grain to produce a pound of meat and only one pound to produce a pound of bread.
In addition to the overwhelming evidence that a diet rich in red meat and other animal fats causes heart disease and several types of cancer, there is now also clear evidence linking a high- protein (largely meat) diet with osteoporosis or thinning of the bones, a condition that often leads to discomfort and broken bones among the elderly. Large amounts of meat in the diet cause you to lose calcium (hence bone mass) as well as other valuable minerals such as magnesium.
A vegetarian (or at least largely vegetarian) diet is thus not
only extremely good for our own health and welfare. If more people adopted this as a routine way of life, more land would be freed to grow food for people rather than animals, and the devastating effects of hunger around the world could be greatly reduced.
Food and the Laws of Nature
I met Mr. Frank Bracho at a conference on ayurveda and alternative medicine several years ago. At the time, he was Venezuela's ambassador to India. He had authored a book entitled Health , Environment , and Economics and another on ancient monuments of India.
Mr. Bracho was deeply interested in ancient cultures, the achievements of past great civilizations, their monuments and arts. He was also drawn to understand the wise and respectful relationship with nature exhibited by some of these ancient cultures. It was because of that relationship with nature and Mother Earth that they could acquire the physical, mental, and spiritual strength, the knowledge and wisdom that nurtured these great civilizations.
While in India, this lover of nature had his residence in a farmhouse with a beautiful vegetable garden and fruit orchard. We had a meal with him one evening and enjoyed the farm-fresh fruit juices and delicious vegetable dishes. Mr. Bracho explained that according to Luis Espinoza, a shaman in the Inca tradition, "at the time of a meal a bridge of light is created between the eater and the plant world. Then, if the circumstances are right, the magic flows; the subtle arrives and we all nourish our bodies.”
"It is important to prepare food with love,” he continued, "to ingest it with thanks, to energize it before assimilating it. It is important to be aware and mindful of nourishment, as if you were talking with the spirit of each food stuff. They must also be cultivated with tenderness, and our relationship with the earth must be that of reciprocity and love. Plants can live without
man and animals, but neither man nor animals can live without plants."
All the nourishment we need comes from plants, which yield us various kinds of food through their sap, roots, bark, seeds, flowers, leaves, and fruit. Animal protein is not only dispensable, but for reasons of health is actually undesirable. All the basic nutrients can be obtained from a combination of food from plants.
Eat right think right, act right. Meditate on the Self and live your life in divine joy and bliss day and night.
—PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA
The sowing of crops has always been looked upon with reverence, and from this reverence wisdom has emerged. In ancient times we knew how to live in equilibrium with nature. The ancient peoples believed that plants are living beings that listened and responded to the human voice.
Today there are still native farmers who allow no one who is angry or ill-tempered to go on their fields during planting. “You will ruin the earth," they say as they turn the unwelcome presence away. On the other hand, before sowing, it is often customary to take children to the fields to play, because innocence is powerful energy and purity a valuable fertilizer for the soil, plants, and human beings.
I told Mr. Frank Bracho that what held true for Pre- Columbian peoples in Latin America was the truth for all great ancient civilizations. If we could respect and maintain a harmonious relationship with the mountains, forests, trees, and rivers of Mother Earth and all her beings, as our ancestors did, and live in accordance with the laws of nature, this world would certainly be a much better place to live.