[b]

Many of you go on carrying the burden of totally imaginary things, things which don't exist. It is as though you are one of those beggars  who thinks himself to be a rich man, which you are not. Why when you put your hand in your pocket and don't find any money, yu ask, "What kind of wealth is this?"  This is not wealth at all.

Beggars have a favorite pastime: dreaming about eing rich -- and all beggars dream of becoming rich. So the more worldy you are, the more you will dream about being religous.

There are many ways to dream. Go to the temple in the morning, donate a little something, perform some rituals, sometimes even read a little from the Gita, the Koran or the Bible, so the illusion is created that you are religious.

These acts create the illusion that you are religious. And then when these so-called interests are defeated by wordly desires, you become very sad and full of regret, and you think, "How weak spiritual interests are and how strong wordly interests are." But you don't have any spiritual interests. You are deceiving yourself by thinking that you are religious.

So you need to understand that a spiritual interest which can be defeated by sexual desire is false. This is the criterion: the spiritual interest which can be defeated by wordly interests is false. The day an interest is born in you in whose presence your worldly interests disappear -- where even if you look for them you will not be able to find them --that day, something will have truly happened to you. You will have had a gimpse of religiousness.

If the sun rises in the morning and the darkness remains as it is, know that you are only dreaming that the sun has risen. When the sun rises, darkness disappears by itself. The sun has never met darkness; the sun does not know that something like darkness exists. And it will never be possible for it to know.

Until now the soul has not known that something like wordly desires exist. When the soul awakens, then desires are nowhere to be found. The two have never met. Remember this criterion; it will be useful.

One friend has asked: Is austerity needed in meditation?

What I am describing to you  --  purification of the body, purification of  the thoughts, purification of the emotions; emptiness of the body, empitness of the mind, emptiness of the emotions -- this is austerity.

And what do people think austerity is? If somebody is standing in the sun, they think that he is preacticiing austerity. If somebody is lying on a bed of thorns, they think that he is practicinsg austerity. If somebody is sitting hungry, that means thathe is practicing austerity. Our ideas about austerity are very materialistic, very bodily. Austerity, to most people, means torturing the body. If somebody is hurting his body, then he is practicing austerity. In actual fact, austerity has nothing todo with hurting the body. Austerity is something absolutely unique; it is something quite different.

If somebody is fasting you think he is practicing auserity -- but he is only dying of hunger. And I will even go so far as to say that he is not fasting, he is only going without food. Going without food, not eating anything, is one thing; fasting is something totally different.

An upvaas, a fast, means to be living in the presence of the divine. It means to be near one;s soul. It means to be close to the soul. And what does it mean to go without food? To go without food means to be close to the body. These are two diametrically opposite things.

A hungry man is closer to the body than to the soul. In comparison, a person with a full stomach is less close to the body. A hungry man always things about hunger, his stomach and his body. His line of thought concerns the body. His preoccupation is with the body and with food.

If being hungry were a virtue, poverty would become something to be proud of. If staying hungry were something spiritual, the poor countries would be spiritual. But do you know that no poor country can be spiritual? At least it has never happened uptil now. A country can only become religious when it is rich.

You remember the days of the past when the countries of the East were religious, when India was religious, but those were days of great prosperity, great happiness and great affluence. Mahavira and Buddha were the sons of kings. This is not a coincidence. Why was a tirthankara never born in poor house? There is a reason for it: austerity always begins in the middle of affluence. A poor person is closer to the body. A rich person starts becoming free of the body, in the sense that his bodily needs have been fulfilled and for the first time he starts becoming aware of new needs which are of the soul.

This is why I am not in favor of staying hungry, or of making someone else go hungry, or of calling poverty spiritual. The people who say this are under an illusion and they are deceiving others as well. They are only supporting poverty and finding false ways to feel contented. Staying hungry has no value, fasting has value. Yes, it is possible that in the state of fasting you forget about food and go without it, but that is a totally different matter. Mahavira was practicing austerity. He was not staying hungry, he was fasting. Through fasting he was continuously trying to reach closer to the soul. In some moments when he was closer to the soul, then he would forget the presence of the body. These moments can be prolonged and one or two days, even a month can pass.

It is said about Mahavira that in twelve years of practicing austerity, he ate only three hundred and fifty days. One or two months would pass when he did not eat. Do you think that he had been hungry, two months would have simply passed? A hungry manwould have died. But Mahavira did not die because he was not aware of his body during those periods. There was so much closeness, such a proximity to the soul, that he was not aware that the body was also there.

And it is a great mystery .... if you become unaware of the presence of the body, it starts functioning according to a totally different system and it no longer needs food. Now it is a scientific fact that if you become completely unaware of your body, it will start working in a totally different system and it will not need much food. And the more a person enters into the spiritual world, the more it will become possible for him to receive subtle, very subtle energy from food which is not possible for an ordinary person.So when Mahavira was fasting, it was only because he was so close to the soul that he would forget all about food. This is how it could happen.

Once a religious man was with me, and he said to me, "I am on a fast today."

I said, "You must mean you are going without food, but not fasting."

He said, "What is the difference between going without food and fasting?"

I said, "When you go without food, you stop eating food and you start meditating on food.  Fasting means that you are no longer concerned with food; you are in communion with the soul and food is forgotten."

Fasting is genuine austerity. And going without food is hurting the body, suppressing the body. People who have an ego go without food: egoless people fast. Going without food fulfills the ego, that "I haven't eaten for so many days"

And your point is?.......

i suspect you perhaps need to read the whole post paul-of-birchbay rather than making dry comments.  Would be helpful in continuing a conversation or discussion.

Suzi