Fasting

[Guest guest]

Fasting is very simple -- just the first five days are difficult. I have fasted.

The first five days are the most difficult, the fifth is the worst; you are

almost ready to break the fast. But if you pass the fifth, you have passed the

most dangerous, the most vulnerable period. From the sixth day your body starts

functioning in a new way. It starts eating itself. From the sixth day onwards

things become simple. On the fifteenth day, you are absolutely unconcerned with

food; you don't have any hunger. The body is absorbing its own fat, so hunger

does not arise.

 

A man who is perfectly healthy can fast for ninety days without dying. Of course

he will become just a skeleton, but for ninety days he can stay alive because a

perfectly healthy body goes on accumulating fat for any emergency. This is an

emergency situation so the body has an emergency system. If food is not coming

from the outside, then the body starts eating from the inside. That's why you go

on losing weight every day.

 

In the beginning you will lose two pounds per day. Then the body becomes aware

that perhaps the emergency is going to last longer: then you lose one and a half

pounds a day. Strange, the body has its own wisdom. Then you will lose one pound

a day, then half a pound a day, because the body will start trying to save as

much as possible, and to live on as little as possible; to keep you alive as

long as it is in the body's hands.

 

So it is not something like a miracle, but people get impressed because deep

down they feel, "We cannot do this." If somebody is enjoying a feast, you don't

have that feeling, because you can also enjoy the feast. It is just that you are

not invited, that's why you are feeling angry -- even against that man who is

enjoying himself -- that he is just a glutton; that he believes only in the

philosophy of eat, drink, and be merry; that he is not a spiritual man. This is

jealousy, anger because you have not been invited. You are also capable of

enjoying the feast, but a fast? -- you have never tried it.

 

And in the beginning a fast is not a joy. Five days seem like five months. It

seems that the clock no longer moves, and the hunger goes on growing. It hurts

in the stomach; the intestines feel as if they are shrinking. Your whole body is

in turmoil because it is not getting its daily ration. All the parts of the body

are in a strange situation; they cannot figure out what has happened, why the

ration has been stopped. You have not informed them; you cannot because you

don't know their language, they don't know your language.

 

There is chaos in the body -- but only for five days. After that the body

automatically moves itself onto the emergency system; then there is no problem.

And all these mahatmas have learned only that: the strategy of five days. Once

you have learned it, then it is not very difficult to last five days.

 

Jaina and Buddhist monks both impressed the whole of the East so much that the

Hindu ashrama, which was really a beautiful place, became condemned. Those

seers, those sages, became condemned by people: "These are as materialistic as

we are. The real mahatmas and sages are the Jainas, the Buddhists. These people

are nothing compared to them." Naturally Hinduism had to change its whole

structure.

 

It is a competitive world: to remain in existence, Hinduism changed the whole

style of the ashrama. The ashrama became ascetic but they still retained the old

name, they forgot to change the name. It is no longer an ashram because there is

no relaxation, no rest, no joy, no blissfulness.

 

Go to an ashrama today and you will find self-torturing people, psychologically

sick, masochistic, suicidal -- but egoistic, because all this torture is

bringing to them one thing: great respect from the people. The whole country

pays tremendous respect for what they are doing.

 

Osho: From Personality to Individuality