Fasting can show you your cravings so you can be free of them—watch gently, don’t punish yourself.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, I had said something about fasting. People have asked: Are you opposed to fasting? Don’t the senses grow weak through fasting, bringing detachment? Didn’t Mahavira, Buddha, and others do their sadhana through fasting? In this way, many questions have come related to fasting.
The body is an amazing mechanism. The flesh and fat stored in our body are not without purpose. If we stop eating, the body starts digesting its own fat and flesh—a kind of carnivory. We begin to eat our own meat. That is why your weight drops. If you don’t eat for a day, a pound can drop—you’ve digested a pound of your own flesh. The body has to work every day and needs to digest flesh; ordinarily you supply it from food and all goes on. If you stop eating, the stock of flesh you carry begins to be consumed. Within four or five days, the body drops the habit of taking new food and starts digesting its own tissues. You must have seen frogs—they almost come alive in the rains and spend the rest of the time almost like dead, buried in the earth; they dry up and…
It is understood that in the past, many schools of yoga taught mainly through suppression. And quite a few did attain through it. Is it not possible that even today, the technique of suppression may suit a certain type of person?
When sex desire arises, one simply pays total attention to it, not judging, not saying this is good or bad not saying this is evil, not saying that this is a provocation from the devil. No -- no evaluation at all because all valuation belongs to the mind and witnessing is not of the mind. Good, bad -- distinctions all belong to the mind, and the witnessing is undivided, one. It is neither good nor bad, it simply is. One pays attention to hunger or to the sex desire, total attention -- and total attention is such an energy, it is fire-the hunger simply is burned, the sex desire is simply burned. What happens? What is the mechanism inside? You feel hunger. In fact, you have never been hungry. The body has been hungry, you have never been hungry. But you are identified with the body that, "I am the…
The Musalmans observe Roja fast, the Jains and the Hindus and the Christians also observe fast. Yesterday a friend was asking me the meaning of observing fasts. What happens by remaining hungry? The people who started these practices were not fools. The necessity of food in a man s life is the greatest of all needs, it is the most necessary thing for survival. To get food a man can give up love, or a mother can cut her child. During the Bengal famine many mothers sold their children. A husband can kill his wife, can sell her, and a wife can throw away her husband. At the time of death when the last moment comes to save oneself, the instinct for survival is very forceful because everything can be done again, but not the saving of one's life.
Osho, ever since I took initiation from you, I have also begun to feel afraid of you. Earlier this fear was not in me, though I have been afraid all my life. I also know that the love and freedom I have found in your presence I never found even around my parents. And if, even in the shade of a master as utterly love-filled as you, I do not become free of fear, then where else will I? How is this freedom from fear possible?
Take this as a touchstone: if the reason for which you went to the master is the very reason he accepts and works upon, he too is standing in darkness. You have come to me because of fear—I know. But it is not my task to lessen your fear; it is to awaken abhaya. You did not come for abhaya. You came for nirbhayata, a little courage to fight—you would be satisfied with that. You are easily satisfied; your discontent is not very deep. A drowning man is content with a straw. You are looking for a straw; I know that no one is saved by a straw. Perhaps because of the straw you will drown—whoever takes a straw for a boat stops looking for a real boat. Whoever mistakes a false shore will find the true shore very far. Whatever reason you have come with is not my concern.…
The fifth saying jesus said to them: if you fast you will beget sin for yourselves; and if you pray you will be condemned; and if you give alms you will do evil to your spirits. And if you go into any land and wander in the regions; if they receive you, eat what they set before you, and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but what comes out of your mouth, that is what will defile you.
That one is one, there are not two. Whether you look at a house or you close your eyes and look at the picture of the house inside, the looker remains the same. Whether you look at anger or you look at love, the looker remains the same. Whether you are sad or happy, whether life has become a poetry or life has become a nightmare, makes no difference -- the looker remains the same, the witness remains the same. The witness is the only center, and this witness is the world of religion. When Jesus says, "Go and heal people," he is saying, "Go and give them their centers, make them witnesses. Then they will neither be involved in the world, nor involved in their thoughts; they will be rooted in their being." And once you are rooted in the being then everything changes, the quality changes -- then…