Fasting isn’t starving yourself; it’s being so absorbed in your inner self that you forget about eating.
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…
A friend has asked: Osho, is austerity needed in spiritual practice or not?
What I am telling you—purification of body, purification of thought, purification of feeling; emptiness of body, emptiness of thought, emptiness of feeling—this is austerity. What do people think austerity is? A man standing in the blazing sun—“he is doing austerity!” Someone lying on thorns—“he is doing austerity!” Someone sitting hungry—“he is doing austerity!” Our concept of austerity is extremely materialistic, very physical. For us, austerity means tormenting the body. If someone inflicts pain on the body, we say he is practicing austerity. But austerity has nothing to do with bodily torture. Austerity is something wondrous; it is something altogether different. A man is fasting. We think he is practicing austerity. He is merely starving. And I would even say he is not fasting at all; he is simply without food. Being without food, not eating, is one thing; being in upavasa is quite another. Upavasa means dwelling near the divine.…
A few more points about anashan. Mahavira’s emphasis on fasting was great — why? One reason I have told you — its esoteric, inner secret. But there are others. Mahavira knows — as do all who have experimented in this direction — that your connection with this body is through food. Food is the bridge between you and the body. If one wants to know ‘I am not this body,’ it will be easiest to know at that time when there is no food at all in the body. When the linking element is not there, it is easy to know that I am not the body. The more the linking element is present, the more difficult it is to know. Food connects; therefore after ninety days, in its absence, the connection breaks — the Atman falls apart from the body. The linking element in between has fallen away.
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…
Is sadhana a natural growth, or is it a jump outside the evolutionary process of nature? If sadhana is not a jump and transcendence of the natural evolution, then is it possible that the entire human race can reach spiritual heights all by itself? If it is true that the course of evolution continues to move ahead, why were the greatest spiritual cultures of the past left behind in the whole evolutionary process?
As the individual becomes more and more conscious, his ability to choose becomes more and more profound. The more unconscious an individual is, the less profound is his ability to choose. For example, there is no way that water lying in the sun cannot turn into vapor -- it would be difficult for it not to. The water can't decide whether to become vapor or not. If it stays in the sun, then it is sure to become vapor, and lying in the cold, it is sure to become ice. This, the water will have to live through, although it will have no knowledge that it is living through it, because its consciousness is low, or not at all, or dormant. Trees in Africa rise hundreds of feet in search of the sun. They grow in height. Trees in India won't grow to such heights, because in India there aren't…