Fasting

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.

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.…