How Some Saints Survive Without Food

It is not uncommon for saints, those with highly advanced states of consciousness, to stop eating. They grow out of the need for material sustenance. A teacher of mine, Swami Bua, subsisted on a tiny bit of vegetable juice each day and died—nobody really knew his exact age—definitely over the age of 115.

How do they do it?

Why do they do it is also a good question.

In more elevated states of consciousness, the act of digesting food is disruptive to the experience, takes away from it, pulls you out of it. Consider why fasting has always been tied to the concept of spirituality. This is the primary reason why the act is given up. It's also a subtle argument in favor of a light, plant-based diet—it takes away from the experience of elevated consciousness less than a heavy, meat-based diet.

The science behind the how, I doubt can fully be explained with the written word. These Great Souls have realized the irreality of reality. The game nature of everything you see, touch, taste, smell, hear. Their consciousness then quite literally pulls out of time (past-future), the defining feature of five-sense reality—and they rest in the Eternal Now.

With awareness fixed and rooted in the Eternal Now, there is no forward motion of time as we typically reckon it, there is no effort, no stress, no disease. The aging process slows dramatically, as the awareness has a profound impact on the physical body. We have historical accounts of saints living 500+ years—when you consider the genius of the physical body and its resiliency, it doesn't seem conceptually outlandish.

Living in a kind of state of suspended animation, hunger does not really develop, as all systems are fed by the bliss and fullness of the moment.

It's good, at least, to know about the possibility.

There Is No Cure for Loneliness

Ask your doctor what the cure to loneliness is and he or she might rattle of responses like find a hobby, join a volunteer organization, go out more, think about starting family, and so on.

Will these things really help?

Or, do they just cover up the loneliness, turn our attention away from it?

The sad thing is that we can spend entire lifetimes avoiding the essential truth: we are alone. And nobody—including family—and nothing can alleviate the feeling of being so. People and things can soften it, certainly, but it can't be cured externally because the experience is primarily internal and knowledge-based.

It's good to come in contact with this truth, however uncomfortable, and to feel that essential aloneness, then steps can be taken to transform it.

The step is one of letting go, an incredible act of surrender, like diving off a cliff, or letting a ship sink. It's a surrender of your personal will and identity to an impersonal will and identity. Merging into something much larger than "you."

Huh?

There's no other way to say it.

The main thing to understand is: there is no cure for loneliness. Adjust accordingly.

The Folly of Most Practices of Meditation

Is that you're attached to the technique—the method. Or trying to prove a point either to yourself or to others.

What we do in meditation is thin ourselves so we can merge with the mystery of creation. We don't want to confuse the means with the end. Love and sincere curiosity of that mystery brings us to the tool of meditation. Once we are familiar with that mystery, the tool will be dropped, or used ceremonially.

If you can sit four hours a day, attend 10-day silent retreats and the like, you still are outmatched by the person who does none of these things but whose heart overflows with the love of creation and reveres its all encompassing mystery and beauty.