By

CHAITANYA CHARAN DAS

Question: Spiritual people often fast on certain occasions, thus depriving themselves of natural bodily needs. Isn’t such fasting an unnecessary self-torture?

Answer: Not at all. To the contrary, for many people, their daily gorging of food is an unnecessary self-torture. WHO statistics show that over a billion suffer obesity, whereas 800 million people suffer undernourishment. More health disorders result due to overeating than due to fasting. We eat more often to fulfil the greed of the mind than the need of the body. Due to eating too often and too much, our digestive system becomes a perpetually overworked machine in desperate need of rest. That’s why many alternative cure doctors recommend periodic - fortnightly or monthly - fasting with intake only of fluids to rest and flush the digestive system. Abstaining from food may seem be an infliction of torture for minds, but it is a relief for our bodies.

Fasting, when done according to scriptural guidance, can purify the mind and awaken the soul. By analysing how life and consciousness cannot emerge from dead, unconscious matter, we can intellectually understand that the soul - and not the body - is the real source of life and consciousness. This implies that we are souls, temporarily occupying material bodies. Fasting is a way to transform this understanding into a realisation.

During our normal lives, we pander to the demands of the flesh, thus perpetuating our misidentification with flesh. The desires and plans to fulfil our bodily demands preoccupy and fill our minds, leaving little mental room for spiritual contemplation. When we resolve to fast on certain days, we realise that if we keep thinking of food while fasting, we will simply be torturing ourselves. This realisation gives us the impetus to evict thoughts of food from our minds. Then with the mental room thus created we become free to contemplate on the deeper spiritual dimension of our existence. Such contemplation is possible without fasting too, but starving the flesh sharpens the spirit, thus making spiritual contemplation more intense.

During the fasting period, if we lovingly call out to god by chanting his names like the Hare Krishna mahamantra, we can experience a nonmaterial nourishment far more fulfilling than the most delicious food. This strengthens our realisation of our spiritual identity, reinforces commitment to progressive spiritual advancement to the realm of everlasting devotional delight. Temporary bodily fasting becomes a doorway to eternal spiritual feasting. 

(The author is associate-editor of ISKCON’s global magazine)