FROM A SITE VISITOR: You mentioned the limitations of teachers who “self-assign” labels but didn’t your teacher self-assign a label, “Nisargadatta Maharaj”?
F.: This site has a banner at the top of the page that allows seekers to know which yoga is offered here. Teachers in Bombay in the 70’s and 80’s had no such means, so the name “Nisargadatta” was used to allow seekers to know that the nisarga (natural) yoga would be offered in that loft.
FROM A SITE VISITOR: My faith in my guru is absolute, so I eat only what he tells me to eat.
F.: And Catholics, with their absolute faith in their religious-spiritual advisers, ate fish on Fridays because someone they thought holy told them to do so. Jews and others with their absolute faith in their religious-spiritual advisers, do not eat pork because someone they think holy told them not to.
And some with their absolute faith in their religious-spiritual adviser drank the Kool-Aid because a person they thought holy told them to do so. For thousands of years, persons have unquestioningly allowed others to convince them that diet is not just a matter of the physical realm but also has some "supernatural" and "magical" aspect as well.
Persons once accepted without question a religious-spiritual teaching that claimed an angry god could be made happy (and would make it rain) if a virgin was killed and if her body and blood were consumed by a priest and the people in the crowd as an act of “communion with god.”
The "spiritual advice" was, "Here's what you should eat and drink to be holy: you should eat this heart we're passing around, and you should drink this blood we're passing around." (In daily and weekly re-enactments of that barbarism, 1/3 of the people on the planet eat symbolic crackers and drink symbolic juice while others eat crackers and drink wine that they believe has been literally "transubstantiated" into body and blood.)
Similarly, many among the masses have accepted unquestioningly that what they do or do not eat, and what they do or do not drink, will make them "more religious" and/or "more spiritual" or even "holy." Yet those same persons who think they know as much as modern scientists and dietitians do not even know Who/What They Truly Are.
Some Eastern teachers know that certain seekers display a tendency toward the rajas (toward an energetic and active nature) while others display the darkness or passivity of tamas, but few understand those “natures” are linked to two of the three different body types.
Fewer still, in the East or West, have a clue that the bodies of the three varied body types require differing food plans if their bodies are to function in an optimal manner and if their body chemistry is to be balanced and if their emotions are to be stabilized.
Few know that consuming head lettuce can cause some to become moody; few understand that if the body chemistry is too-alkaline, that can trigger depression; and most have no understanding of the fact that a too-acidic body chemistry can trigger irritability. Few know that alkaline-acid imbalances can cause nightmares and “cold sweats” during sleep.
The masses believe moodiness and depression and irritability and nightmares and cold sweats are only about “mental conditions” or “being spiritually unfit.” Most have no awareness of the physical components that often drive those conditions.
Does all this pertain to the relative only? Of course, because there is no correlation between “food plans” and “levels of spirituality.” The physical body is a plant-food body, not a spiritual body, so all body types and food plans are strictly relative issues, not noumenal issues.
As for a food plan based in the belief that “one size fits all,” understand that what can appear to be wise noumenal guidance can actually be ignorant phenomenal sabotage. So it is.
Yet in all of nature, there is only one species—humans—who become programmed and conditioned and enculturated and thereby lose the awareness of what each should eat and should not eat…what each should drink and should not drink. Realization can remove the belief in "a person with attributes," but it does not alter the basic I AM requirements regarding food and clothing and shelter during the period of manifestation.
[Here, you will not be told what to eat or not eat and you will not be told what to drink or not drink. Here, as always, the invitation is to investigate objectively…or not. For those interested in additional information regarding the way that many relative conditions which are labeled “mental problems” are really physical problems, see FAQ’s at http://www.marielachney.com/ ]
FROM A SITE VISITOR: Where do you live?
F.: I do not live anywhere because I do not live. You may as well knell on the floor and speak into an electrical outlet in the wall and ask that energy where it lives.
I am manifested…not born…not dying…not living. I just AM, for now. I do not abide at, though I do currently abide as...as THAT. If you take all seven steps on the path to Full Realization, and if You understand consciousness / awareness and the Reality even beyond SELF-Realization, then the above will also be understood.
If not, then none of the preceding will be understood. Please enter into the silence of contemplation.
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