Dharma No.8

Around 6 – 6.30 pm, drink another liter to liter and a half water at a stretch. This time concentrate on the intestines for a third free bowel movement. You can eat your evening meal only if you achieve this third free motion. It means your morning breakfast is digested completely, and you feel hungry again. After a shower, you should have your dinner before sunset. If you don’t do much physical work, you should eat bread, pulkas with raw or cooked vegetables. Raw vegetables are useful for those who have chronic diseases or are obese. If you had worked physically during the day, you can eat rice. But people above 50, those who do not work very hard, and those who wish to get well more quickly will eat only fruits, coconut and dates. You can have buttermilk or just rice with curd if you like.

If you eat 60% raw food (vegetable juice, sprouted seeds, fruits, coconut and dates) and 40% cooked food (lunch and dinner), it means you have fulfilled your dharma of food properly. After dinner, you eat no more for the rest of the night.

Dharma No.7

 Around 3.30 pm, you should drink one or two glasses of water. Drinking at this time water helps your skin to face the weather outside. Between 3.30 and 4.30 p.m., you can eat any seasonal fruit as much as you can. Eat the pulp as well. This way, the body receives protein-rich, nutritious food and immunity too. If necessary, you can add honey and dates to the fruit.

What happens if you eat continuously?

It leads to indigestion. It becomes poison. Food eaten when you are hungry is nectar. Unnecessary food is poison. The reason behind this is, when a person is hungry, the digestive juices will be waiting for food. In the contrary, when he is not hungry, the food goes in unwanted. Wanted food is like a pleasant sunshine in winter, but unwanted food is like prickly heat in summer. If you eat on an hourly basis your stomach and soul will suffer. So beware. You have to live for 100 years.

Let’s look at it this way. Suppose you had lunch at 2 pm, and then, because you had company, you had some coffee and cake at 3.30 p.m. What happens then? The food you eat at 2 pm was digested 50% and is in the third stage of digestion. At that time, the cake and coffee join it. What should the intestines do now? Should they continue with their first duty, or put it aside and honor the second guest? By the time the second guest gets digested to 50%, the first meal stagnates, giving off a sour smell. That’s why we get belching, indigestion, acid reflux, etc.

For example, a woman normally cooks four glasses of rice for her family. One day suddenly two guests arrive. She requires two more glasses of rice for them, but by that time their regular quantity of rice is half-cooked. She doesn’t add the extra rice into the pot. Why? Because she knows the first half will become paste and the second half will be half-cooked.

The doctors advise us to eat something every couple of hours to avoid acidity, but by that we develop acidity and gastric troubles. You can’t suppress indigestion problems that way.

Don’t eat unnecessarily. Eat only when you are absolutely hungry. That is the secret of good health and immunity to disease.

What happens if you drink water while eating? or Why you should not drink water while eating?

It is a grave mistake to drink water while eating. It lays a foundation for gastric problems. Now that you have changed your diet by giving up salt, oil and spice, you won’t feel thirsty and so don’t need water. Earlier, you consumed all these and so to digest them you drank more water in the course of eating and after, affecting your stomach.

Why you should not drink water while eating? Hydrochloric acid produced in your intestines digests food that you eat but it becomes diluted if you drink water while eating and after. So it cannot digest food easily and the process takes twice the time, but still not digested properly. As a result food will be in the stomach for a longer time. For example, if you apply soap to a soiled cloth and wash it immediately, the dirt is not completely gone. Instead, you soak it in soap for a while and see how bright the cloth becomes. The same theory applies here.

In fact, no other creature ever drinks water while eating or immediately afterward. They are showing you the natural practice of the dharma of water. They drink only when their stomach is empty.

Our elders tell us one mistake leads to another. You commit one crime by eating spicy, greasy food. You add fuel to the fire by drinking water with it. You may wonder how you can avoid drinking water while eating. But you won’t feel thirsty if you eat raw vegetables or fruits. It is a natural food because it is a food of dharma, and it automatically leads to the dharma of water. That’s the difference between good and evil.

There is yet another loss which results from drinking water while eating. Water taken on an empty stomach comes out within fifteen minutes, but water consumed while eating remains in your stomach along with the food. That’s why all human beings, even those who do hard work grow a belly.

Water drunk during meals causes even more heaviness. Food becomes heavier with water and pressures the lungs and the heart. So we should not drink water for two hours after eating. After that, a glass or two will suffice. The water will then join the food that is grinded and together they will become liquid and join blood in the intestines. At that time you will feel thirsty and you need to take water.

Dharma of Food

Every living organism is destined to eat a particular type of food based on the shape and size of its body. “Dumb” animals lead their lives accordingly. Man, the more intelligent one, on the other hand, has no proper knowledge. He doesn’t know whether he should eat vegetarian or non-vegetarian food, cooked or raw food, or during the daytime or night, or both.

Man’s true lifespan is 100 years. Shouldn’t he eat the foods that will properly nourish his cells and allow him to live this long? Our life becomes waste if we cannot sharpen our intellect and attain jnana – wisdom - ultimately. The food we eat should help in the process. We should eat foods that will be digested easily, give us more energy, and create less waste material.

The main dharma of food is that it should contain life-energy, which in turn promotes life-energy in us. But we do not eat such staple foods. Instead we are cooking, frying, toasting and adding chemicals in various forms to our food. We are eating at odd hours. Even worse, we eat as much as our desires demand, ignoring the dharma of the body. Can a car run with kerosene in the place of gasoline? That is what we are attempting with our bodies. When we violate so many rules, how can we expect to have good health?

The body suffers because of the food we supply. Only by replacing the wrong food with right food suffering to the body can be avoided. No medicine can cure it permanently. For instance, our car uses unleaded gas. If it is not available at the nearest gas station, aren’t we going to go as far as we must to get it? When we realize this simple truth regarding an inanimate thing like our car, can’t we take greater care of our most precious possession, our one and only body? That we don’t is our greatest tragedy, our sin and curse. Call it whatever you want. It is not too late to realize our mistake and move in right direction.