The Destiny of the Body

Chapter III

METAPHYSICS OF HUNGER:

THE MYSTERY OF 'ANNA' AND 'ANNADA'*

This whole world, verily, is just food and the eater of food.

(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, I.4.6)

This is the Power...that has the multitude of its desires so that it may sustain all things; it takes the taste of all foods.

(Rig Veda, V.7.6)

O Thou in whom is the food, thou art that divine food, thou art the vast, the divine home.

(Rig Veda, IX.83)

In the beginning all was covered by Hunger that is Death.

(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, I.2.1)

All Matter...is food, and this is the formula of the material world that "the eater eating is himself eaten".

(Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 192)

He who knows this food that is established upon food, gets his firm base; he becomes the master of food and its eater.

(Taittiriya Upanishad, III.9)

Metaphysically viewed, the problem of hunger and food-intake is a most important one because the question of death is intimately linked therewith. And this is so not because of the very obvious reason that embodied life cannot sustain itself without substantial support from outside, but because of the much more profound, although at first view paradoxical, consideration that so long as the organism has necessarily to depend for its very existence upon material alimentation, it cannot but succumb sooner or later to the ineluctable siege of death.

* Anna and Annāda: From the Sanskrit root ad meaning 'to eat, to consume, to devour'. Anna signifies 'food, aliments', while annāda is 'one who devours, takes food.' The terms anna and annāda do not however apply only to gross material food and its devourer; they have senses deep and mystical.

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This strange interlocking of aśanā, Hunger, and mṛtyu, Death, arises from the inscrutable mystery of the mutual relation of anna and annāda ('aliments' and their 'devourers'). For, as the ancient Rishis of the Upanishadic lore discovered long ago, in this manifested world of becoming, each formation without exception is at the same time annāda and anna: it exhibits a ceaseless search for its 'aliments' (anna) and thus plays the role of an insatiable 'devourer'(annāda), but at the same time it is constrained by the great Law of Cosmic Exchange (viśva-yajña) to offer itself willy-nilly as 'aliments' for others.

But, in real truth, there is only one and unique anna in the world, also a unique annāda who is One-without-a-second, ekamevā-dvitlyam. It is the Supreme Spirit, the Eternal in things, who has become 'all this universe, yea, all whatsoever exists',¹ who is in the last result the 'general devourer and enjoyer', sarvabhuk maheśvaraḥ, — whosoever be the immediate 'eater' and whatever be the nature of the 'food', for the world itself has come into existence because of Brahman's seeking after 'food', annakāmena brahmanā.²

But the great Initiator of the Cosmic Becoming, the Mother Mahashakti, is not merely licking all the regions around with her million tongues of flame, sahasrajihvā; it is She Herself again who has become the universal food, annabhūtamidam jagat³ and it is in the ultimate vision the annāda Divine who is devouring and enjoying the anna Divine in various guises and names and through various phenomenal intermediaries. It is this very idea that has been so forcefully figured in the Puranic symbol of chinnamastā,⁴ the Mother chopping off Her own head and holding it in one of Her palms so that the blood gushing forth from Her decapitated trunk may enter Her separated mouth in a threefold stream to quench Her Thirst. The Maitri Upanishad expresses the same truth in more philosophical terms when it declares: "Thou art the Universe, Thou the Vaishvanara; it is Thou who hast brought out the world from Thy own being and who maintainest it all the time; let

¹ Taittiriya Upanishad, II.6.

² Maitri Upanishad, VI. 12.

³ Ibid., VI. 10.

⁴ Literally, 'the One with a severed head'.

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everything then be offered to Thee in sacrifice."¹ We find the very same idea occurring in the following verse of Chandi Saptashati: "Mother Divine, this world has been created by Thee, is being maintained by Thee, but it is Thou again who art devouring it all the time."² Vadarayan Vyasa's Brahmasūtram suggests the same occult finding when it hints³ that the Supreme has a double aspect, sthithyadanamūrti, an aspect of timeless status, sthiti, and an aspect of eternal Becoming which is in its inmost character a great process of Devouring and Assimilation, adana. And since phenomenal Nature has been brought forth by the Absolute Spirit from His Self-Being as a great cosmic Movement "to provide a habitation for the Spirit, who, being One, yet dwells multitudinously⁴ in the multiplicity of His mansions"⁵ and since the object of habitation is to possess and enjoy the multiplicity and the movement with all their relations, the Spirit is indeed the great attā or Devourer, for He swallows the whole of the Universe, carācara,⁶ including all that moves and all that moves not, the immutable as well as the mutable.⁷

But what is the essential purpose behind this mahābubhukṣā, this colossal hunger and cosmic enjoyment of the divine Inhabitant who as 'Agni the Devourer' (agniḥ annādaḥ, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, I.4.6.) tastes and consumes the world as soma⁸ ? All

¹ "Viśvo'si vaiśvānaro'si viśvaṁ tvayā dhāryate jāyamānam. Viśantu tvām-āhutayaśca sarvāḥ prajāḥ." (Maitri Upanishad, VI.9)

² "Tvayaiva dhāryate viśvaṁ tvayaitat sṛjyate jagat. Tvayaitat pālyate devi tvamatsyante ca sarvadā." (Chandi, 53)

³sthityadanābhyāñca. (Brahmasūtram, I.3.7)

Also see: Purushottamananda Avadhuta, Brahmasutra, pp. 144-46.

⁴"The Spirit pervades the universe as the Virat Purusha, the Cosmic Soul, and as paribhū (literally, 'the One who becomes everywhere'). He has entered into every single objct in the Movement, for 'it is the Self-Being that has become all existences that are Becomings'." (Isha Upanishad, 8). Cf. :

"All this is for habitation by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion".(Isha Upanishad, 1

"He is below, He is above, He is behind, He is in front, He is to the, right, He is to the left, He is indeed all this that is". (Chhandogya Upanishad, VII).

5Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, p. 25.

6Attā carācaragrahaṇāt. (Brahmasūtram, I. 2:9.)

7 Cf. 'Vyaktamannamavyaktamannam' meaning "The manifest is food and the unmanifest is food". (Maitri Upanishad, VI. 10).

8Cf. "The cosmos is at the same time Agni the Consumer and Soma the Food" (annānddāsvarupam agniṣomātmakaṁ jagat).

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formations including ourselves are willy-nilly the Great Mother's food; but what high goal has She set Her act of devouring, adanakriyā, to achieve?

An integral spiritual perception discovers therein an absolute drive towards perfection and purification, transfiguration and a divine new birth, devāya janmane. All that is not integrally, and in a joyful conscious 'sacrifice' (yajña), possessed by the Divine, all that is as yet maimed and impure, has perforce to be devoured again and again by the Cosmic Devourer and pass through the portals of death and dissolution so that it may be progressively re-created on an ascending scale of accomplishment. The Spirit as Agni is thus essentially a 'purifier', pāvaka, and "all that is... born, he as the flame of Time and Death can devour. All things are his food which he assimilates and turns into material of new birth and formation."¹

Indeed, destruction is always a prior necessity if there is to be any new creation or re-creation. "Destruction is always a simultaneous and alternate element which keeps pace with creation and it is by destroying and renewing that the Master of Life does his long work of preservation."² And in all this there is work of purification that can be consciously felt and experienced by the person who has been a real yajamāna. For when Agni devours and enjoys, he also purifies at the same time; and his very hunger and desire, infinite in their scope, prepare and perfect the divine Manifestation upon earth. "Devouring and enjoying, purifying, preparing, assimilating, forming he rises upward always and transfigures..."³

But what does it mean to be pure and perfect? When can we say that we have at last attained the status of total purity and unalloyed perfection? The essence of purity, according to Sri Aurobindo, is to respond to and accept only the Divine Influence and not to have the slightest affinity with other movements of whatever sort. And by perfection is not meant any so-called maximum or an extreme; for, as a matter of fact, in the divine progression of things, there cannot be any extreme achievement with the label of non plus ultra. In truth, "perfection is not a static state, it is a poise and a dynamic poise.... Perfection will be

¹ Sri Aurobindo, Kena Upanishad, p. 111.

²Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, p. 520.

³Sri Aurobindo, On the Veda, p. 315.

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reached in the individual, in the collectivity, upon earth and in the universe, when, at every moment,¹ the receptivity will be equal in quality and quantity to the force that seeks to manifest."²

Now, no form or formation in the universe can expect to subsist indefinitely or for all time unless it acquires this state of purity and perfection through being repeatedly devoured by "God the devourer and destroyer."³ We, too, in our egoistic isolation, cut off in our consciousness from the essential source of our existence, must perforce enter again and again into His "mouths that gape to devour"⁴ until we become pakkvānna or matured food when the Great Mother-Devourer, sarvagrāsinī, can at last eat us up in an entire assimilation, not indeed in a supracosmic Nirvana or extinction, but in Her dynamic World-Play, a state about which it has been said:

"The last stage of this perfection will come when you are completely identified with the Divine Mother and feel yourself to be no longer another and separate being,...but truly a child and eternal portion of her consciousness and force...it will be your constant, simple and natural experience that all your thought and seeing and action, your very breathing or moving come from her and are hers. You will know and see and feel that you are a person and power formed by her out of herself, put out from her for the play and yet always safe in her, being of her being, consciousness of her consciousness, force of her force, ananda of her Ananda. When this condition is entire and her supramental energies can freely move you, then you will be perfect..."⁵

But the mystery of the Manifestation lies in the fact that this ātmasātkaraṇam or assimilation in absolute possession by the Mother is at the same time a process of utter assimilation of the Mother Herself.⁶ For Her annatva or 'foodhood' is in direct

¹ Italicised in the original.

² The Mother, "The Supreme Poise", in Bulletin, Vol. XI No. 3, pp. 79-81. ³ Essays on the Gita, p. 517.

⁴Ibid., p. 514.

⁵Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, pp. 32-33.

⁶In this connection we may recall the following words of The Mother: "The reality of the universe is what one calls God and God is essentially

delight. The universe was created in delight and for delight; but this delight can exist only in the perfect unity of the creation with its creator.

"This unity Sri Aurobindo describes as a kind of mutual possession. The Possessor, that is to say, the Creator, who possesses the creation is at the same

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proportion to the creature's annatva. Of course, whether we are aware of the situation or not, even in our 'spiritual' ignorance and at all moments, we are devouring and enjoying only the Mother; for it is She who has become food in the shape of this world, annabhūtam idaṁ jagat, and no creature can remain in existence even for a moment except by feeding upon Her various forms and figures. But because of our as yet impure and imperfect status, and that too because of our besetting sin of separative ego consciousness, our devouring capacity is itself hemmed in and stunted and our power of assimilation all but reduced to nought.

Now the more we can grow into fit food for the Mother, the more bur assimilating capacity is bound to increase until at the end we may dare exclaim with Ramprasad the famous saint of Bengal:

"This time I shall devour Thee utterly, Mother Kali: Thou must devour me first, or I myself shall eat Thee up; One or the other it must be.

To show to the world that Ramprasad is Kali's rightful son, Come what may, I shall eat Thee up—Thee and Thy retinue— Or lose my life attempting it."¹

It is the same mood that Sri Ramakrishna expresses when he refers to one of his experiences in the following terms:

"Oh, what a state of mind I passed through! I would open my mouth, touching, as it were, heaven and the nether world with my jaws, and utter the word 'Ma'. I felt that I had seized the Mother, like a fisherman dragging fish in his net."²

It is because of this holy mystery of 'the Divine the Devourer and the Divine the Food', ahamannam...ahamannādaḥ,³ that the

time possessed by it. That is the very essence of unity, the source of all delight. But because of division, because the possessor possesses no more and the possessed also no longer possesses the possessor, the essential delight is changed into ignorance.... Everyone who has a spiritual realisation has this experience also that the very minute union is established with the divine origin, all suffering disappears." (The Mother, Bulletin, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 59). ¹ Swami Nikhilananda's translation.

²Swami Nikhilananda (Trans.), The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 527.

³Taittiriya Upanishad, III. 10.

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Upanishadic Rishis sing forth again and again in eulogy of the principle of Food in terms ringing with profoundly mystical overtones. Thus to quote a select few of the inspired utterances:

"Food, verily, is the Lord of Creation."

(Prashna Upanishad, I.14)

"Lo, all this that was born as form, is no other than Food."

(Aitareya Upanishad, I,3.2)

"Verily, they who worship the Eternal as food, attain the mastery of food to the uttermost."

(Taittiriya Upanishad, II.2)

"Great is this figure of the Spirit that is Food."

(Maitri Upanishad, VI. 11)

"Worship then Food as thy very Self."

(Maitri Upanishad, VI. 12)

And the supreme assurance that the Rishis solemnly offer is this that "he who recognises the double aspect of the world, the world as Agni the divine Devourer and the world as Soma the divine Food," "will himself become a cosmic devourer" and "never again be caught in the devouring that is death."

(Maitri Upanishad, VI. 10,13,9)

But it goes without saying that this high achievement can surely not come from a mere intellectual recognition: we have to seize the truth in a dynamic living experience in which even our body consciousness and its very constituent cells should fully participate. In no other wise can we expect to dissolve the Hunger-Death wedlock, for by the very definition of the term anna ('Food'), "it is eaten and it eats; yea, it devours the creatures that feed upon it, therefore it is called anna."¹

But are we indulging in unnecessary obfuscation and passing off nonsense for high-sounding truth? Let us then be explicit and discuss in intellectual terms how the metaphysical problem of Hunger and Death can be adequately solved, for, as we shall presently find, a prior solution of this crucial question is a necessary, though by no means sufficient, condition for the successful tackling of the problem in hand, the necessity of material alimentation for the body.

¹ "Adyate'tti ca bhūtāni tasmādannaṁ taducyat iti". (Taittiriya Upanishad, II.1).

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