Guidance from Sri Aurobindo - Volume 1

FOOD AND FORCES

The year 1933

      I always take salt with curds and vegetables. Is It good? 

      It is not good. On the seashore one ought not to take too much salt. Salt in curds is always bad for health.

      X says that a little pepper should be taken with certain kinds of fruits. She got this bit of advice from you!

      It is very strange — Pavitra himself gives me daily pamplemousse with sugar, never with salt and pepper. So how I could have written that, I do not know — there must have been a mistake somewhere either in my writing or her reading.

      Pepper is not to be eaten with fruits — it is very bad for it would spoil the effect of the fruit.

      Is not a greedy desire for food and drink a movement of the vital being? Can it be felt as a physical need?

      Yes. The first effect of such a desire is on the physical.

      Y told me that if anything comes to us without our

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asking for it we should not reject it. For example, someone offers us sweetmeat: we may accept it. But we should not be depressed when things desired by us are not given to us. What do you say about that?

      How can such a rule stand? Supposing someone comes and offers you meat or wine, can you accept it? Obviously not. A hundred other instances could be given where the rule would not stand. What the Mother gives or allows you, you can take.

      I believe that one should not accept any food from outside. But when an impulse — desire for food or sex-urge or anything else — arises, should not one let it spread in full in oneself so that one might offer all of it to the Mother and aspire for its transmutation?

      If you do that, the impulse may spread so far as to take hold of you and master you. If a wrong impulse comes, you must reject it as soon as you become aware of it.

      People who take outside food fall ill very often. Do they suffer merely because of the food or because they have been disobedient?

      For both reasons. The food is bad or full of bad influences — also they create a struggle in themselves between the Yoga force and a foreign force.

      How is it that some people enjoy outside food without feeling any struggle?

      It creates no conscious struggle if one does not care for the sadhana, but even then it accumulates bad forces which end either in illness or some other adverse result.

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