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Main Index
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about the food he will eat the next day and plans for it. This kind of fasting is meaningless. Then it is merely abstaining from food. The distinction between abstaining from food and fasting, upvasa, is this: fasting means residing closer and closer. Closer to what? It means coming closer to the self by creating a distance from the body.
The word upvasa does not imply going without food. Upvasa means residing closer and closer. Closer to what? It means closer to the self, residing closer to the self and further away from the body. Then it is also possible that a man may eat and yet remain in the state of fasting. If, while eating, he knows from within that eating is taking place elsewhere and the consciousness is totally separate from the act, then it is upvasa. And it is also possible that a man may not really be fasting even though he may have denied himself food; for he may be too conscious of being hungry, that he is dying of hunger. Upvasa is a psychological awareness of the separation of the self and the physical state of hunger.
Other pains of a similar type can also be created voluntarily, but creating such voluntary pain is a very deep experiment. A man may lie on thorns just to experience that the thorns only prick the body and not his self. Thus a misery can be invited in order to experience the disassociation of consciousness from the physical plane.
But there are already enough uninvited miseries in the world -- no need to invite any more. Already much misery is available -- one should start experimenting with it. Miseries come uninvited anyway. If, during the uninvited misery, one can maintain the awareness that "I am separate from my suffering" then the suffering becomes a sadhana, a spiritual discipline.
One will have to continue this sadhana even with happiness which has come on its own. In suffering, it is possible we may succeed in deceiving ourselves because one would like to believe that "I am not pain." But when it comes to happiness, a man wants to identify himself with it because he already believes that "I am happy." Hence the sadhana is even more difficult with happiness.
Nothing, in fact, is more painful
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