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really, when the mastery is lost, the body becomes more healthy, because now it is natural.
The mastery of the body is really unnatural; it is not healthful -- even to the body -- because the body has no consciousness, and goes on demanding; the body has no discrimination and goes on demanding.It goes on doing things which are not even good for it. Consciousness becomes the slave; and the material desires, the mechanical ones, becomes the master.
This is the deepest accident, the deepest misery that has happened to humankind. But in a way, it had to, because we have developed from an animal existence. We have developed from animal existence. There is no need for a Darwin to prove this -- we have know it always. Because an animal has no consciousness, the body has to be the master. There is no one other to claim the mastery -- the body has to be the master. But when consciousness grows inside, the body goes on, mm? -- Just as a old habit.
You have to change it. Now you are not in the animal world; now you are not animals. Austerity means that now we declare we have passed the state of animalhood. The suffering that one goes through in austerity is just a birth pain -- nothing else. And that suffering is good and healthy, because out of that suffering is transformation.
But it should not be done as a masochist -- that's altogether a different matter, a very diseased thing. You can make your body suffer and enjoy it. If you are enjoying it, then you are suicidal: then it is not austerity. Then it is not austerity; then you are really a very impotent, violent mind. You cannot do violence to others, so you are doing violence to yourself. So you can fast as a masochist, as a person who enjoys suffering. This is not austerity; this is very abnormal, this is really a mental case.
Out of one hundred, ninety-nine percent of the people who go on austerities are masochists, but they can deceive; they can deceive others and themselves also. To deceive others is irrelevant, but to deceive oneself is very dangerous. You can deceive yourself. The point to understand is that one must not enjoy suffering; one must take it as a necessary measure
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