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Cooked food forces your light body into dormancy, Living food naturally & spontaneously awakens it!
Pranayam for Fruitarians Part I By Habib Bailey The science of pranayam, or breath control, has been practiced in India for thousands of years. As western culture becomes increasingly fascinated with all things Indian, it's not surprising that many Americans are now practicing pranayam, too. We are beginning to understand that the breath is intimately linked with our mental state. If the mind is too agitated to meditate properly, then by conscious regulation of breathing, the nerves are soothed and the current of life energy that flows through them is harmonized. In this way the mind is quieted and made receptive to Spirit. Indeed, the breath is a subtle bridge that can lead one to heightened intuition, creativity, and keen insight into all aspects of life, both spiritual and mundane. As Raw Food Eaters and Fruitarians, we have some very distinct advantages over the average yoga practitioners, when it comes to pranayam. We can match their achievements while expending far less energy. We also have the potential to progress much further along that path than they. This is not to belittle the efforts of these well-intentioned and dedicated practitioners. They can and do make great spiritual achievements. But there is one thing they lack, which would make all the difference…and that is the prana or vital force, which animates the physical and subtle bodies! This is not to say they have no prana: obviously, if they had none, they would be dead! But then again, many people who eat dead food think they are vital! And they may be vital: relative to those who are who are worse off than they are! In actuality they are just getting by. They don't know that vital, pranic life-force comes primarily from raw living foods! Being deficient in the vital prana, their perceptive faculty is deranged, so that their breath practice simply cannot yield spectacular results! Here is the crux of the problem: they try through breath control to effect the movement of vital force in the body, but their body has precious little vital force for them to work with! It is well known in yoga, that if one's aim is to raise the spiritualizing kundalini energy up the spinal column for the purpose of achieving enlightenment, then the vital force must first be conserved. This is the reason why yogis sometimes practice celibacy: if the vital force is always dissipated…never allowed to build up within the body, then there will never be sufficient kundalini to raise! The same principle applies to breath practice: If there is a deficiency of vital force in the body, when breathing practice is engaged in, an unfocused mind will produce unfocused results. If there is a surplus of vital force in the body, the mind will be clear, focused and capable of effortlessly leading the prana where it wills. Here is where the Raw Food Eater or Fruitarian may excel: their body is full to overflowing with prana they have assimilated from raw living food! Because of this, their mental focus will be strong, enabling them to perform pranayam with precision and efficiency. There is a certain amount of free energy circulating in the air that we breathe, which yields a small amount of prana. But raw fruits and vegetables are the primary source for this energy, supplying at least 75% of all the prana we absorb from our environment. Green leaves collect energy from the sun and convey it to the fruits, which concentrate and store it. Air may act as a medium of transmission for the rays of sunlight, but can't hold a concentrated charge of solar energy for a long time the way plants can. On a sunny day, the level of atmospheric prana is high. It is natural to feel strong at such times. When the sun goes away, the atmosphere gradually loses its charge. But plants can store this vitalizing force in large amounts and for long periods of time! Humans can also absorb and store this force, but must first absorb it primarily from raw living foods and then to a lesser degree, from the air they breathe. Therefore, raw food eaters and fruitarians regularly avail themselves of a far superior source of concentrated vital force than do the yogis who give mere lip service to eating pure sattvic foods, but who still use fire to corrupt them. A person eating cooked food does absorb prana from the air through the breathing process. But without the additional prana from raw living foods, that person only absorbs 1/4 of the prana nature intended for them to have, in order to stay in a continual state of attunement with spirit. In fact, it is only because humanity began using fire to devitalize their foods that religious mystics found it necessary to practice celibacy. For the first time, our foods no longer supplied sufficient life-force energy to enable us to experience the heaven realms while still in the body. Because we could not be imposed upon to give up our stimulating cooked foods, celibacy was the only option remaining to us that was capable of conserving vital force in amounts sufficient to give occasional glimpses of the divine reality we had previously experienced on a continual basis. In our pristine condition, the expression of sexual love was a spiritualizing function, which served to purify our subtle light bodies. But when we began to fill our bodies with irritating poison, the over-stimulated sex organs became our downfall. Whereas before, the body lasted for hundreds of years in a state of perfect health, it now sensed that it's death was imminent, and the reproductive function was activated and "kicked into high gear" to ensure that the species would survive. Sex became an obsession, increasingly associated with depletion. The good news: If we will eat only raw living foods, and secure adequate sunshine, fresh air and rest, celibacy is not an absolute requirement for spiritual realization. These essentials for good health are by their very nature, extremely energy conservative. Whether sexually active or not, the raw-eating fruitarian will be surcharged with plenty of high-grade life energy to empower their breath practice or meditation. However, conservation of the sex force during certain periods in one's life, can be a further aid in the awakening of higher spiritual faculties, for the aspirant who desires even more energy to fuel their upward ascent. (Note: If sex is engaged in not merely for ego gratification, but with genuine selfless love for our partner, it can be restored to it's original spiritualizing function: that of energizing the body and allowing us to see the transcendent God reflected to us in our Beloved.) This is good news for all practicing and aspiring raw food eaters, but it is not the entire picture. The simple act of eating a sun-ripened apple will certainly vitalize the body. And the body so cared for will also harbor a greatly purified nervous system. The raw eater becomes sensitive to the solar power within their food and naturally assimilates a greater amount of it. Certain mystical experiences the yogis strive for with intense effort begin to arise spontaneously. Without any effort, the raw eater begins receiving Divine Revelation. But this is not enough, if our intent is to reach the very same goal the yogis strive for. Divine revelation can certainly assist one on the spiritual path, but it is not the goal: it is an instruction from Spirit that is meant to be followed, in order to achieve the goal of union with God. The raw food eater must actually become a yogi. In ancient India the enlightened yogis who wrote the Vedas, or sacred scriptures, were called Rishis, or "forest seers." After living full lives, they had retired to the forest to meditate and realize God. Many lived only on the fruits they found growing around them. Although these yogis were fruitarians, living very pure lives in close contact with nature, they still found it necessary to practice yoga to reach their goal of absolute knowledge. Yoga is any method that helps us to dispel illusion, so that we may realize that we are one with God A yogi is one who strives to voluntarily surrender the individual ego-self in order to become reunited with the Greater Self, or God. If the raw eater wishes to become reunited with God, the raw eater must strive toward that goal through the practice of yoga (The terms Yoga and Yogi are used here in their broadest sense, without limitation to specific religious creed: the idea of union with God is universal to the mystical traditions of all cultures). Without the discipline of yoga, there is always the danger that the large amounts of vital force the raw eater absorbs from their raw food may merely strengthen the ego structure and it's delusion of separation. The person who remains identified with nature or the vital force, believing they are the physical or subtle bodies, will remain vulnerable to this common spiritual pitfall. It must be remembered that nature, vital force, the physical body and the subtle body are but vehicles for consciousness, or God. A spiritual practice that includes the equivalents of Raja yoga, Jnana yoga and Karma yoga will protect one from this sort of unbalanced spiritual development When the world was new, there was no need for self-effort in order to become enlightened, because enlightenment was the normal state. The enlightened state was our Garden of Eden. The initial act that began our fall from the enlightened state was the act of eating forbidden food. This was the first cause. But this first cause precipitated a long chain of causes leading to our present state of ignorance. All of these other causes must be resolved also, if their effects are to be undone. Rejecting forbidden food will make the body a strong and capable vessel for divine experience, but there is much unlearning and de-conditioning that needs to be done on the emotional and mental levels, before that receptacle can become light-filled. What stands in the way are subtle impressions, or samskaras, which are lodged in our subtle energy bodies, arising from past experience as well as the full force of humanity's collective delusion of the past few thousand years. The only way to effect a complete resolution of the entire chain of karma is through yoga meditation, through which we become wholly identified with the Self, or God. Regulation of the breath will purify the nervous system and the subtle energies that are the constituents of our light body, so that they will not distract us in our practice of meditation. The one who engages in yoga meditation with a mind that is purified by regulation of the breath and a body that is purified by living foods will have the support of both the angels of the Heavenly Father (the spiritual forces of the cosmos) and the angels of the Earthly Mother (the forces of nature). Such a person is guaranteed success. It should be very clear by now that the raw eater has the greatest potential for success in the practice of pranayam. I now intend to teach, step by step, an effective method for incorporating the practice of pranayam into the raw food lifestyle. I will take the reader, in great detail, through all the subtle points, which will enable him/her to gain the most from the technique. The method I describe is different from pranayam as it is usually practiced. Traditional yogic methods are used, but the context for their use is slightly different. Instead of simply sitting and breathing, one utilizes the breath to extract the maximal amount of prana from food as it is being eaten and then directs this energy along pathways that purify it and add its light to the spiritual body. It is also valuable to perform pranayam at times other than when you are eating, but first you should ensure that you have absorbed sufficient prana from your living foods to be able to work with. Then your other practices will begin to bear fruit. It is recommended that these techniques be practiced in the order they are given, as each additional step is made possible by the one preceding it. It is also recommended that the aspirant adopt a completely raw diet first. The body of a person who eats cooked food in any amount will not be sufficiently sensitive to the subtle energies to be extremely precise with these techniques. Begin your practice by simply slowing down the eating process. If you are to effect any movement of prana, you must first be aware of the food that contains it. Your senses are the keys that unlock the vital force that is stored within your food. Try this experiment, which will prove to you that this is true. Choose some raw living food that appeals to you, such as grapes. If you are using grapes, place one in your mouth and eat it as you normally do. When you are finished, take a few moments to notice how you feel. Then take another grape, but don't place it in your mouth just yet. First, close your fingers around it. Feel the weight of it in your hand. Feel its shape, texture and temperature. Open your hand and allow your eyes to caress it. Appreciate all the subtle nuance of color. Bring it slowly to your nose and breathe slowly and deeply of its fragrance. Although you haven't (physically) eaten it yet, you should already be feeling a subtle quickening in your energy field by now. Place it in your mouth and feel it's coolness on your tongue. Bite into it and chew it slowly. Taste it's sweetness that now begins to spread slowly through your mouth, sending out subtle ripples of energy through your whole body. Breathe slowly and rhythmically while you are doing this. The pleasurable waves of tingling sensation that you feel is the sign that prana is entering your body. Any food that does not elicit this response should not be eaten, for it only stimulates the physical body and does not feed the spiritual. Once you are finished, be still for a few moments to notice how you feel. You will realize that when you ate the first grape without allowing your senses to be fully absorbed in the process, you didn't feel dramatically different afterward. The second grape was different! You probably felt a very tangible infusion of energy that time! You may also have noticed that your body utilized that energy in a more profound way than it did the first time, enlivening your perceptual faculties. The only thing you did differently was to be more present: to actually notice what you were eating! Using all of your senses, you absorbed more of the food's subtle essence. Instead of eating your food with only one of your senses (your sense of taste), you ate the food with ALL of your senses, and your senses then became a subtle bridge that allowed the prana to flow out of your food and into your body. You felt more enlivened, more whole. Continue to repeat this "experiment" any time you can remember to do so: the more often the better. Make it a practice you integrate at every meal. Allow time for it to sink in. Contemplate your experiences and compare them often with the preceding descriptions. Write down any impressions that come to you as a result of this practice. Continue to eat in this fashion and subtle secrets will continue to be revealed to you. Above all, remember this: eating is meant to be a sensual experience. The senses are a gift that God has given you to keep you in perfect physical and spiritual health. They are not sinful. Learn to use them responsibly, to keep yourself in balance, rather than for mere ego gratification. After you have been practicing this for a while, your perceptions will have changed noticeably. You will have become sensitive to the life force within your living foods. You will begin to experience directly that only raw, living food contains pure, wholesome life force; while cooked, dead food contains weak and degraded energy. This refined sense faculty is good - for you are only able to consciously use and direct this life force once the senses have served to put your awareness in contact with it. The life force energy is magnetized, or drawn to wherever you place your attention, or consciousness. Remember this truth and use it well by directing your attention only to those things that serve your evolution. When you have become conscious of the life energies in your food, the next step is to learn how to maximize your absorption of them. Simply being aware of your food opens a pathway through which energy may flow, but it doesn't do a lot to effect a movement of that energy. This is where the practice of pranayam comes in. There is a specific breath technique, which you will now be taught in several gradual but important steps, which will allow you to effect this movement. If you remember, I mentioned earlier that the air acts as a medium of transmission for the vital force, although it can not effectively accumulate and store it. The more complete truth is that the air can store this energy, but it can only store it for a short period of time before it becomes dissipated. The air serves as a temporary medium of transmission, or vehicle of transport for the vital force, as it makes its journey from the food we eat, into our body. Pranayam allows us to take full advantage of and maximize this function of the air element. You may remember in your earlier experiment feeling energized when you ate your raw food the second time around. What you didn't realize was that mere awareness of your food was not the agent that mobilized its vital force. Your awareness simply opened the door. It was the slow and rhythmic breathing which actually allowed you to absorb and utilize it. Traditionally, slow rhythmic breathing in which the duration of the in-breath is equal to the duration of the out-breath is the very first step in the practice of pranayam. Now take some time to repeat your previous experiment, but this time with extra emphasis placed on the rhythmic quality of your breath. The subtle waves of energy you felt before will now be felt more strongly, indicating that you are making more efficient use of your absorptive faculty. Make this a regular practice, and take some time with it, for integration, before moving on to the next segment. Don't rush ahead in this course of instruction, as this more gradual approach will ensure your mastery of it. During meal times, allow your breath to teach you it's subtle function. You will begin to experience it as a rhythmic tide that entrains other vital currents, such as the ones in your food, to follow its movement. As you progress in your practice of utilizing slow, rhythmic breathing to absorb prana from your food, you will naturally want to further refine your ability to absorb this prana more efficiently. A method of pranayam called Ujjayi will accomplish this purpose. Before trying to apply Ujjayi while you eat, you should first learn and practice it when you are not eating, so that you will not have too much to focus on, and thereby lose your concentration. Once you have learned how to properly perform Ujjayi, you will begin to apply it in rhythmic fashion during your meals. You will find yourself able to extract considerably more prana than you already were. Then you will learn how to direct this concentrated stream of prana from your food along certain energetic pathways in the body, directing it upwards through the higher spiritual centers, gently awakening them. Now, we will prepare to learn Ujjayi. Retire to some quiet, restful spot and spend some time in silence, adjusting to your surroundings. Sit in a comfortable, erect posture, which will allow your body to relax, but without going to sleep. Close your mouth, and breathe only through your nose. If you are eating only raw foods, this will be easy. Your sinuses will be clear and both of your nostrils will be equally open. Breathe gently and quietly for some time, not forcing the breath, but simply watching and allowing it to happen in its own natural rhythm. Remain in this mode until your quiet attention to the quality of your breath has changed the breath to one that is effortless, joyful, and natural. Rest in this state until you feel ready. Now we will perform Ujjayi. Continuing to breathe rhythmically through the nose, inhale slowly through both nostrils in a slow, uniform manner until the breath fills the space from the throat to the heart, expanding the chest. During inhalation partially close the glottis, so that an audible sound is made. The glottis is the structure that closes when you swallow to avoid food going down the windpipe into the lungs. If you don't know where it is, look in a physiology textbook. To partially close the glottis, slightly constrict the muscles at the base of your throat, as if you are beginning to swallow, but don't quite follow through. It doesn't need to be strenuous: you only want a subtle constriction - just enough that when you breathe, an audible sound is made. The sound produced should be continuous, and of a mild and uniform pitch. Retain the breath as long as you can do it comfortably, then slowly exhale. It is not necessary or desirable for the breath to be audible when you exhale, so relax the glottis on the out-breath. The exhalation should be very quiet and subtle. Pay close attention to sensations of subtle energy within your head and spinal column while you breathe in this manner. You will find that on the in-breath is created a very concentrated stream of prana. During this in-breath, if you will focus sensate attention on the pineal gland, which is the seat of the ajna chakra, or "third eye," you will find this stream of prana rising up through the soft palate at the back of the roof of your mouth, toward the pineal gland. If you will remember, earlier I taught that the life-force energy is magnetized, or drawn to wherever you place your awareness. If you place your attention on your third eye chakra, the stream of prana you are extracting from the air by means of Ujjayi pranayam is immediately diverted upward, being magnetized toward the location where you have focalized your consciousness. So that you can visualize where the pineal gland is, you should look in a physiology textbook. You will find that the pineal gland sits in a small depression called the Sella Tursica, on the superior surface of the sphenoid bone, which is shaped like a butterfly with wings. The inferior surface of the "wings" is like a photo-receptive net that receives all transmissions of vital force that rise upward, and then channels them directly to the pineal gland. So that you may feel where your pineal gland is, practice intoning the Bija seed-mantram "hung" while noticing where the sound resonates within your cranium. This mantra resonates the entire sphenoid bone. Then practice intoning the long vowel sound, "eeeeeee." This sound more specifically resonates the Sella Tursica, which is the depression within the sphenoid bone that houses the pineal gland. With practice, you will be able to feel precisely where your pineal gland is, almost in the very center of your head. This will help you to direct prana more precisely to this area. On the out-breath, visualize the energy you have just brought in being "burned" so-to-speak; as if in a subtle invisible fire that is localized in the pineal gland. You may try to see the pineal gland as if it were embers in a fire, and on the out-breath they are fanned, causing them to glow with spiritual heat. As the prana exits the pineal gland on the out-breath, see and feel it radiating outward as clear, pure light. It has now been purified and transmuted into the more subtle form of spiritual light, called Tejas. Tejas is the form prana must take before it may travel up the spinal column as the spiritualizing kundalini force. If energy building up within your body is being converted into Tejas, it will be evident, for others will perceive a subtle light emanating from you. Look in a mirror and you will see it: your face will gently glow, taking on a soft, almost angelic appearance. There are many subtle complexities in the foregoing description of Ujjayi pranayam. Likely, you will not be able to remember them all at first. Simply perform the technique, remembering what you can. Frequently re-read the prescribed method and one by one, begin to add all the other refinements into your practice. Don't worry that it will be too difficult, for it is based on natural rhythms already existing within your own body, that want to be remembered. Once Ujjayi feels natural, it will be easy to integrate it into your practice of fruitarian pranayam. Simply begin to do Ujjayi while you are eating. On your in-breath, you will be extracting most of your prana primarily from the food in your mouth instead of from the air. You will still also be absorbing prana from the air, but in lesser amounts than you are receiving from your food. Continue to repeat all of your earlier lessons in food awareness and pranayam, remembering that the air you breathe serves as the carrier mechanism for prana you absorb from your raw foods. Regularly do Ujjayi without food as well, continually striving to improve your focus, and thereby increase the additional amount of prana you extract from the atmosphere. Also regularly feed the body with SunLight. This will do much to prepare you for the very real possibility of being able to live on air alone, should your physical and spiritual purification take you beyond the need for physical food. If you persist in this way of eating, you will begin to look forward to your meals for very different reasons than you had before. Previously you ate primarily to curb the sensation of hunger, and to please your palate. Now, eating becomes a tool to help you experience spiritual bliss. If you have been eating raw for some time now, you will have begun to understand that what you previously thought were real hunger pangs, were nothing more than symptoms of cooked food addiction. For the first time in your life, you will experience true hunger signals, eating only when the body actually requires nourishment, instead of as a regular drug fix to keep you from withdrawal symptoms. As for the taste of your foods, you will derive greater enjoyment from them. This is in part because true foods simply taste better in their raw state, and in part because you have learned that eating sensually is a key to the absorption and utilization of the pranic energies in your foods, and have begun to practice it. Last, but not least, you will derive greater enjoyment from your foods because they are the carriers for the solar energy that when consciously used, will bring you to direct, intuitive experience of your Creator. Because you are eating optimal foods in an optimal way, mealtime will become associated in your mind with the feelings of serenity and peace that come over you every time you provide your physical and subtle bodies with the vital force they require. As this experience grows in frequency and depth, if you will also choose to eat in silence, the blessings will be greatly magnified. The simple act of reverently eating pure food with full conscious awareness will at times produce ecstatic spiritual states. I myself have had deeply significant spiritual experiences catalyzed by eating raw meals. At such times I naturally conclude the meal with meditation. The meditative experiences made possible by eating living, prana-rich raw foods are infinitely more subtle and profound than anything I have ever experienced before. In the traditional meditative and contemplative disciplines, it is generally considered that one should not meditate when one has a full stomach. For most people, this injunction is very appropriate, but here it does not apply. When a person eats cooked food, all of the body's energy is necessarily directed toward ridding itself of the ingested poison. There is no energy left over to be directed toward spiritual practice. Meditation practiced when the body is in a state of emergency will be unproductive, possibly even counter-productive, and the person is more likely to fall asleep than to experience blissful transcendence. In this instance it would truly be unwise to meditate because productive meditation is impossible. But when a person eats living food, the subtle body is so purified and enlivened by the influx of vital prana that this actually becomes the most opportune time to engage in meditation. More refined states become immediately accessible. In a future essays, I will introduce purification methods called Elemental Kriyas, that when regularly practiced keep the subtle light body purified of negative emotions. Here are the essential elements of a successful spiritual practice, as I envision them: 1) Achieve a very pure level of fruitarian or Vitarian diet 2) Regular practice of Ujjayi pranayam 3) Perform regular 4-Element Purification (Kriya) 4) Perform Agnihotra fire sacrifice 5) Cultivate an Attitude of Non-Attachment to Possessions 6) Eradicate the Sense that one is the Doer 7) Adopt the Immortalist Lifestyle and Philosophy 8) Identify with Eternal Self which exists beyond the Body, through: a) Nondual meditation b) Affirmation of the Real c) Negation of the Unreal d) Quiet Reflection on Nature e) Mantra f) Prayer I believe that if a person completely integrates all of these elements into their spiritual practice, then that person stands a very good chance of becoming a Physically Immortal Breatharian. Although for almost everyone, Raw Living Food must be the primary source for prana…for the breatharian the atmospheric prana becomes more than sufficient for their needs, and air actually becomes their most efficient, clean-burning source for this prana. The only possibility for a state beyond this would be the Heliovoran, in which the dense physical body has been refined into a body of light which requires only sunlight for it's nourishment. Attaining the Heliovoran state would be synonymous with what we think of as ASCENSION.
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