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The Body Natural WITH regard to the food that man takes, there
are two factors that determine or prescribe it. First of all, the real need of
the body, that is to say, what the body actually requires for its maintenance,
the elements to meet the chemical changes occurring there, something quite
material and very definite, viz, the kind of food and the quantity. But usually
this real need of the body is obscured and sumberged under the demands of
another kind of agency, almost altogether foreign to it, (I) vital desire and (2)
mental notions. Indeed, the menu of our table, at least 90% of it, is arranged
so as to satisfy the demands of the second category, the consideration that
should come first comes last in fact. The body is at present a slave of the
mind and the vital; it is hardly given the freedom of choosing its own
requirements in the right quantity and quality. That is why the body is seen to
suffer everywhere and it normally sick for the greater part of its earthly
existence. It has been compelled to occupy an anomalous position in the human
organism between these two tyrants. The vital goes by its greed, its attraction
and repulsion, its impulse to excess (sometimes to its opposite of
deprivation); what it has been accustomed to, what it has taken a fancy for, to
that it clings, and if the body has not what it prescribes, it throws the
suggestion into the body that it will fall ill. The physical mind has its own
notions and schemes, pet ideas and plans (perhaps from what has been read in
books or heard from persons) in respect of the body's needs; it thinks that if
a certain prescription is not followed, the body will suffer. The mind and the
vital are thus close friends and accomplices in regimenting the body. They
impose their own demands and prejudices upon the body which helplessly gets
entangled Page – 174 in them and loses its native instinct. The
body left to itself is marvellously self-conscious; it knows spontaneously and unfailingly what is good
for its health and strength. The animals usually, especially those of the
forest, preserve still the unspoilt body instinct; for they have no mind to tyrannise over the body nor is their vital of a kind
to go against the normal demands of the body. The body, segregated from the
mind and the vital, can very easily choose the right kind of food and the right quantity and even vary them
according to the varying conditions of the body. Common sense is an inherent
attribute of the body consciousness; it never errs on the side of excess and
immoderation or perversity. The vital is dramatic, the mind is imaginative, but
the body is sanity itself. And that is not a sign of its inconscience and
inertia. The dull and dumb immobility of which it is sometimes accused is after
all perhaps a mode of its self-defence against the wild vagaries of the mind
and the vital to which it is so often called upon to lend its support. Indeed,
it may very well be that the accusation against the flesh that it is weak is
only an opinion or suggestion imposed on the body by the mental – vital who
throw the whole blame upon the body just to escape from the blame due to
themselves. The vital is impatient and clamorous, and if it is all push and
drive-towards physical execution and fulfilment – it is normally clouded and
troubled and obscured and doubly twisted when counselled and supported by a mind, narrow and
superficial, not seeing beyond its nose, bound within a frame of incorrect and
borrowed notions. The body, precisely because of its negative
nature – its dumb inertia, as it is called – precisely because it has no axe of
its own to grind, that is to say, as it has no fancies and impulsions, plans
and schemes upon which it can pride itself, precisely because of this childlike
innocence, it has a wonderful plasticity and a calm stability, when it is not
troubled by the mind or vital. Indeed, the divine qualities that are secreted
in the body, which the body seeks to conserve and express are a stable harmony,
a balance and equilibrium, capable of supporting the whole weight of all the levels
of consciousness from the highest peak to the lowest abysses even as physically
it bears the weight of the entire depth of the atmosphere so lightly as it
were, without feeling the burden in the least. Page – 175
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