There’s a man I know, used to be a neighbour, whom I’ll call George. George was a fine figure of a fellow. A little under six foot I’d say, fit as a fiddle with a lean and lithe physique, well-muscled but none of that boxy bulked-up look some guys and their gals you see down at the far end of the gym, stolidly hefting what look like train wheels, go in for. I used to bump into him walking his dog or at the gym we both used and swap a few words. George was a personable chap, and among other things stood in as a sort of local tennis pro.
Next time I see George there’s something different about him.
“
Hey George, Whassup man?”, I says expecting to spend the next ten minutes shooting the breeze with a bit of gossip thrown in. Not this time. George is enthused and gets right to the point.
“
I’m a Breatharian now”, he says. “It’s fantastic. You gotta tell people about this. I want you to write a piece about it”.
“
Oh yeah, right. Interesting. Maybe I will someday”, I say politely, getting off the ‘hood stuff and going all anglo.
“
Nah you won’t “he says knowingly, “C’mon man I want you to do it Now!”, getting all enthused again.
I manage to steer the conversation away from me doing an article onto the merits of Breatharianism in general and 20 minutes later manage to extricate myself.
“
Don’t forget my article, now”, is his parting shot.
Next time I see George a month or so later he’s lost a lot of weight. He still looks OK, sort of “New Agey thin” if you know what I mean. It kinda suits him, though he no longer looks the picture of rude health he once was.
“
Where’s my article, Man? Ya didn’t did’ja?”, he says.
“
Bin a bit busy, I say “maybe I ‘ll get around to it soon”, I venture unconvincingly.
“
Hell, you will”, he mutters, before warming to his subject. This time I get away in about ten minutes and manage to put in a cautionary tale about some woman who died doing it.
“
I know, I know, I heard it Big Macs an’ all. An’ I still want my article”, he says as we go our separate ways.
I don’t bump into George again, who’s moved out the banjar, for quite a few months. This time George looks terrible. He is gaunt. Most of the muscle and lean tissue has disappeared. He is not Belsenesque yet, but he looks like a man on a well advanced hunger strike, which is essentially what he is. But he is not low energy.
“
Hey man, where’s my piece?”, is his immediate greeting.
This time I don’t bother to pretend I’ll be writing it any time soon and got stuck right into the alarm stories. George don’t give a rap. He’s feeling good, got lots of energy and has heard all the horror stories. George of old is no New Age patsy and had a cheerfully cynical disposition, so I figured he was smart enough to know what he was doing. That was over eight months ago now and I sometimes wonder how he’s faring.
Apart from the various jeering news reports the closest I ever came to a direct experience of Breatharianism was while attending a month-long retreat with a man called Paul Lowe, here in Bali at Candidasa in the early 1990’s. Paul Lowe is an interesting character with definite gifts who, known as Tirta, was once one of the shining lights orbiting around Osho. Paul had developed a fearsome reputation as the leader of anything goes encounter groups that went far beyond anything originating at Esalen. He was, according to him, Osho’s designated successor, though there were of course other claimants. But now he was not into the guru-thing and just wanted to surround himself with “friends”, not devotees you understand. Most of these friends, but by no means all, were ex-Osho sanyassins. What I quickly found in Paul’s company was that the essential manipulation and exercise of authority was firmly in place and far outweighed the undoubted gifts and insights to be had from his teaching.
This was the second month-long retreat held in Bali, and this year all the friends, that is those who had given up all to travel with Paul, were into Breatharianism. Here’s how it appeared to work. You were carefully and lovingly inducted into the process, which involved breaking the addiction to food and water over a short period of time. As a result you acquire the fundamental knowledge that you can go without thus losing one of mankind’s most basic fears. You had in fact developed syddhi-like powers and were obviously pretty far along the path. Thank you Paul, thank you group.
Once inducted you could eat but not swallow. In fact the junkier the food the better it was for you and the farther along you were. This led to the pretty sight of Paul and his beauteous wife Grace draped around one another sipping 7-Up while spooning themselves and each other with ice creams, cakes and all sorts of goodies but spitting out the residue once masticated. You try eating chocolate cream sponge cake and spitting out what’s left. There’s not a lot left is there.....?
Presumably what you chose to eat or not eat and drink in private was your own affair. Nobody was going to give you a hard time about that.
So, all good group building stuff. But it threatened to unravel with one wretched Australian woman who had recently been admitted to Paul’s travelling circle but who took it all much too seriously. This woman had latched onto the food denial thing for dear life. This was her vehicle for self-realisation. She obviously had an unbalanced relation to food and didn’t quite “get it” in the way that the group did. By the time I saw her she was in a very bad way. This women was literally starving to death. She was a living skeleton. Nothing anybody in or out of the group could say would persuade her to stop. As a result she was denounced by Paul and shunned by him and the group. She hung around on the edges of the group like a ghost in that pathetic and heartbreaking way that true believers have when they have been cast out. Much later I heard the group had managed to get her family to take her off their hands and that she’d eventually taken to eating again.
Denying yourself food is indeed an ancient and powerful spiritual practice. It can also be a very healing one. It is the fastest and most effective way to de-tox the body. Fasting does in fact cure all known diseases, until that is you die of starvation. For a fast to be really effective you need to do 21 days as the major detox stage occurs after 14 days. It also clarifies the mind and frees enormous mental and physical energy. However it is not all good news. Do it wrong and you can damage yourself, possibly permanently and that is why fasting should always be medically supervised. Unless you support the body with the right nutrients you will lose lean tissue, even organ mass. Permanent calorie restriction, that is eating 30% of what most people eat has been shown to lengthen your life. Not drinking water on the other hand, very quickly leads to dehydration and death.
Having done four major fasts myself a dozen or so years ago I am aware to some extent the powerful and exhilarating forces it can unleash. It is therefore easy to see how some people can get hooked on it. I am entirely open to the idea that there are people among us who are very far along the spiritual path that they can do extraordinary things, even to the extent of changing their body composition. However that is not very many of us. The dangers to the foolish and the inflated along the spiritual path are all to real. Leaving aside the cranks and the cheats my fear is that most Breatharians, not necessarily all, are likely to damage themselves.
Somehow I doubt this is the article George had in mind but wherever he is, I wish him well and hope he is tucking into a delicious organic free range calorie-restricted meal somewhere.
