In fact everything can become a sort of meditation, because in everything there are two dimensions – just as there are in the first breath: the outer and the inner.

That’s why fasting has been used. To fast is to try to discover in hunger the other dimension. Fasting means an effort to move into the desire of hunger and to come to know that; the divine. That’s why fasting became so important in so many religions. It can give you a glimpse.

If you fast long the glimpse is possible. But I am not in support of it because you are not making the whole circle. You are jumping, not moving gracefully. From the third, hunger, you are trying to reach the first. It will be a small circle, not the whole compass of life. It will not be very comprehensive. It will not be very rich.

That’s why people who have attained to any spirituality by fasting you will always find a little stupid. Moving among Jaina monks for many years I was suddenly surprised: I had never come across a really intelligent man. They all looked stupid.

The reason is deep. The reason is: they have been depending on fasting. They are trying to find a short cut. Beware of short cuts. Life doesn’t like short cuts because then you can move to the source without growing. You bribe, you don’t grow. From hunger you can jump – that means without knowing the whole complexity of life, the life of sex, love, aesthetic activity. You remain impoverished.

What I am saying is a fact – you can go and look at Jaina monks; they are pure people, but stupid. Nobody can say anything against their purity. Pure they are, sincere they are, serious they are, but they have chosen a short cut. They have been trying to bribe existence and reach home before their time. One can reach, but one will reach without growing, without maturity. A certain type of childishness you will find in them. Purity, but not enlightenment.

The fourth is physical activity. You can move from the fourth again – from any point you can move to the source, you can drop out of the journey of the total circle.

Physical activity has been used by hatha yoga. Hatha yoga developed a total science out of it: how to move just by physical activity, by sheer physical force, to the source.

Hatha yogis are powerful people, they have control over their bodies – nobody can claim that much control. They can lie down underneath the earth for months, even for years.

One fakir in Egypt remained underground for forty years. The people who had buried him all died. And he had told them: After forty years you should open my tomb, break the seal and open the door of my underground chamber. And after forty years I’ll be coming back – alive.