And so, exactly like taste, you have to look at beauty and enjoy; you have to listen to music and enjoy; you have to touch the rocks and leaves and human beings – the warmth, the texture – and enjoy. Use all your senses, use them at their optimum, then you will really live and your life will be aflame; it will not be dull, it will be aflame with energy and vitality. I am not for those people who have been teaching you to kill your senses; they are against the body.
And remember, the body is your temple; the body is a divine gift. It is so delicate and it is so beautiful and it is so wonderful – to kill it is to be ungrateful to God. God has given you taste; you have not created it, it is not anything to do with you. God has given you eyes and God has made this psychedelic world so colorful, and he has given you eyes. Let there be a great communion between the eye and the color of the world. And he has made everything and there is a tremendous harmony. Don’t break this harmony.
These so-called mahatmas are just on ego-trips, and the best way to feel that you are great is to be against the body. Children do it. The child feels that the motion is coming; he holds it, he feels powerful because he feels his will: he will not yield to the body. His bladder is full and he holds it. He wants to show the body “I’m not your servant, I’m your master.” But these are destructive habits.
Listen to the body. The body is not your enemy, and when the body is saying something, do accordingly, because the body has a wisdom of its own. Don’t disturb it, don’t go on a mind-trip. That’s why I don’t teach you any dieting, I teach you only awareness. Eat with full awareness, eat meditatively, and then you will never eat more and you will never eat less. More is as bad as less. Too much eating is bad, just like too much fasting; these are extremes. Nature wants you to be balanced, to be in a sort of equilibrium, to be in the middle, neither less nor more. Don’t go to the extreme.
To go to the extreme is to be neurotic. So there are two types of neurotics about food: those who go on eating, not listening to the body – the body goes on crying and screaming “Stop!” and they go on. These are neurotic people. And then there is the other variety: the body goes on screaming “I am hungry!” and they are on a fast. Neither is religious, both are neurotic, both are pathological – they need treatment, they need to be hospitalized. Because a religious person is one who is balanced: in whatsoever he is doing, he is always in the middle. He never goes to the extreme because all extremes will create tensions, anxieties. When you eat too much there is anxiety because the body is burdened. When you don’t eat enough then there is anxiety because the body is hungry. A religious person is one who knows where to stop; and that should come out of your awareness, not out of a certain teaching.