Love – the most nutritious ingredient

Out of all things that make life healthy and livable, the most important thing is food. Nutritious food – food with appropriate content of vitamins and minerals - helps live long and healthy life. The strength that one achieves through nutritious food helps perform duties with high and complex responsibilities. Intake of nutritious food at regular intervals goes long way in maintaining high energy level that helps to face all challenges in life.
 
After nutritious food the second most important thing is the desire to offer and partake nutritious food. One may have the most nutritious food in the world, but if one does not have desire to eat that food, what’s the use?
 
That’s where comes the importance of the most nutritious ingredient of the food – love - that helps develop desire to prepare and partake nutritious food. Even the simplest food can become rich in nutrition when prepared and partaken with love. This ingredient – love - enters the food when one remembers the original provider of the food and ultimate consumer of the food.
 
They say that to bring this ingredient of love in the food, first offer food to the ultimate consumer – paramabhokta – of the food, i.e. God and then partake the food. The process of thus remembering God transforms the food into prasad. It is a belief, and there are numerous stories in scriptures that support this belief, that prasad never runs short. Nobody in the surrounding can remain hungry when the food is partaken as prasad.
 

They say that the food should be partaken in happy mood. It is better to avoid insistence for eating excessive quantity food. Such insistence can lead to displeasure and loss of fun of eating. Ananda, happiness, is the real form of God. Food brings ananda and ananda brings food. There can never be scarcity of the food in the house where food is partaken in happy mood. Getting all family members together, praying and thanking God for food before partaking food and then partaking food in happy mood goes long way in keeping family together, happy and healthy.

Yogashakti - the power of all powers

 

Out of all shaktis (powers) the most important power is Yogashakti - power acquired through Yoga. Yoga is popular throughout the world. It is mostly popular as a method to achieve balance of mind and body. Yes, it is true that yoga helps in maintaining balance of mind and body to experience tranquility. And one should always perform yoga to keep body and mind healthy. But yoga is much broader than that. Word “yoga” is derived from the Sanskrit root “Yuj” meaning to associate, to join, to unite. So yogashakti is the power that is acquired through association, through union with Yogishwar – the lord of yoga.

 

It is a known fact that once one establishes close relationship with the powerful, one need not worry about anything. Mere close association with the powerful removes all worries and fears. Saints are the people who establish intimate relationship with God by incessantly remembering His form and His name. Through this association they also inherit the powers of God. However they use these powers only to again promote devotion to God and welfare of society. They never use it for their personal benefits. Through yogashakti yogis work in unison. They can meet and help each other by remaining in their own places.

Sheikh Mohammad was a saint who resided in Shrigonda village near Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. Once he was performing kirtan (praising God by singing His glories) with great love. All present at the kirtan, including great Brahmins, were joyfully listening to the kirtan with great concentration and were totally absorbed in the thoughts of God. However, in the middle of kirtan, Sheikh suddenly stopped, jumped and rubbed the cloth covering the mandap (a structure like a hall erected by placing vertical bamboos on four sides and then covering them with a big cloth for shelter). All present in the kirtan were amazed by the act and asked Sheikh, with great respect, what he was doing. He told them that Tukaram Maharaj was performing kirtan in Dehu and torchbearer, while totally absorbed in the kirtan, didn’t realize that his hand went up and touched the cloth covering the mandap and the cloth caught fire. So by rubbing cloth of the mandap, in Shrigonda, he (Sheikh) extinguished the fire in the mandap at Dehu. However people couldn’t really believe that answer. They asked how nobody from the people present there noticed the fire. Sheikh said that everybody was so absorbed in the kirtan that they just forgot about what’s happening in the surrounding as their minds were totally focused on God and his name. Out of curiosity people asked further that how could even Husband of Rukmini (Lord Vitthala), the subject of the kirtan, couldn’t notice and help extinguish the fire. Sheikh said that even Lord Vitthala was totally absorbed in the kirtan of Tukaram Maharaj. God and his bhaktas had become one. So who will protect whom? Sheikh said he could understand, through his yogashakti, the subconscious state of God as well as His bhaktas and so he (Sheikh) immediately rushed to extinguish the fire. Satisfied by Shiekh’s answer the villagers developed curiosity to hear more about that beautiful phenomenon and so they wrote a letter to the officer of Dehu village requesting to describe the incident of fire in the mandap where Tukaram Maharaj was performing kirtan. The officer in his reply asserted that mandap did showed indication of fire (a hole) in the corner of the cloth covering mandap and looked as if it was extinguished.

That’s the power of yoga. Saints are considered as God in human form and so through association of saints one can acquire such a power and again follow the path of saints to use that power for welfare and upliftment of society.