The Roles of Four Human Members in the Phenomenon of Hunger
When we observe the kingdoms of nature we find an extremely momentous
role of phenomena of hunger and thirst in the life of animal species.
[1]
These work in animals in an instinctive way; in the case of human beings
they belong to the lower impulses of human organism. These "are the impulses
from which develop sympathy and antipathy, everything of an instinctive
nature, from hunger and other allied instincts to the reproductive instinct,
which as such belongs entirely to the category of lower instincts."
[2]
Therefore hunger is "an example of suffering that is typical on a lower
(bodily) level and can result in destruction of life. Hunger is alleviated
by food and the food thus becomes a source of enjoyment because
it gets
transformed into something that enhances life." [3] In the nutritional
principle FOOD AS SOURCE OF ENERGY we have seen that food intake stimulates
life processes which are the expression of the activity of the
etheric body.
This means that food works as stimulus for the activities of maintenance and
renewal of bodily life functions.
In these activities, of course, our physical organs and systems are
involved. For that reason "hunger arises when our organs can no longer
continue their proper function unless new substance is given them. What the
hungry person seeks first of all is to eat enough. As soon as enough food
has been taken in for hunger to cease, then everything has been achieved
which the drive to be fed seeks. The enjoyment connected with eating enough
consists first of all in removing the pain which hunger causes"
[4] and in
this manner preserving our physical body from harm or even from the
disintegration.
However, it is not our "physical body, with its chemical substances, that
experiences hunger and thirst; these are experiences of the soul. But it is
through the physical body that all such cravings are satisfied here on
Earth. Hunger lives in the soul, and in earthly life hunger is satisfied
through the body; through the body thirst is quenched, although thirst, too,
lives in the soul." [5] Therefore we can say that "hunger and thirst are
phenomena revealed very clearly in the human astral body. As known to the
ordinary human being, hunger and thirst are, of course, astral phenomena.
What we experience in consciousness, such as hunger or thirst, is to begin
with experienced astrally. You must be perfectly clear about this. The
ordinary person knows nothing about what he does not experience astrally.
What he experiences only etherically lies so deep in the subconscious that
he knows nothing about it" [6] directly.
Nevertheless, what is happening in the depths can come to the surface as
desire for food and drink. But "to the drive merely to be fed, there comes
another need. A person does not merely want, through taking in nourishment,
to restore the normal functioning of his organs, or, as the case may be, to
still the pain of hunger – he seeks to effect this to the accompaniment of
pleasant taste sensations. When he is hungry and a meal promising rich
enjoyment is a half hour away, he can even avoid spoiling his pleasure in
the better food by not eating something inferior which could satisfy him
sooner. He needs his hunger in order to have the full enjoyment of his meal.
Through this, hunger becomes for him a cause of pleasure at the same time."
[7] This is possible only in the case of human beings due to the fact that
they possess an ego that can control the desires and urges of the astral
body to a certain extent.
From this short description it is obvious that we need to investigate the
mutual relationships between the four bodies of man – the physical body, the
etheric body, the astral body and ego – if we want to really grasp the
causes and effects of hunger. Usually people "easily regard things like
thirst or hunger as physical phenomena. But imagine that the same physical
changes that are happening in your organism when you are thirsty were in a
body not ensouled. The same changes could be there, but the soulless body
would not suffer thirst. As a chemist you might investigate the changes in
your body when you are thirsty. But if, by some means, you could produce
these same changes, in the same substances and in the same complex of
forces, in a body without a soul, it would not suffer thirst.
Thirst is not
something in the body; it lives in the soul – in the astral – through
changes in the physical body. It is the same with hunger." [8]
Thus we can summarize the involvement of four members of human
constitution in the phenomenon of hunger in the following way:
- Our ego can have more or less
control of the desires
and instincts of the astral body in relation to nutrition.
- We have sensations of desires and urges for food, sensual pleasures in
eating, and enjoyment of appeasing hunger by the means of our
astral body.
- The underlying cause for the emergence of hunger lies in the need of
the etheric body to obtain stimulus for the
regeneration of physical body by
the intake of food.
- Our physical body needs a proper shape and it has to be in adequate
condition to be capable to perform all physical functions such as movement,
work, etc.
Food as Medicine for Hunger Disease
One of the most important activities of all human societies in the past,
as in the present, is production of food that serves the needs of their own
population. And one of the biggest calamities that can inflict people is
such a degree of the general deprivation of food that leads to hunger and
death. It is very likely that, beside wars and illnesses, famines are among
the top three greatest causes of death since the onset of agriculture.
If we want to really understand why food is so important for human life
on the Earth, we need to look at the role of the astral body in the inner
activities of the human organism in relation to nutrition. The
astral body
is not only the vehicle which conveys to us unpleasant feelings of hunger and
pleasure while we are eating and when we appease hunger, but it is also
involved in the following activities:
- peristaltic movement of the gut which enables the
movement of food through the digestive tube;
- breaking down of food in the digestive system;
- separation of useful nutrients from the useless ones in the small
intestine;
- distribution of absorbed nutrients to the various parts of the body
(see
Instincts as an Expression of the Wisdom of the Astral Body in Action)
Now we will focus on one activity of the astral body which is the cause
for the emergence of the feeling of hunger – disintegration of food
substances inside our organism. We will start with the fact that "in everyday life a man constantly becomes a bit indisposed and then must cure
himself. The point is that all of us are really a bit sick when thirsty or
hungry, and we cure ourselves by drinking and eating. Hunger is the
beginning of an illness, and if it is allowed to continue we can die from
it. After all, we can die of starvation and even sooner of thirst. So you
see that even in our everyday lives we bear something like the beginning of
a disease. Every act of drinking or eating is in truth an act of healing.
We must make clear to ourselves what in fact happens when we become
hungry or thirsty. You see, our body is inwardly always active. Through the
intake of food, the body receives nutrients. External substances are
absorbed through the mouth and the intestinal passages into some part of the
body. Now, you must understand that the human organization immediately
rebels against these nutritional substances. It does not tolerate them in
their original forms and destroys them. Food substances must actually be
disintegrated. In fact, they are annihilated, and this begins in the mouth.
The reason for this is that there is continuous, never-ceasing activity in
our body. This activity must be observed in the same way as fingers or hands
are. Ordinary science simply records how a piece of bread is eaten,
dissolved in the mouth, and then distributed in the body, but we must also
take into consideration that the human body is continually active. Even if
nothing is put into it, if nothing goes into the body for five hours, say,
still its activity does not cease. You may even be like an empty sack, but
things have not quieted within. You remain in constant inward activity, and
things are still bustling around. Only when this internal activity can
become occupied with something is it content. That is especially the case
after a meal when it can dissolve and disintegrate the food substances; then
it is content. This internal activity is identified in spiritual science as
the astral body. It is never lazy, and if it can stay active destroying and
dissolving the food substances, it is filled with inward comfort; it then
has a feeling of inner well-being. But if I take in no food substances, then
the astral body is not satisfied, and this dissatisfaction is expressed as
hunger. Hunger is not something at rest within us; it is an activity, a
soul-spiritual activity that cannot be stilled. We can truly say that this
inner activity is in love with the food substances, and if it does not
receive them it is just as dissatisfied as any jilted lover.
This
dissatisfaction is the hunger, and it is by all means something spiritual.
So the activity that is executed internally in the digestive tube
consists of disintegrating food substances. What is useful is transmitted
into the blood vessels, and the rest is eliminated through urine or faeces. This is the healthy, normal
and regular activity of the human being in which the astral body works
properly to dissolve the food substances." [9]
We can also ask: "What happens to a man who has to go hungry? A person
who has not enough physical material in his body becomes more and more
spiritual. But this is not the right way to become spiritual, for under
these conditions spirit consumes him, burns him up." [10]
The image that can
help us to understand this relationship between the consumption and
regeneration of our body is the herd of goats grazing in an enclosed meadow.
The goats eat the grass until it gets so short that pasture ends and then
they need to be moved in another enclosed meadow. This enables the grass to
grow again and thus the goats can later return to the same meadow. Goats
present the astral body, grass the etheric body, and food is the manure that
stimulates the growth of the grass to its proper size. And the ego is the
'shepherd' who takes care that things exchange in proper rhythm.
From the above explanation we can understand that we don't satiate
ourselves just with filling our stomach with food, but because our astral
body becomes occupied with activities of breaking down food. This is an
extremely important distinction for the proper choice of food. For example,
the stomach is the place where the disintegration of proteins starts. This
is not surprising if we know that in the stomach the astral body dominates
above the etheric body. Because of this we feel in the case of hunger
discomfort or even pain (so-called hunger pangs) in the area of the belly.
[11]
Hunger has a damaging effect on the structure of the physical body. If we
cannot satisfy hunger for a prolonged period of time, our physical body
start to waste until this process of dissolution causes death. It is known
that in a case of starvation, muscles and some other body tissues made from
proteins start to disintegrate. According to the scientific explanation, the
human organism starts to use proteins as the last source of calories after
all fat reserves are used up. Another way of explaining it is: the astral
body starts to destroy the proteins of our own body because there are no
more food substances that it can disintegrate. Thus we have arrived to the
most important attribute of food in relation to hunger –
food is the remedy
for the disease of hunger. The food heals the state of hunger which causes
harm to our body if we cannot eat for a prolonged time.
[12]
For complementary perspectives see:
♦ FOOD AS 'POISON'
♦ WHOLEFOOD vs REFINED FOOD
♦ EATING vs FASTING
DIETARY CONCLUSIONS & PRACTICAL INSTRUCTIONS
In modern times there are two kinds of hunger in the world:
- Classical hunger due to lack of food
- Hidden hunger due to lack of important nutrients in food
[13]
Classical hunger predominates in the industrially underdeveloped
countries, while the new form of hunger predominates in industrially
developed countries. If we want to find the solution for the second type of
hunger we need to consider what kind of food does satisfy, not just our
taste buds, but also other needs of our body. It is a sad fact of life that
nowadays a lot of food no longer has the effect it should have. Much of
modern food is just a worthless product of food quackery unable to heal the
hunger! [14] This is the ultimate proof of the loss of the food quality due
to the modern methods of food production. We can witness how obese people
are, stuffing themselves with junk food, and they never really become
satiated. People are eating so-called 'empty calories' which just makes
them want to eat more. This is confirmed also with the emergence of the new
trend of eating in USA where "sociologists who study American eating habits
no longer organize their results around the increasingly quaint concept of
the meal. They now measure 'eating occasions' and report that Americans
have added to the traditional big three – breakfast, lunch and dinner – an
as-yet-untitled fourth daily eating occasion that last all day long: the
constant sipping and snacking they do while watching TV, driving, and so
on." [15]
All this demonstrates that something is lacking in food produced on a
large industrial scale. It is lacking natural nutrients and nourishing
forces. The food is over-processed, highly refined, and almost
'pre-digested'. Such food doesn't require even much chewing. "By eliminating
the need to chew, modern food processing techniques allow us to eat faster…
Refined food simply melts in the mouth." [16] This
is one of the basic aims of the modern food industry: to make food as
digestible as possible. There is not much work left for the human body to
digest and disintegrate such food, regardless of how much food one eats. The
result is a constant hidden form of hunger, which cannot be ever really
satisfied, because our astral body needs such food which can be processed
and broken down. Food that fulfils this criterion is whole natural food
processed as little as necessary.
The same kind of problem exists also in the case of organic food where we
can notice the trend to produce an ever greater number of
organic refined
foods which contain white flour and highly refined sugars. This is contrary
to the one of the fundamental goals of organic agriculture to produce high
quality food because such foods are also depriving the astral body of its
activities of breaking-down and are consequently not satisfying hunger as
they should. That which satisfies hunger are organic wholefoods.
♣ See
HOLISTIC FOOD 'PYRAMID'
for the list of foods that still have the power to heal the hunger.
WARNING: You always have to put the above
practical dietary instructions inside the framework of
GENERAL NUTRITIONAL
GUIDELINES with the aim to know their limits when looking for a solution
of a specific nutritional problem. You also need to be familiar with
THE ROLE OF NUTRITIONAL GUIDELINES
with the aim to avoid any one-sided conclusions.
