A Disregard for Dietary Advice

Om Prakash mentioned earlier that he thought that Papaji had an ability to control his physiology in some way. I have never heard Papaji say this himself, but there is ample evidence to indicate that his body does not junction in the way that other people’s bodies do. A few examples will suffice.

More than twenty years ago, when Papaji was staying in Londa, he went to a government hospital to have his blood pressure checked. The doctor who checked him recorded figures that were so impossibly high, he couldn’t believe that anyone could have them and still be functioning normally. He rushed off to find another doctor, telling Papaji that he must lie down and not move till he got back. There was some delay because the other doctor was not immediately available. Papaji got tired of waiting and just got up, left and went home. He was not feeling sick at all, and he didn’t see why he should waste his time waiting for the new doctor to appear.

Though his assorted ailments have always required a carefully controlled, sugar- and salt-free diet, for most of his life he has displayed an utter disregard for the dietary advice that has been given to him. He has often eaten huge amounts of prohibited foods without suffering any ill effects. He once told me that when he was living in New York, he went for lunch at a restaurant which advertised ‘Eat as much as you want for $15.00’. After he entered he discovered that the menu was almost exclusively non-vegetarian. Not wanting to waste his money, he consumed $20 worth of ice cream, without, apparently, doing any serious damage to his blood-sugar levels. A similar incident took place in South India. He went to a restaurant that also advertised ‘Eat as much as you want for a fixed price’. After the twentieth chapati, the proprietor backed out of the deal and refused to serve him any more food.

Papaji himself has described another of his eating feats:

As I was flying into America a few years ago, I had to fill in a form that asked me if I had any foreign food with me. I had a big box of Indian sweets in my bag. They were the crunchy kind so I declared them as ‘Indian biscuits’. The customs officer read the form and wanted to see what they were.

He opened the box, looked at the contents, and told me, ‘You can’t import food like this. You will have to leave it here.’

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘Because it may have Indian bacteria in it,’ he said. ‘We have to be very careful. We have to safeguard the health of the American people and protect them from foreign germs.’

‘But I’m not going to feed these sweets to the American people,’ I replied. ‘These are my sweets. I intend to eat them all myself. I don’t mind if I eat a few Indian bacteria. I have been eating them all my life and they never did me any harm.’

The customs officer wouldn’t accept this. He still insisted that I leave the sweets behind. I thought that this was a stupid rule.

I didn’t want to waste the sweets so I told him, ‘I’m not leaving them behind. If you won’t let me import them, I’ll eat them all here.’

The customs officer laughed because it was a 3 kg box. So, in front of the customs counter, I consumed the entire contents while he watched and then walked into America, leaving the empty box behind me.

Excerpt From Nothing Ever Happened Volume Three, pages 191-193
By David Godman