natural nutrition

painting by Mary Cassatt

“(…) “Man is what he eats!”. Man can nourish himself in such fashion that he undermines his invisible independence. In so doing he makes himself an expression of what he eats. Yet he ought to nourish himself in such a manner that he becomes less the slave of his nutritional habits. Here spiritual science can direct him. The wrong food can easily transform us into what we eat, but by permeating ourselves with knowledge of the spiritual life, we can strive to become free and independent. Then the food we eat will not hinder us from achieving the full potential of what we, as men, ought to be.” - Rudolf Steiner

(todo)

“Have you ever thought that your every in breath charges you with power to live, and every out breath is death? That means that you are perpetually living and dying thirty or forty times a minute. (…) You breathe in living oxygen which comes to you from the earth and its foliage. It dies in you and you breathe out a deadly poison known as carbon dioxide. That carbon dioxide is not poison to the ground, however. It is food to the ground. The earth breathes in that food and breathes it out as oxygen, which is poison to it but life to you. Have you ever thought of that? Have you ever thought that the water you drink, the air you breathe, and the food you eat, comes from the dead and decaying body of this planet, and that every living body which dies and is returned to the earth, recharges the earth with renewed life?” - Walter and Lao Russell

“Consider the following idea. An Italian labourer can lift thirty to fifty tons of coal in one day, a shovel full at a time. That feat takes an enormous amount of energy. Where did the energy come from which performed that amount of work? Most certainly it did not come by conversion of the food consumed by the labourer into heat. The few pieces of bread, cheese and onions consumed as food would not generate heat enough by any known process to lift fifty pounds, much less fifty tons. The food consumed is used to repair the body and replace its ever dying corpuscles. Any residue is eliminated after normal replacements are completed.

Any machine that man may make which would lift fifty tons would need at least five hundred pounds of fuel. A man's body is a machine made for performing work just as a man-made machine is. Why is it that one machine needs five hundred pounds of fuel converted to heat to lift fifty tons, while the human machine lifts fifty tons without needing any fuel at all? The answer is that the human machine is centered by the Universal Consciousness which is the Source of all power, from which man expresses power through desire to express power, even though he is not aware of the Source of his power.

The man-made machine has no such motivating source of power so an electric current is extended to it from a generator which consumes a tremendous amount of fuel. The machine made by man needs the electric current while man IS the electric current. His heartbeat is connected with the universal heartbeat. (…) Consider, likewise, the fact that you can lift your own body ten thousand feet above the earth to the top of a mountain, and back again in one day, because YOU are the universal electric current, and YOUR power is limitless when you know it is limitless. If your power is limited it is because you, yourself, have set limitations to it. Again I say, man is Omnipotent when he knows his Omnipotence.

As a last example for your meditation I would like you to consider the tremendous energy expressed in the vegetable kingdom by the desire of the forest to lift its thousands of tons up above the earth. In the Soul-seed of the forest is the mighty desire to manifest its power. Every seed of the forest is centered by that Soul-desire to unfold the pattern of its idea. Desire in the seed is electric current in the seed expressing its desire by polarizing light to form its body. Those mighty tons of the forest are not lifted up by “heat energy” but by the alternating heat and cold of sunlight and cool earth. These are the two conditions which desire in the seed makes use of to polarize stillness of equilibrium into vibrating bodies. Desire makes its own electric current, for desire of Soul is the polarized thought-power which creates YOUR body and ALL BODIES.” - Walter Russell

“At night the soul energy or consciousness is withdrawn from the brain and descends the spinal column into the sympathetic plexuses where this energy is needed to absorb and distribute food and nourishment taken in during the day, to repair the tissues. (…) In this respect, man is subject to the same law as all vegetation. During the day time, when the sun is in the horizon, all the plants' energies are in the stalks and green leaves, in order to absorb 'Prana' from the sun, carbon dioxide and nitrogen from the air, and convert these into its own substance called chlorophyll. The plant also draws energy from the earth, through its roots; for this purpose the sap flows upward. After sunset, the energy in the top, all goes to the roots and nourishes them with the energy gathered during the day.” - Randolph Stone

“Food and drink are the fuel for our bodily functions. Air and warmth are the combustion factors of our motor. There are four stages of this process: 1. Digestion, 2. Assimilation, 3. Elimination, and 4. Oxidation. When any one of these processes is incomplete, the body suffers. Therefore, it is essential for us to take only the foods and drinks which can be digested fully in the stomach, chemicalized by the liver, absorbed by the intestines, and eliminated by the colon. Then only will the oxidation be completed through the skin and the lungs in a normal way. The stomach is the digestive center on the left side of the body, and the liver is the big chemical organ on the right side. When these two function normally, then the digestive process in its lysis (or breaking down of the food into its component elements and the subsequent chemical reassembling of elements and their change into bodily materials) will be completed in harmony of function. But when there is a constant overload and too rich a fuel (too much and too rich a food), then these two polarity functions break down and the whole economy of the body suffers and goes wrong. So the first step in retracing is to clear these two functions and to give the body a chance to right itself in its own chemistry without drugs.” - Randolph Stone

“In this world there exist four main classifications of diet:

• A lax diet conforming to habitual desires and taste preferences. People following this diet sway back and forth erratically in response to whims and fancies. This diet could be called self-indulgent, empty eating.

• The standard nutritional diet of most people, proceeding from biological conclusions. Nutritious foods are eaten for the purpose of maintaining the life of the body. It could be called materialist, scientific eating.

• The diet based on spiritual principles and idealistic philosophy. Limiting foods, aiming toward compression, most “natural” diets fall into this category. This could be called the diet of principle.

• The natural diet, following the will of heaven. Discarding all human [intellectual] knowledge, this diet could be called the diet of non-discrimination.

People first draw away from the empty diet which is the source of countless diseases. Next, becoming disenchanted with the scientific diet, which merely attempts to maintain biological life, many proceed to a diet of principle. Finally, transcending this, one arrives at the non-discriminating diet of the natural person. (…) It is impossible to prescribe rules and proportions for a natural diet. This diet defines itself according to the local environment, and the various needs and the bodily constitution of each person. A definite code or system by which one can consciously decide these questions is impossible. Nature, or the body itself, serves as a capable guide. But this subtle guidance goes unheard by most people because of the clamor caused by desire and by the activity of the discriminating mind.” - Masanobu Fukuoka

“We must learn to live life and feed the body wholesome natural foods with all the life elements in it, in their finer forms as enzymes, hormones, vitamins, and minerals, besides the bulk of proteins, starches, sweets and fats to nourish the grosser parts and serve as combustive material in the digestive process.” - Randolph Stone

“Fruits and vegetables are the foundation of a healthy diet. They are low in calories and nutrient dense, which means they are packed with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber. Try to eat a rainbow of fruits and vegetables every day and with every meal.” - *

(todo: yogic diet, positive/neutral/negative pranic foods, juicing)

“As the fully ripe fruit-flesh constitutes the future absolutely right human food, or the food that will prevent all nutritional diseases and make the human organism's state of vibration such that it can unhindered vibrate in contact with “the holy spirit” (which means that the organism's brain and nervous system can vibrate unhindered in the highest and finest thought-materials the individual thereby becoming enriched with the highest wisdom), evolution will gradually guide all the energy people now use on animal nutrition over to vegetarian nutrition. This will in turn mean that in the coming world order, instead of the present great slaughter-houses and cattle breeding establishments one will find huge concerns whose function will be to promote the improvement of plants and the evolution of edible fruit-flesh. This will in turn lead to the gradual development of fruits of simply fantastic dimensions compared with today's known species. Evolution will therefore lead to today's agriculture becoming horticulture. The waving cornfields will become flourishing orchards.” - Martinus Thomsen

(todo: ongoing transformation towards a more natural, sustainable, healthier and spiritual diet)

(todo: 2 meals a day pattern within an 8 hour period and a 16 hour fast period is healthier than a 3-meals a day meal frequency.)

(todo)

(todo: pacing, overeating, undereating, …)

“People who cook at home are conclusively healthier, consuming less sodium and fewer overall calories than people who mostly eat out. Cooking at home is better for the planet: it avoids the single-use plastics and paper goods that delivered food usually comes with, and with just a bit of creativity with leftovers, home cooking can be entirely free of food waste. Cooking is being studied as a promising tool for improving mental health, and even as a method for eliminating unhealthy behaviors such as smoking. And no matter what restaurant you order in from, there’s always a home-cooked meal that can be made for less money.” - *

“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.” - Terence McKenna

(todo)

• natural healing

• Veganism
  • Raw foodism
    • “Becoming Raw - The Essential Guide to Raw Vegan Diets”, Brenda Davis, Vesanto Melina, Rynn Berry
  • Vegan diet types
  • “The Fruitarian Warrior’s Handbook”, Jericho Sunfire

• Sadhguru video:
  • “Yogic Diet”,
  • “Benefits of Fasting and Eating Twice a Day”

• “The Ideal Food”, Martinus Thomsen

• Rudolf Steiner and related work:
  • “Problems of Nutrition”, Rudolf Steiner
  • NewFoodCulture.org

• pfaf.org (edible plant database)

• todo:
  • Ayurvedic nutrition principles
  • research: Breatharianism (aka inedia, pranic diet, sungazing), a possible explanation
• ■ topic search