jaundice and sugar candy

 
But body is my diseased condition. As a diseased man cannot enjoy life... How it is possible? Take, for example, a man who is suffering from jaundice. It is practical. You can test practically. If a man... You find out a man who is suffering from jaundice. You give a piece of sugar candy and ask him to take. He will say, "It is bitter." He will say, "It is bitter." He won't taste its sweetness. Because his condition is diseased, therefore, he actually cannot enjoy the sweetness of sugar candy. But when he is cured, a man in healthy state, if you give him sugar candy, oh, he will say, he will appreciate, "Oh, it is very sweet, very nice." The same sugar candy, according to our condition of life, is tasted differently. So unless we cure from this disease of wrong conception of life, we cannot have any taste. Anything, anything, we cannot taste, have any taste for it. The bitter taste. We will have bitter taste.
Of course, in your country I know that there is no such disease as typhoid, but India there is a fever called typhoid. Here it is called typhosis, or something like, medical term. That typhoid is disease of intestine. Now, in that disease, any solid food is strictly forbidden. First time is twenty or fourteen days, then twenty-one days, then forty-one days, up to sixty days. He is to live only on glucose water. That's all. Other things is dangerous for him. Now, if that typhoid patient desires to eat some solid food and if somebody, out of compassion, gives him some solid food, then it is death for him because in that condition he cannot enjoy. His enjoyment is forbidden. Therefore, in our diseased condition of this bodily conception of life, if we increase our so-called enjoyment, enjoyment of the body, oh, then we shall be more and more entangled in this conditional life of material existence. If you really want freedom from this material existence and miseries of material existence, then we must minimize the bodily enjoyment.
We must minimize. Just like a diseased man is given some liquid food. He is forbidden... He is forbidden to take any food because any food will aggravate his disease, but still, because he has to exist, he is given some glucose water, some barley water, some fruit juice, little. Just... It is also psychological. The patient may think also that "I am eating something. I am eating, not I am starving. I am eating." That is also psychological effect. At the same time, this light food, fruit juice or glucose water, that is easily digested, so there is no harm.
Similarly, we have to... The body must be considered a diseased condition. A diseased man cannot enjoy himself properly; a man with jaundice, for instance, will taste sugar candy as bitter, but a healthy man can taste its sweetness. In either case, the sugar candy is the same, but according to our condition it tastes different. Unless we are cured of this diseased conception of bodily life, we cannot taste the sweetness of spiritual life. Indeed, it will taste bitter to us. At the same time, by increasing our enjoyment of material life, we are further complicating our diseased condition. A typhoid patient cannot eat solid food, and if someone gives it to him to enjoy, and he eats it, he is further complicating his malady and endangering his life. If we really want freedom from the miseries of material existence, we must minimize our bodily demands and pleasures.    (More...)
Just like in jaundice disease that if you... Because the doctors, the medical practitioners, they give sugar candy. The physician gives sugar candy. The sugar candy, to the person suffering from jaundice, tastes bitter: "Oh, it is bitter." But actually sugar candy is not bitter. Similarly, to the sinful man the krsna-katha, discussion about Krsna, does not appear to be very palatable. They do not like to hear. They think it is waste of time. But that, as the sugar candy is the only medicine for jaundice disease, similarly, the hari-katha, or krsna-katha, is the only medicine for our material disease. If we take it... Just like the jaundiced patient: if he takes sugar candy, then gradually he becomes free from the diseased condition, and at that time, the same sugar candy which he tasted in the beginning as bitter, it appears to be very, very sweet. Then he cannot live without. This is the process.    (More...)