Radhanath Swami on Nourishment for the Soul

If we don’t eat nourishing foods properly, then we will be weak. Now what happens if someone is starving? How much could he actually work? Similarly, spiritually too, we need food. Otherwise we may have big bodies, and we may have acute intelligence to do business, but spiritually we are just feeble weaklings. That’s what most big people are today. Nature, with one finger, just pushes them and they give in to greed, envy, lust and their selfish passions and motivations. They are just spiritual weaklings. They are starving. And the saintly person pities such an ignorant fool although the world is bowing at their feet deeming them great. So we need food to have strength and that strength will give us the proper perception. And what is the food we need? Offering prayers, chanting God’s names, hearing the truth, associating with saintly persons, doing proper worship with the proper state of consciousness. All these spiritual practices are like food. They give us strength by which we can maintain our spiritual, moral and ethical integrity under all circumstances and be fixed in our goal. And anyone can do that. We just have to stop making excuses that we can’t do it. If you don’t eat and you are weak, then eat. That’s what religion is about actually, the process of purifying our perceptions, the process of purifying our hearts, so that we can do our work with the integrity that will bring us spiritually upward rather than downward.