Let me explain to you how, in so many ways, in millions of ways, we are searching oneness.
The child is born. His first functioning in the world is through eating; his first functioning in the world is through absorbing matter. The search has started: matter wants to meet matter. Matter wants to have an organic unity with other matter: matter is being pulled by matter, attracted by matter. This is the first love — food.
Food gives the first orgasm to the child. When you feel satisfied after taking food or drinking water, that satisfaction is a feeling of oneness: matter from the outside has been absorbed into the inside, the inner and the outer have met. The meeting is not very deep — it cannot be, it is of matter; it is very superficial but still it is there.
Hindus call this, the first chakra, MULADHAR. There are many people who live at this first chakra. They simply go on eating and defecating. Their whole life is nothing but absorbing matter and throwing matter out; their life is very mechanical. It is very very narrow — a small tunnel. MULADHAR is the smallest aperture in your being from where the light enters into you, and you enter into the existence.
The smallest aperture is MULADHAR — the first center. It starts functioning because the child has to survive; he has to take food first, otherwise he will die. It is a survival measure — but one should not live to eat. If you are just living only to eat, you are not living at all. You are simply waiting for death. And you have chosen a very small pleasure, very ordinary pleasure — just titillation, and you will be finished with that small pleasure. And immense possibilities surround you….
Look into your own life. If you are attached too much to food, become a little more aware.
It is the first search towards oneness. Now even physicists, a few crazy physicists, say that atoms are together because they love each other. The word `love' is not good to use, it seems anthropomorphic; but now a few physicists are courageous enough to say that it explains something. And it HAS to be used, because there seems to be no other explanation. Why are electrons, neutrons and protons together? Why this togetherness?
There must exist a certain sort of bond, a certain attraction. There must be a certain unity, a certain love affair going on — on the lowest level, but there must be a certain love affair — otherwise why don't they fall apart? You can call it gravitation, you can call it magnetism, you can call it electro-field, or whatsoever you choose — but love seems to be the best word because it can explain the whole spectrum from the lowest to the highest.
Love seems to be the most economical word: the whole spectrum is included in it. When you eat, and you become obsessed too much with eating, you are just hanging around the first lesson of love — electrons, protons, neutrons, attracted by each other; your body attracting other body-matter from the outside. Of course there is a certain satisfaction, because whenever there is oneness there is satisfaction, there is content — but it is of the very lower, the lowest. One should learn to go beyond it. Hence all the religions teach the significance of fasting.
Fasting does not mean starving, fasting does not mean that you have to kill your body, that you have to be destructive, no. Fasting simply means: give only as much a is needed, not more than that, so that you can become available on the second plane: you can become available to the second center. If you are obsessed too much with food, you will be closed by food; you will become just material. One should not get attached too much to food and one should not get attached too much to fasting either. Then the balance is achieved. And only through balance is growth.
OSHO