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inedia (breatharianism)
"I tried breatharianism once, except I thought it was called anorexia." --Oshinn Cerra
Inedia is the alleged ability to live without food. Some inediates become breatharians, like the stigmatic Therese Neumann (1898-1962) of Bavaria, who said “one can live on the Holy Breath alone.” She claims to have done this from 1926-1962, during which time she says she only consumed her daily serving of transubstantiated bread.
Fasting has long been considered a way to purify one’s body and mind. Fasting reminds us of our dependence and weakness, and links us to those who suffer hunger as part of their daily lives. Inediates strive to be spiritual beings and carry fasting to an inhuman level. If restraint, self-control, and reducing one’s intake of food and water are good, then eliminating all physical nourishment must be better. Spiritual beings don’t need food, water, or sleep. Maybe so, but food, water and sleep are not optional for human beings.
One inediate who has been attracting followers to breatharianism is Australian Ellen Greve, a.k.a. Jasmuheen. According to Greve, a former financial advisor, we can get all the nutrition we need from prana, the universal life force. She is the author of Living on Light: A Source of Nutrition for the New Millennium, a 21-day program that will allow the body to stop aging and attain immortality by living solely on light.
Greve claims she hasn’t eaten since 1993; yet, she admits “she drinks herbal teas and confesses to the occasional ‘taste orgasm’ involving chocolate or ice cream” (Sunday Times Online UK, Sept. 26, 1999). She also admits “if I feel a bit bored and I want some flavour, then I will have a mouthful of whatever it is I’m wanting the flavour of. So it might be a piece of chocolate or it might be a mouthful of a cheesecake or something like that.”* Several interviewers have found her house full of food, but she claims the food is for her husband, who once went to prison for misappropriating a pension fund. Apparently he hasn’t seen the light and is unable to live on prana yet (Walker and O’Reilly 1999).
Greve runs the Cosmic Internet Academy (C.I.A.) and claims to have 5,000 followers worldwide. People pay over $2,000 to attend her seminars. There are many, apparently, who are not bothered by the contradiction of saying one needs only prana (or is it light?) but admits to the odd sweet and cup of tea, and has a house full of food. This “diet” is changing her chromosomes, she says. Her “DNA is changing to take up more hydrogen and is developing from 2 to 12 strands.”* Greve also claims that the starving of the world would be just fine if they could only be “re-programmed”. They starve to death, she says, because the mass media has tricked them into thinking they need food.* Such gibberish would get some people into treatment; instead, she makes world tours promoting her book. At least three of Greve’s followers have starved to death while trying to purify themselves with total fasting. Despite the dangerousness of her insane teachings, in the fall of 1999, the Australian television program “60 Minutes” tested her ability to live on prana, the “light of God.”
After Greve had fasted for four days, Dr. Berris Wink, president of the Queensland branch of the Australian Medical Association, urged her to stop the test. According to the doctor, Greve’s pupils were dilated, her speech was slow, she was dehydrated, and her pulse had doubled. The doctor feared kidney damage if she continued with the fast. The test was stopped. Greve claimed that she failed because on the first day of the test she had been confined in a hotel room near a busy road, which kept her from getting the nutrients she needs from the air. “I asked for fresh air. Seventy per cent of my nutrients come from fresh air. I couldn’t even breathe,” she said. However, the last three days of the test took place at a mountainside retreat where she could get plenty of fresh air and where she claimed she could now live happily.* Clearly, had the test continued, she would have died. Instead, she lived to lead others to their deaths.
Another inspiration for breatharianism is Wiley Brooks, who heads The Breatharian Institute of America. For the past thirty years or so, Brooks has been claiming that we don’t need food, water, or sleep. He asks “if food is so good for you, how come the body keeps trying to get rid of it?...Man was not designed to be a garbage can.” He claims that adepts and yogis have been living on air for millennia. Brooks offers workshops to train people in the art of living on air. In the beginning, he charged $500 for these workshops; at last check he was asking for $10,000,000 and promising to increase the fee to $25,000,000 in January 2008. I'm sure that includes all meals. Brooks may seem to have lost his mind but he hasn't lost his sense of humor.
Unfortunately, the belief that we can live without food continues to spread. A sixty-four-year-old retired mechanical engineer from India, Hira Ratan Manek, claims that he lives on boiled water and energy from the sun. In effect, he claims he's turned his body into a photovoltaic cell that converts the rays of the sun into nutritional energy. As would be expected in this age of faith-based gullibility, Manek has a cult following.
further reading
book
websites
SD Newsletter 34 - Prahlad Jani
Breatharianism - article links from Rick Ross
Three deaths linked to 'living on air' cult by Tom Walker and Judith O'Reilly, Sunday Times (London), September 26, 1999.
Fasting guru defends cult as doctors warn that her disciples are on path to suicide The Express, September 23, 1999 By Laura Kibby
A Really Light Lunch by D. Trull
Investigating the Reincarnation of Buddha by Joe Nickell
Last updated 02/23/09
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