The Bad Effects of Abundance on the Body

The influence of abundance on the body is apparent even in matters of religion and divine worship.

The frugal inhabitants of the desert and those of settled areas who have accustomed themselves to hunger and to abstinence from pleasures are more religious and more ready for divine worship than people who live in luxury and abundance.

There are few religious people in towns and cities. People there are mostly obdurate and careless. This is connected with the use of much meat, seasonings, and fine wheat.

The existence of pious men and ascetics is, therefore, restricted to the desert, whose inhabitants eat frugally.

Likewise, the condition of the inhabitants within a single city differ according to the different distribution of luxury and abundance.

Those people who live a life of abundance and have all the good things to eat die more quickly than others when a drought or famine comes to them.

This is the case with:

• the Berbers of the Maghrib
• the inhabitants of the city of Fez and
• Egypt (Cairo).

It is not so with:

• the Arabs who inhabit waste regions and deserts
• the inhabitants of regions where the date palm grows and whose principal food is dates
• the present-day inhabitants of Ifriqiyah whose principal food is barley and olive oil
• the inhabitants of Spain whose principal food is durra and olive oil.

When a drought or a famine strikes them, it does not kill as many of them as of the other group of people, and few, if any, die of hunger.

This is because the stomachs of the wealthy are used to seasonings and, in particular, to butter. These acquire moisture over and above their basic constitutional moisture.

This makes the stomach weak. It soon dries out when eating habits are thwarted by:

• the lack of food or seasonings
• the use of coarse food that it is not accustomed to.

Sickness and sudden death are prompt consequences of these.

Those who die satiation, not of the hunger that now afflicts them for the first time.

In those who are accustomed to thirst and to doing without seasonings and butter, the basic moisture, which is good for all natural foods, always stays within its proper limits and does not increase.

Thus, their stomachs are not affected by dryness or intemperance in consequence of a change of nourishment.

As a rule, they escape the fate that awaits others on account of the abundance of their food and the great amount of seasonings in it.

The basic thing to know is that foodstuffs are matters of custom.

Whoever accustoms himself to a particular type of food that agrees with him becomes used to it.

He finds it painful to give it up or to make any changes in his diet, provided that the type of food is not something that does not fulfill the real purpose of food, such as poison, or alkaloids, or anything excessively intemperate.

Whatever can be used as food and is agreeable may be used as customary food.

If a man accustoms himself to the use of milk and vegetables instead of wheat, until the use of them gets to be his custom, milk and vegetables become for him his habitual food, and he definitely has no longer any need for wheat or grains.

The same applies to those who have accustomed themselves to suffer hunger and do without food. Such things are reported about trained ascetics.

We hear remarkable things about men of this type. Those who have no knowledge of things of the sort can scarcely believe them.

The explanation lies in custom. Once the soul gets used to something, it becomes part of its make-up and nature, because the soul is able to take on many colorings. If through gradual training it has become used to hunger, hunger becomes a natural custom of the soul.

The assumption of physicians that hunger causes death is not correct, except when a person is exposed suddenly to hunger and is entirely cut off from food.

Then, the stomach is isolated, and contracts an illness that may be fatal. When, however, the amount of food one eats is slowly decreased by gradual training, there is no danger of death. The adepts of Sufism practice such gradual abstinence from food.

Gradualness is also necessary when one gives up the training. Were a person suddenly to return to his original diet, he might die.

Therefore, he must end the training as he started it, that is, gradually.

We saw a person who had not eaten for more than 40 consecutive days. Our shaykhs were present at the court of Sultan Abul-Hasan when 2 women from Algeciras and Ronda were presented to him, They had abstained from all food for years.

The women continued this way until they died.

Many persons we used to know restricted themselves to (a diet of) goat’s milk. They drank from the udder sometime during the day or at breakfast.

This was their only food for fifteen years. There are many others who live similarly. It should not be considered unlikely.

Everybody who is able to suffer hunger or eat only little, is physically better off if he stays hungry than if he eats too much.

Hunger has a favorable influence on the health and well-being of body and intellect.

This may be exemplified by the different influence of various kinds of food upon the body.

Camel Milk and Dung

People who live on the meat of strong, large-bodied animals grow up as a strong and large-bodied race.

The same applies to persons who live on the milk and meat of camels. This influences their character, so that they become patient, persevering, and able to carry loads, as is the case with camels.

Their stomachs also grow to be healthy and tough as the stomachs of camels. They are not beset by any feebleness or weakness, nor are they affected by unwholesome food, as others are.

They may take strong alkaloid cathartics unadulterated to purify their bellies, such as, for instance, unripe colocynths, Thapsia garganica, and Euphorbia. Their stomachs do not suffer any harm from them.

The inhabitants of settled areas have stomachs that have become delicate because of their soft diet. If they were to partake of them, death would come to them instantly because these cathartics have poisonous qualities.

An indication of the influence of food on the body is a fact that has been mentioned by

Agricultural scholars have observed that when chickens feed on grain cooked in camel dung, they produce large chicks.

One does not even have to cook any grain to feed them. One merely smears camel dung on the eggs set to hatch, and the chickens that come out are extremely large.

Hunger also exercises an influence on bodies.

• It keeps it free from corrupt superfluities and mixed fluids that destroy body and intellect, in the same way that food influenced the (original) existence of the body.