What is the most intimate physical act?
What is the most intimate mental act?
What is the most intimate thing you can share with someone else?
I don’t know what your answers were to the above questions, but I will tell you what the most intimate is…
The most intimate thing you can do is to eat something prepared by someone else. When a person cooks something, it is not just the ingredients getting combined and heated together to produce something… the consciousness of that cook quite literally descends into whatever they are making.
This is why something that your mother or grandmother made can never be replicated by anyone else.
So when a person cooks, especially with grains, then every single element of their consciousness enters into the food they are preparing.
Every source of jubilation
Every source of anger
Every source of sorrow
Every single source of satisfaction
And Frustration
Every hope, desire, longing
Every single fear, every single moment of embarrassment
Every intention, every belief, every single trait
It is all there in that food they have prepared.
It is all there, in what you eat.
Consciousness, you eat
And you are eating it. You will imbibe it all, all their joys and sorrows, their satisfaction and their frustration, every single one of their hopes, desires, and longing will be in your heart too. Every single fear and moments of embarrasmens, every single intention and belief, their very character descends in your heart.
And there it all mixes and mingles with all the other consciousness you have imbibed, from all the other food you have eaten in your life.
Sri Krishna Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said
viṣayīra anna khāile duṣṭa haya mana
Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in https://vedabase`.io/en/library/cc/adi/12/50/
Srila Prabhupadw writes in the purport to that verse…
It is very risky to accept money or food from materialistic persons, for such acceptance pollutes the mind of the charity’s recipient…In fact, a Vaiṣṇava should not even accept charity or food from persons who do not follow the rules and regulations of the Vaiṣṇava principles.
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, in purport to https://vedabase.io/en/library/cc/adi/12/50/
My grandparents never used to eat outside in restaurants, etc. This was exactly for this reason, that they did not want to pollute their consciousness.
Do you know who works in those restaurants? Do you know what goes on there? Do you know the character of your cook? You should, because you are about to eat his consciousness, quite literally.
Next time you feel tempted to order take-out or go to some fancy restaurant or even a fast-food place, remember, you are buying more than just a plate of food. You are inviting all those people who work there to come and sit in your heart, feed you their thoughts and desires… it could be a lot more than you bargained for.
Before the pandemic, there were more than 70,000 restaurants in Canada alone. In the United States there were over 660,000 restaurants! Just think of how many meals of darkness are being spread? How many are inside you?
It is no use of course, to tell someone not to do something without giving them an alternative!
The ideal would be to take food prepared by an advanced spiritualist in sacrifice to God. Not meat or other dirty things, but clean pure vegetarian foodstuffs, prepared in a clean state of body and mind, clear consciousness, and in loving devotion to Krishna. The person should be cooking only to please God, not for money or any other such mundane reason.
But there are various grades of consciousness, try to find the person with the best consciousness then.
Of course, you can try cooking yourself. Cooking for God is such as wonderful loving personal service to God. Why don’t you try it?
Servant of the Servant of the Servant of God 