Addressing the need of the world today, Hazrat Inayat Khan has begun by addressing the physical aspects, such as food, cleanliness, and the manner of living. He speaks here of ‘outdoor’ life, by which he means ‘outside the home.’ The first post in the series is here.

On one side science is making a great headway in finding out the various diseases, and perhaps their remedies. But at the same time the diseases are increasing because of the life lived in towns and crowded place, and the food stored in tins and in barrels, the meat perhaps sent from one country to another, and after so many months it arrives. By this unnatural food people become ill, and that illness spreads. On the one side science is improving, on the other side the life is going down. There have not been so many diseases in the ancient times as one finds today. A man may think that perhaps the ancient physicians did not find out so many diseases, but that is not true. The life was more natural.

It is a great question whether meat is a desirable thing to be allowed to be eaten as a food every day, and the answer is that there are many sides to that question.  There are places such as the deserts of Sahara, of Arabia and Syria, where vegetables are not to be found, where man cannot live without meat. Many have asked why the Prophet Mohammed did not prohibit his followers from eating meat, and the same answer may be given.  And not only that; the animals that are used by mankind for meat, if they were not used by mankind, they would be used by lions and tigers, and there would be many more lions and tigers in the world. But at the same time vegetable food is by every means advisable and desirable for the health in every way, if only the vegetable food is fresh and clean. If  decayed, if the vegetables are bad, it is worse that meat, because there again life begins to show itself in the form of insects, and it is just the same or perhaps even worse, when the vegetables are not fresh enough to eat. Very often by eating vegetables people get illnesses; many different insects become born in vegetables, and the consequence is that illness comes.

Besides this, the outdoor life, which may be called the restaurant life, is becoming more fashionable for the rich and for the well-to-do, and home life, which is the ideal life, is being neglected. Today there seems to be an increasing tendency toward restaurant life, which is now turning into what they call club life.  

This is quite contrary to what at one time the Brahmins did. The Brahmins believed in keeping their kitchens so pure and clean that no outsider could enter into their kitchens; they considered food something so sacred, a symbol of spiritual food on the earth, that no outsider should touch it, for they did not know what he was doing before, where he was coming from, or what influence he was bringing. And the one who cooked the food must be a Brahmin also, which means he must be of the same thought; he must not be a person of inferior thought. An inferior person must not cook for a superior person, as the latter’s stage of evolution demands a person of his own stage to cook for him – or he himself will cook it. And then they ate on leaves and they sat on little boards, not on carpets or things which could have the germs of those who come and go, but clean boards, washed every day, on which they sat separately, not touching each other, and they were helped [i.e. served] with their own hands, and the dinner was served on leaves, in the bowls made of leaves the liquid food was served, no spoons or forks to be washed in the same thing, perhaps having been eaten with by a hundred or a thousand people in the same restaurant, and wiped by the same towel, and who knows! Cooked by whom, what evolution that person was, in what attitude he was at the time he cooked.

Now man is looking for the life in the restaurants; a person thinks that it is a great deal of trouble to arrange food at home, that it is much better to go out. Even if they have a home, they want to go out to dine, or dine at a club, which is a miniature restaurant again. All these things bring about a tendency to a life far removed from hygienic principles, although there is so much talk going on about hygienic food and what one should eat.

The conventionalities of the day are becoming greater.  For one meal there are so many things that are to be washed and cleaned afterward, that life becomes burdensome. If there are ten people living in a family, they have a boy, a laundryman to clean the table linen. If one only knew how life could be made simple, it would not only be less work and trouble, but more hygienic, less expense and less trouble, less responsibility. How many people there are in the world today, who, owing to the greater complexity of food, do not wish to establish a home; they wish to eat outside, just as students and travellers. There was a time in the East when students and travellers would consider it the greatest joy if they had to cook for themselves. Even the princes were taught, as one of their occupations in life, to cook for themselves. Whom can you trust more than yourself, and who can know properly what you want? When a person is master of his choice he may cook every day what he wants. Nobody else knows what he wishes. When a person is always dependent upon others for his food, which is the principal thing in life, he does not live a life. In this direction he lives mechanically; he does not know life. He must have his free choice to cook what he wants, or whether he wishes to eat or not, it must be his choice. One day, if he wishes to go without food, he can do so. One day if he wishes to eat something with people that day, he can do so, or to make a concoction of certain things, why not make it?

To be continued…