This program discusses the possibility of breatharianism, or living without eating food, and is not a full instruction. For your safety, please do not attempt to cease eating without proper expert guidance. For your safety, please do not attempt to cease eating without proper expert guidance.

Today’s Between Master and Disciples – “Oberom C. Silva: Returning to Our Divine Self through Breatharianism” – will be presented in Portuguese with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech-Slovak, English, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, and Thai.

In scriptures, the human body is often referred to as the temple of God. Yet, it is quite an uncommon privilege for any soul to attain this sacred abode that houses the Divine, as it is truly a blessing to be reborn as a human being. On several occasions, Supreme Master Ching Hai has spoken about the rarity of this phenomenon:

To be reincarnated in the human world is hard. You have to have enough Human Quality. You have to have affinity with the parents and with the society, with the people around which you are born. Very difficult. To be a human, you need some merit. You have done something good in the past in order to be able to pick a human birth.

As a living temple of God, the human body is fully equipped with miraculous wonders that can be awakened in those who are spiritually conscious and have complete faith in the Creator of all life. Inedia, Latin for “fasting,” is the human ability to live without food. Since time immemorial, there have always been individuals who can sustain themselves on prana, or the vital life force. Through the grace of the Providence, inediates, people who follow a food-free lifestyle, can draw the energy from nature to nourish themselves:

They live on the chi from the ground, or from the forest, and from the sun and from the air. They make use of all that. Or they live on love, on faith alone. These individuals are known as breatharians (pranarians or inediates), solarians, or waterians, and they come from all walks of life, from different cultures, and all corners of the world.

Indeed, the possibilities and miracles in this life as our benevolent Creator has designed for us are endless; we only need to connect within to recognize our abounding largess as God’s children. Supreme Master Ching Hai has lovingly recommended a weekly series on Supreme Master Television to introduce those individuals of the past and present who have chosen to live food-free on Earth. May their spiritual stories enthrall you; may hearts be opened, and horizons be expanded. We now invite you to join us for part 2 of our 4-part program, “Oberom C. Silva: Returning to Our Divine Self through Breatharianism,” on Between Master and Disciples.

Greetings, generous viewers. Today, we return once again to the vast and multifaceted country of Brazil in Latin America to speak with Oberom Silva, a big-hearted breatharian who has a profound respect for life. Oberom has been food-free for nine years. Growing up in a family that respects life wherein all members adhere to this principle through their plant-based dietary lifestyle, Oberom was receptive very early on to the more exalted values of human life.

My parents came from São Paulo, the capital, a metropolis recognized today as a center for opportunities, and discovered that it did not fit with what they saw as being true to continue the path of life, which they understood as a goal to be incarnated here and it went far beyond having a good job, good salary… of everything that people are looking for there. So they decided to go to the countryside, to the south of Minas Gerais, to have a family far away from the principles of competition, of fear...

All the children, and not few in number, follow the same ideal, have the same perception of life, of the world, toward work, love… to stimulate the love in our daily life with people. Not so much as to talk about love but live the love and understand that our example speaks much louder than our words. So when we encountered the pranic consciousness or living on light back then, it was a general recognition, for the whole family.

After Oberom’s mother started the transition toward living on prana, her physical transformation was a wonder to behold. So my mother went through the pranic process with all the beliefs, which were reflected in her process. Six months later, my brother, a year younger, entered the process two days after I went through the process. Two weeks later, my sister started the process; two days after that my father began the process. Four processes, and my mother was assisting. It was very strong for her because she's a nurturing kind of person, and suddenly she was seeing that in some way, the natural function was cut off.

And we saw that somehow was changed going through with her process, because at the time when she went through the transitioning process, she was a woman, a mother of six children with forty-some years… stressed. The stress reflected on her body: she had more weight, looked tired, low on energy but always very spiritual and everything, but she lacked this blessing. So when she did it (transitioning to breatharianism), she simply became beautiful, externally and internally. You could see in the eyes this change. And I joked that I don’t have a boring mom anymore, and instead gained a cool, older sister. Seeing the amazing changes in his mother after she had adopted the food-free lifestyle, Oberom, along with other members of his family, decided to undergo the transitioning process as well.

So this relationship of being connected to the umbilical cord, we became more close knit in love, and this, the process itself, it was like a large experiment in our case, because some time later, a brother did the process, at 14 years of age and then a another sister did the process, at thirteen years old. So there were several family members, except the little one who also wanted to do it but was stopped from doing it, that was living that experience.

So it was interesting for us to see ourselves as test tubes, because there is no manual that describes when this happens, you have to do that. Then there was that issue of internalization, of silence and realization, hearing the answers coming from within. We know that the consciousness accesses everything; it is everything. So it was very interesting that we awakened more of these things which we believe: “we are one,” “we create our reality” – all these clichés, we live it in practice. Truly! We made the body's cells realize this, that it’s not just a beautiful theory.

While undergoing the 21-day transition process to breatharianism, Oberom was already experiencing some physical benefits. However, it was the divine connection that was the driving force for his determination to live on prana.

My diet before was based on volume, but always observing the non-suffering. Of course, I didn’t know that a lactose diet is very similar to the suffering of animals, maybe due to ignorance. I feel I've passed through without suffering, but in ignorance. When we heard about this possibility, for me it was a strong possibility of gaining this experience of really feeling that I am nourished by God. That was very strong for me. As a young man of 17 years of age at that time, it was truly fantastic; also the benefits that the imagination created about the non-eating factor.

I was an athlete, which I stopped during my 21-day period, and more or less about a month and a half, actually three months, of recovering, re-establishing myself, until three months later I had two pounds more than I had before the process, but in muscle mass, and spare energy to return to a handball court, to run 8,7 miles in Minas Gerais, riding a bike uphill and downhill as training, and to do capoeira and athletic activities, just drinking juice, and living on prana three times a week and doing all that. So it motivated me a lot.

It was a very strong motivation, but the main one, which is the same for the whole family, is this possibility to be closer to God or this consciousness. This was the biggest motivation really. The 21-day process was a journey of self-discovery for Oberom, one in which the experience left a deep and unforgettable impression.

How was this process of 21 days, do you have any interesting memory that you can comment on? You see, the process was very smooth. What draws the most attention as well, from what I recall… I actually have a good memory with respect to it. Various details, for example the first week,

spending 24 hours wide awake and learning how to deal with it; realizing the patterns of the ego, discerning where the ego is, where is the conscience; moving away from the command of the ego, of the future and past that brought suffering in that situation, and entering the moment where there was suffering. Learning this through practical experience makes all the difference. So this was a great school.

And another thing that calls a lot of attention and which is worth mentioning is that about the second and third week, I saw God in everything. Everything was love, I wanted to embrace everything. Sometimes people say this is a releasing of endorphin – it could be, but the issue is that I saw everything more colorful, and the experience of being filled with love and happiness was very clear. The transitioning process for Oberom became challenging after an initial period of smooth sailing.

My first day without eating anything was before the process; my preparation was on a Sunday. One day I woke up ready to eat absolutely nothing, but with all my mental patterns about what could happen. Said and done, I had a day with a little headache, sometimes feeling weak, and I woke up the next day with almost no strength to get out of bed. In contrast to the transitioning process, when I started the process, my first day seemed like a normal day, my second day seemed to be normal, my third day seemed like a normal day. On my fourth day, the issue of sleep started to bother me and I began to realize my strong ego on the fourth day.

Then the issue of food, from my first days of my process – very, very smooth. I had the experience of food as a vehicle of emotional fulfillment, a valve when our emotional field is shaken, and I had a break in a relationship and I did not stop to observe, did not stop to connect or to surround myself with this consciousness of who I am. I entered inside the ego, going deep into the ego and I said, “It is up to you,” and he (the ego) punished me with feelings that he’d like to have.

So it was a time after three years living within that consciousness, I found myself eating to fill an emotional hole, and it was a very cool experience, looking back today, because my physical endurance dropped immediately. In the beginning, I had a cold immediately after going back to eating solids. I felt more dense to the subtle perceptions. My thoughts were invasive, messy, noisy, and this stirred up in my behavior as a person. So it was a worthwhile experience, and today I learned a lot from it.

It has been a pleasure to have your charming presence for this episode of Between Master and Disciples. Join us again next Sunday when we continue with part 3 of “Oberom C. Silva: Returning to Our Divine Self through Breatharianism.” Coming up next is Good People, Good Works, after Noteworthy News. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television. With gratefulness, may our planet and all beings continue to be immersed in Heaven’s boundless mercy.

For more information about Oberom and his work, please contact: Literature on Living Food-free

Oberom Silva is a teacher, author, council member of the Brazilian Association of Alternative Communites (ABRASCA), and an administrator for the Ecological Diversity and Regeneration- Friendly Movement (MADRE). He is also a breatharian.

It is possible to access possibilities beyond the non-eating, perhaps beyond the human understanding, such as the dematerialization of the body and re-materialization of the body, freely, and the non-eating state is a small matter.

Tune in to Supreme Master Television on Sunday, January 30, for our program, “Oberom C. Silva: Returning to Our Divine Self through Breatharianism,” on Between Master and Disciples.

Tune in to Supreme Master Television today for our program, “Oberom C. Silva: Returning to Our Divine Self through Breatharianism,” on Between Master and Disciples.