ABIDING IN THE BODY OF LIVING BEINGS AS VAISHVAANARA — The same Supreme Consciousness expresses Itself as the warmth-of-life in all living creatures. That physical structure from which all warmth has gone, is dead. Metabolism creates the body-heat and the functions of the inner organisms continue automatically without any conscious effort on the part of the individual, so long as LIFE is pulsating in the body.

Here, the Eternal Reality is indicated as that mighty LIFE, which, when pulsating through the body, manifests Itself as the ‘digestive fire’ (Vaishvaanara), which assimilates all the food taken in.

I DIGEST THE FOUR-FOLD FOOD — The digestive power in a healthy living organism assimilates all types of food. The entire variety of human diet is classified under four heads in Sanskrit as food that should be (i) masticated, (ii) swallowed, (iii) sucked, and (iv) licked. Under these four types, we can embrace all kinds of food, vegetarian and non-vegetarian, prepared and unprepared, raw and ripe. All things consumed by the mouth are digested, assimilated and absorbed because of the digestive system and the power in the digestive system is nothing but a manifestation of the All-present Life Principle.

ASSOCIATED WITH PRANA AND APANA — The two physiological functions of “perception” and of “excretion” in all living creatures are called Prana and Apana. Here, however, these terms can be considered in their broadest general sense. Not only does the Consciousness, as the ‘digestive fire,’ assimilate the food that has reached the stomach, but is again Life manifested as the peristaltic movement (Prana) that receives and rolls down the food swallowed, through the oesophagus into the stomach. After digesting, assimilating and absorbing food, it is again the same Divine Spark-of-Life that gives the intestines its capacity to throw out (Apana) the undigested and unnecessary by-products. In short, it is the Lord that helps us to swallow the food, it is the Lord that assimilates the food, and it is the Lord again that presides over the function of eliminating the by-products.

MOREOVER:

Bhutva, taking the form of; vaisvanarah, Vaisvanara, the fire in the stomach, mentioned in such Upanisadic texts as, ‘This fire that is within man and digests the food (that is eaten) is Vaisvanara’ (Br. 5.9.1); becoming that Vaisvanara, and asritah, residing in, entering; deham, the bodies; praninam, of creatures, of living beings; aham, I Myself; prana-apana-samayuktah, in association [i.e. kindled, inflamed, by Prana and Apana.] with Prana and Apana; [Prana-that vital force which goes upward and has its seat really in the heart (cf. Tai. Br. 3.10.8.5), but it said to be located at the tip of the nose since its presence is directly felt there. Apana-that vital force which goes downward, below the navel, and has its seat in the organs of excertion.-Tr.] pacami, digest; the caturvidham, four kinds of; annam, food-those that are eaten by masticating, swallowing, sucking and licking. The eater is the fire called Vaisvanara, and the eaten is the food Soma. One who looks upon all that there is as being these two, fire and Soma, is not affected by the impurity of food. Further,