Ode to Green Smoothie

As the Russian proverb says: New- is something old, that has been long forgotten. This summer I re-discovered green smoothies. What do I mean by green smoothie? Here is one of my favorite recipes: 4 ripe pears, 1 bunch of parsley and 1 big cup of water. Blended well. This smoothie looks very green, but it tastes like fruit. I like green smoothies so much that bought an extra blender and placed it in my office, so that I could make green smoothies throughout the day. More than half of all the food I’ve had in last several months have been green smoothies. I have so much more energy and clarity that I have removed green juices from my diet. (Juicing has been something that I’ve been doing regularly for years.) Green smoothies have numerous benefits for human health.

1. Green smoothies are very nutritious. I believe that the ratio in them is optimal for human consumption: about 60% - ripe organic fruit mixed with about 40% - organic green vegetables.

2. Green smoothies are easy to digest. When blended well, all the valuable nutrients in these fruits and veggies become homogenized, or divided into such small particles that it becomes easy for the body to assimilate these nutrients, the green smoothies literally start to get absorbed in your mouth.

3. Green smoothies, as a posed to juices, are a complete food because they still have fiber.

4. Green smoothies belong to the most palatable dishes for all humans of all ages. With a ratio of fruits to veggies as 60:40 the fruit taste dominates the flavor, yet at the same time the green vegetables balance out the sweetness of the fruit, adding nice zest to it. Green smoothies are simply the best tasting dishes for the majority of adults and children. I always make extra smoothie and offer it to my friends and customers. Some of them eat a standard American diet. They all finished their big cup of green smoothies with complements. They were quite surprised that something so green could taste so nice and sweet.

5. By consuming two or three cups of green smoothies daily you will consume enough of greens for the day to nourish your body, and they will be well assimilated. Many people do not consume enough of greens, even those who stay on a raw food diet. The molecule of chlorophyll has only one atom that makes it different from a molecule of human blood. According to teachings of Dr. Ann Wigmore, to consume chlorophyll is like receiving a healthy blood transfusion.

6. Green smoothies are easy to make, and quick to clean up after. Many people told me that they do not consume green juices on a regular basis because it is time consuming to prepare green juices and clean the equipment after juicing, or to drive to the juice bar.

7. Green smoothies are perfect food for children of all ages, including babies of six or more months old when introducing new food to them after mother’s milk. Of course you have to be careful and slowly increase the amount of smoothies to avoid food allergies.

8. When you consume your greens in the form of green smoothies, you can greatly reduce the consumption of oils and salt in your diet.

9. Regular consumption of Green smoothies forms a good habit of eating greens. Several people told me that after a couple of weeks of drinking green smoothies, they started to crave and enjoy eating more greens. Eating enough of green vegetable is often a problem with many people, especially in children.

10. Green smoothies can easily be freshly made at any juice bar, restaurant or health food store for the great convenience of health-oriented customers. Please bring a copy of this article to your local juice bar.

I encourage the readers of this article to start playing with green smoothies, and to discover the many joys and benefits of this wonderful delicious and nutritious addition to the menu.

Here are more ideas for your green creations.
Some of my favorite greens to add to green smoothies: parsley, spinach, celery, kale and romaine. My favorite fruits for green smoothies are: pears, peaches, nectarines, bananas, mangoes and apples. Strawberries and raspberries taste superb in green smoothies, when combined with ripe bananas.

Delicious combinations.

Mango-parsley
2 large mangos
1 bunch parsley
Water

Peach-spinach
6 peaches
2 handfuls of spinach leaves
Water

Mango-weeds
2 mangos
1 handful of lambs quarters, stinging nettles, purslane, etc
Water

Strawberry-banana-romaine
1-cup strawberries
2 bananas
1⁄2 bunch romaine
Water

Apple-kale-lemon
4 apples
1⁄2 lemon juice
4-5 leaves of kale
Water

Kiwi-banana-celery
4 very ripe kiwis
1 ripe banana
3 stalks of celery
Water

Pear-kale-mint
4 ripe pears
4-5 leaves of kale
1⁄2 bunch of mint
Water

Finger banana-spinach
10 finger-bananas
2 handfuls of spinach leaves
Water

Bosc pear-raspberry-kale
3 bosc pears
1 handful of raspberries
4-5 leaves of kale
Water

It is natural.

There is no need to hide it behind the beautiful word love. There is no need to create a cloud of romance around it.

Ninety-nine percent know sex only as a relief; they don't know its orgasmic quality.

Even if they think they are having an orgasm, it is not orgasm - it is just genital relief.

Orgasm has nothing to do with genitals as such. Genitals are involved in it, but orgasm is total - from the head to the toes, it is all over you.

What is orgasm?

Orgasm is a state where your body is no longer felt as matter; it vibrates like energy, electricity.

It vibrates so deeply, from the very foundation, that you completely forget that it is a material thing. It becomes an electric phenomenon.

Now physicists say that there is no matter, that all matter is only appearance; deep down, that which exists is electricity, not matter.

In orgasm, you come to this deepest layer of your body where matter no longer exists, just energy waves; you become a dancing energy, vibrating. There are no longer any boundaries to you - pulsating, but no longer substantial. And your beloved also pulsates.

Now, sexual orgasm needs time - the longer, the better; because then it will go deeper into your being, into your mind, into your soul.

Then it will spread from the toe to the head . . . every fiber of your being will be throbbing with it. Your whole body will become an orchestra and it will come to a crescendo.

But if you are in a hurry the orgasm becomes just an ejaculation, it is no more an orgasm. It is local and very tiny, almost meaningless. In fact you will feel tired, frustrated, depressed after it, because the energy is lost and it has not given you a bath, so it was just meaningless.

You remain the old - a little more tired, of course, with less energy of course, but you remain the same. It has not been a cleansing process, it has not thrilled you from corner to corner, from end to end.

Man always likes to enter the woman immediately.

He is not interested in foreplay because his positive pole is always ready. And women are always reluctant to enter into the sex act immediately, without any foreplay, because their negative pole is not ready. . . .

And man thinks the sex act is simple. Why waste time? Enter the woman immediately - and he is finished within minutes. But the woman was not a part, she was not aroused. . . .

When the woman remains cold, the man's orgasmic experience remains local, genital.

It does not reach to his soul, it does not reach to his whole body. All his cells are not thrilled, are not in a dance. It is poor, very poor.

It is a release, a relief, but not an orgasmic experience.

Make love only when there is tremendous desire and passion, otherwise simply say, "Excuse me, it is not there, so what is the point?"

Pretending is not good.

And if you stop pretending, you will find that your depth of love-making has increased very much.

Premature ejaculation is really not a sexual problem at all; it is more a psychological problem.

Physiologically there is nothing wrong but psychologically you are in a hurry, that very hurry creates premature ejaculation.

Why has man so many ways in relating - heterosexual, bisexual, one-to-one or in a group?

Man has freedom to choose.

And this choice can make you pathological or this choice can make you a Buddha.

Now it depends on you, how you use your freedom.

Sex has been called the original sin - it is neither original nor sin.

Up to now societies have been so much against sex - religions and churches against it - that they have created a very very unconscious hatred.

You may not be aware of it consciously, you may not see it anywhere in your mind so that you can detect it.

It has gone to the very roots of the body, to the gut level, because it has been centuries that people have been taught to be against sex.

That hatred has to be dropped, that hate and condemnation has to be dropped, and that can only be dropped if you start learning a reverence for sex.

We suppress movements. Particularly, all over the world, we suppress all movements, all shaking for women.

They remain just like dead bodies.

You are doing something to them; they are not doing anything to you. They are just passive partners.

Why is this happening? Why all over the world do men suppress women in such a way?

There is fear - because once a woman's body becomes possessed, it is very difficult for a man to satisfy her; because a woman can have chain orgasms; a man cannot have.

Any woman can have at least three orgasms in a chain, but man can have only one. And with a man's orgasm the woman is aroused and is ready for further orgasms.

Then it is difficult. Then how to manage it!

She needs another man immediately, and group sex is a taboo.

All over the world we have created monogamous societies. We seem to feel that it is better to suppress the woman.

So, really, 80% to 90% of women never know what orgasm is.

They can give birth to children; that is another thing. They can satisfy the man; that is also another thing. But they themselves are never satisfied.

So if you see such bitterness in women all over the world - sadness, bitterness, frustration - it is natural.

Their basic need is not fulfilled.

Because of three basic elements in sex, you come to a blissful moment.

Those three are, firstly, timelessness: you transcend time completely. There is no time. You forget time completely; time ceases for you. Not that time ceases: it ceases for you; you are not in it.

Secondly, in sex, for the first time you lose your ego; you become egoless. You are not, nor is there the other. You and your beloved are both lost into something else.

And thirdly, in sex you are natural for the first time. You are a part of nature - a part of trees, a part of the animals, a part of the stars - a part! You are immersed into something - the Cosmos, the Tao.

You cannot even swim in it; you are not. You are just floating - being taken by the current.

These three things give you ecstasy.

The future will have a totally different vision of sex.

It will be more fun, more joy; more friendship, more a play than a serious affair as it has

Whenever you are half-hearted in anything, it lingers longer.

If you are sitting at your table and eating, and if you eat only half-heartedly and your hunger remains, then you will continue to think about food the whole day. You can try fasting and you will see: you will continuously think about food. But if you have eaten well — and when I say eaten well, I don’t mean only that you have stuffed your stomach. Then it is not necessarily so that you have eaten well. You could have stuffed yourself. But eating well is an art. It is not just stuffing. It is great art: to taste the food, to smell the food, to touch the food, to chew the food, to digest the food, and to digest it as divine. It is divine; it is a gift from the divine.

Hindus say, Anam Brahma food is divine. So with deep respect you eat, and while eating you forget everything, because it is a prayer. It is an existential prayer. You are eating the divine and the divine is going to give you nourishment. It is a gift to be accepted with deep love and gratitude. And you don’t stuff the body, because stuffing the body is being anti-body. It is the other pole. There are people who are obsessed with fasting, and there are people who are obsessed with stuffing themselves. Both are wrong because in both the ways the body loses balance.

A real lover of the body eats only to the point where body feels perfectly quiet, balanced, tranquil; where body feels to be neither leaning to the left nor to the right, but just in the middle. It is an art to understand the language of the body, to understand the language of your stomach, to understand what is needed, to give only that which is needed, and to give that in an artistic way, in an aesthetic way.

Animals eat, man eats. Then what is the difference? Man makes a great aesthetic experience out of eating. What is the point of having a beautiful dining table? What is the point of having candles burning there? What is the point of incense? What is the point of asking friends to come and participate? It is to make it an art, not just stuffing. But these are outward signs of the art; the inward signs are to understand the language of your body: to listen to it, to be sensitive to its needs. And then you eat, and then the whole day you will not remember food at all. Only when the body is hungry again will the remembrance come. Then it is natural.

Yoga is a science. It is just an accident that Hindus discovered it. It is not Hindu. It is a pure mathematics of the inner being. So a Mohammedan can be a yogi, a Christian can be a yogi, a Jain, a Buddhhist can be a yogi. Yoga is pure science, and Patanjali is the greatest name as far as the world of Yoga is concerned. This man is rare. There is no name comparable to Patanjali. For the first time in the history of humanity, this man brought religion to the state of a science: he made religion a science, bare laws; no belief is needed.

So-called religions need beliefs. There is no other difference between one religion and another; the difference is only of beliefs. A Mohammedan has certain beliefs, a Hindu certain others, a Christian certain others. The difference is of beliefs. Yoga has nothing as far as belief is concerned. Yoga doesn’t say to believe in anything; Yoga says experience. Just as science says experiment, Yoga says experience. Experiment and experience are both the same; their directions are different. Experiment means something you can do outside; experience means something you can do inside. Experience is an inside experiment.

Science says: Don’t believe, doubt as much as you can. But also, don’t disbelieve because disbelief is again a sort of belief. You can believe in God, you can believe in the concept of no-God. You can say God is, with a fanatic attitude; you can say the quite reverse, that God is not, with the same fanaticism. Atheists, theists, are both believers, and belief is not the realm for science. Science means experience something, that which is; no belief is needed.

So the second thing to remember: Yoga is existential, experiential, experimental. No belief is required, no faith is needed...only the courage to experience. And that’s what’s lacking. You can believe easily because in belief you are not going to be transformed. Belief is something added to you, something superficial. Your being is not changed; you are not passing through some mutation. You may be a Hindu, you can become Christian the next day. Simply, you change: you change the Gita for a Bible. You can change it for a Koran, but the man who was holding the Gita and is now holding the Bible remains the same. He has changed his beliefs.

Beliefs are like clothes. Nothing substantial is transformed; you remain the same. Dissect a Hindu, dissect a Mohammedan, inside they are the same. He goes to a temple; the Mohammedan hates the temple. The Mohammedan goes to the mosque and the Hindu hates the mosque, but inside they are the same human beings.Belief is easy because you are not required really to do anything — just a superficial dressing, a decoration, something which you can put aside any moment you like.

Yoga is not belief. That’s why it is difficult, arduous, and sometimes it seems impossible. It is an existential approach. You will come to the truth, not through belief but through your own experience, through your own realization. That means you will have to be totally changed. Your viewpoints, your way of life, your mind, your psyche has to be shattered completely as it is. Something new has to be created. Only with that new will you come in contact with reality.

So Yoga is both a death and a new life.

As you are you will have to die, and unless you die the new cannot be born. The new is hidden in you. You are just a seed for it, and the seed must fall down and be absorbed by the earth. The seed must die; only then will the new arise out of you. Your death will become your new life. Yoga is both a death and a new birth. Unless you are ready to die, you cannot be reborn. So it is not a question of changing beliefs.

Yoga is not a philosophy. I say it is not a religion, I say it is not a philosophy. It is not something you can think about. It is something you will have to be; thinking won’t do.

Thinking goes on in your head. It is not really deep into the roots of your being; it is not your totality. It is just a part, a functional part; it can be trained. And you can argue logically, you can think rationally, but your heart will remain the same. Your heart is your deepest center, your head is just a branch. You can be without the head, but you cannot be without the heart. Your head is not basic.

Yoga is concerned with your total being, with your roots. It is not philosophical. So with Patanjali we will not be thinking, speculating. With Patanjali we will be trying to know the ultimate laws of being: the laws of its transformation, the laws of how to die and how to be reborn again, the laws of a new order of being. That is why I call it a science.

Patanjali is rare. He is an enlightened person like Buddha, like Krishna, like Christ, like Mahavira, Mohammed, Zarathustra, but he is different in one way. Buddha, Krishna, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Mohammed — no one has a scientific attitude. They are great founders of religions. They have changed the whole pattern of human mind and its structure, but their approach is not scientific.

Patanjali is like an Einstein in the world of buddhas. He is a phenomenon. He could have easily been a Nobel-Prize winner like an Einstein or Bohr or Max Planck, Heisenberg. He has the same attitude, the same approach of a rigorous scientific mind. He is not a poet; Krishna is a poet. He is not a moralist; Mahavira is a moralist. He is basically a scientist, thinking in terms of laws. And he has come to deduce absolute laws about the human being, the ultimate working structure of the human mind and reality.

If you follow Patanjali you will come to know that he is as exact as any mathematical formula. Simply do what he says and the result will happen. The result is bound to happen. It is just as two plus two become four. It is just as you heat water up to one hundred degrees and it evaporates. No belief is needed: you simply do it and know. It is something to be done and known. That’s why I say there is no comparison. On this earth, never a man has existed like Patanjali.

You can find in Buddha’s utterances, poetry...bound to be there. Many times while Buddha is expressing himself he becomes poetic. The realm of ecstasy, the realm of ultimate knowing is so beautiful, the temptation is so much to become poetic. The beauty is such, the benediction is such, the bliss is such that one starts talking in poetic language.

But Patanjali resists that. It is very difficult. No one has been able to resist. Jesus, Krishna, Buddha — they all become poetic. The splendor, the beauty, when it explodes within you...you will start dancing, you will start singing. In that state you are just like a lover who has fallen in love with the whole universe.

Patanjali resists that. He will not use poetry; he will not use a single poetic symbol even. He will not do anything with poetry; he will not talk in terms of beauty. He will talk in terms of mathematics. He will be exact, and he will give you maxims. Those maxims are just indications what is to be done. He will not explode into ecstasy; he will not say things that cannot be said; he will not try the impossible.

He will just put down the foundation, and if you follow the foundation you will reach the peak which is beyond. He is a rigorous mathematician — remember this.