Question: I Fasted For Six Days, And...

Question: I fasted for six days, and now I feel more inner peace and that a lot of wrong forces have left me. Is there a connection between fasting or losing weight and wrong forces leaving the body?

Sri Chinmoy: Losing weight is good, but you cannot say that the thinnest people are the most pure people on earth! Some people carry extra weight, absolutely unnecessary weight. If they lose weight, then along with their physical lightness, the mind becomes lighter and more clarity enters into the mind. Another thing is cheerfulness. Let us say you are carrying twenty or thirty pounds extra, and then you lose it. How much cheerfulness enters your mind! When cheerfulness enters into the mind, it destroys many negative forces. If you are cheerful, many, many lower vital forces you can conquer. Cheerfulness has tremendous, tremendous strength. So from that point of view, it is true that if you lose weight, wrong forces leave you, but you cannot say that just by losing weight all lower forces will be conquered.