How do I purify my senses?

Somebody asked Swamiji, ‘So how can I heal myself and how can I come down to the senses?’

Shankara gives a beautiful technique to bring us down to the senses. He says aahara shuddhi, cleansing of the diet. It means, censor whatever you are adding into your system!

When I say aahara, I do not mean just food that you eat, no! Even television is aahara, whatever you are feeding in through the eyes. Whatever you eat through the eyes is also aahara. Similarly, whatever you listen through the ears, is also aahara and whatever you experience through your hands and legs is aahara.

Just for a month, decide that you will be on diet: a diet not just with what you eat but with whatever you swallow, everything; a diet on whatever you swallow through each of the senses.

The other day I was reading a very strange but very funny article in a magazine related to food and diet. They say that people sit and eat during TV programs; watching TV and filling themselves. And they don’t know how much is put in front of the table. The moment the program is over, the table is also over. There is a study about the relationship between eating and watching television. They say that if the program is too violent, the quantity of food that goes inside is high because our body feels highly violent. So we tend to swallow left and right and we do not know what we are putting inside.

Not only with regards to the food which we eat, even with the ideas which we take inside, even with the things which we put inside, aahara shuddhi is the best way to bring us down to the senses, to bring us to reality, to make us simple, blissful and down to earth.