Read Online Walking Through Walls by Philip Smith - Free Book Online
Authors: Philip Smith
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swallowing. This was an idea that he found in one of his ancient books on yoga philosophy: âAll digestion begins in the mouth. The enzymes in your saliva must thoroughly mix with your food so that you can extract optimal nutrition from everything you eat.â Each meal became a major project in the reconstruction of the body and mind.
I alternated between being curious and being totally uninterested in Popâs evolving diet fanaticism. At times I wanted to be a supreme thirteen-year-old yogi, and at other times I wanted to be a typical kid and eat as many Snickers bars as I could. Every so often I joined Pop on a ten-day fast, which pushed my already skinny body toward emaciation. He had convinced me that I needed to purge myself of all toxins, which, left untreated, would eventually induce disease and death. During the first three days of any fast, I felt dizzy, unable to concentrate, and horribly hungry. Mom usually ignored any dietary extremism on our parts and continued to eat as she always had. She categorized these dietary adventures as a type of father and son outing.
I begged Pop to let me stay at home during a fast. Nope. I had to go to school, as fasting was supposed to be part of oneâs everyday life and nothing out of the ordinary. By the fifth or sixth day, I emerged from the clouds with a sense of mental clarity and a renewed stream of physical energy. On Saturdays we visited Nancy, the colonic specialist in a crisp white uniform, who irrigated my young colon with a big smile.
My normal appetite was always being curtailed, either through fasts or the dictum that the stomach should never be completely full. While other kids stuffed themselves with sweets and hamburgers, I had to carefully calibrate my eating according to strict yogic principles so that at the end of any meal my stomach would be filled with one-third food, one-third liquid, and one-third air.
During this time of various fasts, my father frequently mentioned his goal of eventually becoming a breatharian, a practitioner of an esoteric form of yoga. This was one of the few goals that, fortunately, he never achieved. Breatharians are those who have refined their bodyâs mental and metabolic processes to the point where they are able to live solely off rarefied magnetic particles in the air known as prana. They breathe, but they do not eat. I could just see us at dinner parties as the hostess passed along her favorite dish: âNo thanks, weâll just have some airâ or âWeâre already full from breathing.â
These ongoing fasts seemed to be the official launching pad for my fatherâs grand philosophical search. Possibly the lack of food altered his brain chemistry and encouraged him to begin asking larger, deeper questions about his own life. He began an aggressive reading program on every aspect of esoteric spirituality. In order to keep up, he enrolled both of us in the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Dynamics made popular by the late President Kennedy. So many books, so little time. At night we would sit in class moving our fingers across and down pages while supposedly retaining everything we read at a thousand words a minute.
In 1966 he began reading everything he could about the philosophy of yoga, which led to an interest in reincarnation. One metaphysical topic led to another. Over time his exploration of the arcane began to unfold as if he were following a well-defined syllabus. His esoteric books were not easily purchased. To obtain these long-out-of-print titles, Pop patiently wrote letters of inquiry to small, dusty bookstores in New York or London that specialized in wacky, hard-to-find books. Most of these were published in the early 1920s during the last great wave of interest in spiritualist matters. Weeks and often months passed between when he mailed his request and the time he found a package wrapped in brown paper and string waiting in our mailbox.
Through his readings, Pop became
I alternated between being curious and being totally uninterested in Popâs evolving diet fanaticism. At times I wanted to be a supreme thirteen-year-old yogi, and at other times I wanted to be a typical kid and eat as many Snickers bars as I could. Every so often I joined Pop on a ten-day fast, which pushed my already skinny body toward emaciation. He had convinced me that I needed to purge myself of all toxins, which, left untreated, would eventually induce disease and death. During the first three days of any fast, I felt dizzy, unable to concentrate, and horribly hungry. Mom usually ignored any dietary extremism on our parts and continued to eat as she always had. She categorized these dietary adventures as a type of father and son outing.
I begged Pop to let me stay at home during a fast. Nope. I had to go to school, as fasting was supposed to be part of oneâs everyday life and nothing out of the ordinary. By the fifth or sixth day, I emerged from the clouds with a sense of mental clarity and a renewed stream of physical energy. On Saturdays we visited Nancy, the colonic specialist in a crisp white uniform, who irrigated my young colon with a big smile.
My normal appetite was always being curtailed, either through fasts or the dictum that the stomach should never be completely full. While other kids stuffed themselves with sweets and hamburgers, I had to carefully calibrate my eating according to strict yogic principles so that at the end of any meal my stomach would be filled with one-third food, one-third liquid, and one-third air.
During this time of various fasts, my father frequently mentioned his goal of eventually becoming a breatharian, a practitioner of an esoteric form of yoga. This was one of the few goals that, fortunately, he never achieved. Breatharians are those who have refined their bodyâs mental and metabolic processes to the point where they are able to live solely off rarefied magnetic particles in the air known as prana. They breathe, but they do not eat. I could just see us at dinner parties as the hostess passed along her favorite dish: âNo thanks, weâll just have some airâ or âWeâre already full from breathing.â
These ongoing fasts seemed to be the official launching pad for my fatherâs grand philosophical search. Possibly the lack of food altered his brain chemistry and encouraged him to begin asking larger, deeper questions about his own life. He began an aggressive reading program on every aspect of esoteric spirituality. In order to keep up, he enrolled both of us in the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Dynamics made popular by the late President Kennedy. So many books, so little time. At night we would sit in class moving our fingers across and down pages while supposedly retaining everything we read at a thousand words a minute.
In 1966 he began reading everything he could about the philosophy of yoga, which led to an interest in reincarnation. One metaphysical topic led to another. Over time his exploration of the arcane began to unfold as if he were following a well-defined syllabus. His esoteric books were not easily purchased. To obtain these long-out-of-print titles, Pop patiently wrote letters of inquiry to small, dusty bookstores in New York or London that specialized in wacky, hard-to-find books. Most of these were published in the early 1920s during the last great wave of interest in spiritualist matters. Weeks and often months passed between when he mailed his request and the time he found a package wrapped in brown paper and string waiting in our mailbox.
Through his readings, Pop became
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