About Cooking & Food Like Medicine 67HAG5
From talk in The Hague, May 12, 1967
"Suppose you are cooking – no matter what it is that you are cooking – when your hands move, it is as if you are guided. The result is that the dishes you produce are really delicious; their taste is unequalled. Conversely, if you are cooking without your hand being guided, if you are cooking with your own will, even some times using recipes where you look up how to cook this and that, the dishes you produce will not taste delicious at all.
Bapak is not criticising those who have not yet found the way to cook delicious food. It is just an illustration. Once you have been able to receive this, it can happen that you take a piece of bread and butter it and add nothing else: ‘Here, John,’ – or whatever your husband is called – ‘Eat this.’
‘It’s divine!’
And yet it is bread and butter. It could even be that there is hardly any butter left. That is something Bapak has experienced.
Now, Bapak is going to be honest with you, brothers and sisters. It is not that he is ungrateful if you invite him out to eat with you – he will always say thank you – but no matter how they cook in a restaurant, the food is not delicious at all. Really. Bapak feels as if he has already eaten. He has barely eaten anything and he already feels full. Well, what do you expect, if it tastes like that? And why is that? It is because the food they have cooked contains nothing but their desires.
That is why in earlier generations – not just in Indonesia, maybe in other places as well, perhaps here too – people used to say, ‘While you are cooking do not talk a lot. Don’t tell stories and don’t talk about this and that. Above all don’t use a recipe; you mustn’t do that. Be silent and worship God in your heart. Then your cooking will be filled with delight.’
And not just with delight: the reality is that those people are then no longer the servants of the food; the food becomes their servant. When food is truly delicious because it is filled with God’s will, and you happen to be short of something, what you are short of will come by itself. It does not mean that the food comes on its own – in Indonesia they say ‘it comes thanks to God’ – it just comes from somewhere. That continually happens, according to Bapak’s experience.
But it is even worse when you eat food that has been cooked by someone who has been quarrelling beforehand. Not only will it not taste good and not benefit the inner feeling of those who eat it, but also it will not quieten their heart and feelings.
So it is clear that the purpose of cooking with God’s power filling your hands is not just to make food taste delicious, but is also very useful and beneficial for those who eat it. For instance, your husband: when he eats the food that you have cooked through quietness, patience and the guidance of God, it will be like a medicine for any unpleasant feelings he may have from his constant work. His heart and mind that are unsettled will become calm. If he is sick, he may recover just from eating your cooking.
Besides curing your husband’s illnesses when he is unwell and calming his heart and thoughts when they are in turmoil because of some trouble, there will be another amazing thing about food that you cook in this way, through the guidance of God. It is that the food will attract more food, as if they are pulling each other along in a chain. Put simply, Bapak can say that good fortune will come to you. It follows that you will never be short of food; you will always have food because it will be attracted to you. Why is that? It is because even though it is just food, it has a soul. It has a vegetable and an animal soul. "