This program discusses the possibility of breatharianism, or living without eating food, and is not a full instruction. For your safety, please do not attempt to cease eating without proper expert guidance.

In scriptures, the human body is often referred to as the temple of God. Yet, it is quite an uncommon privilege for any soul to attain this sacred abode that houses the Divine, as it is truly a blessing to be reborn as a human being. On several occasions, Supreme Master Ching Hai has spoken about the rarity of this phenomenon:

To be reincarnated in the human world is hard. You have to have enough Human Quality. You have to have affinity with the parents and with the society, with the people around which you are born. Very difficult. To be a human, you need some merit. You have done something good in the past in order to be able to pick a human birth.

As a living temple of God, the human body is fully equipped with miraculous wonders that can be awakened in those who are spiritually conscious and have complete faith in the Creator of all life. Inedia, Latin for “fasting,” is the human ability to live without food. Since time immemorial, there have always been individuals who can sustain themselves on prana, or the vital life force. Through the grace of the Providence, inediates, people who follow a food-free lifestyle, can draw the energy from nature to nourish themselves:

They live on the chi from the ground, or from the forest, and from the sun and from the air. They make use of all that. Or they live on love, on faith alone.

These individuals are known as breatharians (pranarians or inediates), solarians, or waterians, and they come from all walks of life, from different cultures, and all corners of the world.

Indeed, the possibilities and miracles in this life as our benevolent Creator has designed for us are endless; we only need to connect within to recognize our abounding largess as God’s children. Supreme Master Ching Hai has lovingly recommended a weekly series on Supreme Master Television to introduce those individuals of the past and present who have chosen to live food-free on Earth. May their spiritual stories enthrall you; may hearts be opened, and horizons be expanded. We now invite you to join us for part 4 of our 4-part program entitled, “Elitom ben Yisrael: Breatharianism for a Working Person,” on Between Master and Disciples.

For your safety, please do not attempt to cease eating without proper expert guidance.

Gracious viewers, Thank you for joining us as we return once again to Ohio, USA, to speak with Elitom ben Yisrael who will give us a little more insight into the first days of his lifestyle as a breatharian.

Did you ever feel the need to talk to someone about what you were doing?

In the beginning stages I did, but once I got the negativity because I came up where it was nowhere around – that knowledge wasn’t even there – so it was a quick door shut from every direction. So it made it hard for me. I had to go, “How am I going to recreate this, deal with it until I can bring it forth and it gets stronger?” So, in the initial stages there wasn’t really nobody to talk to.

So it’s like a calling inside that’s so strong you’re going to do it no matter what? Yes.

Where did you get this inner strength to just trust that everything will be okay? How did you have so much faith?

Actually, when I started noticing the aches and pains in my body going into my later 20s – didn’t know what it was, tried to deal with it, went to the doctor, he handed me some medication. But then I ran into somebody who just said, “Leave meats alone,” that caught me right away so I went into it. What else am I going to do? And then when I started seeing the improvements of the body through diet and the body started healing itself, then that got me on the avenue to understand more about what goes into the body-and-food period.

So I started taking it to higher levels to learn more and more and more. You start seeing the body bring forth new benefits, of energy, of health, vitality, so then, right there, that’s the motivation, the inner strength, the courage to keep on going. And then you start running into, “Well, how I do suppose to die? Do I suppose to die from liver ailments, cancer, strokes, diabetes? They’re all preventive energies that’s brought forth by a habit, but that’s out there, won’t you just quit the habit?” And maybe you can live longer and enjoy more fruits of life because you start loving life. You love life.

Did you keep a diary to document this journey you were taking?

Yes. Actually, I got quite a library that I wrote myself, not only dealing with the 21-day process – even dealing with different things you go through. Like I said, I did many experiments with myself,

“What will happen if you eat this?” I even got things documented where one minute I’m eating all oranges, all throughout the week, just eating oranges, eating oranges, then all of a sudden I get a 100% orange juice out the machine and all of a sudden I felt the negativity of energy just from going from something that simple. I had all of these high motivations to do this and do that, and that just took it all out of me. So the food alchemy piece – everything you put in your body, dealing with how the energy is, how pure it is, everything has an effect on your thinking because you come to find out your body is your thought process.

Once you had reached the 21-day what was that like? Did you celebrate? Did you do anything different? How were you feeling?

Actually, I was happy that I got through it. But the main thing, I was still in awe that the body was still running around. As someone who had been through all the initial trials and challenges of becoming food-free, Elitom has some helpful tips for those who have a busy lifestyle.

Do you have any recommendations for someone who is interested in becoming a breatharian but still has a job or family? What do you suggest?

Well, in that recommendation right there is basically dealing with myself on a challenge that I took, on having a family and having a job. You want to take it more slowly instead of just going all the way out, not eating and drinking and “this is going to happen.” That’s when I start recommending the different diet changes. That’s very important because if you’re already overweight and stuff like that, I don’t know if that’s got something to do with it, but at the same time you do want to start strengthening the body; the more and more it becomes healthier, the more and more chi it has – the higher the diet, the more chi you have.

So, what you want to do is just start gaining your energy, that’s the best recommendation I can give. And also putting your body in the cycle where you’re at least fasting once a week. I do recommend that. So the body can get used to it over a period of time and it gets stronger and it’ll grab other percentage. And I guess that’s what I want to bring up too. Say, I’ve got a plate of food in my hand: you got potatoes right here, the corn right here and something else right here and you’re about to eat. But at the same time, I said earlier, everybody is a breatharian because you will die without breathing before you would without food or without water.

The breath is doing something for your overall makeup, just to move, right off the rib. So on this plate of food you already have a space there of dealing with chi, because that’s what you’re living off of. As time goes on, you’re removing something off the plate, like say a little bit of corn, more chi is coming on that plate over a period of time. Then you’re moving some of the potatoes, again, more chi is coming on that plate. You follow me? The more and more you start moving food off the plate the more the other energy – which is food, it’s just more subtle – it’s coming on, filling up the plate for you to live off of.

But as it goes, everybody is already living off of chi. Chi motivates or moves nature, and you are a representative or a duplicate or a microcosm of nature – same thing, got the four elements in the body and everything. So the chi is the main function and all you’re doing is just bringing more in, or allowing – it’s not a forced thing at all – you’re allowing more chi to come into the body so the body can function naturally like it was designed to do.

In order to help other people who are going through the same food-free process or are thinking of trying it out, Elitom wrote a book about his personal experiences.

You mentioned earlier about a book, can you tell us a little bit about what it’s like?

Okay, the book is called, “It’s Okay to be Healthy,” and that’s right there is a book dealing with a person taking control of their health at a deeper level. You start out at one level, you learn different things, but at the same time there’s other knowledge out here that you can grab that can take the body even further to where some of the preventable diseases which you don’t have to never have, don’t have to get them. And if you do have them, you should be able to reverse the process because it’s your body. Your body’s listening to your mind. There’s nobody holding us down, putting food in our mouths, in our bodies, right now. You have control of that, and you also have control of how you’re spending your time throughout the day, and this is what the book is dealing with.

The gift that you’re going to be given is more time, that’s what it deals with. How are you spending your time in life? Because that’s going to determine what your health is – it all goes hand in hand. What made you want to write this book?

When I went through my transition I said this is what people need to know or need hear. At least put it out there on the scene. But what motivated me to put more deeper thought into it is when Supreme Master Television came to me and wanted to know a lot of information. Then I started to see the horizontal, how many people really want to know. Before what I told you when I first started, well when I first grabbed the knowledge, nobody was interested.

So when I went into it and started teaching, there was just a small group, but now I’m beginning to see how many people at least want to know that these avenues or this knowledge is being brought out, and that there are higher levels of food alchemy that a person can go into – and it’s all up to them. So the whole motivation of bringing this forth is good for me. I’m putting more thought into it. And now I’ve got a chance to share all my notes that I’ve collected throughout the years, bringing in different scenarios, the different falls; a lot of people who go into teaching don’t want to bring in the falls that they have, some of the things that they’ve been into. I don’t have any problem with it at all, to show you that the human being can put themselves into the cycle and the body can keep going on and on and on.

It should be a very interesting book. It's not very big; it doesn’t have to be big. It's just a crucial knowledge getting straight to the point without all the fanfare, but it’ll give a lot of answers so people can start their journeys.

Elitom, thank you so much once again for your time and your wonderful answers. You’ve just added another dimension to the human evolution.

We appreciate your magnanimous company for today’s episode of Between Master and Disciples. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television for Good People, Good Works, coming up next after Noteworthy News. Wishing you much love and kindness every day.

Literature on Living Food-free: For a complete list, please visit

Popularly known as “Teacher” or “Master of Nature,” Porphyry Kornevevich Ivanov, a Russian holy man taught people how to live in harmony of nature. Living by example, Porphyry Kornevevich Ivanov lived food-free for extended periods of time, the longest being 100 days. His only source of sustenance during those food-free periods: the universal energy that abounds in nature.

Meet Porphyry Kornevevich Ivanov by tuning in to Supreme Master Television on Sunday, January 9, for our program, “Porphyry Kornevevich Ivanov: Living in Harmony with Nature,” on Between Master and Disciples.

Tune in to Supreme Master Television today for our program, “Porphyry Kornevevich Ivanov: Living in Harmony with Nature,” on Between Master and Disciples.