hunger

• spiritual hunger › none in Divine Presence
• spiritual hunger › of unspiritualized mortal mind

34:6.8It is the pres­ence of the di­vine Spirit, the wa­ter of life, that pre­vents the con­sum­ing thirst of mor­tal dis­con­tent and that in­de­scrib­able hunger of the un­spir­i­tu­al­ized hu­man mind. Spirit-mo­ti­vated be­ings “never thirst, for this spir­i­tual wa­ter shall be in them a well of sat­is­fac­tion spring­ing up into life ev­er­last­ing.” Such di­vinely wa­tered souls are all but in­de­pen­dent of ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment as re­gards the joys of liv­ing and the sat­is­fac­tions of earthly ex­is­tence. They are spir­i­tu­ally il­lu­mi­nated and re­freshed, morally strength­ened and en­dowed.

• constant urge of early man

63:6.3The An­don­ites early de­vel­oped a fear of the el­e­ments—thun­der, light­ning, rain, snow, hail, and ice. But hunger was the con­stantly re­cur­ring urge of these early days, and since they largely sub­sisted on an­i­mals, they even­tu­ally evolved a form of an­i­mal wor­ship. To An­don, the larger food an­i­mals were sym­bols of cre­ative might and sus­tain­ing power. From time to time it be­came the cus­tom to des­ig­nate var­i­ous of these larger an­i­mals as ob­jects of wor­ship. Dur­ing the vogue of a par­tic­u­lar an­i­mal, crude out­lines of it would be drawn on the walls of the caves, and later on, as con­tin­ued prog­ress was made in the arts, such an an­i­mal god was en­graved on var­i­ous or­na­ments.

• constant urge of early man

63:6.5That food was the all-im­por­tant thing in the lives of these prim­i­tive hu­man be­ings is shown by the prayer taught these sim­ple folks by On­a­gar, their great teacher. And this prayer was:

• of open lands stimulates invention and resourcefulness

64:1.3These An­don­ites avoided the forests in con­trast with the habits of their non­hu­man rel­a­tives. In the forests man has al­ways de­te­ri­o­rated; hu­man evo­lu­tion has made prog­ress only in the open and in the higher lat­i­tudes. The cold and hunger of the open lands stim­u­late ac­tion, in­ven­tion, and re­source­ful­ness. While these An­donic tribes were de­vel­op­ing the pi­o­neers of the pres­ent hu­man race amidst the hard­ships and pri­va­tions of these rugged north­ern climes, their back­ward cousins were lux­u­ri­at­ing in the south­ern trop­i­cal forests of the land of their early com­mon ori­gin.

• primitive man only thought when he was hungry

68:2.5His­tory is but the rec­ord of man’s age­long food strug­gle. Prim­i­tive man only thought when he was hun­gry; food sav­ing was his first self-de­nial, self-dis­ci­pline. With the growth of so­ci­ety, food hunger ceased to be the only in­cen­tive for mu­tual as­so­ci­a­tion. Nu­mer­ous other sorts of hunger, the re­al­iza­tion of var­i­ous needs, all led to the closer as­so­ci­a­tion of man­kind. But to­day so­ci­ety is top-heavy with the over­growth of sup­posed hu­man needs. Oc­ci­den­tal civ­i­liza­tion of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury groans wearily un­der the tremen­dous over­load of lux­ury and the in­or­di­nate mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of hu­man de­sires and long­ings. Mod­ern so­ci­ety is en­dur­ing the strain of one of its most dan­ger­ous phases of far-flung in­teras­so­ci­a­tion and highly com­pli­cated in­ter­de­pen­dence.

• led to primitive food-gathering lines

68:5.31. The col­lec­tion stage. Food co­er­cion, hunger, led to the first form of in­dus­trial or­ga­ni­za­tion, the prim­i­tive food-gath­er­ing lines. Some­times such a line of hunger march would be ten miles long as it passed over the land glean­ing food. This was the prim­i­tive no­madic stage of cul­ture and is the mode of life now fol­lowed by the African Bush­men.

• urge led to accumulation of capital

69:5.3The ba­sic urges which led to the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal were:

69:5.41. Hunger—as­so­ci­ated with fore­sight. Food sav­ing and preser­va­tion meant power and com­fort for those who pos­sessed suf­fi­cient fore­sight thus to pro­vide for fu­ture needs. Food stor­age was ad­e­quate in­sur­ance against famine and dis­as­ter. And the en­tire body of prim­i­tive mores was re­ally de­signed to help man sub­or­di­nate the pres­ent to the fu­ture.

• led to food raids among primitives

70:1.81. Hunger, which led to food raids. Scar­city of land has al­ways brought on war, and dur­ing these strug­gles the early peace tribes were prac­ti­cally ex­ter­mi­nated.

• h. strikes are modern analogue of old-time retaliation

70:10.10Sui­cide was a com­mon mode of re­tal­i­a­tion. If one were un­able to avenge him­self in life, he died en­ter­tain­ing the be­lief that, as a ghost, he could re­turn and visit wrath upon his en­emy. And since this be­lief was very gen­eral, the threat of sui­cide on an en­emy’s doorstep was usu­ally suf­fi­cient to bring him to terms. Prim­i­tive man did not hold life very dear; sui­cide over tri­fles was com­mon, but the teach­ings of the Dala­ma­tians greatly less­ened this cus­tom, while in more re­cent times leisure, com­forts, re­li­gion, and phi­los­o­phy have united to make life sweeter and more de­sir­able. Hunger strikes are, how­ever, a mod­ern ana­logue of this old-time method of re­tal­i­a­tion.

• external restraint to free will

118:8.5The whole prin­ci­ple of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion makes it im­pos­si­ble for prim­i­tive man to ap­pear on the in­hab­ited worlds with any large en­dow­ment of self-re­straint. There­fore does the same cre­ative de­sign which pur­posed evo­lu­tion like­wise pro­vide those ex­ter­nal re­straints of time and space, hunger and fear, which ef­fec­tively cir­cum­scribe the sub­spir­i­tual choice range of such un­cul­tured crea­tures. As man’s mind suc­cess­fully over­strides in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult bar­ri­ers, this same cre­ative de­sign has also pro­vided for the slow ac­cu­mu­la­tion of the racial her­itage of painfully gar­nered ex­pe­ri­en­tial wis­dom—in other words, for the main­te­nance of a bal­ance be­tween the di­min­ish­ing ex­ter­nal re­straints and the aug­ment­ing in­ter­nal re­straints.

• spiritual hunger › those believing in Jesus will not experience

153:2.7“My breth­ren, han­ker not af­ter the meat which per­ishes but rather seek for the spir­i­tual food that nour­ishes even to eter­nal life; and this is the bread of life which the Son gives to all who will take it and eat, for the Fa­ther has given the Son this life with­out mea­sure. And when you asked me, ‘What must we do to per­form the works of God?’ I plainly told you: ‘This is the work of God, that you be­lieve him whom he has sent.’”

153:2.8And then said Je­sus, point­ing up to the de­vice of a pot of manna which dec­o­rated the lin­tel of this new syn­a­gogue, and which was em­bel­lished with grape clus­ters: “You have thought that your fore­fa­thers in the wilder­ness ate manna—the bread of heaven—but I say to you that this was the bread of earth. While Moses did not give your fa­thers bread from heaven, my Fa­ther now stands ready to give you the true bread of life. The bread of heaven is that which comes down from God and gives eter­nal life to the men of the world. And when you say to me, Give us this liv­ing bread, I will an­swer: I am this bread of life. He who comes to me shall not hunger, while he who be­lieves me shall never thirst. You have seen me, lived with me, and be­held my works, yet you be­lieve not that I came forth from the Fa­ther. But to those who do be­lieve—fear not. All those led of the Fa­ther shall come to me, and he who comes to me shall in no­wise be cast out.

153:2.9“And now let me de­clare to you, once and for all time, that I have come down upon the earth, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. And this is the fi­nal will of Him who sent me, that of all those he has given me I should not lose one. And this is the will of the Fa­ther: That ev­ery one who be­holds the Son and who be­lieves him shall have eter­nal life. Only yes­ter­day did I feed you with bread for your bod­ies; to­day I of­fer you the bread of life for your hun­gry souls. Will you now take the bread of the spirit as you then so will­ingly ate the bread of this world?”

• brought prodigal son to his senses

169:1.8“One day, when he was very hun­gry, he came to him­self and said: ‘How many hired ser­vants of my fa­ther have bread enough and to spare while I per­ish with hunger, feed­ing swine off here in a for­eign coun­try! I will arise and go to my fa­ther, and I will say to him: Fa­ther, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no more wor­thy to be called your son; only be will­ing to make me one of your hired ser­vants.’ And when the young man had reached this de­ci­sion, he arose and started out for his fa­ther’s house.