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Candles on your birthday cake

The candle and cake tradition is a mistaken symbol that harms life. The candle represents your life; blowing it out shortens your life. The cake symbolizes your body and also life itself; cutting it severs your life's rope. This custom is not from ancient European or Indian culture but a recent development followed blindly. From a health perspective, one should prepare nourishing foods like milk rice with nuts and honey on a birthday. Ancient Vedic culture speaks of increasing and completeness, blessing long and healthy life, not extinguishing it.

"The candle on the cake symbolizes your life, and the cake symbolizes your body."

"And the cake is life, and never cut your life with a knife."

Filming location: Strilky, Czech Republic

Never blow out or extinguish your candle in this manner. Do not discard the wax on the ground either. There exists a completely mistaken concept when celebrating a birthday: placing a candle on a cake and having the person blow it out. The candle on the cake symbolizes your life, and the cake symbolizes your body. To blow it out means you shorten your life; you blow out your own life. Therefore, you should never blow out a candle, especially on your birthday cake. The cake represents life, and you should never cut your life with a knife. You are severing the rope of your life. Thus, a cake is not meant for cutting. In my view, the cake and candle tradition is not originally from European culture. In ancient times, they did not practice this. I do not know when this custom developed. Therefore, from both a scientific and health perspective, one should prepare something cooked with rice and milk, or nuts and milk, which grant strength in life. On your birthday, you should make something with milk, honey, nuts, and rice. We call it khīr, and you may call it milk rice. That is very beneficial for health as well. So, this practice is neither your European culture nor Indian culture. It is merely something that developed, and we are following it blindly. And we blow out the candle, which symbolically means your life is gone. Ancient culture, Vedic culture, the Vedas, or Hinduism, speak of pūrṇa—completeness. They speak of vardhanam—increasing. Vardhānam. Nābivejte. Oṃ tryambakaṃ yajāmahe sugandhim. Puṣṭi Vardhānam. Increasing. Vardhanam. Vardhanam. Puṣṭi. It means complete. Āyuṣmān—long life. Blessing. These are words for your long, healthy, and happy life. When you put a candle on a cake and blow it out, it symbolically shortens your life.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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