Minimizing the Rajasic or Tamasic Effect of Food on the Consciousness

A popular proverb in recent years is ‘you are what you eat’. There is certainly an element of deeper truth in this expression. All material substance holds vibratory patterns. Rocks absorb heat and radiate it back afterwards for hours. Water absorbs thought vibrations as shown by Masaru Emoto in his book The Hidden Messages in Water. When we experience some strong trauma, or an emotional event, fear, anger, jealousy, the body produces neuro-transmitters to carry that emotion, and the body holds the vibrations, actively for some time, and then encapsulated and potentially able to be triggered later. This is the mechanism of ‘cellular memory’. Food also holds vibrations and these get imbibed by us as we eat the food.

This brings us then to the question of the food we eat, what vibrations it carries with it, and how that may impact our psychology and our bodies. Much research has been done on the interaction between various foods and their psycho-phyiscal effects on us. Ayurveda, the ‘science of life’ categories foods according to whether they generate energetics of vata, the element of air, pitta, the element of heat, or kapha, the element of dense water or earth. Additionally Ayurveda describes foods that carry vibrations that act as toxins to the body, ama, which can cause numerous health disturbances. For detail about the qualities of food from an ayurvedic perspective, and the practical application of this knowledge, there is Dr. Vasant Lad’s book Ayurveda: Science of Self-Healing or Amadea Morningstar and Urmila Desai’s book, The Ayurvedic Cookbook.

The Bhagavad Gita describes foods as expressing the qualities of the three Gunas, Tamas, Rajas and Sattwa. Sri Aurobindo translates in Bhagavad Gita and Its Message, Chapter 17, verses 8-10, Sri Krishna’s description of the psycho-physical relation of food to the action of the Gunas: “The sattwic temperament in the mental and physical body turns naturally to the things that increase the life, increase the inner and outer strength, nourish at once the mental, vital and physical force and increase the pleasure and satisfaction and happy condition of the mind and life and body, all that is succulent and soft and firm and satisfying. The rajasic temperament prefers naturally food that is violently sour, pungent, hot, acrid, rought and strong and burning, the aliments that increase ill-health and the distempers of the mind and body. The tamasic temperament taks a perverse pleasure in cold, impure, stale, rotten or tasteless food or even accepts like the animals the remnants half-eaten by others.”

The preparation of food also infuses energetic vibrations into the food. Food prepared with a sense of order, cleanliness and a feeling of love, goodwill or serenity has a way of enhancing the feeling of well-being for the individual eating it. A loving mother or grandmother preparing and offering food has long been recognised as a means of transmitting their love and support, providing comfort and healing energy along with the food.. Similarly, food prepared by someone who is under the influence of anger, lust or greed carries those feelings which have their own subtle influence on the person receiving that energy with their meal.

Many people eat animal foods. Those animals undergo intense emotions of fear and pain in the moments before they are slaughtered. The hormones and neurotransmitters they generate go into their tissues and are carried forward to the person who eats those foods. Some traditions have recognised this and they eschew using animals as a source of food.

Whatever food one eats, long tradition says to consecrate that food, to pray before taking the food, to recognise the oneness, the sacrifice of the food to the eater, and to honor that food, while also setting up a vibratory pattern to help remove any of the negative energies that otherwise are carried by that food.

The Mother writes: “Physically, we depend upon food to live — unfortunately. For with food, we daily and constantly take in a formidable amount of inconscience, of tamas, heaviness, stupidity. One can’t do otherwise — unless constantly, without a break, we remain completely aware and, as soon as an element is introduced into our body, we immediately work upon it to extract from it only the light and reject all that may darken our consciousness. This is the origin and rational explanation of the religious practice of consecrating one’s food to God before taking it. When eating one aspires that this food may not be taken for the little human ego but as an offering to the divine consciousness within oneself. In all yogas, all religions, this is encouraged. This is the origin of that practice, of contacting the consciousness behind, precisely to diminish as much as possible the absorption of an inconscience which increases daily, constantly, without one’s being aware of it.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 167