A Podcast Featuring Sri Aurobindo Studies
Sept. 8, 2025

Minimizing the Rajasic or Tamasic Effect of Food on the Consciousness

Minimizing the Rajasic or Tamasic Effect of Food on the Consciousness
Minimizing the Rajasic or Tamasic Effect of Food on the Consciousness
Sri Aurobindo Studies
Minimizing the Rajasic or Tamasic Effect of Food on the Consciousness

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, pg. 167This episode is also available as a blog post at https://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com/2025/09/06/minimizing-the-rajasic-or-tamasic-effect-of-food-on-the-consciousness/

Video presentations, interviews and podcast episodes are allavailable on the YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@santoshkrinsky871

More information about Sri Aurobindo can be found at www.aurobindo.net

The US editions and links to e-book editions of SriAurobindo’s writings can be found at Lotus Press www.lotuspress.com

0:00 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 Massaro 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 neurotransmitters 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.

1:00 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 psychophysical effects on us. Ayurveda, the science of life, categorizes food according to whether they generate energetics of wata, the element of air, pita, the element of heat, or tufa, 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 Doctor Vasant Lod's book Ayurveda Science of Self Healing or Amadeya Morningstar and Ormila Desai's book The Ayurvedic Cookbook.

2:08 The Bhagavad Gita describes foods as expressing the qualities of the three gunas, Thomas, Rajas and Satva. Sri Aurobindo translates in Bhagavad Gita and Its Message, Chapter 17, verses 8 to 10. Sri Krishna's description of the psychophysical relation of food to the action of the Gunas quote. The Sutwick 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, rough and strong and burning the elements that increase ill health and the distempers of the mind and body.

3:15 The Temasek temperament takes a perverse pleasure in cold, impure, stale, rotten or tasteless food, or even accepts, like the animals, the remnants half eaten by others. End Quote. 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 recognized 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.

4:22 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 recognized this and they as chew, using animals as a source of food. Whatever food one eats, the long tradition says to consecrate that food, to pray before taking the food, to recognize the oneness, the sacrifice of the food to the eater, and to honour 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.

5:12 Quote Physically we depend upon food to live. Unfortunately for with food we daily and constantly take in a formidable amount of inconscience of Thomas heaviness. Stupidity 1 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.

5:57 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. End Quote Reference Srioro Bindu and the Mother looking from Within, Chapter 5, Attitudes on the Path, page 167.