A healthy diet determines a healthy body and consequently influences spiritual progress. On the other hand, indulging in an unhealthy diet will generate diseases and other unpleasant problems.
SUSHRUTA SAMHITA
The second category includes Rajas foods, which are characterized by Rajas – passion. These include all kinds of hot, stimulating food, such as cooked, spiced, and salted roots. The Rajas based foods are usually associated with salted and hot tastes.
It is recommended that milk, milk products, and eggs only be consumed when they are fresh and carefully prepared. The Rajas based food stimulates the senses, is quite difficult to digest and usually leaves many residual products.
The effect of such food upon sexual secretions varies according to each individual’s case, depending on the ability of that individual to transform the impurities within the Rajas food.
Generally, men who consume such food will have a thick, salted, and somewhat gelatinous like sperm, with an unpleasant smell, sometimes even fetid.
The same characteristics will define the sexual secretions of a woman consuming this kind of food.
Finally, the third type of food, known as Tamas, contributes to the stimulation of rage and other destructive feelings.
This category includes all foods disturbing or soliciting to the senses, either through their aggressive taste (excessively hot, bitter or astringent), or through the fact they become putrid while they are still inside the intestines.
Food based on meat, food with too much oil, or overly fried food will in time lead to destructive feelings and behavior.
This category also includes: meat, eggs and foods that generate strong body odors or flatulence.
Ingesting Tamas based foods will lead to the increase and activation of the earth and water elements in the subtle anatomy of the body, elements which manifest on the physical level in the form of mucus, fat and generally speaking, as a tendency towards being overweight.
Sensitivity will be highly decreased and a particularly materialistic attitude will take over.
Sexual secretions will become unpleasant, and sexual contact will no longer be an enriching act of love, but a mere animal-like act, whose only purpose is immediate physical satisfaction.
The obvious simplicity of these food characterizations explains why it is such a useful, efficient and malleable system in determining what is and what is not suitable for each of us. Choosing one’s food has to be done according to one’s environment and goals in life.
For instance, a highly materialistic person will not be able to sense any taste in Sattva types of food, while a yogi will savor the wonderful taste of this food.
An athlete may well prefer animal proteins, such as roast beef, eggs, etc, as such food will make him experience a certain state of aggression useful for training and competitions.
However, for the Tantric couple, the most indicated type of food is the Sattva (or spiritual) one. To this basic diet, the lovers may add some of the Rajas-ic components, especially in times when they need more powerful stimulation.
Caution! Incorrect food combinations or ‘out of date’ foods are Tamas in their effects on the body and psyche.
Try to experiment with food, combine it according to your taste and use spices moderately in order to create, in your daily diet, an infinite variety of the ‘deity’s food’.
“The sage, who seeks happiness in this world and in the afterworld, will pay close attention in choosing healthy and energizing food. Light foods usually have the qualities of ether, air and fire. Heavy foods have the qualities of earth and water. “ CHARAKA SAMHITA