...for after all is said and done, the purely bodily actions and functions are of far less importance than what a man thinks and feels, what desires he encourages in his mind, and allows to take root and grow there.—H. P. Blavatsky
In the Vedantic classification of man's principles, the physical body is known as annamaya kosha, literally, the "sheath consisting of food." The body is indeed made up and sustained by the food that we eat. Deprived of nourishment, it weakens, and of starvation dies. The food problem is thus one of physical survival.
When a nation is threatened by famine it faces a crisis that calls for the exercise of disinterested, intelligent and co-ordinated effort. When wholesome food becomes scarce, hungry people become desperate and will eat almost anything. Abnormal situations bring about peculiar and extreme consequences.
But what about indiscriminate feeding of the body in times of plenty?
Although dietetics is today a science and much informative and useful literature is available on the principles of a balanced diet, many continue to eat indiscriminately, driven by wrong habits, the cause of which is often psychological. Even physiological cravings are rooted in psychic tendencies. In the Bhagavad-Gita Sri Krishna refers to three kinds of food on the basis of the three gunas or qualities of sattva, rajas and tamas, clearly showing that men like one or another kind of food because of their psychic disposition and mental make-up. Diet for the body necessarily involves a psychological factor, and we shoud understand by a balanced diet not only the proportionate quantity of protein, minerals, vitamins, carbohydrates and fats, but the balance of the inner man, which alone will stimulate a wholesome appetite for natural and nourishing foods. As set forth in the Bhagavad-Gita, only those in whom the dark quality of tamas or indifference prevails will be attracted to food which is rotting or impure.
The body cannot be wrongly fed without almost immediate effects which involve discomfort, pain and disease. And so even the most careless or greedy among men will hesitate to gorge themselves or to indulge in injurious and poisonous foods. But man is enveloped in several sheaths, and the sheath of food, sustained by the food given to the body, is only the external envelope. Within that outward body lie hidden the inner sheaths of man, more important because closer to him. But how many are aware of these inner koshas? How many know the dietetics of the science of nutrition of those inner bodies? When Sri Krishna refers in the fifteenth chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita to the four kinds of food, commentators interpret the statement as a reference to four different types of physical food, but these may be symbolic of the other kinds of food which nourish and sustain the inner sheaths. They may well be a reference to physical, psychic, mental and spiritual nourishment.
However indiscriminate many may be in feeding the body, excesses and abuses in feeding the psychic and mental natures are far more prevalent, and few there be who know even the elements of the science of mental diet. No sane person would voluntarily pick up the contents of a garbage pail to feed the body, yet that same person goes to the gutter, metaphorically speaking, to pick up food for his psycho-mental nature! And careful parents who give their children only clean and wholesome food to nourish their physical bodies, allow the children rotting and poisonous food for their minds and their emotions!
Young children are most impressionable to what they see and hear. They are like tender flowers requiring gentle and loving care, and it is wicked to expose them to the violence and the poison of bad literature, ugly comics, violent films and television shows, etc.
One reason for this criminal negligence is the materialism of our present civilization. Steeped in gross and brutal materialism, we attach greater importance to the physical, that which is perceptible to our senses, and undervalue or altogether deny the importance of the inner. To most people the only real world is the objective; that which is subjective is looked upon as nebulous and unreal. Thus because we see and feel the ill-effects of over-eating or under-eating, of wrong diet, of indulgence in undesirable food or drink, we accept the principle involved and endeavour to exercise some care and restraint in matters of physical diet. What happens in our consciousness when we indulge in wrong food for the inner sheaths is subjective: it cannot be seen or felt via the sensorium; and so we think we can ignore it. In their folly, people deny it altogether, and many there are who would argue: "What I think concerns only myself. What does it matter what I read? We have yet to learn the supremacy of the inner man over the outer case or body. Far more harm can come to man through a wrong mental diet than through indiscriminate eating. And the food for the mind includes what we think and feel, as also what we read and what we talk about.
Certain types of reading are veritable poisons to the inner man. They inflame his passions, pervert his thinking and pollute his consciousness in most subtle and insidious ways. Nay, more: thoughts once generated have wings and travel into space carrying far their intrinsic quality, whether good or evil. Let us by all means learn to take proper care of our bodies and of the bodies of our children, but let us not overlook that more important still is the care of our minds and our psychic natures.
The inner man is made up of thoughts. His closest environment is his mind and its clothing. We live in our thoughts and are always in the company of the pictures we have hung on the walls of our mind. If we have fed our minds on thoughts of evil and of violence, corresponding impressions have been stored in our minds, and, if allowed to take root there, they become corroding forces, undermining our mental health and polluting the mental climate about and around us. How many wicked deeds and crimes could be traced to these invisible picture-galleries in the minds of men and women who have indulged in injurious food for the inner man!
But let us take comfort in the knowledge that we can choose the right food for the inner sheaths and thus clothe our minds in radiant garments of purity and nobility. Let us guard our inner selves from undesirable influences and endeavour to people our current in space with bright and loving thoughts that will spread their beneficent quality far and near.
