Most of us think that we eat mainly to nourish the body and keep it fit and healthy. In fact, the food we eat plays a much greater role in our lives because it influences the way we think, feel, act and react in each moment. It affects our faculties and behavior. As many of us know, the food we eat has three qualities: inertia or tamas, aggressiveness or rajas and purity or satva. If we eat sattvic food, purity increases in us. When our internal state is pure or satelite, we understand things very easily and learning is instantaneous. When we eat tamasic foods, our understanding power becomes very cloudy and it is extremely difficult for us to accept and assimilate new concepts. When we are rajasic, we are willing to go on a tangent and lack the ability to identify or solve the most important problems in any situation. Therefore, our internal state of being depends on the food we eat, as well as on the company we maintain, and the efficiency and effectiveness of our external actions depends on our inner state of being.
In short, "what goes in is literally what comes out". This is the absolute truth. When the liquor is imbibed, what comes out is a confusing speech. When the flesh enters, what comes out is insensitivity to another person's pain. If we place a person who eats sattvik food and another who is not in the same traumatic situation, what happens? The rajasic or tamasic person will not even think about praying for the intervention of Divine Grace. Your slow or aggressive reaction will aggravate the situation and make it more traumatic. The sattvic person, on the other hand, will surrender immediately to God and seek divine help. Then the traumatic situation resolves instantaneously and passes harmlessly. So, the type of food you eat decides what kind of person you are and how you shape your life.
