YOGIC DIET - Part 1

A diet that is wholly conducive to the practice of Yoga and spiritual progress is called Yogic
diet. Diet has intimate connection with the mind. Mind is formed out of the subtlest portion of food. Sage Uddalaka instructs his son Svetaketu “Food, when consumed becomes threefold: the gross particles become excrement, the middling ones flesh and the fine ones the mind. My child, when curd is churned, its fine particles which rise upwards, form butter. Thus, my child, when food is consumed, the fine particles which rise upwards form the mind. Hence verily the mind is food.”
Again you will find in the Chhandogya Upanishad: “By the purity of food one becomes purified in
his inner nature; by the purification of his inner nature he verily gets memory of the Self; and by the attainment of the memory of the Self, all ties and attachments are severed.”
Diet is of three kinds viz., Sattvic diet, Rajasic diet and Tamasic diet. Milk, barely, wheat,
cereals, butter, cheese, tomatoes, honey, dates, fruits, almonds and sugar-candy are all Sattvic
foodstuffs. They render the mind pure and calm. Fish, eggs, meat, salt, chillies and asafoetida are
Rajasic foodstuffs. They excite passion. Beef, wine, garlic, onions and tobacco are Tamasic
foodstuffs. They fill the mind with anger, darkness and inertia.
Lord Krishna says to Arjuna: “The food which is dear to each is threefold. Hear the
distinctions of these. The foods which increase vitality, energy, vigour, health and joy and which
are delicious, bland, substantial and agreeable are dear to the pure. The passionate desire foods that
are bitter, sour, saline, excessively hot, pungent, dry and burning and which produce pain, grief and disease. The food which is stale, tasteless, putrid and rotten, leavings and impure is dear to the Tamasic.” (Bhagavad-Gita. Ch. VII-8, 9, 10).
Food plays an important part in meditation. Different foods produce different effects on
different compartments of the brain. For purposes of meditation, the food should be light, nutritious
and Sattvic. Milk, fruits, almonds, butter, sugar-candy, green gram, Bengal gram soaked in water

From - SRI SWAMI SIVANANDA

YOGA AND ITS OBJECTS - Part 1

Yoga Philosophy is one of the six systems of Hindu Philosophy which exist in India. Unlike
so many other philosophies of the world, it is a philosophy that is wholly practical. Yoga is an exact
science based on certain immutable Laws of Nature. It is well known to people of all countries of
the world interested in the study of Eastern civilisation and culture, and is held in awe and reverence
as it contains in it the master-key to unlock the realms of Peace, Bliss, Mystery and Miracle. Even
the philosophers of the West found solace and peace in this Divine Science. Jesus Christ himself
was a Yogi of a superior order, a Raja-Yogi indeed. The founder of the Yoga Philosophy was
Patanjali Maharshi, who was not only a Philosopher and a Yogi, but a Physician as well. He is said
to have lived about three hundred years before Jesus Christ.
Patanjali defines Yoga as the suspension of all the functions of the mind. As such, any book
on Yoga, which does not deal with these three aspects of the subject, viz., mind, its functions and
the method of suspending them, can he safely laid aside as unreliable and incomplete.
The word Yoga comes from the Sanskrit root “Yuj” which means “to join.” Yoga is a
science that teaches us the method of joining the individual soul and the Supreme Soul. It is the
merging of the individual will with the Cosmic or Universal Will. Yoga is that inhibition of the
functions of the mind which leads to the absolute abidance of the soul in its own real nature of
Divine Glory and Divine Splendour. It is the process by which the identity of the individual soul
and the Oversoul is established by the Yogi. In other words, the human soul is brought into
conscious communion with God. Yoga is the Science of sciences that disentangles the individual
soul from the phenomenal world of sense-objects and links with the Absolute, whose inherent
attributes are Infinite Bliss, Supreme Peace, Infinite Knowledge and unbroken Joy.
Yoga is that state of Absolute Peace wherein there is neither imagination nor thought. Yoga
is control of mind and its modifications. Yoga teaches us how to control the modifications of the
mind and attain liberation. It teaches us how to transmute the unregenerate nature and attain the
state of Divinity. It is the complete suppression of the tendency of the mind to transform itself into
objects, thoughts, etc. Yoga kills all sorts of pain, misery and tribulation. It gives you freedom from
the round of births and deaths, with its concomitant evils of disease, old age, etc., and bestows upon
you all the Divine Powers and final liberation through super-intutional knowledge

From - SRI SWAMI SIVANANDA