6 March 2015 - QA 5

Gurudev what is the relevance of eating satvic and Ayurvedic food? Usually I like rajasic food more than satvic food.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

With rajasic food, you will have a similar rajasic mind-set as well. Do you know what a rajasic mind-set is? It is like a yo-yo. You jump up or you go down. Either you are too happy or you are too down, this is the impact of rajasic food. You can have it sometimes, no problem.
If everybody is so flat and equanimous all the time, then there is no charm, nothing happens. You need a little bit of rajas here and there. That makes life more colourful. But when you find that it’s too much to handle, then come to satvic food.

You know, I recently read that in California, they did some experiments in a prison. They gave the prisoners only vegan food for two months (vegan food means: no dairy or meat products). Vegan means vegetarian without milk or yoghurt. So total vegan food was given to the prisoners for a little longer than two month. They found that the crime that the prisoners used to do repeatedly commit come down by 97% percent. A lot came out of the crime mind-set. It's very interesting.

See, India with such a huge population, almost three times or four times the population of US and one third of the land-mass. If India did not have this satvic mind-set, India would've become a place with the highest amount of crime. Thanks to the ancient culture, it has kept people in a very solid state of mind.

There is an ancient proverb, 'Jaisa Ann Vaisa Mann', which means, as the food you eat so is your mind. That's why I encourage satvic food.
This knowledge is there somewhere from ancient times, though it is fading away. Crime is increasing in India like never before. Still, there’s something which is keeping the harmony in this country, in this society. It can only be attributed to this lifestyle.