“You eat what you are.” In other words, dietary preferences reflect a
person’s nature as sattvic, rajasic, or tamasic.
The second formulation bases itself on the upaniÓsadic instruction—pure
nourishment leads to pure mind or nature (ahara ́ ̄ suddhau sattva ́suddhi;
see Hume, Principal UpaniÓsads, 1985, 262). As a corollary therefore, a
healthy body is considered to be a byproduct of discriminating and con-
trolled nourishment. Diseases follow from flaws—moral, mental, and
physical.^37Khare’s analysis corroborates the idea of religious therapeutics in the
context of Indian gastrosemantics. He refers to the work of Hindu holy
persons who dispense healing foods and herbs:
Over time, they acquire the dual therapeutic-spiritual authority which
even vaidyas (or “doctors”) cannot dispute.... If they are known to
cure incurable bodily diseases, they also treat the “disease” of transmi-
gration—samsÓ ara ̄ (also called bhavaroga).^38Yoga philosophy holds that the very material of the physical body is com-
posed of the guÓnas obtained in the diet, and consonant with the
upaniÓsadic dietary principle, “You are what you eat,” Yoga’s goal of die-
tary purification is the actual replacement of the body’s coarser material
with more refined material.
The subtle body is purified by replacing disturbed thoughts and
emotions with more refined and subtle ones. Purification is a self-
perpetuating process, because the more pure body and mind become, the
more they incline toward pure substances, thoughts, and emotions. An
important purificatory practice for the subtle vehicle is the use of man-
tras. Mantrasare sacred sounds, the primordial one being AUM(Om),
the designator of Î ́svara [YS 1.27]. The vibrations experienced in produc-
ing or hearing or meditating on mantraspermit an influx of spiritual
force, which over time tend to remove obscurity from the subtle body. In
addition to their vibratory powers, some mantrashave meanings that are
purificatory insofar as the practitioner’s ignorance is dispelled by them.
The causal or karmic body is the locus of karmic activity; it is the
body constituted of all the consequences—good and bad—of a person’s
actions in the present life and prior ones. Purification in the domain of
the causal or karmic body means burning up the residue of past actions
so that no new consequences result, and so that no new actions are taken
productive of further karmic results. For a yogin, karmasare “neither
white nor black” [YS 4.7], that is, neither good nor evil. They are not
110 religious therapeutics