Mind Develops From Food

How does the mind develop?

Not brain and nervous system.

The mind.

Mind also develops from food.

The food that we take, like rice or any form of food, in the stomach when it digests, it gets split into three parts: malamsha, dhatwamsha, rasamsha.

The heaviest, the malamsha, gets thrown out as feces – excrement.

The part lighter than this is used to replenish or build the seven tissues of the body: blood, bone, marrow, flesh, fat, nerves, and semen.

The most subtle part, called rasamsha, becomes the mind.

This rasamsha is also called somamsha.

Food – connected to moon.

Prana or energy of the body is directly connected to water.

The speech is directly connected to agni in the food.

Food has three parts – moon, water, and fire: soma, aapa, and agni.

Out of these, soma is the one going towards building up and maintenance of the mind.

The number sixteen is very important.

षोडशकलः सोम्य पुरुषः

In a child, the mind develops in the first sixteen years – fully.

Mind consists of sixteen parts.

This is established through an experiment in Chandogya Upanishad.

Shwetaketu went to his father.

I can't understand this connection between food and mind.

Uddalaka, the father, said:

Stop taking food for the next fifteen days.
But keep on drinking water, otherwise prana will leave your body, you will die.

On the sixteenth day, Shwetaketu went back to his father.

Father said, recite the Vedas.

Shwetaketu could not remember anything.
He said, my mind is blank.

Father said, now you start taking food.

Over the next fifteen days, Shwetaketu regained all his mental faculties – part by part.

The somya purusha or the mind has sixteen parts.

While Shwetaketu did fasting for fifteen days, fifteen of them died – like how a waning moon does.

He went to his father when only one sixteenth part was left.

Father said, your mind is now as small as a firefly, which can't burn anything.

There is fire, then it goes on diminishing, finally only a small ember – a tiny ember – remains, as small as a firefly. That ember, no matter how much you try, will not be able to burn a small blade of grass.

That is the state of mind after fifteen days of fasting.

Proven through an experiment.

This is also the reason it is said that you have to be mindful about what you eat.

You eat satwik food, your mind will become satwik.

You eat rajasik and tamasik food, your mind will also become like that.

Ramaswamy Sastry and Vighnesh Ghanapaathi