God is not attracted by your appearance but God will look at the cleanliness of the inner self. This is interpreted by saying that you give up your external decorations and that God will see you in your natural condition. Another way of saying the same is that you have to give up whatever you have acquired as additions to your body before presenting yourself before God. (SSB 1974, p. 122)
Inner cleanliness is Godliness. That is possible only through sense control and mind control; or what amounts to the same Sadhana, dedication of all desires and activities to God. (SSS Vol.8, p. 192)
Even the most heinous sinner can quickly cleanse his heart and become pure by surrendering to the Lord in anguished repentance.
Ananda and Shanti can be secured only when food and recreation are cleansed and purified. (GV, p. 245)
Cleanliness is the doorway to Godliness. Inner and outer cleanliness are essential, if you desire to install God in your heart. (SSS Vol.10)
Cleanse your hearts through pure habits. You sit before the idol and offer praise, the incense of worship, but you do not now try to grasp the significance of the Divine that you see in the idol. Inquire into the Will of God, discover the Commands of God, guess what will please Him most, and regulate your life accordingly. Let this be your New Year Resolution. Do not get caught in the sticky tangles of outer Nature. Do not harden your heart through greed and hate. Soften it with Love. Cleanse it through pure habits of living and thinking. Use it as the shrine, wherein you install your God
Cleanse the heart with the water of Prema and the detergents, prayer and contrition; so that the stains of desire might be removed. Then God will pour His Grace into it. You should give up Lokabhranthi and Dehabhranthi, that is to say, attachment towards the body and to the external world, if you yearn for God.
The waving of the camphor flame at the end of the Bhajan sessions is to remind you that your sensual cravings must be burnt away without leaving any trace behind, and you must offer yourself to God for being merged with His Glory. (SSS Vol.5, p. 231)
All activities of man must result in cleansing his Citta, the levels of awareness. When these are done as offerings to God, they advance their cleaning process a great deal. The way he works shapes the destiny of man. Work is sublimated into worship which fructifies into wisdom. The flower is Work (Karma), the emerging fruit is Worship (Bhakti) and the ripe sweet fruit is Wisdom (Jnana). It is one continuous and spontaneous process, this spiritual fulfilment of Sadhaka, the Sevaka. They are like Childhood, Youth and old age, each imperceptibly growing into succeeding stage. (SSS Vol.11, p. 196)
Be pure in word and deed and keep impure thoughts away. I am in everyone of you and so, I become aware of your slightest wave of thought. When the clothes become dirty, you have to give them for wash. When your mind is soiled, you have to be born again, for cleaning operations. The dobhi beats the clothes on the hard stone, and draws over it the hot iron, to straighten the folds. So too, you will have to pass through a train of travails in order to become fit to approach God. See Me as resident in every one; give them all the help you can, all the service they need, do not withhold the sweet word, the supporting hand, the assuring smile, the comforting company, the consoling conversation. (SSS Vol.9, p. 60)
Extract taken from: (An Integral And Hol(y)stic Approach To Human Ailments: Vitamin G, Food And Yoga For Physical And Spiritual Health)
Uncleanliness has become a popular cult
Untouchability as a social practice must have had its origin in the realisation of this truth. But, practices like avoiding contact with demeaning or defiling men or things later became a ritual, a hollow round of negations. Those who are ridiculed for observing such restrictions and taboos are finding it difficult to explain the inner significance of their behaviour. These observances originated from the anxiety to earn length of life and strength of body, so that the seeker might gain the goal. The Gita (6:17) speaks of
yuktahara-viharasya
yukta-cestasya karmasu
yukta-svapnavabodhasya
yogo bhavati dukha-ha -- ‘habits of feeding and recreation which are controlled and regulated.’ The gross part of food is discarded as faeces, the subtle part is transformed into muscle, blood, etc. and the more subtle of the subtle aspects are transmuted into the mind and its activities. That is why the sages have prescribed certain limits and levels of food, in order to promote the spiritual urges and prevent contrary tendencies.
But, nowadays, as a result of the downgraded time-spirit, food that damages the spiritual urge is being increasingly favoured! The elementary rules of personal cleanliness are neglected in the name of novelty and neo-spiritualism. Bath is given the go-by. Oral hygiene is not cared for. Damaging habits are cultivated and tolerated. The mouth is the gateway of the physical mansion; if the gateway is foul, what can we say of the residence and the inmates! Uncleanliness has become a popular cult; it is necessary to keep away from its votaries, for, cleanliness is next to Godliness. Unkempt, dishevelled, dirty heads and bodies denote unkempt, dishevelled intellects and minds. (SSS Vol.12, pp. 282-283)
The body will shine if the character is fine
Of course, it is true that many sages and saints paid little attention to personal cleanliness, since they were always on the higher plane of nearness to Reality. Imitating them without the inner conviction that one is not the body but that one is the Universal In-dweller .can only be hypocrisy and exhibitionism. Ishvara swallowed the poison that emerged from the Ocean; but, mortals cannot do the same, even to remove the minor poisons of the world. Develop equanimity, install in the mind the faith in the Divine and then you get the authority to neglect the claims of the body, with impunity. You cannot challenge the wisdom of the sages and ask, what harm is there if I too behave likewise! Great harm will certainly ensue, when you venture into these realms of the spirit with the ego bloated big.
The body has to be carefully and tenderly fostered; it is a precious gift, a very complicated but well-co-ordinated machine, given for achieving a laudable task. Its exterior too must be clean and full of the charm of goodness. The skin of the fruit of Ananda (divine bliss) is the physical body; the succulent flesh is the muscle, bone and nerve; the hard uneatable seed is the evil that gets mixed up in life; the juice which the fruit offers, for which the tree was planted and nourished is the Bliss it shares with all. The body will shine if the character is fine; service of man and worship of God will preserve its charm. The Lord will be watching with a thousand eyes the least activity of man to discover any slight trace of selfless Love sweetening it. In the past, illnesses were cured by the simple remedies that nature herself provided,--roots, tubers, fruits, leaves etc., rest, change of residence, regulation of diet, sadhana (spiritual discipline) etc. But, now man lives in an age of tablets and injections. Do not believe that health is retained or maintained through doctors; nor can drugs alone guarantee it. Were that So, the dead should all be alive now. Well, examine whether the doctors themselves follow the advice they offer to others. They are victims of the very habits which they advise against! They condemn smoking and drinking intoxicants as dangerous to health, but, they indulge in both, and thereby, encourage the very evils they condemn!
This is the type of health-advisers that we have! In every field---spiritual, moral, .economic, political, and literary---absence of proper leaders is the root cause of all the distress, anxiety and fear that torment the world. You are embodiments of the Divine Atma. Do not crave for recognition and respect from others; crave rather for winning Grace from the Lord. In the pursuit of that aim, do not be misled by the emergence of obstacles and obstructions. (SSS Vol.12, pp. 283-284)
Five gates for the temple of body
When you get rid of the evils associated with pollution of speech, hearing, sight, thought and action (arising from the misuse of the five sense organs), you will be able to become the Paramatma (Divinise yourself). If the senses are fed with polluted stuff, you cannot become pure merely by taking milk and fruit. You must take in pure Sattvika food through all the five sense organs.
There are many doors to a temple. They are intended to let in devotees who seek to worship God. Gateways in temples are intended only for devotees to enter. Similarly there are for this temple of the body five gates. What is the purpose of these doorways? If we build a house and erect doors in it, they are for the use of our kith and kin and not for all stray animals to walk in. If such animals enter, the doors are shut against them. Likewise, the doors in this sacred body should be kept open only for sacred and Divine entrants. Only then it deserves the name Kshetra (shrine). It ceases to be a temple if unholy objects are allowed to enter it. (SSS Vol.23, pp. 72-73)
Next comes, Vihara (moving in different places). You will have to consider seriously what sort of places you should visit, what kind of environment in which you should live and what type of persons with whom you should associate yourselves. You should eschew all bad company; because your thoughts are related to the company you keep. Young people today are cultivating bad company. They take easily to bad ways. This is an affront to the human body. The sages of yore chose to live in solitude for directing their thoughts towards God. But even this is a sign of weakness. For instance, if you want to subdue anger, can you do it by any amount of penance in a forest? As your anger arises in the midst of people, it has to be conquered only in the same milieu and not in an unpeopled forest. You may remain tranquil as long as you are in the forest but when you come back to a crowd, you will be the same old irate person. If you want to control your senses, it is a delusion to imagine that this can be done by some kind of rigorous penance. It can be achieved easily if you understand the subtle workings of the body. You can utilise your new car well, for instance, only if you know all about its working and how it should be run. (SSS Vol.23, pp. 73-74)
All the troubles of man are due to the fact that he does not know how to make proper use of his body. Hence, he is a prey to sorrow and disease. One thing should be remembered: No one can go against the Divine Will. No one can alter the Lord s law. It should be realised that the body functions because of the chaitanya (consciousness) within it. Just as the lights, the horn and the engine in a car, though inert in themselves, begin to function when the power is supplied to them from the battery, likewise the organs in the vehicle that is the human body (the eyes, the ears, etc.,) can function well, only if the Atmic consciousness animates and activates them. Just as a magnet attracts iron filings by its magnetic power, the Atma is responsible for the operation of all the organs which are inert by themselves.
Man is prone to three kinds of mistaken ideas. One is to consider what does not belong to him as his own. Another is to regard persons who do not belong to him as his own. The third is to regard the evanescent as the eternal. Man considers the body as his real self. If that is the case, why should he say, ‘This is my body.’ The statement dearly implies that he is different from the body. (The owner is different from what he owns). When a man says, ‘This is my kerchief,’ he is apart from the kerchief, which he can cast away Hence, how can one say that he is the body? This is the first mistake.
Secondly, in worldly affairs man is misled by the belief that he is the owner of properties of various kinds--houses, vehicles, etc. You build a house and call it yours. You sell it and it is no longer yours. Likewise, you buy a car and call it ‘Mine.’ When you sell it, it ceases to be yours. So, it is yours as long as you use it. Forgetting that all these possessions are temporary, you develop attachments for them. Nothing is yours. How can those which belong to the body be yours? All these are caused by Maya (delusion), the sense of possessiveness and the aberrations of the mind. All of them are passing clouds. Before marriage, no one can say who is the husband and who is the wife. Before birth, no one can say who is the mother and who is the child. Only after birth, you declare, ‘He is my son.’ Only after marriage, you say, ‘This is my wife.’ All these relationships are associated with the body. The same person is called in different ways according to various relationships. (SSS Vol.23, pp. 73-74)
Realise that the body is not permanent
You have to do your duty to your kith and kin. But while discharging your duties, you have to keep the Supreme always in mind. The worldly life has to be led, with spiritual relation as the goal. As long as you live in the world, you have to conform to the ways of the world. But the ideal must be based on the recognition that nothing belongs to you--neither mother, nor father, kinsmen or wealth. All these are related to the changing body, which is the basis for all mental aberrations. It is wrong to regard the body as permanent. But it is essential to keep the body in good health as long as there is life, just as you must ensure that your boat does not spring a leak till you cross the river. The body has to be kept clean and for this purpose you have to practise chanting the Lord s name and doing japa. The Divine cleanses the heart, when you offer it to God.
Besides the body, you have to reckon with the sense organs, the mind and the Buddhi. It is only when their nature is properly understood will one be able to lead a full human life. In the absence of such understandings, man becomes a prey to many difficulties. There is constant talk about Sadhana but no special sadhana is needed if one gets at the Truth. All sadhana is aimed at perceiving the Truth.
During the ensuing fortnight, if you are able to grasp the nature of the body, the senses, the mind, the Buddhi, and the Atma, which is the Supreme Witness presiding over all of them, you will be able to master the mystery of the cosmos (which is made up of the five basic elements, the Pancha Bhutas). As God is the basis of everything, you have to develop faith in God. (SSS Vol.23, pp. 75-76)