Impurities of IntelligenceThe whole educative thrust of yoga is to make things go right in our
lives. But we all know that an apple that appears perfect on the outside
can have been eaten away by an invisible worm on the inside. Yoga is
not about appearances. It is about finding and eradicating the worm,
so that the whole apple, from skin inward, can be perfect and a healthy
one. That is why yoga, and indeed all spiritual philosophies, seems to
harp on the negative-grasping desires, weaknesses, faults, and imbal
ances. They are trying to catch the worm before it devours and cor
rupts the whole apple from inside. This is not a struggle between good
and evil. It is natural for worms to eat apples. In yoga we simply do
not want to be the apple that is rotted from inside. So yoga insists on
examining, scientifically and without value judgment, what can go
wrong, and why, and how to stop it. It is organic farming of the self
for the Self.
To reach and penetrate as far as the fourth sheath is a considerable
achievement, but I would be doing the reader a disservice if I did not
point out that considerable achievements also bring in their wake con
siderable dangers. An obvious one is pride-not satisfaction in a job
well done-but a sense of superiority and difference, of distinction and
eminence.
It is an obsession in our modern society to focus on appearance,
presentation, and packaging. We do not ask ourselves, "How am I
really?" but "How do I look, how do others see me?" It is not a ques
tion of, "What am I saying?" but, "How do I sound?"
There are those, for example, who perform polished, well
presented, highly attractive yogasana. They are pleased with this, and
with themselves, and are perhaps financially well rewarded for this out
ward excellence. When I was young, struggling to earn a living, to raise
yoga in public esteem, to exemplify in my visible body the art and aes
thetic beauty of yoga, I was always seeking to present a sana in the best
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