through personal love-the love of one other incarnate soul. Just as
you cannot find illumination by jumping from one guru to another, ac
cording to your whims, you will not easily find the greater love of God
if you keep on finding imperfections in particular creations. By and
large, and I acknowledge cultural differences, there is merit in sticking
with what you have started. I have admitted that pranayarna can be
boring. To a scattered mind, so can sexual fidelity. But to love One is
to access All. Trust and faith bind us not only to each other but to the
Universal. When the breath is gently exhaled towards the heart, the
heart is purified of desires and the emotions that disturb it. The Love
that transcends the particularity of individual attraction and perceives
the soul within the other is the great pathway to God.
Of course, it is easy to say this aged eighty-six. When I was a young
man, I had to fight to keep my integrity. Virtue is an ideal. Integrity is a
reality. I did not want to divide myself. The di root in Sanskrit is the
same as division and devil in English. It implies fragmentation and loss
of self. I knew that if I had ceded to the temptation of a prostitute as a
young man, I would have had to marry her or lose my integrity. In an
angry moment, I even wrote that to my guru, when I was falsely ac
cused of immorality. The great nineteenth-century saint, Ramakrishna,
fell into a state of samadhi when he was introduced to prostitutes, as all
he could perceive was the Goddess within them.
Later on, when I was married and teaching abroad, I was exposed
to temptation. It is normal for women students to set their teacher on
a pedestal in any subject, but by that time I was a bit more worldly
wise and developed a forbidding manner to keep them at arm's length.
My flashing eyebrows and fierce glare carne to my rescue.
Sensual desire when joined with love is an important part of a mar
riage. I had a passionate marriage, and if my wife, Rarnarnani, was
alive today the intensity of our feelings would be undimmed. Often one
partner in a marriage will pursue yoga or another spiritual path, and
they will leave the other partner behind. They must not. They must do
II I( ·' I Y 1·. N 1; /Ill