QUESTION: Isn’t outer cleanliness related to inner purity?
GURUDEV: The word ‘cleanliness’ indicates not only the inner purity of thoughts and motives, but it also suggests the purity of environment, and cleanliness of habit and personal belongings.
As a result of an over-emphasis on subjective purity today, we find in Indian society an utter neglect of external purity. Clean clothes and civic habits have both become rare in our society. Outer cleanliness is, to a large measure, a reflection of the inner condition.
A disciplined person with education and culture alone can maintain systematic order and cleanliness around him.
One who is aspiring to reach perfection will necessarily be so well-disciplined physically that he will be clean both in his relationship with others and in the condition of his belongings around him.
It is well known that the condition of a person’s table and the cleanliness of his apparel give a great insight into the mental nature, discipline, and culture of that man.
In the Scriptures great emphasis has been laid on physical purity, not only in the person, but also in his contacts with the world. Without external purity, internal purification will be but a vague dream, an idle hope, a despairing vision.
At the same time, no amount of external discipline can supply a person with the positive dynamism that is the very core of moral living. A man must live the highest values of life.
Then he can burst forth with a positive glow of righteousness and bathe the entire generation in the light of truth and virtue – virtue that implies honesty of intentions and purity of motives.