In plain words
Now, how do we purify this body? With water, with soap, with perfumes, with many kinds of cleansing things, we purify this body. What is the fruit we gain merely by the body being clean? We can protect some measure of health; we can keep off disease. Beyond that, it is not possible to cure an illness of the mind. Though the body is filled and covered with many kinds of perfumes, and by this we make it into a divine form that gives fragrance to everyone, unless we purify the Buddhi and our speech within us, cleanliness of the body alone cannot give us complete humanness.
We must purify the body with water, speech with Satya, the Manas with learning and tapas, and the Buddhi with Jñāna. How must we purify them? We must purify speech well with the water called Satya. We must purify the Manas with learning and tapas. What is learning? Is it merely an acquaintance with books? Is writing and reading learning? No, no. Learning gives illumination. It gives light. Learning is like a blazing lamp. It drives away Ajñāna and Ahaṅkāra. It gives humility and obedience. That is why we must develop such learning and through it try to purify our Manas. To purify the Manas, there is tapas. What is tapas? Is it doing tapas with the head down and the legs up? No, no. Is it eating roots and tubers and withering the body? No, no. What tapas means is this: we must bring about the oneness of these three, Manas, word and body. Only then can it be called the tapas of learning. Tapas means this: what is thought in the Manas, what is spoken in words, what is done in action, the oneness of these three we must experience. This itself is true tapas. Tapas is not leaving home and household, casting off our duties, going to the forest and meditating on God in some fashion.
God is not in some other land apart; God is in one's own body; sin is not in a foreign land apart; it clings to the deeds one does.
Sin or merit, God or the devil, they all live in our own heart. If God has come in, the devil does not stay. ‘Where Dharma is, there God is. Where Dharma is not, there the devil is.’ For the devil and for God there is only one seat. It is just like musical chairs. Once one has got into it, the other cannot come and sit in it. So we must keep the chair called the heart always reserved for God. So, in thinking of it as the temple of God, this Jñāna, this learning, this tapas, this Satya will be of every help to us in purifying our heart. So we must learn these branches of learning in order to make the inert body a dwelling of conscious divinity. Worldly learning is certainly needed. In daily life we do need this learning to live some kind of independent life. But to try to regard even this learning for our livelihood as the highest goal of life: that itself is tapas. To make the right effort to experience the oneness of these two, the means of living and the highest goal of life, is itself right learning. So today we nourish this thing called the body. We develop it. We have it adorned. We look attractive in every way. But for what? For the sake of God who has entered the house within, we shape the inert body into a form of consciousness.
Next, the senses. The first upādhi is the body; the second upādhi is the senses. You know this. What is this sense like? Sound, touch, form, taste, smell. We must understand well the nature of these five senses. How? For whatever task God gave us whatever sense, that task alone we must carry out through that sense. If we bring other tasks in through these senses, we will be subject to other results, other feelings, other sorrows. How? The eye is able to see. This seeing thing has no power to speak. The tongue speaks. But it has no power to see. God has fixed each sense for its own task. How did He fix it? He fixed it within a limit. This we must be sure of. For this very limit we must make ourselves take up certain kinds of discipline.