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The first necessity of preparation is the purifying of all the members of our being; especially, for the path of knowledge, the purification of the understanding, the key that shall open the door of Truth; and a purified understanding is hardly possible without the purification of the other members. An unpurified heart, an unpurified sense, an unpurified life confuse the understanding, disturb its data, distort its conclusions, darken its seeing, misapply its knowledge; an unpurified physical system clogs or chokes up its action. There must be an integral purity. Here also there is an interdependence; for the purification of each member of our being profits by the clarifying of every other, the progressive tranquillisation of the emotional heart helping for instance the purification of the understanding while equally a purified understanding imposes calm and light on the turbid and darkened workings of the yet impure emotions. It may even be said that while each member of our being has its own proper principles of purification, yet it is the purified understanding that in man is the most potent cleanser of his turbid and disordered being and most sovereignly imposes their right working on his other members. Knowledge, says the Gita, is the sovereign purity; light is the source of all clearness and harmony even as the darkness of ignorance is the cause of all our stumblings. Love, for example, is the purifier of the heart and by reducing all our emotions into terms of divine love the heart is perfected and fulfilled; yet love itself needs to be clarified by divine knowledge. The heart's love of God may be blind, narrow and ignorant and lead to fanaticism and obscurantism; it may, even when otherwise pure, limit our perfection by refusing to see Him except in a limited personality and by recoiling from the true and infinite vision. The heart's love of man may equally lead to distortions and exaggerations in feeling, action and knowledge which have to be corrected and prevented by the purification of the understanding. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p3</ref>

We mustBy the understanding we mean that which at once perceives, judges and discriminates, the true reason of the human being not subservient to the senses, to desire or to the blind force of habit, but working in its own right for mastery, howeverfor knowledge. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p5</ref> '''Causes of Impurity in Understanding''' * Intermiscence of Desire - The first cause of impurity in the understanding is the intermiscence of desire in the thinking functions, consider deeply and clearly what we mean by desire itself is an impurity of the Will involved in the vital and emotional parts of our being. When the vital and emotional desires interfere with the pure will-to-know, the understanding thought-function becomes subservient to them, pursues ends other than those proper to itself and by its purificationperceptions are clogged and deranged. We use The understanding must lift itself beyond the word as siege of desire and emotion and, in order that it may have perfect immunity, it must get the nearest equivalent we can get in vital parts and the English tongue emotions themselves purified. The will to enjoy is proper to the Sanskrit philosophical term ''buddhi''vital being but not the choice or the reaching after the enjoyment which must be determined and acquired by higher functions; therefore we exclude the vital being must be trained to accept whatever gain or enjoyment comes to it in the right functioning of the life in obedience to the working of the divine Will and to rid itself of craving and attachment. Similarly the heart must be freed from it subjection to the action cravings of the sense mind which merely consists life principle and the senses and thus rid itself of the recording false emotions of perceptions fear, wrath, hatred, lust, etc. which constitute the chief impurity of all kinds without distinction whether they the heart. The will to love is proper to the heart, but here also the choice and reaching after love have to be right foregone or wrongtranquillised and the heart taught to love with depth and intensity indeed, true or mere illusory phenomenabut with a calm depth and a settled and equal, penetrating or superficialnot a troubled and disordered intensity. We exclude that mass The tranquillisation and mastery (sama and dama) of confused conception which these members is merely a rendering first condition for the immunity of these perceptions the understanding from error, ignorance and perversion. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p9</ref> * Intermiscence of the sense-mind - The second cause of impurity in the understanding is the illusion of the senses and the intermiscence of the sense-mind in the thinking functions. No knowledge can be true knowledge which subjects itself to the senses or uses them otherwise than as first indices whose data have constantly to be corrected and overpassed.… the beginning of philosophy is equally void the examination of the principles of things which the senses mistranslate to us; the beginning of spiritual knowledge is the higher principle refusal to accept the limitations of judgment the sense-life or to take the visible and discriminationsensible as anything more than phenomenon of the Reality. Nor can we include that constant leaping current <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p10<ref> Equally must the sense-mind be stilled and taught to leave the function of habitual thought which does duty for to the mind that judges and understands. When the understanding in us stands back from the mind action of the average unthinking mansense-mind and repels its intermiscence, but is only the latter detaches itself from the understanding and can be watched in its separate action. It then reveals itself as a constant repetition constantly swirling and eddying undercurrent of habitual concepts, associations, perceptions, desireswithout any real sequence, prejudicesorder or principle of light. It is a constant repetition in a circle unintelligent and unfruitful. There is nothing to be done with this fickle, prejudgmentsrestless, received violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it whether by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or inherited preferences, even though by giving a concentration and singleness to the thought by which it may constantly enrich will of itself by a fresh stock reject this alien and confusing element. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p11</ref> * Improper Action of the will to know - A third cause of concepts streaming impurity has its source in from the environment understanding itself and admitted without the challenge consists in an improper action of the sovereign discriminating reasonwill to know. Undoubtedly this That will is proper to the understanding, but here again choice and unequal reaching after knowledge clog and distort. They lead to a partiality and attachment which makes the intellect cling to certain ideas and opinions with a sort more or less obstinate will to ignore the truth in other ideas and opinions, cling to certain fragments of understanding a truth and shy against the admission of other parts which are yet necessary to its fullness, cling to certain predilections of knowledge and repel all knowledge that does not agree with the personal temperament of thought which has been very useful in acquired by the development past of man from the animal; but it is only one remove above thinker.  The remedy lies in a perfect equality of the animal mind; , in the cultivation of an entire intellectual rectitude and in the perfection of mental disinterestedness. The purified understanding as it is a half-animal reason subservient will not lend itself to habitany desire or craving, so will not lend itself either to desire any predilection or distaste for any particular idea or truth, and will refuse to be attached even to those ideas of which it is the senses and most certain or to lay on them such an undue stress as is likely to disturb the balance of no avail in truth and depreciate the search whether for scientific or philosophical or spiritual values of other elements of a complete and perfect knowledge. We have to go beyond it; its purification can only <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p12<ref> An understanding thus purified would be effected either by dismissing or silencing it altogether or by transmuting it into a perfectly flexible, entire and faultless instrument of intellectual thought and being free from the inferior sources of obstruction and distortion would be capable of as true understandingand complete a perception of the truths of the Self and the universe as the intellect can attain. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p4p13</ref>