In religious ceremonies, prior baths are considered to be a mandatory event. The attendees, both the officials and congregants, are expected to bathe before going for the ceremony. This is rated as cleanliness which is one of the required behaviors. A person feels clean and fresh after bathing. Besides that, the body accumulates detestable odors from sweat, urine, and stool. When these are removed, the body feels refreshed, mainly because of removal of the odors and the removal of films of dirt and greases which clog the pores.

Does this mean that a person’s irreligious attitude is removed by bathing the body? The answer is that the irreligious attitude is a psychic aspect which is not removed by bath. One person may feel that it is removed, but that is because of a shift in the psyche, where the mind during bathing moves away from its need to be criminal towards others.

Physical cleanliness, though it is a social convention, and an important one too, is not a psychic feat. Physical cleanliness has its time and place but one should not be of the view that it results in spiritual shifts.

Bath for yogis concerns the subtle body. It concerns the energy in the subtle body, where that energy should be exchanged for fresh subtle air. This has a physical counterpart, concerning the removal of carbon dioxide and other negative gases which are the byproduct of cell activity in the physical body.

In the subtle body, used subtle air should be removed by doing pranayama breath infusion. This action results in a higher grade of energy being used, and more psychic perception for the person concerned.

This is internal bath which is even more important that bath of the physical system. A yogi in isolation has no need to take physical bath regularly. He does not have to be attired for ceremonies. He does not visit others. Hence his physical body does not have to be odorless. He does not have to attend to it as tediously as others who attend religious functions in the home or temple.

Instead, such a yogi should focus on internal cleanliness of the physical body by removing its pollutions which are gases in the body which accumulate in the blood stream. He must be keen with the subtle body to keep it surcharged with fresh subtle air, prana, so that it operates with the highest grade of subtle energy.