The serious study of the spiritual classics—burning the midnight oil in the pleasant company of the greatest Masters of history—is not much in vogue in our times. Perhaps it's because knowledge has come to be associated with universities and degrees, rather than years of deeply fulfilling apprenticeship under a true Master.

At any rate, a real Master will demand from us—often painfully so—that we put our studies into actual practice. Which with yoga means an incessant examination of our inner weaknesses: a joy in exposing them and routing them out.

As we gradually replace our mental stockpile with an increasingly higher percentage of pure seeds, then our Master begins to come to us in ever higher ways. At a very specific point, she comes to us as the one perfect angel who will guide us personally to our final paradise together.

This is not some wishful fairy-tale thinking. It is the hard, cold, practical, inevitable result of devoting ourselves to the task of cleaning up the seeds within our own mind.