By the study of this, one will find that there are five different aspects which constitute our physical body. The mystics, for convenience, call them earth, water, fire, air, ether.
But these must not be compared with the scientific terms; it is only for the convenience of a mystic.
Then one will see the different senses, the organs of the senses: each sense represents one of these elements. And coming to the natural tendencies and needs of life, every action one does has a relation to one of these five elements. This study of the mechanism will make a person understand that something which he always called himself is nothing but a mechanism, a mechanism made of five elements, the elements which are borrowed from the outer world.
And he will find that his mind, which experiences through all organs of the senses, still remains aloof as a spectator who conceives and perceives the outside world through the mediumship of this mechanism which he calls his body.
This knowledge will waken a deep thinker to the fact that he is not his body; although, consciously or unconsciously, there is perhaps one among a million persons who clearly realizes, "My body is my instrument; I am not my body." The one who has come to realize, "My body is my instrument," is the controller of this prison; he is the engineer of this machinery.
And then there comes the next stage of knowing oneself, and that is to explore what one calls the mind. By a minute study of the mind one will find that the different qualities such as reason, memory, thought, feeling, and the ego, all these five things constitute mind.
One will find that there is a surface to this and there is a depth to it. Its depth is the heart; its surface is mind. Each quality of mind represents one of these five elements. This again takes us to the thought that even the mind, which is above the physical body, is a mechanism.
And the more one is acquainted with the mechanism, the more one is able to manage it to its best advantage; and it is the ignorance of the secret of this mechanism that keeps man unaware of his own domain.
This knowledge makes one think, "I am neither my body nor am I my mind; I am the engineer who has these two possessions, these two machineries, to work with to the best advantage of life." Then one begins to ask, "What am I?"
For to a certain degree even the mind is a mechanism which is borrowed from the outer sphere, as the body is a mechanism which has been borrowed from the physical plane, which has been gathered together and constructed.
Therefore, neither mind nor body is the self. One thinks, "It is myself", only because one cannot see oneself. And so one says of everything one sees, "This is myself." The self becomes acquainted with everything but itself. So that mind which the self has used, has become a kind of cover upon the light which fulfills the purpose of life.
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