but the outward expressions of the latent impressions stored up in the
subtle body. Upon these rests the perfect suitableness of the animal
or human body to the animal or human nature of one's impressions. The
organs of the senses must therefore completely correspond to the
principal desires which are the strongest and most ready to
manifest. They are the visible expressions of these desires. If there
be no hunger or desire to eat, teeth, throat and bowels will be of no
use. If there be no desire for grasping and moving, hands and legs
will be useless. Similarly it can be shown that the desire for seeing,
hearing, etc., has produced the eye, ear, etc. If I have no desire to
use my hand, and if I do not use it at all, within a few months it
will wither away and die. In India there are some religious fanatics
who hold up their arms and do not use them at all; after a few months
their arms wither and become stiff and dead. A person who lies on his
back for six months loses the power of walking. There are many such
instances which prove the injurious effects of the disuse of our limbs
and organs.

As the human form, generally, corresponds to the human will,
generally, so the individual bodily structure corresponds to the
character, desires, will and thought of the individual. Therefore the
outer nature is nothing but the expression of the inner nature. This
inner nature of each individual is what re-incarnates or expresses
itself successively in various forms, one after another. When a man
dies the individual ego or _Jiva_ (as it is called in Sanskrit),
which means the germ of life or the living soul of man, is not
destroyed, but it continues to exist in an invisible form. It remains
like a permanent thread stringing together the separate lives by the
law of cause and effect. The subtle body is like a water-globule which
sprang in the beginningless past from the eternal ocean of Reality;