The Body is an inert Thing made of the five Elements

Take shelter in the indwelling Lord. Do not keep looking towards the body and feeling proud. The body is subject to so many diseases; it undergoes many changes. It is barely able to journey on this ocean of worldly existence and survive. The body is only an inert thing; it is nothing more than seven buckets of water, the iron from four 2-inch nails, the phosphorous from 1,100 match sticks, the carbon contained in four pencils and two pieces of soap. When you put all these things together with a few other assorted substances, it becomes a body. So, the body just consists of this inert matter. But it is able to move and exhibit life because there is an indweller inside.

Consider the wall clock that is hanging there. It has three hands: a second hand, a minute hand and an hour hand. As soon as you wind the clock, all three hands start moving at their own prescribed rate. How long will they keep moving thus? They keep moving as long as there is power in the spring to energize them. The moment that power is exhausted, they stop wherever they are. Your body may be compared to a clock. The breath may be compared to the spring. Your actions may be compared to the second hand; your feelings may be compared to the minute hand; and your joy may be compared to the hour hand. It is the divine energy within which empowers and vitalizes all this.

In the context of this example of the clock, you can answer the question as to why you perform actions at all. You see that the second hand, which represents your actions, moves quite fast and soon covers one whole revolution of 60 seconds. At that point, the minute hand, which represents your feelings, will have advanced one sixtieth of a revolution. It is only when the second hand has made sixty full revolutions of sixty seconds each, and the minute hand has gone once around, that the hour hand, which represents an experience of divine joy and bliss, will move one division. The hour hand moves so slowly that you cannot even detect its movement, although you can see the movement of the minute and second hands.

There is an inner secret here. Once every hour all three hands meet. When the action which is associated with the body and nature, when the feeling which is associated with the inner man, and when the unending joy which is associated with the divinity all come together, then you have the meeting of nature, man and God.