The condition of a being within matter depends more or less on its intelligence and the strength of its vital energy. Thus, intelligence is assisted by the organs of perception in the struggle for existence, and the organs of action, such as the hands and legs, serve to maintain the energy necessary for life. From a global perspective, however, this struggle is a matter of passion. And this is why the sense organs, headed by intelligence and vital energy, represent various primary and secondary manifestations of passion, which is the second attribute and mode of influence of material nature. The latter stems from the element of air.
The Formation of the Body and Its Purpose.
Indeed, the body cannot be formed until the elements, the senses, the mind, and the three attributes and modes of influence of material nature: virtue, passion, and ignorance, are assembled.
The different kinds of bodies attributed to living beings—human, animal, and plant—are exactly like different models of cars made by assembling multiple parts together. When the assembly is complete, the driver takes his place at the wheel and drives the car wherever he wishes.
Each being is, as it were, within a machine, the machine called the material body, and the activities of this vehicle are directed by material nature, much as the driver of a locomotive would.
Distinct individual beings cannot be identified with the material body in which they are located, for they are spiritual souls incarnated within a specific material envelope, which serves as their clothing or vehicle. In truth, every individual being is a spiritual spark, a spiritual soul, a tiny fragment of God, the Supreme Being, Krishna, and the Supreme Father, being full of kindness to his sons, grants them, to a certain extent, the freedom to rule over material nature as they see fit. Just as a father will console his crying child by giving it a toy to satisfy it, the Lord, by His will, manifests the entire material creation to enable misguided beings to exploit their surroundings as they see fit, although they remain subject to the material energy, the Lord's agent.
Essential beings are thus in every way like young children playing on the field of material action, under the watchful eye of the Lord's handmaid, nature. They hold Maya, the material and servant nature of the Lord, to be the sole reality and thus wrongly consider the Absolute Truth, Krishna, to be feminine in nature, as is generally conceived by the worshippers of the goddess Durga. Certainly, the childish conception of materialists cannot rise above the material nature, the servant of the Lord, but the Lord's elder sons, with mature intelligence, know well that the material nature acts under the direction of the Lord, just as a servant follows the orders of the householder.