spiritually advanced being can understand that he is a spiritual particle, a soul that resides within a body of dense matter, so that by cultivating spiritual knowledge he can attain perfection in the spiritual life. He can thus understand that he is a spiritual soul, and not the material body.
The Lord says: "At the moment of death, the soul takes on a new body, as naturally as it has passed, in the previous one, from childhood to youth, then to old age. This change does not disturb who is aware of its spiritual nature."
The first instruction, then, is to understand that the soul is present in the body and transmutes from one body to another. This is the beginning of spiritual knowledge. Anyone who is not versed in this science or who is not interested in it, remains a prisoner of the bodily conception of existence, like the animal. Every human being must clearly understand the instructions of God, because only in this way can we rise spiritually and automatically give up the illusory knowledge that makes us think:
"I am the body, and all that pertains to it belongs to me".
We must immediately reject this mentality worthy of the animal. Rather, one must learn to understand the spiritual soul and the Supreme Being, God, who are eternally connected to one another. Then we will be able to return to God, in his eternal kingdom, after having thus solved all the problems of existence. The embodied spiritual being has its own individuality, but his body is a combination of many material elements. This is proved by the fact that as soon as the soul leaves this set of material elements, the body becomes a simple mass of inert matter. Each individual soul has two kinds of bodies, one coarse made of dense matter, consisting of five elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether) and the other subtle, ethereal, composed of three elements (mental, intelligence , false ego).
A sober person can observe himself and distinguish the soul of the body through an analytical study. There are two distinct entities, the soul and the body. These two entities are not identical, although they seem to form a single whole. But where is the soul?
The sensible man resorts to the spiritual precept and can understand that the whole body develops through the presence of the soul. If the soul is within the body, all its elements and members will grow; otherwise, the body will not grow. A dead child does not grow because the soul is no longer present. If, despite a careful study of the body, we can not discover the existence of the soul, it is because of our ignorance. How can a man understand what touches the soul, that tiny piece of spiritual energy about the size of the ten thousandth of the tip of a hair?