The Science Of Body Structure

Body And Mind

The mind is intimately connected with the body. The body helps the mind and the mind helps the body. The health of mind and the body are undoubtedly bound up in each other. The mind acts upon the body and the body reacts upon the mind. It the body is sick, the mind also becomes sick. If the body is strong and healthy, the mind also becomes healthy and strong. Understand the nature of the mind and keep it in a very healthy condition. Be always cheerful. Cheerfulness is the best mental tonic.

The mind has a great influence over the whole body. Grief in the mind weakens the body. Body influences the mind also in its turn. A healthy body makes the mind healthy. A pain in the stomach causes a mental depression. The body is the shadow of the mind. It is a mould prepared by the mind into which it pours forth its energies. A pure mind means a healthy body.

When the mind is agitated then the body also is agitated. Wherever they body goes, the mind follows. When the body and the mind are agitated, the Prana flows in a wrong direction. Instead of pervading the whole body steadily and equally, it will vibrate at an unequal rate (unrhythmically). Then, food is not digested properly. Diseases originate. If the primary cause be removed then all diseases will soon disappear.

The Skeleton

A mason builds a house out of stones, small bricks, chunam (lime) and cement. He uses big pieces of stones for the construction of the main walls and puts small bricks and pebbles to fill up the crevices in the walls, plasters the walls with chunam and eventually puts layer of cement. He polishes the walls with finishing touches and gives a colouring in the end to attract the eye. Even so the Divine Architect, Ishwar, has constructed this human body with the help of Mother Prakriti. The bones represent the big stones; the muscles represent the pebbles; the fat the bricks; the dermis or white skin is comparable to chunam; the skin or epidermis to the cement; the pigment of the skin to the colouring matter. Look at the marvelous skill of the Divine Engineer, the Engineer of engineers! The muscles are fixed to the bones by means of tendons. The joints are kept intact by ligaments. Deposition of fat gives good shape to the limbs, the trunk and the abdomen and gives beauty to the body.

The bones are the principal organs of support, and the passive instruments of locomotion. Connected together in the skeleton, they form a frame work of hard material, affording attachment to the soft parts, maintaining them in their due position, sheltering such as are of delicate structure, giving stability to the whole fabric, and preserving its shape. The entire skeleton in the adult consists of about two hundred distinct bones. They are distributed as follows :