The mind can be likened to a record of the talking-machine. But, as it is a living mechanism, it does not only reproduce what is impressed on it, but it creates as well as reproduces. There are five different actions of the mind which can be distinguished:

creating of thoughts;
the sense of discrimination;
memory;
the factor of feeling;
the principal faculty, the feeling of I-ness, or ego.

Every thought which mind creates has some connection with some idea already recorded, not exactly similar, but akin to it. For instance, one deeply engraved line on the mind may have several small lines shooting out from it like branches from the trunk of a tree.

The Sufi, therefore, learns and practices to discern the more deeply engraved lines by the observation of their offshoots. Therefore he is able to learn more from a person's thought than anybody else, just as by looking at a leaf of a tree one can find out what tree it is. As a rule, every thought a person expresses has at bottom a connection with some deep feeling. The reading of the deep-set line is like reading the cause of the person's thought. The knowledge of the cause can give greater understanding than knowing only the thought. It is just like standing on the other side of the wall.

Thought is like a wall; behind it -- the cause. Often the difference between cause and effect is like that between sour and sweet. It is often confusing, yet simple, that the same fruit may be sour when unripe and sweet when ripe. When one begins to understand life from this point of view, the opinion one forms of thought becomes different. There is a great difference between reading a thought externally and reading it from the inside, the source. The one who forms an opinion of the shade has not seen the reality. The effect of a thought is but a shade, the reality is the cause, the source.

What are these deep lines from which offshoots come? These deep lines are the deep impressions which man gets in the first part of his life. In the East, considering this theory, they observe certain rules in the family concerning the expectant mother and the child to be, so that no undesirable impressions may touch their minds. This shows how important it is that this question must be studied.

The word "man" comes from the Sanskrit Manas, which means "mind." This shows that man is principally his mind, rather than his body. And as mind is naturally impressionable, that means that man is naturally impressionable too. Most often his illness, health, prosperity, failure, all depend upon the impressions on his mind.

They say "Lines of fate and death are on the head and palm," but I would say that it is the impressions man has on his mind which decide his destiny. The lines on head and palm are but re-impressions of the mind, and once a person has learned the lines of the mind, there is no need of the lines on hand or face.

Can this language be learned like shorthand? No, the method is different. The method is that, whereas to understand a person every man in his reasoning goes forward from the thought of another, the Sufi goes backward. All impressions of joy, sorrow, fear, disappointment, become engraved on the mind. This means that they have become man's self. In other words, man is the record of his impressions. The religion of the ancients said that the record of man's actions will be reproduced on the Last Day, and that angels write down all the good and ill done by each one. What we learn from this allegorical expression is that all is impressed on the mind; although forgotten, it is always there and will one day show up.