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PRACTICAL RULES FOR SOUL-CULTURE
things ; but it does not arise from material things; let a person of sound intelligence take a large does of some intoxicating drink and the intelligence will not work at all. Why should this material thing influence the immaterial, the soul ? The soul thinks that the boy is itself and therefore anything which is done to the material self is supposed by the real self to be done to itself. That is where the Christian scientists and the Jain philosophy will agree; that if the soul thinks that the body is its real self anything done to the body will be considered by the soul to be done to the soul, and therefore what happens to the body will be felt by the soul; but if the soul for a moment thinks that the body is not the self, but altogether different and a stranger to the soul, for that reason no feeling of pain will exist; our atteution is taken away in some other direction and we do not know what is passing before us. This shows that the self is something higher than the body. Still under ordinary circumstances the soul is influenced by the body, and therefore we are to study the laws of the body and soul so as to rise above these little things and proceed on our path to salvation or liberation, which is the real aspiration of the soul. There is power of matter itself, but that power is lower than the power of the soul. If there was no power at all in the body or in matter the soul would never be influenced by it, for mere non-existence will never influence anything; but because there is such a thing as matter,
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