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OCCULT POWERS
a great cause of grossness, because when a person eats impure food or drinks intoxicating drink, which injures his physical nature and therefore his mentality, and then attempts to think of higher things, the memory itself will not come into operation. Those foods which are of a stimulating character would make a person nervous, and take away the strength from the higher things, but if the proper rules are observed, it becomes easy for a person to concentrate his thought on a certain matter which he may wish to consider. The food and drink do not directly bring out the conscisusness of the soul, but prevent darkening forces from coming over the soul, and it is free to evolve its own powers of consciousness and spirituality. It is not only the memory which thinks at that plane, but other powers, the power of thinking on different matters. There are so many degrees in human beings; there are people who cannot think on higher subjects; they cannot understand even the words in which these things are expressed. The soul cannot exercise its inherent powers on account of certain forces collected either in this life or in some other life in the past. The person may have lived a different kind of life in the past from that he is living now. In all these three planes, the physical, mental and spiritual, morality itself has a very important connection, and unless it is strictly observed there is no chance of rising higher at all. Morality affects not only the high ideal but even little acts, and if we do not observe the true rules of every-day life we can never hope to rise morally or spiritually. Now we
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