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RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE JAINAS
done by concentrating our thoughts. If the department of life in which we are engaged is such that our very maintenance depends on the knowledge of these things we must concentrate upon them. Will this really advance us? The ordinary result is that we become fond ony of unimportant things, later on, of sensational things and still later of those things which will satisfy our morbid appetites. That is the reason why there are so many sensational novels written. All these things are really injurious. When a murder is committed and the information concerning it is published, people are after the extra papers, and read details with eagerness. Why? Because on account of the unnatural life they lead their propensities are such that nothing can satisfy them except that kind of information. The further result is that the mind being in a state of vibration and therefore in a state to transmit these vibrations to the ethereal matter outside of us, they are carried to other people and thus these propensities are also transmitted. We have even known that a murder has been committed in one part of the country, just about the same time many other murders are committed in other parts of the country. How can this be explained but on the hypothesis that the minds of persons saturated with these thoughts are influencing others by means of the transmission of the thoughts to another place where they are received by a person in a similar condition of mind and translated into thoughts which act on the physical organism and produce the desire to commit crime. From a physiological standpoint we know that the germs from small-pox and other contagious diseases are flying in every direction, and that we should not come into contact with persons who have these diseases. We must take even more care in matters of the mental and moral nature, and thought has indeed a wonderful power of acting on a person's mind, as we see in our daily experience. When one person meets another, suppose a conversation takes place between them, whom we will call A and B. A says, "Well Mr. B, I think you are looking forty years old instead of thirty. How is that?" There is a change in that person's mental organism
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