In his marvelous book Thought Power, Swami Sivananda argues that “thought moves,” “thought is a force”–indeed, is a “vital, living force.”

This claim is by no means obvious. For many of us, a thought seems almost like a pastime. It’s fun to think about geopolitics, but what effect, apart from entertainment, does such a thought have?

Or thought, we think, has stakes that only come when we put them down on paper or when we come to some sort of decision with one another. On this construal, thought isn’t effective until it’s cast in the form, say, of a contract.

Yet Sivananda is saying something deeper and also far more mysterious. Any time a thought appears, it’s a force, a power, a movement, a vibration. And that living force doesn’t stop when the thought is no longer evident. It travels, carrying on and on and on.

For one thing, the thought carries on as speech, then as action, then as habit, then as character, and ultimately, says Sivananda, as destiny. “As a man thinks,” he write frequently, “so he becomes.”

For another thing, the thought is carried outward, becoming worldly. Evil thoughts spread and are taken up, Sivananda avers, by others. You could say not only that thoughts transfer from one to another but also that thoughts color the recipient’s mind. Is this proposal too weird to even consider, let alone to accept?

Not if we let thoughts be very subtle vibrations that are occurring on a subtle plane. What makes us assume that a thought is bound to a particular thinker to which it’s currently appearing and thus is bound to stop there? What makes us think it’s impossible for thought, since it is a vibration, to travel, to spread, to infiltrate? We accept that there are memes (in Dawkins’s sense of the term) and we certainly can feel a collective mood. That’s not so out there, right?

Then why can’t we allow that thoughts don’t abide imaginary borders? If they don’t, then we had better take care of the thoughts that appear.

For Sivananda, evil thought can beget evil acts. Likewise, sublime thoughts can be beget sublimity.

If he’s right, then we have two reasons to carefully watch our thoughts and, what’s more, to cultivate powerful, wholesome thoughts. One is, as said, that the common “groove” of thought maketh the man, the character. The worry groove makes one into a worrier. The divine thought makes one truly devout. The other is that especially powerful thought waves can color–favorably or unfavorably–others’ experiences.

If we wish to know love, we must cultivate loving thoughts. And if we wish to spread love, we must let these loving thoughts bloom in all directions.