stimulating ideas which it goes chasing after and is at once
unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot keep your mind from
wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you.
After an Interval of Days
O.M. Now, dreams–but we will examine that later.
Meantime, did you try commanding your mind to wait for orders
from you, and not do any thinking on its own hook?
Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when
I should wake in the morning.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own
initiation, without waiting for me. Also–as you suggested–at
night I appointed a theme for it to begin on in the morning, and
commanded it to begin on that one and no other.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No.
O.M. How many times did you try the experiment?
Y.M. Ten.
O.M. How many successes did you score?
Y.M. Not one.
O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the
man. He has no control over it; it does as it pleases. It will
take up a subject in spite of him; it will stick to it in spite
of him; it will throw it aside in spite of him. It is entirely
independent of him.
Y.M. Go on. Illustrate.
O.M. Do you know chess?
Y.M. I learned it a week ago.
O.M. Did your mind go on playing the game all night that
first night?
Y.M. Don’t mention it!
O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in
the combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you
get some sleep?
Y.M. Yes. It wouldn’t listen; it played right along. It
wore me out and I got up haggard and wretched in the morning.
O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a
ridiculous rhyme-jingle?
Y.M. Indeed, yes!
“I saw Esau kissing Kate,
And she saw I saw Esau;
I saw Esau, he saw Kate,
And she saw–”
And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it
all day and all night for a week in spite of all I could do to
stop it, and it seemed to me that I must surely go crazy.
O.M. And the new popular song?
Y.M. Oh yes! “In the Swee-eet By and By”; etc. Yes, the
new popular song with the taking melody sings through one’s head
day and night, asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. There is
no getting the mind to let it alone.
O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite
independent. It is master. You have nothing to do with it. It
is so apart from you that it can conduct its affairs, sing its
songs, play its chess, weave its complex and ingeniously
constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no use for your
help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either, whether
you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could
originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed
you could do it.
Y.M. Yes, I have had that idea.
O.M. Yet you can’t originate a dream-thought for it to work
out, and get it accepted?
Y.M. No.
O.M. And you can’t dictate its procedure after it has
originated a dream-thought for itself?
Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind
and the dream mind are the same machine?
O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic
day-thoughts? Things that are dream-like?
Y.M. Yes–like Mr. Wells’s man who invented a drug that made
him invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.
O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple,
consistent, and unfantastic?
Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that
are just like real life; dreams in which there are several
persons with distinctly differentiated characters–inventions of
my mind and yet strangers to me: a vulgar person; a refined one;
a wise person; a fool; a cruel person; a kind and compassionate
one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old persons and young;
beautiful girls and homely ones. They talk in character, each