g every
waking moment. Have you never tossed about all night, imploring,
beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to
sleep?--you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must
obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you
tell it to stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it
still for an instant. The brightest man would not be able to supply it
with subjects if he had to hunt them up. If it needed the man's help it
would wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning.

Y.M. Maybe it does.

O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to
give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying, "The moment I wake I
will think upon such and such a subject," but he will fail. His mind
will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough
awake to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work upon
another subject. Make the experiment and see.

Y.M. At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to.

O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a rule it will
listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all
persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle
dreams; the bright speaker throws out 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.