s, I know it's absurd to grumble. But I'm like that. I've tried to stop
it, and I can't!' How have you tried to stop it? 'Well, I've made up my
mind several times to fight against it, but I never succeed. This is
strictly between ourselves. I don't usually admit that I'm a grumbler.'
Considering that you grumble for about an hour and a half every day of
your life, it was sanguine, my dear sir, to expect to cure such a habit
by means of a solitary intention, formed at intervals in the brain and
then forgotten. No! You must do more than that. If you will daily fix
your brain firmly for half an hour on the truth (you know it to be a
truth) that grumbling is absurd and futile, your brain will henceforward
begin to form a habit in that direction; it will begin to be moulded to
the idea that grumbling is absurd and futile. In odd moments, when it
isn't thinking of anything in particular, it will suddenly remember that
grumbling is absurd and futile. When you sit down to the meal and open
your mouth to say: 'I can't think what my ass of a partner means by--'
it will remember that grumbling is absurd and futile, and will alter the
arrangement of your throat, teeth, and tongue, so that you will say:
'What fine weather we're having!' In brief, it will remember
involuntarily, by a new habit. All who look into their experience will
admit that the failure to replace old habits by new ones is due to the
fact that at the critical moment the brain does not remember; it simply
forgets. The practice of concentration will cure that. All depends on
regular concentration. This grumbling is an instance, though chosen not
quite at hazard.

VI

LORD OVER THE NODDLE

Having proved by personal experiment the truth of the first of the two
great principles which concern the human machine--namely, that the brain
is a servant, not a master, and can be controlled--we may now come to
the second. The second is more fundamental than the first, but it can be
of no use until the first is understood and put into practice. The human
machine is an apparatus of brain and muscle for enabling the Ego to
develop freely in the universe by which it is surrounded, without
friction. Its function is to convert the facts of the universe to the
best advantage of the Ego. The facts of the universe are the material
with which it is its business to deal--not the facts of an ideal
universe, but the facts of this universe. Hence, when friction occurs,
when the fa