The Master Mind

How rare indeed to find a man! How common, rather, to discover a creature hounded by tyrant thoughts (or cares, or desires), cowering, wincing under the lash—or perhaps priding himself on running merrily to a driver that rattles the reins and persuades him he is free—whom one cannot converse with in a casual, private talk because that alien presence is always there, on the watch.

✓ “It is a prominent doctrine of some of the Eastern schools of practical psychology that the power of expelling thoughts, or if need be, killing them dead on the spot, must be attained. Naturally, the art requires practice, but like other arts, once it is acquired, there is no mystery or difficulty about it. It is worth the practice. It may be fairly said that ✓ life only begins when this art has been acquired. For obviously, when—instead of being ruled by individual thoughts—the whole flock of them, in their immense multitude, variety, and capacity, is ours to direct, dispatch, and employ as we wish, ✓ life becomes so vast and grand, compared to what it was before, that its former condition might appear almost prenatal. If you can kill a thought dead, for the time being, you can do anything else with it that you please. That is why this power is so valuable. It not only ✓ frees a man from mental torment (which is nine-tenths, at least, of the torment of life), but it gives him a concentrated power of handling mental work absolutely unknown to him before. The two are related to each other.

✓ “While at work, your thought must be absolutely concentrated upon it, undistracted by anything irrelevant to the matter in hand—