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 preserves his own characteristics. There are vivid fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing is exactly like real life.
O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably through – all without help or suggestion from you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or suggestion from you – and I think it does. It is argument that it is the same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the mind is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an automatic machine. Have you tried the other experiment which I suggested to you?
Y.M. Which one?
O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you have over your mind – if any.
