EIGHTH TALK l49

you will still fail a great many times before you
achieve success. They tell you in India the mind is
the rajah or king of the senses, and that of all things
he is the most difficult to control. I think you will
find that to be true. In that respect we of the West
are no better off than the Indian, I think perhaps a
little worse ; because we have been developing this
lower mind and have prided ourselves upon the
rapidity with which it could change from one subject
to another. All true and all very necessary. But it
must be subordinate to the one great idea; and if
with us it is not so subordinate, then just to that
extent we are not doing the highest we could do, we
have still something to strive for, and a long time
indeed it takes most of us to attain the final conquest
over mind. But with the mental elemental, also, there
is possibility of habit. Get him into a groove. (One
speaks as though he were an intelligent entity ; he is
not that, and yet in many ways one understands him
better if one treats him as though he were.) Get
him to understand that you, the ego, intend to have
this one dominant idea there all the time, but that in
connection with that there are infinite ramifications,
that there is nothing which cannot be brought into
the service of the Master; and then presently this
curious, unmanageable mental elemental will come to
understand that, on the whole, he gets more by work-
ing with you, whom he does not understand, than by
working against you ; that, if he works with you, he