lthough it is clear that reading scientific papers becomes easier with experience, the stumbling blocks are real, and it is up to each scientist to identify and apply the techniques that work best for them.

At the beginning, new academic readers find it slow because they have no frame of reference for what they are reading.

The world, like your mind, can be a terrifying place to be. Its appearances are frightening and threatening, and it is in chaos with great, insurmountable problems-just like your mind.

When you begin to listen inside of yourself, you hear the chaos of your own thinking and begin to feel your discomfort. If you are patient and observe these things without running from them, you will pass through them because they cannot keep you from what lies beyond. What keeps people from being free is not their external circumstances. It is their own mind and their own thoughts. They are prisoners to their thoughts. They cannot stop watching their thoughts. It is as if you were watching a movie on a screen and you could never tear yourself away. The screen then becomes ever more real to you, for you have no contrast. You have no experience to remind you that it is just a movie you are watching. As a result, it has greater and greater impact upon you, and you are become a more captive audience with every moment. These things which make you suffer, cause you pain and drive your behavior are only thoughts. They are vaporous things. They have no substance. But for you to look beyond, you must not be afraid of what lies beyond them, for what lies beyond them is a wellspring of tremendous love. What lies beyond them are your true Teachers.

What is the adaptive value of consciousness?

27This realization will surely come, when you can recognize that this Message is from Me, andwhen you have determined that it shall be. To you, whom I have inspired with such adetermination, I will cause every illusion in time to disappear, and you shall in truth know Me.The exercise of your mind along these abstract lines will not hurt you. Instead it is what yourmind needs. For, not until you can grasp My Meaning when presented to you in ideas such asthere herein contained, coming from without, can you perceive and correctly interpret My Ideawhen I inspire you from within. Your mind I AM thus preparing for USE, not to gain moreEarthly knowledge, but in order that you can receive and give forth My Heavenly Knowledge tothose whom I shall bring to you for that purpose.With a prayer to Me, Your Own Real Self, your Father-in-Heaven, that true realization maycome, read carefully what follows

Now, My Consciousness is the inner essence of all Space and all Life. It is the real Substance ofMy All-comprehending and All-including Mind, whose informing and vitalizing Center iseverywhere and Its limit and circumference nowhere. Within the realm of My Mind alone I liveand move and have My Being. It both contains and fills all things, and Its every vibration andmanifestation is but the expression of some phase of My Be-ing.

In the Eternal there is no Time, or Space, or Individuality, and it is only by reason of thephenomenon of Thought being born from the womb of Mind into the world of Matter that theillusions of Time, Space and Individuality occur; the thought, or Creature, acquiring theconsciousness of separateness from its Thinker or Creator

Expressing what?What else could I express, if I AM All that Is, but My Self?You cannot yet see or comprehend when I inspire you with an Idea.Therefore, if I AM All there is, that Idea, which is direct from Me, must be part of or a phase ofMy Self in Being or Expression.Any Idea, once born within the realm of My Mind, as has been shown, immediately becomes aReality, for in the Eternality of My Being Time is not. With you, however, an Idea first createsDesire, a desire to express that Idea; then Desire compels Thinking, Thinking causes Action, andAction produces Results -- the Idea in actual outer manifestation.In Reality I have no Desire, for I AM All Things, and All Things are of Me. I need only to thinkand Speak the Word to produce results

Now, My Consciousness is the inner essence of all Space and all Life. It is the real Substance ofMy All-comprehending and All-including Mind, whose informing and vitalizing Center iseverywhere and Its limit and circumference nowhere. Within the realm of My Mind alone I liveand move and have My Being. It both contains and fills all things, and Its every vibration andmanifestation is but the expression of some phase of My Be-ing.Be-ing is ex-pressing or out-pressing. You cannot imagine be-ing without expression. Therefore,I, All that Is, AM expressing, constantly and continuously expressing

In the beginning, at the dawn of a new Cosmic Day, when the Word consciousness was justawakening and the stillness of Cosmic Night yet prevailed, I The THINKER, conceived MyIdea.This My Idea of My Self in manifestation in a new condition, called Earth expression, I sawcompletely pictured in the mirror of My Omniscient Mind. In this mirror I saw the real Earthshining forth brilliantly in the Cosmos, -- a perfect Sphere, where all the Infinite phases,attributes and powers of My Divine Nature were finding perfect expression through the mediumof Angels of Light, living Messengers of My Will, My Word in the Flesh, even as It is in theCelestial World of the Eternal.I saw My Self manifesting outwardly as Nature, and My Life as the vivifying and evolvingPrinciple back of all Manifestation. I saw Love, the Divine Creative Power, as the animating andvitalizing Force back of all Life, and My Desire to give perfect expression to that Love as thePotential and Real Cause and Reason of the birth of My Idea.All this I saw mirrored in My All-seeing and All-knowing Mind, which could see and reflectonly the Soul of things or their Reality. Therefore this that I saw pictured in My Mind was theReal Earth, in fact, its beginning, its conception into Cosmic being

Raj: It all depends on where you’re standing as you’re observing it. Because I will tell you, again, that from my vantage point this is cause for great Joy and great Joy is being experienced by those of us standing in attendance, you might say, as you reach out and desire to embrace, and thus express Mind, thus express your natural inherent Sanity.

You must stop valuing the inputs which bolster the ego and satisfy it. I mean by that, the actions that get approval. You must at this point value the marvelous fact that you are, at this instant, connecting with me from That of you which is Fourth-dimensional. It is a concrete demonstration of your Sanity—your presence of Mind—and therefore an illuminated experience of your Being, with no distortion present.

Raj: Again, Paul, there is a need for desire to be present—a desire for a friend. A desire to be with me consciously. And again, at this point, any experience of not being with me is not a valid or valuable experience. Therefore a choice for being unaware of me is a choice which imprisons you in unconsciousness, ignorance. Your great familiarity with your ignorance, and your great unfamiliarity with being with me does not justify the ongoing choice for being unconscious of me, and therefore unconscious of You. If it seems that the protocols of your dream are dissolving—being rendered meaningless—and as a result there is what you perceive and judge to be chaos, then you may know that the elements of its attraction—meaning the ignorance or the dream—are losing their ability to hold your attention, and thus, you not only have a “window of escape,” you also feel a need. This is in perfect order and is indicative of healing, of your coming back into your right Mind—your undistorted, unbiased, unconditional, unconditioned Conscious experience of Being.

Stop trying to figure it out, Paul. The process of “observing” is the Conscious Function of Mind. That which is being “observed” is Mind’s Universal Function of being Conscious Being. In other words, Being—Mind—by being, projects or manifests Itself, and is the Observing of the Process. It is the projector, the image, and the observing of it.

I will tell you that it will be important for you not to think too much, because your thinking is habitual. I mean by that, it is unoriginal. It is caught in the past. It substantiates old concepts and fears, which, because of their great familiarity, can distract you for a time, and thus delay your coming into your right Mind.

Again I am going to reiterate: Avoid thinking! If you want to have the stimulation of insight, don’t think. Listen! And listen to me. Then the amplifications which you expect to arrive at through thinking, but will not, will be present in the nature of the dialogue, the connection. Then the specifics that you would hope to arrive at through thinking will come as Knowing, and further substantiate the shift of weight of emphasis of attention to you, and thus disengage you further from the distorted self-perception that you have thought was really you. Again: If you want to understand, don’t think. Listen. Dialogue. Actively speak with me. Actively be with me. This is another way of saying, actively let me in, because to the degree that you let me in, you let yourself into your right Mind, and your full Sanity, and your full embrace of what is Really going on—Reality, the Kingdom of Heaven, the Movement of Creation, the experience of unity, integrity.

It is the experience of being Who you Are that I am promoting, and not an “intellectual knowledge.” Indeed, to quote Susan, if I were to sit here and say “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” and you did not miss one moment of the “blahs,” but were attentive to them, the essential dynamics of Awakening would be present, because you could not hear the “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” from within your defenses. Thus the experience of being in your right Mind, even though it would not be complete, would be Actual, and that is the way the weight gets shifted from the unreal sidekick that seems real to the real Friend that seems unreal, and the real You that has seemed nonexistent.

Now, I am not giving you a teaching here for you to grasp and understand and employ! I am giving you an experience which you are giving yourself permission to have by virtue of not blocking me so significantly that you cannot hear me. And the experience is one that is not occurring from within the ignorance. It is not originating within the false sense of Paul—the sidekick, if you will—but is arising out of the little bit of you that is in your right Mind, and therefore is experiencing a little bit of what is Really going on.

You are right. You are still not getting it. But, I will tell you something: What you mean is, you are not getting an intellectual grasp of it. But, to the degree that you continue to talk [with me], whether you are intellectually getting it or not, you again are being the willingness and the invitation to experiencing yourself in your right Mind by operating, even in this limited fashion, as you in your right Mind. You, as your ego, cannot talk to me at all. It is You, in your real Being, who is talking with me and hearing me. And so you are substantiating your Sanity, your Wholeness, the Reality of You, whether you are “getting it” or not, whether you are allowing a Conversation with Raj to occur or not.

Would you not be in your right Mind? Would you not choose to move beyond even the happy dream? The happy dream is a stepping-stone, not a place to settle into. The happy dream is insubstantial—dreamlike because it still isn’t Reality. But, it does promote the dissolving of denser illusion which seems so real. And, as I said, the stepping-stone begins to crumble, and you must make the final leap across the little gap that is no gap at all. The issue here is not money or schedule or any other obligation to the human condition. The issue is Listening permanently—committing to me rather than your fantasy sidekick, your imaginary self. In this act, you must necessarily come into the full conscious awareness as my brother—the real You that You Are.

It is absolutely correct that you are going to have to learn to be out from your Center with your eyes open. At this point, I wish to make it very clear that in spite of your experience with the bio-feedback equipment—which seemed to make it obvious that visual experience is of such a stimulating nature that it interferes with one’s being able to come out from a theta or delta frequency—the key is where you are placing your attention. The key is whether you are placing your attention at the threshold of Centeredness or at what I will call the “threshold of stimulation.” Mind you, that “threshold of stimulation” only seems to have meaning relative to a body which, in itself, has the capacity to be sensitive, the capacity to be aware—something which the body does not have, simply because it is the visibility and the tangibility of the expression of Meaning which is being experienced as a result of Knowing.

The world you walk through is the Mind that you Are.

The process of “observing” is the Conscious Function of Mind. That which is being “observed” is Mind’s Universal Function of being Conscious Being. In other words, Being—Mind—by being, projects or manifests Itself, and is the Observing of the Process. It is the projector, the image, and the observing of it. The more you learn to be out from Mind—rather than believing that you are some part of the image on the screen—the more you will become aware of the total harmony of the total process or function that constitutes your Being. What you apparently do, and what apparently is done to you, will become apparent as being totally harmonious. There will be no sense or experience of separation, lack, division, or opposition. The conscious experience of Being is all that is going on. The details, the drama, the story line, et cetera, are incidental to the whole Process.

RAJ: This would mean that the conscious experience of Being is not existent someplace in an objective, three-dimensional universe. It means that the Universe of Mind is peopled with infinite ideas which are perfectly tangible to Consciousness. Therefore, they are not bodiless in the sense of having no visible, tangible outline, form, or colour. It means that everything is identified and identifiable, minus the finite sensation of space and time, minus the sense of separation between subject and object, which is unavoidable in the three-dimensional frame of reference. It is also minus the sense of the beholder being located somewhere in that which is beheld. Man is as incorporated as God, and yet “all is infinite Mind and Its infinite manifestation.” Mind is never minus Its manifestation.

You see, the Christ-consciousness is that consciousness of things which embraces the Totality of Being as It Actually Is, consciously. It is that which sees and experiences the Reality of all appearances, because It does not have Its attention focused on them—but rather on that Awareness which is Mind being Aware of Itself. Mind sees from the inside, as it were.

When observing them from the position of the image, we seem to be trapped into the story line. But, as we leave that position for the standpoint of being as Conscious Being, we apparently gain perspective. The story line appears to change and identify the Universal Harmonies of Being, which we could not see when we thought that we were one of the characters on the screen. It is in this process of leaving the basis of the image and uniting with and as the One Mind that the Reality of things begins to appear. This is why we have taken the last four weeks to effect this change of view. It is time for you to sop operating from the dimension of the image, and to begin functioning as Fourth-dimensional Man, being out from Mind. Until you thoroughly understand that nothing occurs at the point of the “image”—the three-dimensional frame of reference—until you realize that Cause does not reside at that point, out of habit you will be inclined to continue to try to rearrange things on the screen, to try to improve them, to try to make them more comfortable. And this will be a waste of time.

RAJ: Paul, when you ask that question, you are seeing Substance gathered together in clumps, so to speak—objects—which imply that Substance is absent in the spaces between those objects. In other words, you are thinking of Substance three-dimensionally. In fact, Substance is Fourth-dimensional or non-dimensional. It constitutes every aspect of conscious experience as Conscious Being. You must remember that none of what you see, hear, taste, smell, or feel is going on external to the conscious experience of it, even though that is the way it appears. All of it is Consciousness. All of it is Mind’s Self-experience.

Mrs. Eddy said, “All consciousness is Mind; and Mind is God—an infinite and not a finite consciousness.“1 Now, if there is no other might nor Mind but God, then there is no other consciousness of things to be experienced than that one conscious experience of Being, which is God’s.

The ultimate goal here is to live your whole day as Mind, as Conscious Being, as Fourth-dimensional Being

In spite of appearances, Fourth-dimensionally speaking, you and your family’s whole Universe—being the infinite Expression of the One that each One is—is lovingly and wonderfully bent on the fulfillment of infinite progression. You have an opportunity here to observe, to participate in, and be the experience of being Conscious Being, and to observe the most unique way in which being out from Mind resolves the illusion of conflict within the three-dimensional frame of reference.

Such a sanctuary is in some ways a satisfying experience, but you can’t pull a sanctuary behind your car with you everywhere you go, or pull it into a building on a wagon just so your place of living as Conscious Being can always be with you. If that is the only means one has, then one must work with what one has, but it is most certainly limited. I am glad to see that you are discovering that you can function intuitively out from Mind as Conscious Being. This indicates a rapid integration of being consciously aware of Who You Are, What You Are, and that You Are Where It’s All Happening.

I want you to begin an extremely thorough study of the functions of your Mental Body. Dissect it. Look at it. Don’t be afraid to delve into every nook and cranny you find. It is you, and yet it is the infinite Reality you have been looking for in all your studying and listening for the Truth.

It is time to become aware of the “physiology” or anatomy of your mentality. Be attentive to the process of what you call inspiration, intuition, psychic awareness, enlightenment. It is not something happening to you at all. Rather, it is You happening as You.

PAUL: In what way does Substance constitute Supply? RAJ: Let us first be clear that when we speak of Supply we are not speaking from a finite, three-dimensional standpoint. Supply is not something that comes from one point to another point, such as payment from a client or customer. Supply does not come from one thing to another, such as food value from wheat. Supply is not given or received. Supply is an Omnipresencing of That Which Is: God, the Life Principle, Divine Mind, Fourth-dimensional Being as Conscious Being. You must remember that Substance is Activity, not a static lump of stuff. We have already spoken in regard to the fact that It has intent or purpose. Substance is Being’s Ability to fulfill Itself successfully, Totally. Therefore, it should be clear that Substance is fulfillment—Supply in its truest meaning. Supply is inescapable, unavoidable, when understood.

Law is intelligent Principle—principled Intelligence—and this constitutes the omniactive Nature of Substance. The Light which is divine, intelligent Love is the means by which divine Mind reveals Itself to Itself infinitely as the omnipresently active Experience of Revelation. It allows Soul to respond. “And, behold, it was very good.“2

PAUL: How does Substance function? RAJ: It functions by being the omnipresent omniaction of Being. The substance of Mind is Consciousness. The substance of Truth is Principle. The substance of Principle is Intelligence/Law. The substance of Soul is Love. The substance of Love is Life. And the substance of Life is Mind.

PAUL: Very well. My first question is: What is Substance? RAJ: Your first answer is that Substance is infinite, nondimensional, and pure Energy—the Life Force, as it were. It is Intelligence. It is Soul. It is Spirit. It is Principle. It is Love. It is Life. It is Truth. It is Mind. It is, in the final analysis, what is meant by the word God. It is omnipresent. It is omniactive. It is the nondimensional or Universal “stuff” of which all that is made is made. It is that which constitutes You and your entire experience as Conscious Being, whether you are being “out from Mind” or not.

If All is Infinite Mind, then All is Infinite Mind! One must live his experience of the infinitude of his Being as though that were the Fact. Not because that will help make it so, but because that is what is so! And such thinking is, therefore, in line with what is already true.

PAUL: Okay. I know that all of me has to be present and functioning… RAJ: Don’t add that “but.” Stay with the simple Fact you have just stated. The “but” is the hooker! “All is infinite Mind and Its infinite manifestation.“1 There aren’t any “buts” about it! Being is “neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing towards it. It is at that point and must be understand therefrom.“2 It will never be understood from the standpoint of the three-dimensional frame of awareness (ego). You must stop looking for clues, helpful hints, or reassurances objectively. Being doesn’t need them, and “ego” only needs them in order to hook you. Remember, as you “do battle,” that there is no battle going on at all. It is a process by which you are becoming less slipshod in your self-identification. It seems as though it is an attempt to influence you in the direction of misidentification, but you are at a point where the thrust truly cannot reach you because you are hidden in the Secret Place of the Most High. You have experienced It.

You can see that it truly, completely, means getting yourself out of the way. This is the grand lesson. Do not be afraid of being “out of control.” So many times people feel that if they are out of control, they will be wide open to being controlled by other entities, forces, or powers. But the omnipresent I Am—the infinite, divine Mind that constitutes the Being of every being that be’s—is the only Presence and Power which can exert and manifest Itself, and be the center and circumference—the Alpha and Omega. Therefore, such concepts or beliefs are groundless, and one need never be afraid to let go and say and be the statement, “Thy Will be done.“

On the other hand, Identity, when It is perceived to be the expression of the Universal, omnipresent divine Mind or Intelligence, is capable of expressing Itself on a sustained basis—so sustained that the word “eternal” is the only word that describes It. It is so substantial by virtue of Its Nature as Intelligence, that It is called Omnipotent.

You need to take some time each day to specifically be out from Mind and ignore the demands which seem to be coming from “out there.“

Seeing out from Being is that perfect Awareness which Mind experiences of its own infinite Self-expression. All that actually happens is that the illusion, or misunderstanding, caused by conceptual thinking simply evaporates. One is left with a clear view of the Actuality of one’s own Being and the Harmony of it as one’s own experience.

You must come to the realization that it is your Being which is unfolding Itself infinitely on the basis of Its Nature as Intelligence, as Life, and as Mind. Therefore, It is—before you think a single thought about it—unfolding Itself (your Self) with all the precision, Intelligence, and Principle which constitutes Itself. It is this infinite unfolding of your Self that you must learn to bring your thought in line with. You cannot use your thoughts to bring your Being into line with them. This is a part of the letting go which is necessary for you in order for you to experience the unfolding of your Being as complete Harmony.

Seeing out from Being is that perfect Awareness which Mind experiences of its own infinite Self-expression. All that actually happens is that the illusion, or misunderstanding, caused by conceptual thinking simply evaporates. One is left with a clear view of the Actuality of one’s own Being and the Harmony of it as one’s own experience.

The need here is to let go of the thought process, which you are already rather proficient at, as well as the misidentification of your self as that thought process. You are that Mind which functions perfectly and infinitely without thinking a thought in order to do so. This Mind has, as one of Its capacities, the ability to formulate verbalizations of Its infinite Self-action. Yet, It is never in Its verbalizations, and never mistakes Itself as being the “thought process” by which means the verbalizations are developed.

Paul, it is impossible for your world to become integrated if you do not understand what the Substance of that Totality is. This is why we are discussing this point this morning. The only Substance there is throughout the Universe—and throughout all dimensions—is Light. This Light, in Its various aspects, is Life, Truth, Principle, Mind, Soul, and Spirit. It is also Intelligence and Substance. In everything you do, I want you to begin to be conscious of this idea that all there is to you—and all there is to everything—is this Light of Living Love. There are not two things going on. This Light is eternally living Itself as the intelligent expression of Conscious Experience, universally and specifically.

Paul, it is impossible for your world to become integrated if you do not understand what the Substance of that Totality is. This is why we are discussing this point this morning. The only Substance there is throughout the Universe—and throughout all dimensions—is Light. This Light, in Its various aspects, is Life, Truth, Principle, Mind, Soul, and Spirit. It is also Intelligence and Substance.

Your assignment is: As best as you can, leave our conversation, but stay in the same place. Be there when you listen to the tape. You have already experienced the meaning of the words and the communication as Mind. Now you are having the opportunity of feeling the meaning of listening to a tape recording of the conversation and of discerning the subtle structures and patterns of that experience as Conscious Being.

Thank you for opening your eyes, for it is a definite aid in broadening your ability to be out from Mind while being in an apparently more natural state from a three-dimensional point of view. You see, Paul, you are going to have to be able to move incognito in the three-dimensional world

Again, whatever appears to be going on three-dimensionally, is going on Fourth-dimensionally as Mind fulfilling itself Perfectly. You need not be apprehensive concerning it.

Existing as a material being in a three-dimensional environment is exciting, challenging, scary, but never Satisfying because it is literally to live as though One is out of One’s Mind. It is not the ultimate purpose of Man, or Being.

When observing them from the position of the image, we seem to be trapped into the story line. But, as we leave that position for the standpoint of being as Conscious Being, we apparently gain perspective. The story line appears to change and identify the Universal Harmonies of Being, which we could not see when we thought that we were one of the characters on the screen. It is in this process of leaving the basis of the image and uniting with and as the One Mind that the Reality of things begins to appear. This is why we have taken the last four weeks to effect this change of view. It is time for you to sop operating from the dimension of the image, and to begin functioning as Fourth-dimensional Man, being out from Mind.

the more you learn to be out from Mind—rather than believing that you are some part of the image on the screen—the more you will become aware of the total harmony of the total process or function that constitutes your Being. What you apparently do, and what apparently is done to you, will become apparent as being totally harmonious. There will be no sense or experience of separation, lack, division, or opposition.

You see, the Christ-consciousness is that consciousness of things which embraces the Totality of Being as It Actually Is, consciously. It is that which sees and experiences the Reality of all appearances, because It does not have Its attention focused on them—but rather on that Awareness which is Mind being Aware of Itself. Mind sees from the inside, as it were.

Paul, the shift which you have been experiencing for the past four weeks is, indeed, a shift from a personal, finite, limited sense of universal facts to that Awareness which is Mind’s experience of Itself as All. This is why there is great need for trust, for willingness, and for letting go.

Beloved friends, as we speak of these things, though, let not seriousness enter the mind. For in Truth, all we are really doing is describing for you what you need to do, and can do, in order to release the burden of illusion that seems to cause you to feel a heaviness upon your countenance, a sense of a lack of safety in the world. You could think of it as taking your rheostat and turning it up a bit by enlightening you, taking your burden of guilt and judgment from you.

But at the level of the capability hierarchy where we wish to work, it seems useful to us to distinguish several different types of structuring--even though each type is fundamentally a structuring of the basic physical processes. Tentatively we have isolated five such types--although we are not sure how many we shall ultimately want to use in considering the problem of augmenting the human intellect, nor how we might divide and subdivide these different manifestations of physical-process structuring. We use the terms "mental structuring", "concept structuring", "symbol structuring", "process structuring," and "physical structuring."

The fundamental principle used in building sophisticated capabilities from the basic capabilities is structuring--the special type of structuring (which we have termed synergetic) in which the organization of a group of elements produces an effect greater than the mere addition of their individual effects. Perhaps "purposeful" structuring (or organization) would serve us as well, but since we aren't sure yet how the structuring concept must mature for our needs, we shall tentatively stick with the special modifier, "synergetic." We are developing a growing awareness of the significant and pervasive nature of such structure within every physical and conceptual thing we inspect, where the hierarchical form seems almost universally present as stemming from successive levels of such organization.

Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.

The real heart of the matter of selection, however, goes deeper than a lag in the adoption of mechanisms by libraries, or a lack of development of devices for their use. Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path. The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.

copy

Do not players on the harp, for example, exert their memory and attend to the sound of their voice and the various inflections of it, while at the same time they strike part of the strings with their right hand and pull, stop, or let loose others with their left, while not even their foot is idle, but beats time to their playing, all these acts being done simultaneously

As birds are born to fly, horses to run, and wild beasts to show fierceness, so to us peculiarly belong activity and sagacity of understanding

The above are the motives that make men do wrong to others; we are next to consider the states of mind in which they do it, and the persons to whom they do it.

As to the frame of mind that makes people calm, it is plainly the opposite to that which makes them angry, as when they are amusing themselves or laughing or feasting; when they are feeling prosperous or successful or satisfied; when, in fine, they are enjoying freedom from pain, or inoffensive pleasure, or justifiable hope.