The Star in the West

310 THE STAR IN THE WEST (a) Yoga teaches that by concentrating the whole mind upon “ horse " these ideas will be withheld , and the ultimate state arrived at will be “ horse " pure and simple (ec stasy). (But this theory involves Scholastic -Realism ; like all others , it is a false reflection of the L.V.X. ) mind , and was followed in quick succession by the idea of four legs, hoofs, teeth , rider , saddle, racing , cheating ; all of which ideas are connected in my experience with the im . pression , or the idea , of a horse and with one another , by the relations of contiguity and succession (a). No great attention to what passes in the mind is needful to prove that our trains of thought are neither to be arrested , nor even permanently controlled , by our desires or emotions . Never theless , they are largely influ enced by them . In the pres ence of a strong desire , or emotion , the stream of thought no longer flows on in a straight course , but seems , as it were , to eddy round the idea of that which is the object of the emo tion . Every one who has “ eaten his bread in sorrow ," knows how strangely the cur rent of ideas whirls about the conception of the object of re gret or remorse as a centre ; every now and then , indeed , breaking away into the new tracts suggested by passing associations ( b), but still re turning to the central thought . Few can have been so happy as to have escaped the social bore , whose pet notion is cer tain to crop up whatever topic is started ; while the fixed idea of the monomaniac (c) is but the extreme form of the same phenomenon . ( b) This breaking away Yoga prevents . (c) Conscious or sub - con scious , but not supercon scious .