The Magic Box - The Mind’s First Power

YEARS ago I described the contents and workings of the mind as a magic box, comparing it to the nest of boxes produced by an Oriental conjuror, who spreads his carpet and lays a box in the middle of it, then takes a number of boxes out of that box, and then a number of boxes out of each of those, until the whole carpet is piled up with boxes. I compared these boxes to ideas in the mind and described how one idea contains or gives rise to innumerable others.

Now, in order to describe the nature of the contents and, working of the mind, I will pick at random an advertisement in the daily newspaper. It reads as follows: “Artistic luxury home. Hillside. Magnificent trees. 6 bedrooms. 4 bathrooms …“

What does this advertisement do to me? It does very much the same as I do when I press the self-starter in my car. It sets the engine going. I can then sit still in the car and let the engine tick over while I decide where to go, or I can connect it with the transmission and steering mechanism and start my journey to a definite place.

In my mind the ticking over begins: “Home” — I instinctively and almost unconsciously say to myself and at once several memory-pictures spring up. Several! Nay, thousands of them; homes in which I have lived — in my childhood, youth, maturity and elderliness — in which I have visited, which I have looked at as I passed them by on the road, which I have seen pictured in magazines. . . . And if for one fraction of a second I allow myself to dwell upon one of these homes, thousands of details arise. Perhaps it is a door that I look at. Immediately there are hundreds and hundreds of doors of various sizes and colors and patterns — even of several shapes — standing and pushing around and jostling one another, and seeming to call out: “Look at me! Look at me!”

I will not try to compute the number of these memory pictures in my mind, nor what future hordes of them will arise with further experience. But I will acknowledge that every slightest one can proliferate prodigiously. It reminds me of that old story of an Eastern potentate who promised a boon to one of his courtiers, who then asked for one grain of rice for the first square on the chess board, two for the second, four for the third, and so on to the last of the sixty-four squares — a boon which the monarch smilingly granted, little recking that it would bankrupt his whole kingdom, in fact all the kingdoms of the earth, and of many earths.

In my mind I find, too, homes that might have been and homes that may be in the future — re-arrangements and re-combinations of the part of the homes that I have seen. In this manner I can enter the realm of imagination as well as of fact, and I may even think of birds’ homes and worms’ homes and gnomes’ homes and heavenly homes — there is almost no end to this.

But there comes an end to the process, for something inside me says: “Among all these, which do you want to possess or to contemplate?” Now arise two further powers of the mind. I find myself saying: “I like this. I do not like that”, and thereupon pushing some of the memory-pictures away out of sight and inviting others to stay. This is the love-process.

Then comes a decision: “This one I want. To this I will go. I will work for this. I will contemplate this”. Now the mere ticking-over ceases, the transmission is engaged and the steering begins.