it, and I can’t!’ How have you tried to stop it?  ’Well, I’ve made up my mind several times to fight against it, but I never succeed.  This is strictly between ourselves.  I don’t usually admit that I’m a grumbler.’  Considering that you grumble for about an hour and a half every day of your life, it was sanguine, my dear sir, to expect to cure such a habit by means of a solitary intention, formed at intervals in the brain and then forgotten.  No!  You must do more than that.  If you will daily fix your brain firmly for half an hour on the truth (you know it to be a truth) that grumbling is absurd and futile, your brain will henceforward begin to form a habit in that direction; it will begin to be moulded to the idea that grumbling is absurd and futile.  In odd moments, when it isn’t thinking of anything in particular, it will suddenly remember that grumbling is absurd and futile.  When you sit down to the meal and open your mouth to say:  ‘I can’t think what my ass of a partner means by—­’ it will remember that grumbling is absurd and futile, and will alter the arrangement of your throat, teeth, and tongue, so that you will say:  ‘What fine weather we’re having!’ In brief, it will remember involuntarily, by a new habit.  All who look into their experience will admit that the failure to replace old habits by new ones is due to the fact that at the critical moment the brain does not remember; it simply forgets.  The practice of concentration will cure that.  All depends on regular concentration.  This grumbling is an instance, though chosen not quite at hazard.

VI

LORD OVER THE NODDLE

Having proved by personal experiment the truth of the first of the two great principles which concern the human machine—­namely, that the brain is a servant, not a master, and can be controlled—­we may now come to the second.  The second is more fundamental than the first, but it can be of no use until the first is understood and put into practice.  The human machine is an apparatus of brain and muscle for enabling the Ego to develop freely in the universe by which it is surrounded, without friction.  Its function is to convert the facts of the universe to the best advantage of the Ego.  The facts of the universe are the material with which it is its business to deal—­not the facts of an ideal universe, but the facts of this universe.  Hence, when friction occurs, when the facts of the universe cease to be of advantage to the Ego, the fault is in the machine.  It is not the solar system that has gone wrong, but the human machine.  Second great principle, therefore:  ’In case of friction, the machine is always at fault.’