The Action or Function of the Will

Sage: It depends upon what you have read about the different kinds of will. The will is the power-control in your mind, which holds your thought in a given direction until a result has been accomplished. For example: Suppose you wish to go to a certain place; without the will to go there, you could not even start, not could you retain the thought of the place long enough to arrive. You would start in the right direction, and then, because there was not sustaining power in the thought, you might turn and go in another direction.

Pupil: So it is the will which holds the thought to a given purpose until it is consummated; or keeps an idea in its place in one's mind until it is objectified in form. It might be termed a thought-stabilizer.

Sage: just so. It is the will which holds your mental faculties in position relative to the creative power which does the desired work. Thought is always creative, as I have explained in my book "The Edinburgh Lectures of Mental Science," page 84: "If, using the word in its widest sense, we may say that the imagination is the creative function, we may call the will the centralizing principle, its function being to keep the imagination centered in the right direction." The will has much the same place in our mental machinery that the tool-holder has in a power-lathe. To my mind this is the will.

Pupil: It is a wonderfully clear statement. It means that success or failure is contingent upon but one thing mental control, and the will is this controlling factor.

Sage: The business of the will is always the same, that of keeping your mental faculties where they will do the work you intend them to do.

Pupil: Suppose I were conducting a business, but my thoughts were more on an anticipated vacation than on my work. Naturally my business would suffer. I low could my will help me?