The thought as a river
Inside ourselves runs an uninterrupted flood of thoughts : an idea calls some another which calls another etc. This mechanism of association is the basic operation of the unconscious. Our mind is a continuous river.
This work relates to unconscious, the always active one in background. At the same time, in an waked up state, our cognition, on the surface, is able to gather the ideas, to organize them and to apparently direct their flow.
But if our conscience is able to catch new ideas, to adapt to the situation, it is in fact because the work of association, this bubbling, continues to be played in background, in the unconscious. It is the river in which it fishes.
We do not belong to ourselves : our uncontrolled imagination controls us.
We are not the Masters of this immersed part of our mind, this flow which escapes to us because it is played upstream. It is however what determines us, by the choice of associative which the unconscious mind gives us, and which depends on our education. Thus, the mathematician will have more tendency than another to have associations of mathematical ideas, the architect of architectural ideas etc.
In philosophical language, we could say that we do not have a being in front of us which makes our person, namely this unconscious flood of imagination. In theological language, we would say that we do not have a soul.
The finality of the mystic is to acquire a being above imagination,
In other words,
the purpose of the mystic is to be opposed to the government of the imagination.
Caution
It is not a matter of overcoming the associative dispersion of the mind, what is impossible, but of opposing to the consequences of this dispersion on intellect.
