A quarter century ago it was hoped that extended research into the colloidal material of nerve fibres would help solve the tantalizing problems that lie at the root of organisms having life and consciousness. Much progress has certainly been made since then. That the connection between the physical and the mental lies in the tiny nerve cell's colloidal structure will certainly prove indisputable eventually. But there is no basic solution of these problems without an adoption of the view that the physical itself is but an aspect of the mental. If this is done it is then possible to trace the building up of the individual's world picture through the ages by a combination of mnemonic images, associated ideas, thought tendencies, and habit energies; and his body picture through the evolution of functions like sight, digestion, and so on, which in their turn generated suitable sense apparatuses like eyes, stomach, and such. All these are memorized and conserved in a planetary mind which underlies all individual minds and without which indeed the activity of the latter could not be possible. Stromberg and Korzybski must eventually find themselves in a cul-de-sac unless they can comprehend that the wonderful synthesis which results in the actual perception of objects can be achieved by a consciousness which observes and interprets the reactions not only of the sense organs but also of the brain centres which, physiology supposes, give birth to or control the functions of thought, sensation, and memory. There is no use talking in terms of neurological structure or cerebral changes here, for with the detection of a principle of awareness one departs from everything physical and enters another world. If, therefore, he wishes to find just where a conscious connection with the nonmaterial energy can be made, he will have to detect this principle itself and not necessarily a particular point in his structure as an organism. And this can be achieved only by ultramystical methods.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 1 : The Sensed World > # 136
