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How hard for the average mind to grasp this central fact, that the World-Idea is the world-creation. The one does not precede the other. The second is not a copy in matter of the first. Man has to work, with his senses and his intellect, when he wants to convert his ideas into objects. But the World-Mind does not need to make an effort in order to make a universe, does not in reality have anything to do at all, for Its thought is the thing. Some mystics and most occultists have failed to perceive this. Their realization of the Spirit did not bring with it the full revelation of the Spirit. This is because they have not thoroughly comprehended--usually through lack of competent instruction--its utter emptiness. Nothing can come out of the Universal Mind that is not mental, not even the material world which men believe they inhabit and experience. Science is on its way, through its delvings into atomic structure, to a suspicion of this tremendous fact; but so many scientists are so devoid of metaphysical faculty that they uphold materialism and deny mentalism!

-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 3 : The Individual and World Mind > # 57