Adherents of religion, practisers of meditation, and dabblers in spiritism, magic, or occultism can hypnotize themselves into believing anything, such as that there is no individual self, no physical world, and no physical disease. All these beliefs may be contradicted by their own experience or may be confirmed in temporary mental states. If the former, they ignore or explain away the contradiction. If the latter, the state passes away and they return to normal--a common phenomenon of hypnotism. Mind can play tricks upon itself, by itself, upon others. To understand what is true and what is false in such beliefs we must turn away from their parrot-like repetition to the study of mind in its various phases. This is supposedly done, and in great detail, in the academic world; but the central, the most important point is entirely missed. To learn what that is, study Mentalism.
-- Notebooks Category 21: Mentalism > Chapter 4 : The Challenge of Mentalism > # 32
