To some who begin to suspect that all this may be like a dream--which is a hazy but imprecise glimpse of mentalism--it comes as a shock.    (#26471)

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!    (#26479)

A popular misconception of mentalism must be cleared. When we say that the world does not exist for man apart from his own mind, this is not to say that man is the sole world-creator. If that were so he could easily play the magician and reshape a hampering environment in a day. No!--what mentalism really teaches is that man's mind perceives, by participating in it, the world-image which the World-Mind creates and holds. Man alone is not responsible for this image, which could not possibly exist if it did not exist also in the World-Mind's consciousness.    (#26488)

Those who cannot accept the doctrine of mentalism have sometimes thought up very clever attempts to refute it. My friend, Professor Ernest Wood, once said to me that by leaving any object in a dark room and by turning a camera in its direction, fitted with a light and operated by a timing switch, so as to switch on the light in the absence of any human being in the room, a photograph of the object would thus be taken; and its existence apart from the thought of any human being would thus be proven. He said that an even simpler refutation of mentalism would be to walk over some rubbish in the dark which you did not know was there and to stumble over it. You could not possibly have thought of its existence, not knowing it was there, and yet it did exist! The answer to these clever criticisms is simple. Professor Wood, in the first case, had forgotten the person who had put the camera and the light in the dark room. That person had turned the camera towards the object and must surely have been thinking of the object. This, however, is only an answer to satisfy the requirements of logic; the real answer which philosophy gives is that the world-thought is given us by the Cosmic Mind--we do not create it. The presence or absence of any particular object within it does not therefore depend upon the individual thinking it, but his awareness of it will depend on this. The object in the dark room, the heap of rubbish in a dark street, exist for any individual's experience only so far as they come into his consciousness. Whether or not they exist for him at other times or for other men or for the Cosmic Mind does not and cannot alter this single fact--that his senses could never tell him about them unless his mind tells him about them, first and last.    (#26497)

Are we to assume, as the unexamined and unanalysed experience tells us, that there is an external object outside us and an internal cognition of it inside us? No!--mentalism asserts that a cognition has only another cognition for its object, that the private and personal idea of the world "picks up" the cosmic and universal idea of it.    (#26504)

It may be asked: if mentalism is a true doctrine then why are we not able to alter physical things, such as our fleshly bodies, for instance, merely by exercising our thought upon them? We have to answer that it is the creative activity which gave rise to these things, and it is admittedly no less a mental activity than introspection, remembrance, and reverie, but whereas the latter occur in the individual conscious mind, the former occurs independently of us in the cosmic subconscious mind; and that the miracles which do unquestionably occur occasionally are primarily performed by the cosmic will and only secondarily because the necessary conditions of intense concentration or utter self-surrender have been successfully provided. In short, man's creative power is only a semi-independent one.    (#26512)

If materialism reduces man to mere physical substance, mentalism magnifies him to the grander stature of Mind.    (#26519)

The mere definition of mentalism startles the common mind, antagonizes the materialistic mind, but comforts the spiritually oriented mind.    (#26520)

Mentalism is the first and best way of breaking through the glamour which the world's materiality throws over most people. The Real is hidden from them. Consciousness is then supposed to be a property belonging to a lump of matter. This upside-down assumption is a false piece of knowledge. It must be dropped from possession, from held faith and reasoned conclusion--and each person must do this for himself: no other can take his place, not even a guru--or the illusion will return.    (#26521)

In this doctrine of mentalism we come upon the central mystery of philosophy.    (#26523)

The mentalist character of all their experience is little or not at all understood by the great mass of people. Yet, curiously and paradoxically, this truth is the hidden basis of their religious beliefs, no matter what sect they belong to, for mentalism alone can make plainer the idea of Spirit, and make plausible the operations of Spirit.    (#26524)

It is because men are deceived by their senses into accepting materialism that they are deceived by their ego into committing sin. Mentalism is not only an intellectual doctrine but also an ethical one.    (#26528)

Mentalism as the key to the understanding of the nature of the universe dissolves materialism. In this way it restores real religion to its rightful place and importance, but it does not restore the hollow semi-materialistic theatrical performance which passes for it. It restores a truer concept of God and brings back a solidly based faith in God.    (#26529)

The dematerializing of human belief has to pass through more than one stage before the process completes itself. All religious, metaphysical, and mystical systems which recognize the existence of Spirit but, side by side with it, the reality of Matter also, have passed through the earlier stages but not through the later ones. Only when they advance to mentalism will this final dematerialization be possible.    (#26533)

Once rid of the basic error of materialism, once he has comprehended mentalism, the way is open for a real, and not illusory, progress.    (#26535)

If the basic teaching of Mentalism seems too daring to risk acceptance, too impossible to be credible, he should look into the statements of celebrated persons who supported it--Plato, Plotinus, Chuang Tzu, Sir James Jeans, Bishop Berkeley.    (#26538)

It was a favorite saying of my venerable old teacher, the late Subramanya Iyer, that you may measure the spiritual profundity of a people or nation by its appreciation and acceptance of the doctrine of mentalism.    (#26539)

Is mentalism suited to the world's present needs? On scientific, cultural, practical, and religious grounds, we reply Yes.    (#26540)

To be initiated into "The Mysteries" is to be introduced to the revelation of Mentalism, to what it means and to what startling consequences it leads; it is to discover that life, after all, no matter how thrilling, is like a dream passing in the night. But even the uninitiated are not allowed to stay in perpetual ignorance. For the tremendous event of leaving the body at death is attended by the enforced learning of this lesson, however much a man clings to his memories of this world.    (#26542)

With intellectual assurance, mystical experience, and the sages' confirmation, he can afford a wholehearted assurance about the truth of mentalism.    (#26543)