One need not seek out those unscalable heights for which the saints thirst, however much the purification of thought, feeling, and deed the philosophers welcome. Whoever understands Mentalism will also understand why.    (#26826)

The body is there but he is not present in it. Activity goes on but he does not seem to be the actor. It is as if he were not present at all, except as an observer. Somehow he is in society, for they see and hear him, but he does not belong to society. Now at last he understands perfectly dying Socrates' celebrated phrase: "Yes, if you can catch me." For he understands the "I," comprehends mentalism. Now at last Reason governs him and truth is revealed plainly to him.    (#26827)

There are great possibilities open to the man who believes in and applies mentalism. This is indirectly evident by the history and state of the Christian Science movement, for it will be found that many Christian Scientists, if they have really understood and constantly applied their doctrine, have risen to high executive positions. Why is this? It is partly because they have obeyed the higher moral law and partly because they have used the creative power of meditation. They have tried to run their businesses on the Golden Rule, and they have positively affirmed ideals in their business and work. Thus they have made good karma for themselves not only by acting morally but also by acting creatively through using their thoughts in a constructive, healthy manner. They do not believe that business is a struggle of wolves but an opportunity to serve and to profit by such service. They do not believe that it is an opportunity to get the best of others unscrupulously but that it is an opportunity to practise ideals and to express ethics. They do not believe in depending solely on their own little selves for results but they also look up to a higher power, God, in prayer and thought. They increase their openness and receptivity to this higher power by trying to purify their characters and to ennoble their personalities.    (#26829)

Mentalism does not teach us to ignore the world and to dismiss the body. It does not tell us to cease from activity and to deny life's utility. It simply gives us a new and truer way of looking at these things.    (#26831)

It was not Jesus' thorn-crowned corpse that was resurrected but the man himself, not his transient body but his immortal consciousness. For mentalism teaches us that a mental form can be seen by others so vividly, so objectively, that it can easily be taken--or mistaken--for a physical one.    (#26848)

Once we perceive the truth and implications of mentalism, the tremendous practical and persuasive value of good suggestions and creative imaginations will also be perceived.    (#26875)

In Jerome K. Jerome's play The Passing of the Third Floor Back, when the part of "The Stranger" was played in London by Forbes-Robertson, the latter was so overcome by the lofty spirituality of the principal role that he had to cancel a long-standing arrangement with fellow-actors to go out after work in the theatre for a glass of wine at a tavern and thence to a restaurant for dinner. During the run of the play, F-R could not bring himself to do anything so material while his mind was still so exalted with the afterglow of "The Stranger's" character. A lady with long experience as an actress, both on the theatrical stage and in radio broadcasting, once told me that she had found the work of acting could become a path to spiritual self-realization. She said that she found it necessary to act so intensely on the stage in order to be thoroughly convincing that she lost herself in the part she played. It was a complete concentration. She became so absorbed in it that she really did identify herself with it, become one with it. In other words, she lost her own personal identity for the time. She projected herself so fully into her characters that there was no room for her own familiar ego. She concluded that acting was a yoga-path because the same capacities for self-absorbed thought, if sufficiently directed in spiritual aspiration towards the higher self and not towards some weak human character, could one day turn an actor into an adept. Henry Daniell denied all these assertions and told me his own experience refuted them. A point of view which partially reconciles these two conflicting ones is that his theory is correct for the great mass of actors, whereas the lady's theory is correct only for the geniuses among them. The first are always conscious of being witnesses of their own performances, being too egotistic to do otherwise; but the others are not, being able, like all true geniuses, to rise during creative moments above themselves. In confirmation of this point of view is the fact, noted by Charles Lamb and confirmed by the actress herself, that Mrs. Siddons, one of Britain's supreme theatrical geniuses, used to shed real tears (not fakes) when she played the part of "Constance" at Drury Lane. Henry Daniell's belief that the actor always remains apart in his inner consciousness is thus refuted. He may do so but the perfect actor, the genius, does not and cannot. He must live his assumed character perfectly if he is to succeed in completely putting it over to the audience.

This lady said further that it is well known in the theatrical world that certain actors become what is technically called "typed." That is, in their personal character they tend to become more and more like the kind of part they have mostly played during their career. If a man has been cast as a villain year after year throughout his life, he actually begins to develop villainous traits in his moral character as a result. This, she said, was the effect of his intense concentration while upon the stage reacting later on his off-stage mentality. Another extremely interesting thing which, she said, helped to convince her of the truth of mentalism, was that when she had given herself with the utmost intensity to certain situations in which she played on the stage, and played repeatedly over a long period of time, situations somewhat similar would enact themselves in her own personal life later on. The discovery startled her for it revealed the creative power of concentrated thought.

Finally, she told me it was common knowledge in her profession that the most effective way to learn the words for a part is to learn them at night in bed just before sleep. No matter how tired she was at that time the lines would sink into the subconscious with a couple of readings and emerge next morning into the conscious with little effort. Critical comment on the above: E.Y. says that it is true that most actors do lose themselves utterly in their roles. Nevertheless, this happens only if they are mediocre artists or unevolved spiritually. The supreme artists, as well as those who are highly developed spiritually, do feel perfectly able to play the observer to their acting part, to stand aside from the role even in the very midst of playing it.    (#26878)

If students can understand the way the mind and the senses really work, what the results of this working are, and what direction they point to . . . if they can break through that barrier between flesh and thought which favours materialism and agnosticism and even atheism, then the perception actually becomes a spiritual experience. It is the key opening the way to mentalism's discovery and acceptance.    (#26883)

Until he acquires firm possession of the truth of mentalism, the mysteries which lie beyond it can be only hazily grasped.    (#26887)

The doctrine of mentalism is understood personally or confirmed practically by an advanced mystical experience, provided the experience itself is not misunderstood through overstrong preconceived notions which are brought to it.    (#26889)

If a materialist would stop to think about this mystery of the ultimate observer and if his thinking faculties were sufficiently sharpened, purified, and made capable of dealing with such an abstract subject, he would lose his materialism and become a mentalist. Let him ask himself who it is that speaks when he speaks about himself, what is this "I," this thing that bears his name? Since that which speaks and that which is spoken of cannot be the same but must be separate, then he would have to admit a further "I" behind the one that speaks about himself. He could go on analysing backwards in a never-ending series in this way. Each time the "I" would seem to have some other "I" to which it was an object and to which it could refer as the subject. The existence of his ego would be established in relativity, for it would seem he could move infinitely and indefinitely through this mystery of what is meant by "I." This is because the instrument which he is using for such analysis is the logical intellect, which would thus reveal to him its strict limitations.

Observing these limitations he would then have to ask himself whether or not it were possible to use a subtler instrument, and then mystical metaphysics would tell him: Yes, such a subtler instrument is available--it is your intuition. Cultivate this rightly, shun its counterfeit, subject your feelings to the philosophic discipline, and then practise meditation. You will find that your intuition will lead you back and back to the one element which is the final "I" and which directs every operation of the subconscious functions of the body, and which gives your personality its consciousness of existence. This "I" is non-physical; it is the inmost part of your mind. Understand this and you will necessarily have to give up materialism. You will become a votary of mentalism. Even more, the realization of this truth in actual experience makes you aware that the universe is friendly to you because you are intimately related to it. Your own mind grows out of the World-Mind. It is this relation which enables your mental nature to think and to know, your emotional nature to feel, and your physical body to act. Without it you would be dead in the fullest sense of the term. Everything inside of you, like everything outside you, changes; but this real Self never changes for it dwells in the kingdom of the World-Mind, the kingdom of heaven which is an everlasting one.

It is a phenomenal feat to understand Einstein's law of relativity as it applies to the physical world; but, after all, this understanding does not bring peace of mind or strength of life. It is quite another thing to understand the law of relativity as it applies to the inner Self and such understanding does bring these things. Our knowledge of physical relativity has led us to control of the atom, whose reward seems to be the likelihood that we shall destroy ourselves, but our knowledge of spiritual relativity leads us to control of the mind, whose reward is to save ourselves.    (#26898)

If mentalism turns our universe upside down for us, further comprehension of it brings the universe back again into position, but transformed, divinized, and divinely supported.    (#26899)

The word gnana means "knowledge" and is generally translated as such. But it has a secondary and allied meaning: "that which reveals." When the truth of mentalism finally dawns on a man, not only as an idea thought out, an emotion strongly felt, and an experience shattering the last remnants of materialism for him, what happens is the greatest revelation of his life--as sacred as any gospel.    (#26901)

How mentalism lights up those deeper and darker sayings of Jesus! "The kingdom of heaven is within you" is then seen to be both a joyful proclamation of spiritual hope and a statement revealing a little-known fact. It proclaims a heavenly existence as being within reach of the mind that is the real man and it tells of such existence being hidden within the mind itself. Heaven is then no far-off place or no post-mortem condition but a state attainable in this life.    (#26902)

When this truth of mentalism strikes our mind with vivid lightning-flash, we have gone a long way on the quest.    (#26904)

Outside of the mystical experience wherein the whole universe rolls up and vanishes away, leaving the man "conscious only of consciousness," the next overwhelming realization of mentalism comes to dying persons.    (#26911)

Why is it that during our most exalted and purest emotional happiness, such as that which comes from listening to fine music or looking at a landscape of wild grandeur or giving ourselves up to, mystical rapture, time seems to be blotted out and we remember its existence only when we are recalled to our ordinary prosaic state? Consider that this strange feeling never arises during our more worldly or more painful episodes. The explanation lies in mentalism. All human experience, including the physical, takes place in the mind. Each episode must be thought into consciousness before it can ever exist for us. If the episode is a happy one, we love to dwell on it, to linger in it, and to become absorbed by it. Such intense concentration greatly slows down the tempo of our thoughts and brings us nearer the utter thought-free stillness wherein our spiritual self forever dwells outside time and space.

This kind of experience demonstrates vividly to those who have not yet been able to practise the meditation required for, and leading up to mystical rapture, what mystics find during such rapture--that man in his true being, in his Overself, is not only timeless but also sorrowless.    (#26912)

The truth of mentalism may become intellectually convincing, but it will be subject to doubts so long as it is not carried into the heart and deeply felt like a living thing. It should attain the force of personal experience.    (#26913)

For those of an intellectual inclination, Mentalism, well-absorbed, can become the forerunner of spiritual awakening.    (#26914)

Mentalism makes it possible for each man to understand why there must be a god. And what is more, it also makes it possible for each man to transcend his intellectual discovery by the mystical experience of the presence of God within himself.    (#26915)