Neither mysticism nor metaphysics is sufficient by itself. We need not only the union of what is best in both, but also the disinterested driving force of moral activity. Only when our metaphysical understanding and meditational exercises begin to interpret themselves in active life do we begin to justify both. The Word must become flesh. It is not enough to accumulate knowledge. We must also apply it. We must act as well as meditate. We cannot afford like the ascetical hermit to exclude the world. Philosophy, which quite definitely has an activist outlook, demands that intuition and intelligence be harmoniously conjoined, and that this united couple be compassionately inserted into social life. Like the heat and light in a flame, so thought and action are united in philosophy. It does not lead to a dreamy quietism, but to a virile activity. Philosophic thought fulfils itself in philosophic action. This is so and this must be so because mentalism affirms that the two are really one. Thus the quest begins by a mystical turning inwards, but it ends by a philosophic returning outwards.    (#24626)

It would be of little use to take such a teaching as mentalism to the masses, for it would make them feel out of their depth intellectually.    (#25005)

Philosophy would not be itself if it sought to stage theoretical debates: those who find it satisfying grow or come into it of themselves. But it does seek to show that materialism serves its adherents less while mentalism enlightens them more, that narrow sectarian versions of religion catch less of the divine atmosphere than mentalism does.    (#25074)

He only is worthy of the name philosopher who not only possesses a knowledge of mentalism, and understands it well, but who reverently lets the higher power be ever present in, and work through, him. Otherwise he is only a student of philosophy.    (#25865)

One thousand years ago the doctrine of mentalism was taught at Angkor, according to an inscription of that time which I saw there, the inscription of Srey Santhor. It likened the appearance of the doctrine in the world of faith and culture to the sun bringing back the light.    (#26105)

The philosopher today has a twofold path: to cultivate the gentle feeling of Overself in the heart within and to study the mentalness of the world without. A whole new generation is beginning to seek a better and higher life physically and emotionally, as well as more understanding of what it is all about. Here is where absorbing the knowledge of mentalism leads to dissolving the futility of materialism.    (#26106)

Why is it that when an object gives rise to a sensation and is perceived as being outside the eye or ear which senses it, reflection shows that the process of sensing it could only have occurred within the eye or ear itself? Why is it that what is perceived as being outside the eye cannot possibly be reached by the eye? Mentalism alone can provide the answer.    (#26120)

All our ordinary experience of the world is derived from the activity of the sense-organs. But a conviction of mentalism's truth can only be derived from rational thinking or mystical experience. Consequently, he who limits himself to the evidence of the sense-organs and does not perceive its relativity will not be able to perceive the truth of mentalism.    (#26122)

In mentalism we separate the concept of the senses from the concept of the sense-organs. The two are not the same. The senses must be mentally active before they can be active at all. Although the physical sense-organs are the usual condition for this activity, they are not the indispensable condition. The phenomena of dreams, hypnotism, and somnambulism demonstrate this adequately. The physical sense-organs do not operate, and cannot operate, unless the consciousness takes them into its purview. Absent-mindedness is a common example of what happens when it does not do this. There are even commoner examples, however, of which we never think at all until our attention is drawn to them. A man sitting at his desk will not be aware for long periods of time of the sense of touch or pressure where his body makes contact with his chair; the nerve endings in his skin may report the contact but the mind does not take it in, and consequently is not aware of it. The sense impressions of touch are simply not there at all.    (#26136)

We have the feeling of complete self-identification with the body. The five senses, the four limbs, the two eyes, and the entire torso report as parts of ourself. Yet mentalism shows that this feeling arises because they are really manifestations of our own consciousness, thoughts in our mind.    (#26164)

No discoveries made in a physiological laboratory can ever annul the primary doctrine of mentalism. The mechanism of the brain provides the condition for the manifestation of intellectual processes but does not provide the first originating impulse of these processes. The distinction between mind and its mechanism, between the mentalness of experience and the materiality of the content of that experience, needs much pondering.    (#26169)

The materialist argument is essentially that mental function varies with bodily condition, that alcohol can convert the coward for a time into a brave man, that the increase in size and weight of the brain as man passes from infancy to maturity runs parallel with the increase of mental capacity, and that therefore mind is nothing else than a product of body. Mentalism says these facts are mostly but not always true but that even granting their truth, the materialistic conclusion does not necessarily follow. It is just as logical to say that mind uses brain as a writer uses a pen, that the body is merely instrumental and the limitations or changes in the instrument naturally modify or alter the mentality expressed. The thoughts and feelings, the ideas and memories, the fancies and reasonings which constitute most of our mental stock can be detected nowhere in the brain, can be seen by nothing physical, and can only be observed by the mind itself as acts of consciousness.    (#26173)

There is a difference--vast and deep--between the way Christian Science denies the body and the way mentalism affirms but changes the ordinary conception of the body.    (#26181)

To grasp this mentalism, there must be continuous reflection on the differences between the body, the brain, and the mental consciousness which uses it as an instrument. Embodied consciousness uses instruments to get particular bits of knowledge: the body's five senses, the body's brain for thoughts. But the knowing element in all these experiences is his power of attention, which is derived from purely mental nonphysical being.    (#26191)

Mentalism affirms not only that consciousness is an immaterial thing but also that "no bodily activity has any connection with the activity of reason," as Aristotle taught.    (#26192)

Mentalism tells us that the mind's activity is one thing and the brain's activity which accompanies it is another. Materialism asserts the contrary, that the mind's phenomena are produced by movements of the material atoms composing the brain.    (#26201)

Mentalism based on human experiences from the earliest Asian history right into our own time emphatically affirms that consciousness and brain are two different entities.    (#26202)

Human experience of the world is the basis of the materialist theory of the world. But mentalism sufficiently explains that experience. This materialism cannot do, because it cannot account for the "leap" from sense to thought. The materialist theory collapses altogether when this simple analysis is made.    (#26230)

The critic may point out that all biology is opposed to mentalism, that when forms attain a particular level of organization they become thinking forms, that inanimate insentient Nature preceded living conscious form in the order of evolution, that the embryonic mind of animals appeared in the universe before the maturer mind of man itself, and that consequently it is quite absurd to suggest that the mind of man could have thought into existence what in fact was already in existence before it had itself appeared. He may finally observe scornfully that these are mere commonplaces of scientific knowledge, which now have long passed the need of being defended. We must give as a reply to our materialistic critic a fundamental counter-criticism. If the world's existence is completely and satisfactorily accounted for by its reactions to the physical senses of the human body, and if this body itself is a consequence of the evolutionary process of the larger world outside it, the materialist's explanation explains nothing, for it falls into a vicious circle. He forgets that if, according to his theory, the appearance of consciousness were the consequence of an evolution of material forms, then the cerebral-nervous structure of the sensory instruments--which are supposed by him to explain the possibility of consciousness--not having yet manifested themselves, no sensations telling of a world's existence could have been possible! This dilemma cannot be got over except by mentalism. The only world of which we can be certain is that constituted by sensations of colour, shape, breadth, bulk, taste, smell, solidity, weight, and so on. But sensations form the experience of individual minds and such experience, being always observed experience, is formed by thought. Hence if we talk of an uninhabited world--that is, of a world utterly devoid of a mind--we contradict ourselves. The error of materialism is to separate things from the thoughts of them. The consequence of this error is that it can speak of a world by itself as though the latter includes no such existence as thought. It forgets that each individual knows only its own world, because it knows only its own sensations, and that the identity between a Man's consciousness and the world of which it is conscious, is complete and indissoluble. We must place the mind inseparably alongside of the world. The world does not precede it in time. This is so and this must be so because, as the psychological analysis of perception shows, it is the constructive activity of the individual mind which contributes toward making a space-time world possible at all. An uninhabited world has never existed outside the scientific evolutionary theory. For sensations have never existed in separated form, as some celebrated metaphysicians of the eighteenth century supposed, but only in the combined form which they take in the individual's own perceptions.    (#26240)

By starting with the consideration of matter as something already existent, and mind as something which has yet to come into existence, nineteenth-century science arrived at this impassable gap in its explanation of human world-experience. It is still impassable and will remain so forever because the premise with which science started is wholly wrong. If a human being takes a wrong road and cannot arrive at his destination, the sensible course is for him to retrace his steps and take the right road. There is no other course open to science if it wants to arrive at a satisfactory explanation. It must go back from the materialistic line of thought and start with the mentalistic one, that is, with mind first. The essential point which must not be missed is that unless consciousness existed previously, the sense stimuli might strike on the brain forever but they would never get any response. There is no hope for success in solving this problem along the materialistically scientific road of explanation so long as it pursues a rigidly non-metaphysical course, no hope that the secret of consciousness dwells in a stimulated nerve or that the medium of interaction between thought and flesh is in colloidal structure. That secret dwells where it always has dwelt--in the mind alone--and both nerve and colloidal structure dwell there too. Once he grasps this fact, that the whole of his life-experience is only a play of attention, he will have grasped the essence of mentalism. This will liberate him intellectually from materialism.    (#26243)