We have now been able to discover that our ordinary sense of self is a muddled one, confusing thought and thing, mind and body. It may be thought that the statement of mentalism contradicts our natural belief in the solidity of the material world. But as a matter of fact it does not really contradict either of the aforementioned beliefs; it merely corrects them. For it does not deny that the world is external to the body, and it does not deny that all tangible things are solid to the touch. What it does say is that the world is internal to the mind and that its solidity is likewise present in the mind alone.    (#26262)

The statement that we can know only our own sensations and that we do not experience the world directly constitutes the very beginning of the doctrine of mentalism.    (#26277)

There cannot be any contact with a world outside consciousness. This is a tenet fundamental to mentalism.    (#26281)

Herbert Spencer admitted the truth of mentalism in his Principles of Psychology (Vol. 2, Part 7). He admitted that the world we know is mentally constructed and mentally existent. Having got so far, he then fell into error, for he said that our experience of the resistance which objects in the world offer us proves that they also exist independently of and outside the mind. What was Spencer's mistake "of all of the objective idealists"? It was the failure to penetrate sufficiently far into the meaning of these two words: "independent" and "outside." How can the world have an independent existence when it has no significance for us before we actually experience it? It must touch our body or affect our senses before its existence comes to have any meaning at all for us. When this happens we have the feelings or thoughts which science calls sensations. Whether they are feelings of hardness, resistance, or weight, thoughts of redness, fragrance, or noise, they are still nothing else than our feelings and thoughts. Where is the independence here? The objects in the world are only objects of our consciousness. They may be independent in relation to our body but they are not independent in relation to our senses and hence to our mind. The sensations of resistance and hardness are no less mental ultimately than are any of the other sensations. Again, where is the outsideness here? Does the world really stand outside the mind that knows it? It is only at the cost of self-contradiction that we can answer that it does so stand. For whatever is in consciousness, whatever is mental, can be explained by the mind alone. It is the mind's own activity which makes resistance as it makes smells, sounds, and sights. Furthermore it is this same activity which creates the space-relationships between objects and hence the thought of their outsideness.    (#26292)

All forms of the past have existed in time and place but many of them are now existing only in memory, that is, in thought. Mentalism says, "They were always in thought only."    (#26294)

Stereoscopy offers an excellent illustration to help us realize that space is an illusion created before our very eyes. If two photographs of the same object are taken from different angles, placed in a simple stereoscopic apparatus, and looked at through its little window, the resulting picture is no longer a flat two-dimensional thing but a bulky three-dimensional one. There has been added to the height and width of an ordinary photograph the new element of depth, which makes the object stand out in relief. What seems to be a tangible space has been created behind and in front of the object. The consequence is that the image is transformed in a startling manner from a lifeless representation to something that seems vividly real. When such an apparatus so obviously creates space for us we ought not to regard it as fantastic when mentalism tells us that the human mind subconsciously creates its own forms and projects them into a fancied space.    (#26297)

The molds of time and place, ego and its extensions, which shape human mentalism, the forms of thought, belong to this maya, this alchemically transforming power of mind.    (#26303)

If we do some act without attending to it but, on the contrary, with our thoughts engrossed on an entirely different subject which perhaps fills us with anxiety or joy, we are often later quite unable to remember whether we have done it or not. Here is an indication that if, as mentalism declares, it is not man's surface mind nor his everyday consciousness which presents the universe to him as an outside appearance then, in fact, he has a deeper unconscious mind which does it.    (#26330)

Mentalism tells us not only that matter is an unreal show but also that motion is just the same. The events and movements on a cinema film are not affecting or moving the white backsheet at all. Yet withdraw matter and motion and the whole universe will become nothing more substantial than a cosmic cinema picture.    (#26334)

The moods succeed each other--sometimes bright, sometimes dark--but who is the experiencer of them? It is the ego. The first stage of philosophy is to learn the secret of mentalism. Look upon every mood as a bunch of thoughts. The second stage is to look upon the experiencer as an object of those thoughts.    (#26341)

It would be absurd for him to deny the actuality, the living presence, of all that is happening to him in every moment of the day. They are there and they are real as experiences and he would be a fool indeed to deny them. Nor does mentalism ask him to do so. What it does say is that if he analyses the actuality of all these experiences, if he tries to trace out their beginning and end, their existence and continuity, he will discover that consciousness is their seat, that this consciousness can by profound thought be separated from its projections--the thoughts, the scenes, the objects and events, the people and the world--in short, that everything including himself is in the mind.    (#26344)

The doctrine of mentalism begins and ends with the bold pronouncement that all experience and even all being is in the mind.    (#26365)

Two things which are totally different from one another, quite unrelated, cannot work together or affect each other. This is mentalism's case.    (#26411)

Because I am a conscious being I am aware of physical sensations and mental thoughts; but the consciousness which enables such awareness to exist itself existed before sensation and before thought, and this is as true of newborn babies as it is of dying men. This is what the materialistic anatomist dissecting the body fails to perceive. This is the forgotten self of the fabled ten persons crossing a river in Indian mythology, and this is the great secret which mentalism unveils for us.    (#26420)

Whatever the five senses tell us about things and people, scenes and events, in our experience is certainly there and is not denied at all: such denial is emphatically outside the claim of mentalism.    (#26427)

Nothing of the existence of anything in the world is taken away by mentalism but everything of it still remains.    (#26433)

Mentalism is not so foolish as to deny the existence of our familiar world, the one we daily experience; it does deny that it is experienced independently of the mind or externally to the mind.    (#26435)

Mentalism does not reduce our experience of the world to a shadow. It lets us keep the reality we feel but points to an ultimate reality from which that feeling derives.    (#26437)

The common objections to mentalism may be summarized in three forms: (1) A thing does not cease to exist when we cease to think about it; thus, Australia is still to be found on the map even when we are not thinking about Australia. (2) The fact that we do not think of a thing does not prevent such a thing coming into existence. (3) Our awareness of things is largely quite involuntary; we do not choose to think them into existence--they just are there. The answer which mentalism makes to these objections, and to all others which may arise, is a simple one. It is this: consider your life as a dream! All possible objections will then have no ground on which to stand. They appear true while we are under the illusion of dreaming, but they are seen to be false as soon as we awake from the dream itself.    (#26447)

Many have felt during meditation or even outside of it the dreamlike character of the world. As dreams are only thoughts, this means that they have felt the truth of mentalism. However, the world is only like but not actually a dream. When one meditates on the reason still more subtly he finds that it is really the substance of God reflected forth, the self-externalization of Cosmic Mind. It is there divine in essence. Its form is changing and an appearance but its ultimate stuff is, in reality, God. Life here on earth is divine in this sense. Once this is grasped, he finds a fresh basis for conduct, a deeper inspiration for activity. He cannot be a mere dreamer, cave dweller, or drifter. He must act. But actions will now be inspired by and performed for that deeper self within, and will therefore be impersonal and altruistic.    (#26465)