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.
THE SENSED WORLD
1
The evolution from a world-view based upon the Eye
to one based upon the Idea, is an evolution from materiality to spirituality. It
is consummated when the vividness of sense experience is transcended by the
truth of abstract conceptions.
2
The truth is that the hands touch and the eyes see
but the surface of things. They do not touch nor see the completeness, the inner
reality of things. In our ignorance we look upon forms as reality, we must needs
have something to touch and handle if we are to believe in its real existence.
The forms are alright where they are but they do not exhaust existence. That
which tells us they are there, the consciousness which causes our senses to
function and our ego to become aware of the results of this functioning, is
itself closer to real being than the physical forms or mental images which are
but tokens of its presence. We look always for mere forms and so miss their
infinite source. We try to reduce life to arithmetic, to make one thing the
effect of some other thing as cause, never dreaming that the sublime essence of
both is unchanging and uncaused, formless and bodiless, the self-existent
reality of Mind!
3
Our trouble is that our notion of what constitutes
reality is incorrectly limited to the world of the five senses, with the sad
consequence that we devise dozens of ways of finding happiness but never arrive
at it.
4
We accept the first and chief suggestion of our
senses without inquiry, the suggestion that we are dealing with a world totally
outside us. It is an error which arises because we do not possess a deep enough
understanding of ourselves. But this ignorance arises in its own turn because we
do not penetrate deeply enough into our understanding of the world. Hence, the
way out of it involves a twofold inquiry: into both self and not-self.
5
He sees that in the end the five senses are
particular functions of the mind.
6
This thought that we are hermetically sealed in our
five senses, that our sense-world is but a mere fragment of the total existence,
and that such existence is itself a mere shadow of reality, is enough to awe us
into a feeling of utter insignificance and helplessness.
7
Do the senses give you any real knowledge of a world
outside your mind? Is it not rather that your sensations of such a world are
only ideas inside that mind, and that you have no positive assurance of the
existence of anything beyond those ideas themselves?
8
That which seems to be solid substance to the human
touch is nothing else than a mental sensation. The testimony of the five senses
is thus overthrown by profound reflection, and mind reveals its truth over the
illusion of matter.
9
Thus our five-sensed experience of the physical
world is really our remote experience of the divine world. The materialist's
error is to take the first as a final experience.
10
He will come to see by experience, as science is
coming to see by experiment, that this vast universe is real in its present form
to his bodily senses only. As soon as his mind is freed from them, it takes on
quite a different form, the old form having no further existence at all. He is
then compelled to correct his false belief in the world's reality. If there were
nothing more than the five senses, then this correction would make the universe
an illusion. But the presence of mind in him makes it an idea.(P)
11
The distinction which is often made (especially by
the school of Faculty-Psychology) between sensation and idea or between
sense-data and thought was once believed to be an actuality, but it is now
believed to be only a convenience for intellectual analysis. A compromise view
now regards our experience of the world as being a compound of the two, but a
compound which is never split up into separate elements. This view represents a
big step towards the mentalist position but is still only a step. And this
position is that there is only a single activity, a single experience - thought.
The idea is the sensation, the sensation is the idea. The sense
datum which our present-day psychologists find as an element of experience is
really their interpretation of experience. Hence it is nothing else than
a thought. And that which it unconsciously professes to interpret is likewise a
thought!(P)
12
Men are not to be blamed for making the eye and
the brain their measure of truth or reality: they are to be blamed for
stubbornly refusing to heed the reports of those who have not so limited
themselves.
13
It is a commonplace of scientific teaching to say
that without the five senses man would know nothing of an external world. This
is true, but only while science remains on a materialistic basis. For when it
turns over - as it is now beginning to turn - to a mentalistic one, then it has
to admit that both those senses and that of which they become aware are
themselves mental products. Once this is grasped then it is possible to grasp
why they do function during dreams and why we do know an external world in them.
14
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.
15
What actually happens when you see something is
that you become conscious of two pictures which are made upon the curved
sensitive retinas of your two eyes. The reflected pictures - and not the solid
thing itself - are all you directly know and hence all that you see. The whole
world in which you really live and move is indeed only a picture-world!
16
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.
17
Men who believe this world of five-sense
experience to be the only real one can form only a mental concept - and that a
wrong one - of the Overself.
18
Things seen or felt physically are technically
called sensations or percepts in psychological jargon. And the ideas formed of
those things are called concepts. But this is the materialistic view. Philosophy
says they are one, not two.
19
That the outside world is reflected in our five
senses as is our face in a mirror, is what those senses themselves tell us. That
they participate in its making as a movie projection lamp in its screen
pictures, is what deeper inquiry tells us. Nevertheless this only reveals the
world's unreality, not its significance.
20
The fact that we do not perceive more than the
world's appearances, never its realities, should alone be enough to dispose of
old-fashioned crude and naïve materialism.
21
We have the illusion that here, in this sensory
experience, we touch all of reality.
22
It is through his sense-organs that a man relates
himself with the world and thus includes himself in it.
23
The real power to see, hear or feel, taste or
smell does not dwell in the body. A deep unbiased analysis of the physiology of
sensation will show that this power dwells in the mind.
24
In the process of sense-perception, registering
impressions of the world are somehow transformed into mental states, that is,
ideas. The world itself we never perceive, but only ideas.
25
All the muscle movements and nerve exertions and
brain responses are themselves ideas to the mind.
26
It is not what most people regard as the world
that the senses bring him into contact with, but rather the perception of it -
an idea - or the projection of it - another idea.
27
All human experience is known experience.
The world which comes to my attention through the five senses is known to
me by the mind. Whatever the shifts of scientific knowledge may be at any time,
this will remain as the central fact.
28
The power of sight in the eyes is to be
distinguished from the eyes themselves, the perceiver of the world from the
instrument of perception.
29
The totality of the immeasurably rich nature of
the universe never reaches the human senses. This is not their fault. They
cannot help but receive nothing more than a limited selection from it. There are
numerous vibrations beyond their range and also beneath it. And yet we have the
temerity to assert that the world of our experience, the only one we know, is
the real world and that all others are illusory!(P)
30
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.
31
Men live tightly enclosed in the straitjacket of
the human senses, so that they never know what is beyond these very limited and
very restricted channels of perception. Yet their experience of the world is
actually created out of this mysterious element which transcends their ordinary
view. All that they get is their own idea of what is real, and never any contact
with the real world itself. The lesson of atomic research is that such a world
is completely different from the one that seems to surround them.
32
A curious example, but one helpful to the
enquirer, exists in the case of bodily pain. It is utterly impossible for us to
imagine pain in the abstract - existing without any mind to be conscious of it.
The word becomes quite meaningless if we try to separate it from someone or
something to perceive or feel it. Its very existence depends entirely on being
thought of, on being related to a conscious percipient. The sensation of being
felt, this alone gives reality to pain. This fact refers equally to past or
present pain. It should be easy to apply this analogy to the case of mere ideas,
for the latter, like pain, can never come into existence without something, some
mind, to think of them. Consciousness, on the part of someone or something,
alone makes them real and factual.(P)
33
There are sixty-four different points of the
compass. Therefore, it is possible for sixty-four men to take up all these
different positions and look at an object. Each will see a different appearance
of it. Thus there will be sixty-four different appearances. Yet all the men will
glibly talk, when questioned, of having seen the same object when they have done
nothing of the kind. And if any one of them asserts that he has studied only the
appearance of the real thing and the whole thing, he is obviously talking
nonsense. Yet this is what most of us do when we say we have seen the world that
surrounds us - this and nothing less. It is completely impossible through the
instrumentality of the senses to see the whole of any object, let alone the
whole of the world. They can only view aspects. But what cannot be done by the
senses can be done by the mind, which can form an idea of the whole of anything.
Therefore it is only through reflection - that is, through philosophy - that we
can ever get at a grasp of the whole of life and the universe.(P)
34
It is natural for the materialist to ask how any
sense can function without a sense organ. It is natural for the mentalist to
point to the experience of dreams for the answer. All the senses are functioning
during the dream but they do so without the apparatus of sense organs. This fact
alone indicates in the clearest possible manner to anyone sufficiently
perceptive to understand the indication that it is the mind and the mind alone
which is the real agent in all the senses' experience. When, because of
distracted attention, our mind is not aware of a thing which stands before our
eyes, that particular thing temporarily ceases to exist for us. This means, if
it means anything at all, that the thing receives its existence partly at the
very least from us. It does not stand alone. Sense-experience actually takes
place in consciousness itself: the five senses do not create but limit,
canalize, and externalize this experience. We receive the various sensations of
hardness, colour, shape, and so on, but they are not received from outside the
mind. They are all received from within our consciousness. This is because they
are received from the World-Mind's master image within us. The objects
which cause those sensations truly exist, but they exist within this image -
which itself exists within our field of consciousness. The things of experience
are not different from the acts of knowing them. Hence the world exists in our
thoughts of it.(P)
35
Everything happens in these organs, and all their
highly complicated functions are carried out with the perfect precision of a
finely made watch. Yet it happens without their owner knowing anything about it
at all. Does not this show that there is something within the body that
does know and does direct these organs?
36
The body's surface organs explain the nature and
reveal the qualities of things in our environment. But without the mind such
explanation and such revelation could never be possible. This is easily proven.
When we withdraw the mind from the sense-organs, as in deep thinking or profound
remembrance, we alienate the environment and hardly observe the things in it. In
other words, we sense ultimately only what the mind senses.
37
The world-picture which the mind creates is, after
all, a limited one for it is painted with only five colours. The senses we
possess now do not exhaust the possible ranges of perception.
38
The two physical organs of sight, the eyes,
causing two sets of sensation to be experienced, nevertheless produce only a
single impression in my consciousness. The experience of an object and the
thought of it are two different things. This means that the mind has its own
separate existence apart from the body.
39
We wrongly fix our standard of reality by what we
see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, by the senses which contact only a
part of the great universe around us.
40
Mind is supersensual yet it is the ultimate
activating agent in all sense experience. Hence the Koran says: "No sight
reaches Him: He, the Subtle, the Knowing, reaches the sight."
41
The problems of illusory experience and truth and
error really belong to epistemology.
42
The materialist who would confine all experience
to sense-experience can no longer get away with such an antiquated argument.
Without the instruments which convert these radiations into sights or sounds,
his senses do not ordinarily tell him that infra-red and ultraviolet rays exist,
for instance. This statement rests upon verifiable fact, not upon fanciful
speculation.
43
The snake [seen in the place of a rope] may be an
illusion, but all the same the perception of it was a factual experience. It is
not to be ignored merely because it is an illusion, but to be explained.
44
When we say the world is not real, we mean that it
lacks intrinsic reality for it is an idea only in a mind, an
appearance only to something else.
45
We know the world through our thoughts and
sensations about it, which are thus like a pair of spectacles. But we do not
know what the world is like without these spectacles.
46
We are aware of the world only as it seems to our
existing perceptions. Whole areas of it are therefore shut out merely because
they lie beyond those perceptions.
47
The notion that one's own brain originates all
one's own thoughts is shallow and erroneous. It may originate most of them in
most cases, but only some of them in other cases. Four possible sources are
one's physical surroundings, other people's thought directed to one, one's
mental-emotional surroundings, and other people's mental-emotional atmosphere
(aura) as it impinges on our own when brought close together.
48
In every physical illusion the bodily sense
falsifies the mind's knowledge, yet this knowledge does not change the fact of
deception, does not prevent the senses from continuing their operation even when
their falsity has been exposed.
49
Even the physiologists tell us that the working of
the mind is necessary to complete the act of seeing. Philosophy says, however,
that the working of mind is necessary even to begin the act of seeing.
50
We see with our eyes forms and colours, we feel
with our hands soft or hard things, wet liquids, large or small objects. All
these observations are true ones; the body is not deceiving us but in certain
circumstances appearances are doing so. That is, the use the mind is making of
body is an interpretational one.
51
Those who say that everything in man's
consciousness has come through the five gates of his senses, forget the
consciousness itself.
52
Brain tissue is not mind. The five senses which
are connected by nerves with it could not operate without mind, but mind can
operate without the senses. Where are the senses when we work out a mathematical
problem "in the head"?
53
Nature has placed the eyes in the highest part of
the body, perhaps to signify that they are the most important of the five
senses.
54
The materialist is also beguiled by his deeply
cherished belief in the sole validity of sense testimony. What if Nature had
given him ten senses?
55
Scientifically we never see the real light, but
only its manifestations and reflections on various objects and surfaces. Light
is invisible. We become aware of it only through its effects. Scientifically the
eyes reveal only a part of the world in which we live; like all sense organs
they are limited in function to a certain range and we cannot register beyond
it. Science has had to invent and make many instruments to supplement this
imperfect working of the senses. Detectors of X-rays and infra-red rays are
cases in point. A German scientist once calculated that even the dense metal
platinum would be reduced to a thousand-millionth part of its original volume if
its molecules could be packed together so closely that they could not move. In
other words, even the densest matter is mostly empty space! The eyes, however,
see nothing of this truth and continue to testify to a platinum which exists
more in appearance than in reality.
56
It is not the five senses which know the world
outside, since they are only instruments which the mind uses. It is not even the
intellect, since that merely reproduces the image formed out of the total sense
reports. They are not capable of functioning by themselves. It is the principle
of Consciousness which is behind both, and for which they are simply agents,
that really makes awareness of the world at all possible. It is like the sun,
which lights up the existence of all things.(P)
57
He feels so firmly situated in the physical body
that his whole being seems there alone. The first unthought, unanalysed
impression supports materialism. But if he remains there he remains an
intellectual child. It cannot be said that the brain knows the outside things
directly; for it knows them through the intermediary service of the
structure of nerves which connects it with the body's eyes, ears, skin, and so
on. He hears, touches, or sees a thing or person through the body's senses. But
although ear, finger, or eye is involved, analysis shows that in the end the
experience is a concept: it is there when he thinks it. Consciousness is
involved in the act. For the mere fact that a man is aware of what he does and
feels shows that he is a conscious creature in his own right, a
mind-being apart from the fleshly form, however much he may be
interlocked with it. This perception of the mentalist nature of all our
experience of the world opens the way to de-blocking the innate materialism
forced upon us by the senses and the thoughts linked with them, a materialism
which can be so subtle that even very pious persons are deceived by it.
58
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.
59
The mind issues orders to, and thus uses, the
body. The transmission is staged through will, then energy, then nerve
vibration, then muscle contraction, and finally, movement. Just as the mind does
not act directly upon the body, so the body affects the mind by the same
graduated process but in reverse.
60
The materialistic claim that all mental states,
all spiritual experiences, and all ideas generally originate solely in the
physical brain or in physical changes of the nervous system would be correct if
the term "all" were replaced by the term "some." (This would still leave
unsettled the mentalistic claim - which wreaks havoc with the whole underpinning
of materialism - that the body, brain, and nerve system exist as a group of
states of our consciousness and that we know of no other existence of
theirs.)
61
From where does our consciousness come? The
materialists say it is from the brain, and we cannot say that they are quite
wrong. But what they need to learn is that although consciousness is expressed
through the brain it does not start there. It has a prior existence.
62
Is it the body that tells you it is there, or the
brain which informs you of its existence? No! Consciousness comes first and
reveals their presence. If a dead man clutched a dissected brain for a whole
year, neither of them would know of his own or the other's existence. Why?
Because the mind which really knows has left.
63
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.(P)
64
The intelligence in the deeper human mind
manufactures the bodily organs it requires for experience or development. In
this way it has built the entire body itself.
65
Mind is an entirely different thing from body. How
can it make contact and interact with it, and vice versa? Yet we know they do.
The explanation is that there is no real difference in entity, only a seeming
one.
66
Those who limit mind to the brain are unobservant.
The entire body shows its presence, although not in the same highly specialized
way that the brain does.
67
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.
68
The scientist's statement that the workings of the
consciousness are associated with physiology of the brain and the nervous system
does not contradict in any way the mentalist's statement that our experience of
the separate existence of that brain and nervous system is itself a working of
consciousness - that is, an idea.
69
Philosophy follows a wiser path. Instead of
setting up spirit and matter as eternally opposed enemies, it sets out to find
the real and true relationship between them.
70
The man who refuses to acknowledge the fact of
mind, as apart from brain, utters the ultimate rejection - of himself!
71
Mind is its own reality: it does not need "matter"
from which to derive itself.
72
The most important of all metaphysical facts - the
fact of their own consciousness - is entirely misinterpreted. The tremendous
importance that ought to be attributed to it is instead attributed solely to the
body.
73
The notion that consciousness is a sort of "gas"
generated in the fleshy brain is the modern Western error, although an easy one
into which to fall. There is, of course, a very close interrelation between body
and mind, but it is one wherein the latter is expressed through the former,
although narrowed and confined by the brain's limitations.
74
So much do human character, outlook, and mentality
depend upon the physical body - its shape, condition, health, and fortunes -
that the materialist identification of the self seems completely plausible. It
is certainly part of the self, or an expression of the self; but if we analyse
the notion of self as deeply and as abstractly as is possible, we find the
materialist view to be a fiction. What then is left? Consciousness!
75
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.
76
That what takes place in the mind is only and
solely a reflection of what takes place in the body - once a pillar of
materialist doctrine - is hardly tenable in these days. It is quite other to say
- correctly - that there is a close connection between the two.
77
The bread you ate last week became temporarily a
part of your body but it never was really you at any time. That
is, it was not your consciousness although it affected that consciousness.
78
Consciousness really does exist whereas the things
which it makes known are present only when they are perceived, felt, heard, or
otherwise sensed by one or more of the five reporting agents. This consciousness
is in itself always the same, unvarying, the one thing in us in which thoughts
and bodies make their appearance and from which they also vanish.
79
The world is both an experience in the mind and a
picture in the mind. The brain is a machine for making thoughts; it is an
expression of the mind and yet is itself in the mind.
80
The person is like an oyster shell, a mere house
built around and existing for the living inhabitant within, yet a house that has
somehow grown out of it and become inseparably a part of it.
81
The brain is in most cases the accompaniment and
in some cases the condition of mental working but it is never the origin of such
working.
82
It is a mistake to believe that the body, via the
brain, makes its own thoughts. To correct it, reverse the assumption and
perceive that thoughts are projections from Thought, that Consciousness comes
first.
83
The world depends on the body's five senses for me
to notice its existence. The body depends on the mind, without which I could not
be aware of its existence. In the end, all is mental.
84
The consciousness which tells us that the physical
senses are active is not to be mixed up with those sense perceptions, not to be
mistaken for the sum of those perceptions. A deep, careful, and prolonged
analysis will reveal that it is an entity in itself.
85
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.
86
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.
87
The materialist who regards thought as solely an
activity in the brain, and consequently as a physiological product in its
entirety, has overlooked the thinker of the thought.
88
My life as a body is one thing, as a mind it is
another.
89
If the blood, bone, and flesh of the human brain
secrete thought then the wood and string of a violin secrete music.
90
So many use the word "mind" as if they knew
perfectly well what they are talking about but the fact is that they confuse it
with "body."
91
The materialist asserts that consciousness has no
existence apart from the body, is indeed a product of the brain. A blow on the
head may deprive a man of consciousness; an operation on the brain may change
its mode of functioning. The mentalist says that these only provide the
conditions which normally limit consciousness, thus making it seem as if the
brain created it. But under abnormal states (like anaesthesia, hypnotism, drugs,
or deep meditation) consciousness shows its own separate being.
92
The materialist who believes that not only are
thoughts and ideas secretions of the fleshly brain but that mystical peace and
divine revelation are as well, is wrong.
93
It is important to differentiate between man and
his "garment," the physical body; that is, between mind and the thought of the
body which it carries. It is important to make clear the distinction in thinking
between the popular belief that man is the sum total of his physical attributes,
and the philosophic revelation that mind is the source, projector, and substance
of the man-thought.
94
If there were no such thing as consciousness in
the body, we would be perfectly entitled to call it nothing more than a machine,
albeit made of flesh and bone instead of steel and wood.
95
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.
96
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.
97
It takes keen deep thought to penetrate through
the mass of often false and misleading suggestions received from so-called
education which confuses two utterly separate things - brain and consciousness.
The brain is what the dissection room of a medical school reveals; the
consciousness is what enables the teachers and the students in that school to
know what is being revealed.
98
There is a stubborn psychological problem, with
profound metaphysical implications, which has remained unsolved throughout the
whole history of science; but the range of data available today being greater,
the prospects of its solution are brighter. Put briefly, this problem is as
follows: is consciousness a property developed by the physical body in the
course of its activity or is it a primary and intuitive part of the individual's
nature? If the solution proved favourable to the theory of primacy of
consciousness, then the effects upon our culture would be incalculable. The
Christian teaching about the immortality of the soul would be vindicated, the
value of religion in human life would be established, and the intellectual
materialism of our time, which has given birth to such horrible evils as Nazism
and Communism, would be eradicated.
99
The brain is physical - material, if you wish -
but the mind, the private consciousness, is not. Most scientists, psychologists,
and psychoanalysts would not agree with this statement, but the far-seeing ones
would. The dispute can be solved only in two ways: having one's own personal
experience of mind-in-itself, apart from brain, or awaiting the discovery of
new, further extrasensory phenomena.
100
Psychologists have pursued the mind into that
lump of greyish-yellow protein, that most complex of all organisms, the brain.
They have triumphantly concluded that brain and mind are one and the same thing.
Philosophy says that it is a mistake to identify the fact of general awareness -
which no one can pursue simply because he is awareness itself - with a
particular faculty of awareness as shown by some part of the brain. Brain is
physical, consciousness is mental.
101
The study of man's brain and nervous system
tells us a great deal about his brain and nerves; it tells us nothing about his
mind, all the psychologists to the contrary.
102
Psychology, like all the sciences, has to turn
itself into philosophy the moment it puts to itself such a radical question as
"what is mind?"(P)
103
There is nothing a man knows more directly than
the experience of his consciousness. He does not know a physical brain but a
mental fact - that of being aware. Yet it is man alone who has produced that
strange creature the materialist, who stubbornly denies the mentality of mind
and insists on its materiality!
104
Because it studied the body first, it was
inevitable that medical training should produce a group of materialists. But now
that it is adding a study of the mind to its curriculum, it is only a matter of
time before it will abandon its materialism.
105
No stimulus from any bodily sense, nervous
system, or brain accounts for the existence of consciousness in many dreams and
most imaginations. Its existence is independent.
106
Medical science still does not know how to
answer with any certainty two questions which seriously affect its knowledge of
how the body works. They are: (a) What is thought? and (b) Why do nerves - which
are physical objects - feel pain and pleasure - which are not?
107
Those who believe that mental power and
intellectual endowment are entirely products of the physical brain, glands, and
nervous system will have to explain why Anatole France's brain weighed less than
the ordinary man's. No, mind is an imponderable element.
108
Materialists who try to derive thought from a
material brain and life from a material substance are fooled by the very
accuracy of their observations. The connection in each case is close and
definite, but it is not a causal one.
109
There is no adequate explanation why the nerves
feel. The medical one only describes what happens; it does not explain.
The mentalist one alone solves the mystery.
110
When we discuss these questions with medical
men, they often raise the objection that the changes of thought and feeling as a
result of liquor, drunkenness, drug narcosis, tropical fever, or brain lesion
constitute a clear proof that mind is the product of body and that materialism
is a true doctrine. We answer that they prove only that mind is closely
connected with the body.
111
The old-fashioned medicine identified the mind's
working with the brain's. The newer psychosomatic medicine begins to see how
mind can of itself affect brain, that is, body. But its perception is unclear,
its conclusions still shaky and uncertain.
112
Where the materialist scientists and
psychologists have gone wrong is, first, the refusal to admit any other
existence than the physical. Therefore they can offer no valid explanation for
Consciousness in all its phases. If the body renews its cells every seven years,
as was formerly claimed, or every one and one-half years, as others now claim,
the very ordinary phenomenon of memory is inexplicable.
113
The researcher can most truthfully say that what
he knows best of the world is its description as it appears to be. Under
microscopic examination it is seen to be undergoing changes, however slight, all
the time. But why does the feeling of its reality persist? Why does the feeling
that the world is really present in our experience refuse to leave us? We have
to say ruefully that there are really two levels of experience and therefore of
truth - the common one and a higher one.
114
Scientists and psychologists who are trying to
find the origin of mind by poking in the nervous system and the brain would do
well not to make this one-sided research stand alone. They should inquire into
the nature of mind - the very opposite of what they are doing.
115
The scientist's error begins when he assumes
there is a gulf between the idea and the thing. For it is only his assumption.
The experience of the thing and the idea of it are not two sunderable entities.
If they were, we should register them as such. But actually we don't; we find
that they form a unit of experience, a unit in consciousness.
116
Mind is the great mystery, so little known by
the glib expounders of psychology who flounder within and never transcend the
ego-bubbles thrown up to its surface.
117
In their haste to assert that mind is
only a function of brain flesh they use the very mind whose existence,
unnoticed and overlooked, makes their assertion possible.
118
Because there is an obvious connection and
relation between consciousness and the brain, science cannot conceive how
consciousness can exist separately. For the scientist, his life is in his body -
nowhere else.
119
Nowhere in the physical brain can any anatomist
find that which creates thought, although he may find conditions in it which
prevent thought or distort it or weaken it. This is because the principle of
consciousness exists before the physical body's brain exists, while it lives,
and after its death.
120
The psychology which divides the brain of man
into different centres of perception and reaction does not thereby explain the
consciousness of man. And it is this principle of consciousness which alone
makes possible all his perceptions and reactions.
121
Where is his consciousness when a man falls into
coma? Or when an anaesthetic drug displaces everything from his mind?
122
Despite all its parade of learning and
experiments, what science really knows about the real origin, the essential
nature and inmost working of the human mind, is still amazingly little.
123
The process of becoming aware of the world makes
a second thing of the world, objectifies it, and thus materializes it. Whoever
proclaims himself a materialist cannot be blamed. But he is blameworthy for
failing to go farther and recognize what has happened. What he experiences is
the mentalness of the world. What he falsely understands by his experience is
the materiality of the world.
124
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.
125
How can you convert solid lumps of matter into
unseen intangible spirit? It is impossible without converting them into ideas
first. For otherwise, you cannot get rid of their mass, volume, tangibility, and
so on, nor reduce them to unity.
126
The attempt to regard Spirit and Matter as two
separate self-existent substances must end in failure, for they cannot then be
brought together, or interact together, either in man or in the universe. The
same is true of Mind and Matter. But the opposing attempt, that of the
materialists, to make Mind the highest product of the evolution of Matter, must
end in equal failure.
127
If materialism were true, there would be no
possibility of human memory and human imagination, from no physical origin could
they be derived. Yet Descartes cut up the heads of animals, hoping thereby to
find a physical explanation of memory and imagination!
128
If a man were made up of nothing more than brain
and spine, blood and flesh, bone and skin, materialism could account for every
phenomenon. But he is also made up of consciousness. And this is where
materialism breaks down.
129
The powers of the mind increase with age in some
men (as with Winston Churchill) even when the powers of the body decay. If
thought were the product of flesh, it would always become enfeebled along
with it. But this is not the case. Therefore the materialistic argument fails
here.
130
The materialist tells us that the sciences of
biology and anthropology prove man to be a thinking animal and nothing more. But
we have already demolished the materialistic theory of the world. Therefore we
cannot bow in complacence before such a solution of the enigma of human
existence. How then shall we regard the materialistic view? Armed with
philosophic preparation, we must now look within ourselves for an answer and
subject the self to strict analysis. We must bring it up out of the darkness and
look it full in the face. This alone when sufficiently prolonged and perfected
can cause its meaning to appear.
131
When all mental facts are completely accounted
for by corresponding physical conditions in the body, why look farther? Why not
accept materialism as a perfect explanation? The answer is that this is not so,
that certain supernormal, abnormal, mystical, and religious mental facts are not
accounted for.
132
He who would make mind an incidental function of
matter does not know what either mind or matter is.
133
How the electrical changes in the brain stuff
which follow every activity of eye or ear, skin or nose, permit a man to acquire
conscious knowledge of what lies outside eye or ear, skin or nose, is a
complete mystery to science.
134
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.
135
It should be understood that by starting with
the consideration of matter as something already existent and mind as something
which has yet to come into existence, science has arrived at the impassable
"gap" in its explanation of human world experience. This gap will remain forever
impassable because unless consciousness existed previously, the sense-stimuli
might strike on the brain incessantly but they would never get any response.
However, by science retracing its steps, dropping materialism, and starting with
the mentalist line first, the gap vanishes and science can proceed to wonderful
discoveries which will bring it into fraternal relation with religion and
metaphysics. It will then understand that all life becomes a play of
consciousness.
136
A quarter century ago it was hoped that extended
research into the colloidal material of nerve fibres would help solve the
tantalizing problems that lie at the root of organisms having life and
consciousness. Much progress has certainly been made since then. That the
connection between the physical and the mental lies in the tiny nerve cell's
colloidal structure will certainly prove indisputable eventually. But there is
no basic solution of these problems without an adoption of the view that
the physical itself is but an aspect of the mental. If this is done it is then
possible to trace the building up of the individual's world picture through the
ages by a combination of mnemonic images, associated ideas, thought tendencies,
and habit energies; and his body picture through the evolution of functions like
sight, digestion, and so on, which in their turn generated suitable sense
apparatuses like eyes, stomach, and such. All these are memorized and conserved
in a planetary mind which underlies all individual minds and without which
indeed the activity of the latter could not be possible. Stromberg and Korzybski
must eventually find themselves in a cul-de-sac unless they can comprehend that
the wonderful synthesis which results in the actual perception of objects can be
achieved by a consciousness which observes and interprets the reactions not only
of the sense organs but also of the brain centres which, physiology supposes,
give birth to or control the functions of thought, sensation, and memory. There
is no use talking in terms of neurological structure or cerebral changes here,
for with the detection of a principle of awareness one departs from everything
physical and enters another world. If, therefore, he wishes to find just where a
conscious connection with the nonmaterial energy can be made, he will have to
detect this principle itself and not necessarily a particular point in his
structure as an organism. And this can be achieved only by ultramystical
methods.
137
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.
138
The mentalist knot cannot be untied without
arriving at the conclusion that the processes of sensation are mental ones
throughout. In The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga the author deliberately
led the argument to a gap and then said we must stop there, as science has to
stop there, unless we drop the original premise that we are dealing with
material objects which give rise eventually to a mental perception, and switch
over to a new premise that we are dealing all the time with mental objects only.
In other words, the gap does not exist except in the imagination of scientists.
139
The theory that we perceive the outer world
through a sensing process which results in a picture arising in the brain, or on
the brain's surface as it does on the eye's surface, still leaves unexplained
how we are able to perceive this picture itself. The brain cannot see it for it
cannot see colours - only the eye can do that. Nor can the brain feel it, for
then it would have to touch it, which would be impossible in the case of large
pictures of outer objects larger than itself. Nor can the picture look at, feel,
or experience itself. The gap in this theory cannot be crossed. Only by
reversing this theory and acknowledging that our awareness of the world really
comes to us from within, that by a trick of the mind it only seems to
come from without, can the correct and true explanation be found.