MENTALISM – Part I
The Wisdom of the Overself – Volume II of Paul Brunton’s Major Opus
All Quotations from this Book
Fundamental to Paul Brunton’s writings about the nature of human consciousness and our experience of the world is the concept of Mentalism. Volume I of his two volume opus, The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga, is devoted to understanding the process of human perception in order to expose the flawed materialistic assumptions about the nature of sensation. Mentalism is a very subtle and abstract concept which taxes our rational faculties to the utmost.
PB begins by pointing out that: “To understand reality we must first understand the unreal.” And that a double standpoint is involved: in one aspect practical, ordinary experience, and in another aspect philosophical understanding. Initially, we need to clarify how PB is using the term “mentalism”:
The term ‘mentalism’ as used here does not mean the halfbaked form which, under the name of ‘objective idealism’, some of its elementary tenets have assumed in the doctrines of a number of Western and Indian metaphysicians who have only halfovercome the materialistic tendencies of their outlook. They distinguish between mental things and material things and say that although we can know only the former, the coexistence of their material external counterparts must still be admitted. By mentalism we mean more precisely this: that all things in human experience without any exception are wholly and entirely mental things and are not merely mental copies of material things; that this entire panorama of universal existence is nothing but a mental experience and not merely a mental representation of a separate material existence; that we can arrive at such conclusions not only by a straight line sequence of reasoned thinking but also by a reorientation of consciousness during advanced mystical meditation.
Human sensation presents a stable world at rest. Scientific examination reveals fields of vibrating energy in constant motion. Deeper examination of human consciousness finds it also in a constant swirl of thoughts and sensations which have no continuous existence and vanish to be replaced by others similar but not identical, which gives the illusion of smooth continuity.
“Hence the world we know is in a state of everbecoming rather than of settled being. A law of movement rules everything material and mental. Now motion implies unsettlement, the dropping of an old position, thing or thought for a new one: that is, it implies change. But this makes the universe not so much a structure as a flow. The reality of the world lies in its restlessness. The vaunted stability and solidity which the senses place before us are mere appearances, this is the verdict of reason. Such therefore is the inescapable illusoriness of the form which human experience takes.”
When science is pressed to present for our examination “energy-in-itself,” it’s forced to realize that only the forms – sound, light, heat, etc. appear. These forms are experienced as presentations within individual consciousness, that is, as ideas – thought forms.
“It will be seen that energy is not the prime root of the universe, that ultimate reality being mental in character cannot be limited to it and that it is but one of the chief aspects of this reality and not an independent power in itself. Mind is itself the source of the energy to which science would reduce the universe. Energy will be found, in short, to be an attribute of mind, something possessed by mind in the same way that the power to speak is possessed by man. This is not of course that feeble thing which is all we humans usually know of mind, and which is but a shadow, but the reality which casts the shadow, the universal Mind behind all our little minds.”
In this last sentence, PB summarizes a conclusion which we may benefit by further examining. Our ordinary understanding of the term “mind” usually presents a function little understood which has to do with concepts and memory. Mind as we know it seems tenuous, personal, and ever-changing, whereas the objective world appears solid, impersonal, and stable. One of the first questions which arises when we consider the mental nature of the world is: What about the time before human consciousness was present in the world? PB addresses these questions:
“It is quite a misconception of the position of mentalism to make it assert that the world does not exist when we are not thinking of it or that a mountain disappears when there is no man to behold it but revives again when somebody is present! This is only the critic’s assertion of what he wrongly believes mentalism to be. What mentalism really asserts is that the world’s existence in itself without a knowing mind alongside it can never be established. Every materialist unconsciously assumes the presence of such a mind when he assumes that the world can exist independently. A world which is not an object of consciousness has yet to be found. Even when he thinks the world away from himself and foolishly believes that it is still present independently of a percipient mind, he is quite unaware of the fact that he is setting up an invisible spectator to whom it must appear as the world. Let him try to talk of a bygone planetary scene or an unvisited polar region without talking of it in terms of some being’s perception of it; the feat cannot be done.
If the reality of the known world lies in senseimpressions, then the reality of such impressions lies in a living mind. The individual, therefore, stands behind the world although, paradoxically, he is also included in the world.
This paradox must be cleared. For if we make the mind of an individual the sole source of his experience, then we fall into the piquant situation of making him the sole creator and governor of this vast and varied cosmos of shooting stars and circling planets. But this is an absurdity. His mind may issue a decree, but a tree will refuse to turn into a river at his bidding. It stubbornly remains a tree. Therefore, it is clear that there must be another factor somehow present underneath the individual experience of the world, a creative and contributive factor which is as beyond his control as it is beyond his consciousness. It is to the united activity of these two elements the individual and the unknown superindividual that we must look for an intelligible explanation of the existence and structure of the experienced world. Thus, although we started with senseimpressions as our first view of what is real in the experienced world, we are compelled to conclude with a superindividual mental factor as our final view of what is real in it.”
Part II of this exploration of PB’s concept of Mentalism will pursue a further understanding of this “superindividual mental factor.” Comments and questions are welcome – email info@paulbrunton.org. You may like to study the complete course of mentalism in The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga and The Wisdom of the Overself available at https://www.larsonpublications.com/.
Compiled by Judy S.