MENTALISM – Part 3
Volume 13, Category 21
All Quotations from this Book – Compiler comments in black, quotes in color
Having reviewed Chapter Two of The Wisdom of the Overself in the previous e-teachings, we turn now to PB’s voluminous notes on Mentalism. These terse statements and brief paragraphs condense an insight into the true nature of universal experience which will challenge our intellects and encourage us to move beyond the rational level of mind to develop a more intuitive grasp of his meanings.
He begins with an examination of our experience from the perspective of sensation:
“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!” [21:1.2]
“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.” [ 21:1.68]
He continues in section two by helping us to understand the working of Mind at both the individual and cosmic levels.
“The difference between the chair thought and the table thought, the red thought and the green thought, the innumerable relationships among ideas, are all explicable by the fact that the mind’s primary power is image making. This is a power which, in human beings, can be called into play deliberately and voluntarily, as we often do during wakefulness, or spontaneously and involuntarily, as we invariably do during dreams. The moment mind emerges from deep sleep and becomes active, it begins to imagine the wakeful world. What happens with individuals on a small scale happens also with the Universal Mind (God, if you like) on a cosmic scale. Its first activity is imagining.” [21:2.68]
“The mind exists and develops on its own latent resources and needs nothing from outside. There is nothing outside. Nevertheless, its imaginative and creative power calls into play an environment which seems to be outside and which elicits those resources.” [21:2.69]
What then is the essential difference between the idea of a remembered episode which arises voluntarily in the mind and soon vanishes and the idea of a lofty mountain which arises involuntarily in the mind and persists throughout many human lifetimes? Both ideas are inevitably and ultimately ephemeral, although the first may endure for a few moments and the second for a few hundred thousand years. The felt distinction between both blinds us to the fact that not only is the act by which an object is known mental, but the object itself is mental too. Whatever we perceive outside us is certainly outside the body and in the place where we perceive it. But as the body, the thing seen and the space in which both exist are themselves proven fabrications of the mind, the ultimate view can only be that the whole thing is an appearance in consciousness.”
“If Matter has any existence at all, it is as the externalizing power of the mind.” [21:2.74]
When we begin to understand the mental nature of the world, does that indicate that the world we experience is illusory? PB helps us to examine this question and to see how our deepening understanding of the true nature of the world impacts our individual experience.
“The nature of world experience, such as moving, talking, or reading, must eventually be understood as mental or mind-made; but your experience of its activity or forms does not change, only your understanding of it: that is, that it is basically mental activity and these are mental forms. For whatever they do and however they behave or seem to behave, whatever you can know of them can be grasped only with the mind. They obviously have their own mental existence and activity even when you are not present to observe it. We must keep our common sense even when learning to reason philosophically.” [21:3.6]
“The world is neither an illusion nor a dream but is analogically like both. It is true that the mystics or yogis do experience it as such. This is a step forward toward liberation but must not be mistaken for liberation itself. When they pass upward to the higher or philosophic stage they will discover that all is Mind, whether the latter be creatively active or latently passive; that the world is, in its essential stuff, this Mind although its particular forms are transient and mortal; and that therefore there is no real difference between earthly experience and divine experience. Those who are wedded to forms, that is, appearances, set up such a difference and posit spirit and matter, nirvana and samsara, Brahman and Maya, and so forth, as antithetic opposites, but those who have developed insight perceive the essential stuff of everything even while they perceive its forms; hence they see all as One. It is as if a dreamer were to know that they were dreaming and thus understand that all the dream scenes and figures were nothing but one and the same stuff–their mind–while not losing their dream experience.” [21:3.24]
“The thought of the external world comes from the Universal Mind (God) originally, while thoughts which pertain to personal characteristics come out of the subconscious tendencies developed in previous incarnations. In both cases the power which initiates thoughts is outside the conscious self but for that very reason is irresistible. The work of the Spiritual Quest is to enter into co-operative activity with God, on the one hand, and to conquer those subconscious tendencies, on the other.” [21:3.56]
To realize the true nature of oneself and the world is the challenge which life presents every person. When ordinary experience, according to collective thinking of our time, becomes unsatisfactory, we begin to search for help from teachers, prophets and guides, such as PB, who have left records of their experiences and insights to assist us. The growth of living truth within each person is a natural and lengthy process – PB reassures us.
“It is not easy to perceive the truth of mentalism: if it were, religion would not have been needed nor mysticism practised. Thought and feeling must struggle with themselves, and suffer, before illusion is shifted out of the way.” [21:4.82]
“Such development comes only after many births. And since this truth has to be lived, it must be in practice and not only in theory. Before a person comes to this truth, this mentalism, much time is needed to enable their mind to develop and receive it.” [21:5.13]
“Through the disappearance of the world during mystical meditation we finds out its non-materiality. This is the Glimpse. But with our return to the world our glimpse changes into a memory only. How to establish it permanently, this harmony between inner vision and outer world, is discoverable only when living and active in the world yet thoroughly understanding the mentalistic nature of the world.” [21:5.12]
“The doctrine will be ours when feeling confirms what reason inculcates, when the figure and history of this world seem no more than a vivid thought in our mind.” [21:5:5]
Compiled by Judy S.