the mentalness of everything...

We know only our mental states, although some of them appear as ‘things’.

We see only our mental images, although some of them appear to be outside.

The man of the world receives a shock, which produces laughter in most cases but terror in a few,

when he is told that if he stands aside in detachment from his experience, then all the pageant of moving creatures, all the long lines of streets and houses which environ him become only forms taken by his mind.

For he believes this to contradict every moment of his experience and to conflict with his most cherished notions.

Hence he refuses to turn an intellectual somersault but immediately scorns such obvious nonsense.

The doctrine of the ‘mentalness’ of everything seems indeed at first sight to involve such a reversal of his natural ways of thought as to be assuredly an absurd one.



The Wisdom of the Overself, Chapter II, The Meaning of Mentalism.
Paul Brunton