the world as idea...

Looked at from the outside, the universe comes forth out of nothingness and passes away into nothingness.

But looked at from inside, there has always been an eternal hidden reality in its background.

This reality is Mind.

The world is only its manifestation.

For if every effect is previously contained in its cause and that again is confined in what preceded it, the chain goes back and back and stops only when it stops with the source of all ideas, Mind.

Thus Mind embraces all things but is itself embraced by none.

Hence Mentalism teaches that the universe has the same origin as any idea, that is, in and for a mind;

therefore the correct way to regard the relation between the universe and its originator is to see it as being similar to the relation between any human idea and the mind in which it is begotten.

The World Mind does not need to ‘create’ the universe out of nothing when it can bring it to birth out of its own self.

And as a mental principle it does this by projecting the world as its idea.

The world is its self projection.




The Wisdom of the Overself, Chapter III, The Birth of the Universe.
Paul Brunton