Many years have gone by since the writing of this book. The world has passed through an unprecedented war full of shocks and surprises and subsequently through a peace, which in a lesser way is also traumatic. Both phases constitute a challenge and a warning to the inhabitants of this planet.
Who can live contentedly in these insecure times? War is still going on in the hearts and minds of men. This is where it must first be stopped, for it is there that the explosives, whether they later take the form of small bullets or tremendously destructive atom bombs, begin their existence.
This outer condition is an illustration of the power of thought and feeling when sufficiently sustained, prolonged, and concentrated.
In the book there has been shown another side of mentalistic truth—the side which shows us how we share in the creative experience of knowing and living with the physical world. How our puny little minds and the great World-Mind (otherwise called God) are closely connected. How time and space, which seem to be outside us, are really inside the mind. How matter, with its seeming solidity, mass, weight, et cetera is really our mental experience of it.
All this leads up, as shown in the second volume (later published as The Wisdom of the Overself) to the supreme Truth that MIND alone is real, that deep within us and within the entire cosmos there is undying consciousness. Our share of it, at our best level, is found in a nobler and purer being than this very limited human existence normally manifests. It is there where it must one day be sought and found by everyone, whether in this or after many lifetimes in many bodies.
If the idea of mentalism seems too incredible and too difficult to understand, there is no other final conclusion to which modern thought will be forced to reach in the end, just as ancient metaphysical thought in Greece, India, and China had to come to it centuries ago. Fortunately thinking is not the only way to the mentalistic terminus. The most delicate form of feeling, which is intuitive feeling, can also bring us to it in the end.
The deepest kind of thought and feeling open to man are really inspired. They present mentalism not as a theory, but as the finest possible form of living experience, an experience so tremendous that it cannot be forgotten and indeed stays for the rest of the lifetime, although adapting itself to the necessities of living in this world.
Before his death Professor Werner Heisenberg expressed his sympathy with the fundamental mentalistic idea (of which he had direct personal experience) and toward which he had been led step by step by his research work in nuclear physics at the famous Munich institution devoted to this subject. He was celebrated for his discovery of the law of indeterminacy and world honored by his receipt of the Nobel prize. A similar result has come into the thinking of Professor Carl von Weizsäcker, well known in German cultural circles for his work in mathematics, philosophy of contemporary history, and atomic physics.
In modern times works have appeared in the sphere of the arts, poetry, and literature which testify to personal and unforgettable experience of a temporary glimpse into the world-meaning. The glimpse hints at and foreshadows the wonderful transformation which if fully developed is vividly and intuitively felt. Every thing, every object then reveals and points to its source—MIND.
Paul Brunton, May 1976