The first year · Lesson 3
The Dream and the Stone
The universe as a thought in THE ALL, and why the book says it is still real for us
Welcome back. Chapter V opens with a saying: “The Universe is Mental—held in the Mind of THE ALL.” It asks you to picture the whole world as a thought in one great Mind. Then Chapter VI asks you not to float away on that idea. Two chapters, about thirty pages. Let’s begin.
The reading
- Chapter V: The Mental Universe The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece, pp. 65–76 · about 1,981 words, 10 min
- Chapter VI: The Divine Paradox The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece, pp. 77–93 · about 2,955 words, 15 min
About 25 minutes in all. Each link opens the book at the first paragraph.
Before you read
- Chapter V asks one question: what is the universe? Follow it step by step. The book tries one answer after another and throws out the ones that don’t work, like a detective.
- Chapter VI is the other side of the coin. It is a warning not to take Chapter V too far. Read the two chapters as a pair.
- Chapter VI starts with a long saying from the Kybalion. The same words come back at the end, with the authors’ explanation. Read the saying twice, once at each end.
- When the book says “see Lesson I,” it means an earlier chapter. The authors wrote their book as a course of lessons. Watch for two words in Chapter VI, Absolute and Relative. The whole chapter turns on them.
In a nutshell
Chapter V: The Mental Universe
The chapter asks what the universe is. The book says it can’t be THE ALL, because the universe has many parts and keeps changing. It can’t be nothing either, because we know it is there. So the authors use the Principle of Correspondence. They look at how people make things, and they rule out two ways that THE ALL could not use. The third way is to create in the mind. That, the book says, is how THE ALL makes the universe: as a thought, the way you might picture a place in your head. Next comes the Principle of Gender. The book says THE ALL is one and is above gender. But when it creates, it shows two sides. One is a Father side that sends out its will. The other is a Mother side, Nature, that does the work of building the world. The chapter ends with comfort. The universe is huge and full of beings higher than us. Death is not the end, and every person is at home in the “Father-Mother Mind.”
Chapter VI: The Divine Paradox
A paradox is something that seems to contradict itself and yet is true. Here is the book’s. If the world is only a thought, is it unreal? The book answers yes and no. From the Absolute point of view, the view of THE ALL, the universe is like a dream. From the Relative point of view, ours, it is very real. Its laws are “Iron Laws,” and we must live by them. The book calls people who forget this “the half-wise.” They think they can ignore the world’s laws, and they get hurt. The wise use higher laws to rise above lower ones. The book calls this “transmutation.” Then the authors say their teaching does not quarrel with science. The only real difference is Mentalism. They even claim that science is slowly moving their way. The chapter ends by telling you to live fully in the world and do your best each day.
Highlights
THE UNIVERSE, AND ALL IT CONTAINS, IS A MENTAL CREATION OF THE ALL. Verily indeed, ALL IS MIND!
The point of all of Chapter V, in capital letters. The book asks you to “fix” it in your mind before going on.
The Infinite Mind of THE ALL is the womb of Universes.
A short saying that joins two ideas: creating in the mind, and the Principle of Gender. Notice the word “Universes.” The book says there are many, not just ours.
Keep your mind ever on the Star, but let your eyes watch over your footsteps, lest you fall into the mire by reason of your upward gaze.
The whole of Chapter VI in one picture. Look up at the big ideas, but watch where you walk. It is good advice for reading any book in this library.
Transmutation, not presumptuous denial, is the weapon of the Master.
The last line of the saying that opens Chapter VI. The book says these words are worth learning by heart. “Transmutation” means change. The Master changes things, instead of pretending they are not there.
In THE ALL, indeed, do "we live and move and have our being."
The words in quotation marks are not the Kybalion’s. They come from the Bible, in the Book of Acts, where Paul speaks to the people of Athens. The old books often borrow lines like this one.
Words to know
- Spirit
- The book’s word for THE ALL as “Infinite Living Mind.” It says no one can fully explain it.
- Paradox
- Something that seems to say two opposite things, yet both are true.
- Absolute
- Things as THE ALL knows them. From here, the universe is like a dream.
- Relative
- Things as people know them. From here, the universe is real and its laws hold.
- The half-wise
- The book’s name for people who learn that the world is mental and then think its laws don’t matter.
- Phantasmagoria
- A show of shifting, dream-like pictures. The book uses it for the world as THE ALL sees it.
- Aeon
- A very long stretch of time, too long to count.
- Transmute
- To change one thing into another. The book uses it for changing one state of mind into a better one.
The real story
Our notes, not the book's.
The idea that the world is a kind of dream was in the air in America in 1908. In 1893 the Indian teacher Swami Vivekananda spoke in Chicago, and many Americans first heard of Hindu thought from him. One school of Indian thought calls the world we see “maya,” a word often put into English as “illusion.” The Kybalion’s own publisher also sold books by “Yogi Ramacharaka,” such as Fourteen Lessons in Yogi Philosophy. Most scholars think that name hid William Walker Atkinson too. So these chapters often sound like the “Yogi” books in Egyptian dress. The West has its own long line of thinkers who said the world is mind, from the ancient Greeks to George Berkeley, an Irish bishop of the 1700s. The ideas are not a secret from old Egypt, but they are real parts of world thought, and these two chapters are a clear and friendly way in.
Quiz
Answer from the notes or the reading, in any order; you can change an answer at any time. Each answer says why, with a link to the page.