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When we have decided that men are not mistaken in believing that an external world is presented in their experience; when we have corrected our first crude notions of what this world is, and have cleared away some confusions from our conceptions of space and time; when we have attained to a reasonably clear view of the nature of the mind, and of the nature of its connection with the body; when we have escaped from a tumble into the absurd doctrine that no mind exists save our own, and have turned our backs upon the rash speculations of the adherents of "mind-stuff"; there still remain many points upon which we should like to have definite information.
For here again the admission would amount to little else, so far as Materialism is directly concerned, than a change of terminology: instead of calling objective existence "Matter," we call it "Mind-stuff." I say "to little else," because no doubt in one particular there is here some change introduced in the speculative standing of the subject.
A universe of mind-stuff and a civilising force constantly causing change, for change is growth, constantly compelling expression of that change to conceive it is to conceive infinitude. And the purpose? Development, always development.
The Yogi teachings inform us that, in the Beginning, The Absolute formed a Mental Image, or Thought-Form, of an Universal Mind that is, of an Universal Principle of Mind. And here the distinction is made between this Universal Mind Principle, or Universal Mind-Stuff, as some have called it, and the Infinite Mind itself.
If, for example, this psychic had known me well enough to have had a very definite picture of 'E. A., he might have been able to model from the mind-stuff that he or the circle had thrown off, a luminous image of my friend, and, aided by my subconscious self, might have united the presence and the musical thought of Ernest Alexander." "It won't do!" exclaimed Miller.
The Yogi Philosophy holds that in the Beginning, the Absolute meditated upon the subject of Creation, and formed a Mental Image, or Thought-Form, of an Universal Mind that is, of an Universal Principle of Mind. This Universal Principle of Mind is the Great Ocean of "Mind-Stuff" from which all the phenomenal Universe is evolved.
You see, I suppose he is compelled to regain his circle, or Purgatory, or Styx, whatever you like to call it, via consciousness. No one present, then no revenant or spook, or astral body, or hallucination: what's in a name? And of course even an hallucination is mind-stuff, and on its own, as it were.
If it is true that a "a moving molecule of inorganic matter does not possess mind or consciousness, but it possesses a small piece of Mind-stuff," then assuredly the central position of Materialism is shown to be impregnable.
When the molecules are so combined as to form the brain and nervous system of a vertebrate, the corresponding elements of mind-stuff are so combined as to form some kind of consciousness; that is to say, changes in the complex which take place at the same time get so linked together that the repetition of one implies the repetition of the other.
Of the universal distribution of the elementary constituents of mind Clifford writes as follows: "That element of which, as we have seen, even the simplest feeling is a complex, I shall call Mind-stuff. A moving molecule of inorganic matter does not possess mind or consciousness; but it possesses a small piece of mind-stuff.
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