carefully as possible to express ourselves, which we can only hope to
do approximately. Therefore when I say that a thing is hot or cold,
or hard or soft, I only mean that it is so by comparison with certain
other things; and when I say that matter has no existence, I mean
that it has no independent existence--no existence outside of the
mind that brought it into being. I mean that it was formed by mind,
formed out of mind, and that it continues to exist in mind as a part
of mind. I mean that it is an appearance objective to our point of
consciousness on the material plane; but inasmuch as it was formed by
thought, it can be reformed by thought, which could never be if it
existed independently of thought. It is real in the sense of apparent
objectivity, and not real in the sense of independent objectivity,
and yet it affects us in precisely the same manner as if it were
independent of thought. What, then, is the difference between matter
as viewed from the Idealist's or the Materialist's point of view? At
first there is apparently none, but a deeper insight will show us
that the difference is vast and radical, for in the one case the tree
or the chair that I am looking at, owing its very existence to mind,
is governed by mind, which could never be did they exist as separate
and distinct entities. Therefore I say with perfect truth that matter
does not exist in the one sense, and yet that it does exist in the
other. I dream of a green field; a beautiful landscape, never before
beheld; I awake and it is gone. Where was that enchanting scene? I
can tell you: for it was in the mind, where everything else is. But
upon waking I have changed my mind, and the scene has vanished. Thus
it is with the Adept of the East, with the Yoghis, the Pundit, the
Rishis, and the common Fakir; through the power of hypnotism they
alter the condition of the subject's mind, and with it his world has
likewise undergone a change. You say this is not real, that it is
merely illusion; but in reply I would say that these illusions have