Definition

Pronunciation: PRIN-sih-pul ov MEN-tal-iz-um

Also spelled: Law of Mentalism, Hermetic Mentalism, First Hermetic Principle, The All is Mind

The first and foundational of seven Hermetic principles from the Kybalion (1908): 'THE ALL is MIND; The Universe is Mental.' Holds that the fundamental nature of reality is mental rather than material — the cosmos exists within and is a creation of an infinite, living, intelligent Mind, and all phenomena are thoughts within that Mind.

Etymology

From Latin mens, mentis (mind, thought, intellect), the root of English 'mental.' The philosophical position that reality is fundamentally mental has a long pedigree under various names: Platonic idealism (the Forms as more real than matter), Neoplatonic emanationism (all things flowing from Nous/Intellect), Berkeleyan idealism (esse est percipi — to be is to be perceived), and the Hermetic doctrine expressed in the Corpus Hermeticum that God is Nous (Mind) and the cosmos is God's thought. The Kybalion consolidated these strands under the term 'Mentalism,' making it the first and most fundamental Hermetic principle.

About Principle of Mentalism

The Kybalion opens its exposition of the seven Hermetic principles with the most radical claim: 'THE ALL is MIND; The Universe is Mental.' This is not a metaphor. The text means that the substance of which the cosmos is made is Mind — not physical matter, not energy, but living, intelligent consciousness. Matter, energy, and all physical phenomena are appearances within this Mind, the way dream objects are appearances within a sleeping mind. The analogy is precise: just as dream objects are real within the dream but exist only as mental constructions, physical objects are real within the cosmos but exist only as thoughts within the infinite Mind.

The Corpus Hermeticum establishes the philosophical foundation. Tractate I (Poimandres) opens with the divine Mind (Nous) revealing itself to Hermes: 'I am Mind, your God, who is prior to the moist nature that appeared from darkness.' The creation narrative that follows describes the cosmos arising from Mind's self-contemplation — Mind sees its own reflection in the watery darkness (matter) and, drawn by love of its image, enters into that reflection, producing the physical cosmos as a mental-material hybrid. The human being, descending through the planetary spheres, retains the Mind's capacity for self-awareness within the material world.

Tractate V states the principle with crystalline precision: 'Unless you make yourself equal to God, you cannot understand God; for like is understood by like. Grow to immeasurable size. Be free of every body, transcend all time. Become eternity and thus you will understand God. Suppose nothing to be impossible for yourself. Consider yourself immortal and able to understand everything: all arts, sciences, and the nature of every living being.' This passage is not motivational rhetoric. It is a logical consequence of the Principle of Mentalism: if the cosmos is mental and the human mind participates in the cosmic Mind, then in principle nothing is inaccessible to human understanding.

Plotinus (204-270 CE) provided the most rigorous philosophical development of the Mentalist position in Western thought. In the Enneads, Plotinus describes reality as a hierarchy of emanations from the One (to Hen), descending through Nous (Intellect/Mind) and Psyche (Soul) to the material world. Each lower level is produced by the contemplative activity of the level above it — Nous is the One's self-contemplation, Soul is Nous's self-contemplation, and the material world is Soul's contemplative projection. The entire cosmos is therefore a series of mental acts at decreasing levels of intensity and coherence. Matter is not a substance opposed to mind but the faintest, least focused edge of mental activity.

The Vedantic tradition, developing independently in India, arrived at a strikingly parallel position. The Mandukya Upanishad declares: 'All this is Brahman. This Self (Atman) is Brahman.' Shankara (c. 788-820 CE), the most influential Advaita Vedanta philosopher, argued that the empirical world (vyavaharika) exists within and as a projection of Brahman (the absolute reality), the way a rope mistaken for a snake exists within the perceiver's mind. The snake is real as experience but unreal as substance — precisely the status the Kybalion assigns to the physical cosmos within the infinite Mind.

George Berkeley (1685-1753), the Anglo-Irish philosopher and bishop, formulated the most famous Western philosophical version of Mentalism: esse est percipi — to be is to be perceived. Berkeley argued that material objects have no existence independent of mind; what we call 'matter' is a coherent pattern of perceptions within God's infinite mind. Berkeley's idealism was developed within a Christian theological framework, but its structural identity with Hermetic Mentalism is unmistakable.

The Kybalion distinguishes its Mentalism from both materialism (which it rejects as philosophically incoherent — matter cannot explain consciousness) and simple idealism (which risks solipsism — the denial of any reality outside individual minds). The Hermetic position is that there is one infinite Mind ('THE ALL') within which all individual minds and all physical phenomena exist. Individual minds are not the infinite Mind, but they participate in it and share its nature. The cosmos is real — not an illusion — but its reality is mental rather than material. This position avoids solipsism (the cosmos exists within THE ALL, not within any individual mind) while maintaining that mind is more fundamental than matter.

The practical implications of the Principle of Mentalism are far-reaching. If the cosmos is mental, then mental operations (thought, intention, concentration, visualization) are not secondary reflections of a material world but primary creative forces operating within the same medium as all reality. This is the philosophical basis for every practice from prayer to ceremonial magic to positive visualization — all of which assume that mental activity can directly affect the structure of experienced reality.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley's Thelema, and the New Thought movement (which produced the modern self-help industry) all drew on the Principle of Mentalism as their foundational axiom. The claim that 'thoughts create reality' — now a commonplace of popular spirituality — is a simplified (and often oversimplified) version of the Kybalion's first principle.

Modern consciousness studies have reopened the question of whether Mentalism describes something real. The 'hard problem of consciousness' — the inability of physical science to explain why and how subjective experience arises from material processes — has led some philosophers (David Chalmers, Philip Goff, Bernardo Kastrup) to propose versions of idealism, panpsychism, or cosmopsychism that bear structural resemblance to the Hermetic position. Kastrup's 'analytic idealism,' in particular, argues that reality consists of one universal consciousness whose dissociative processes produce individual minds and the appearance of a material world — a framework that could be a technical restatement of the Kybalion's 'THE ALL is MIND; the Universe is Mental.'

The Principle of Mentalism is listed first among the seven principles because it establishes the nature of the medium within which all the other principles operate. Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, and Gender are all properties of Mind — patterns within the infinite mental cosmos. Without the Mentalist foundation, the other principles would describe a material universe operating mechanically. With it, they describe a living, intelligent cosmos operating purposefully.

Significance

The Principle of Mentalism is the keystone of the entire Hermetic system. Remove it, and the other six principles become descriptions of a mechanical universe. With it, they describe a living, intelligent cosmos in which consciousness is primary and matter is derivative. Every Hermetic practice — alchemy, astrology, theurgy, contemplative ascent — presupposes that mind is more fundamental than matter, and that working with mind therefore works with the deepest level of reality.

The principle's philosophical significance extends beyond esotericism. The mind-matter problem remains unsolved in Western philosophy, and the Hermetic answer — that matter is a mode of mind, not mind a product of matter — represents one of the oldest and most persistent attempts at resolution. The contemporary revival of idealist philosophy in academic settings (Kastrup, Goff, Hoffman) suggests that the materialist consensus of the twentieth century may be less secure than it appeared, and that the Hermetic position may prove more philosophically durable than its critics expected.

For the practitioner, the Principle of Mentalism is the source of empowerment. If the cosmos is mental and the human mind participates in the cosmic Mind, then the practitioner is not a material object buffeted by external forces but a center of consciousness operating within a responsive mental medium. Thought, intention, and concentrated awareness become tools of world-engagement rather than private epiphenomena. This is the philosophical basis for the Hermetic claim that the wise person can influence reality through mental mastery.

Connections

The Principle of Mentalism is the first and foundational principle attributed to Hermes Trismegistus and codified in the Kybalion. It provides the metaphysical substrate for all other principles — Correspondence, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, and Gender are all properties of Mind.

The Advaita Vedanta doctrine that all is Brahman expresses the same principle in Sanskrit vocabulary. The Corpus Hermeticum develops the Mentalist position through the figure of Nous (divine Mind) as the source and substance of all creation.

In the Emerald Tablet, the 'one thing' from which all creation derives is the universal Mind in its undifferentiated state. Buddhist philosophy, particularly the Yogacara school's 'mind-only' (cittamatra) doctrine, reaches a parallel conclusion through different analytical methods.

See Also

Further Reading

  • Three Initiates, The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece. Yogi Publication Society, 1908.
  • Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  • Plotinus, The Enneads, translated by Stephen MacKenna, revised by B. S. Page. Penguin Classics, 1991.
  • Bernardo Kastrup, The Idea of the World: A Multi-Disciplinary Argument for the Mental Nature of Reality. Iff Books, 2019.
  • George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710). Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • Shankara, Vivekachudamani (The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination), translated by Swami Madhavananda. Advaita Ashrama, 1921.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Principle of Mentalism mean physical reality is an illusion?

Not in the Kybalion's formulation. The text is careful to distinguish Hermetic Mentalism from solipsism or nihilism about the physical world. The cosmos is real — it exists as a genuine creation within the infinite Mind, with consistent laws and structures. The Kybalion compares the universe to 'a dream of THE ALL' — and within a dream, the dream-world is real for the dreamer. The correction the principle makes is not to deny physical reality but to identify its nature: physical reality is mental in substance, not material. This has practical consequences (mental operations can affect physical conditions, because both are modes of the same medium) but does not license the dismissal of physical existence as meaningless or unreal. The alchemist who understood the Principle of Mentalism still worked with real chemicals in real flasks — but they understood that the mental and the chemical were expressions of the same underlying reality.

How does the Principle of Mentalism differ from 'thoughts create reality' in the Law of Attraction?

The Law of Attraction, as popularized by The Secret (2006) and related works, claims that individual thoughts attract corresponding experiences — think positively and positive things happen, think negatively and negative things happen. The Hermetic Principle of Mentalism makes a different and more nuanced claim: that the substance of reality is Mind, and that all manifestation occurs within Mind. The Kybalion does not teach that individual wishes are automatically fulfilled by the cosmos. It teaches that mental mastery — disciplined concentration, understanding of universal law, alignment with the cosmic Mind — gives the practitioner the ability to operate as a cause on the mental plane. This requires knowledge, skill, and effort, not just positive thinking. The popular Law of Attraction strips the Hermetic principle of its rigor, removes the requirement for mastery and understanding, and reduces it to a consumer-friendly formula. The Kybalion's Mentalism is a metaphysical position about the nature of reality; the Law of Attraction is a self-help technique derived from a simplified version of that position.

Is there any scientific support for the idea that reality is mental?

The question is actively debated in contemporary philosophy of mind. The 'hard problem of consciousness' — the inability of physical science to explain how and why subjective experience arises from material processes — has resisted solution for decades. This has led several serious philosophers to reconsider idealist positions. Bernardo Kastrup argues for 'analytic idealism' — the view that one universal consciousness is the fundamental reality, and that the physical world is what this consciousness looks like from the outside. Philip Goff defends 'cosmopsychism' — the view that the cosmos as a whole has a form of consciousness that grounds all particular conscious experiences. Donald Hoffman proposes that spacetime and physical objects are not fundamental but are a user interface generated by a deeper conscious reality. None of these positions are identical to Hermetic Mentalism, but all share its core claim: consciousness is more fundamental than matter. Meanwhile, quantum physics has revealed that observation affects measurement outcomes in ways that remain philosophically contentious — a situation that some interpret as supporting a form of Mentalism, though this interpretation is contested.