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CHAPTER V
THE PERSONAL FACTOR
I have already pointed out that the presence of a single all-embracing
Cosmic Mind is an absolute necessity for the existence of any creation
whatever, for the reason that if each individual mind were an entirely
separate center of perception, not linked to all other minds by a common
ground of underlying mentality independent of all individual action, then
no two persons would see the same thing at the same time, in fact no two
individuals would be conscious of living in the same world. If this were
the case there would be no common standard to which to refer our
sensations; and, indeed, coming into existence with no consciousness of
environment except such as we could form by our own unaided thought, and
having by the hypothesis no standard by which to form our thoughts, we
could not form the conception of any environment at all, and consequently
could have no recognition of our own existence. The confusion of thought
involved even in the attempt to state such a condition shows it to be
perfectly inconceivable, for the simple reason that it is
self-contradictory and self-destructive. On this account it is clear that
our own existence and that of the world around us necessarily implies the
presence of a Universal Mind acting on certain _fixed lines of its own_
which establish the basis for the working of all individual minds.
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