Mental transmutation: what the Kybalion asks before Mentalism

Has a man who represses his anger through discipline changed? No, answers the reading that schools of philosophy such as Nova Acrópole give to the third chapter of The Kybalion: he has only hidden what he feels. Truly changing would mean no longer feeling anger because something shifted within. The distinction opens the chapter and prepares the ground for the first of the seven hermetic principles, that of Mentalism.

The Kybalion was published in 1908 under the pseudonym "the Three Initiates," and claims to hold the essence of the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus, the figure associated with Hermeticism. The ideas that follow belong to that tradition. They are not the results of scientific research, and the question the chapter asks, of how to change oneself, is best read as practical philosophy.

Transforming isn't transmuting

Transforming, in this reading, is altering the form without touching the essence, like putting on a mask. Transmuting is changing the being: converting selfishness into true generosity, ignorance into wisdom.

That is why true alchemy, for the Hermeticists, would not be turning lead into gold. It would be turning crude beings into complete human beings, along a path from ignorance to lucidity and from instinct to purpose.

The mind as cause

The Principle of Mentalism states that the ALL, the ultimate reality of the hermetic system, is mind, and that the universe is mental. Everything that exists, from bodies and emotions to matter and time, would be within the mind of the ALL. Hence the practical conclusion: acting on the mental plane is acting on the cause, while acting only on the physical means dealing with effects.

The lecture's favorite image is a domestic one. Most people mop up the wet floor, which is the symptom. The philosopher climbs onto the roof and fixes the clogged drain. By the same logic, poverty would not come from a lack of goods or food, but from a lack of fraternity and honesty, and hermetic philosophy would act at the root of the problem.

Machado de Assis as an example

To show transmutation in a real life, the recurring example is Machado de Assis. Born in Rio de Janeiro to a poor family, orphaned of his mother at age ten, with little schooling and no university education, he became one of the greatest writers in the Portuguese language. At a time when prevailing theories held that man is a product of his environment, he would stand as living proof of the opposite.

Purifying before focusing

Hermetic knowledge, the teachers warn, can be corrupted when read through the wrong values. Someone who does not share an author's values can read everything and understand nothing. That is why children and simple people sometimes understand the classics better than scholars: they share the same ethics and the same sincere search.

The same caution applies to mental control. Focusing the mind without purifying it would be dangerous: an illuminated mind projects light, and one full of clutter projects shadows. Discipline needs to come with ethics, altruism, and inner elevation, because, in the words of one of the teachers, "a criminal with imagination is a disaster."

What is yours and what isn't

There is also a distinction between personality and essence. Personality is said to be shaped by culture, media, fads, and environment, and spontaneity is not always sincere: it can be merely repeated conditioning. Human essence would lie beyond that and would have to be discovered and built through will and discipline.

The consequence, in this view, is practical. On the mental plane, everyone would be connected, and thoughts and feelings would circulate among people. Whoever lacks their own identity would absorb other people's ideas and emotions. Whoever has one would recognize that a thought has come in without belonging to them and would choose not to identify with it, which would protect them from unconscious manipulation, causeless sadness, and invasive thoughts. This is a claim of the tradition, not a demonstrated one.

The starting point

The chapter's conclusion is that change begins in the mind, and that a purified mind becomes a tool of the soul. It is up to whoever commands it to make of it a hell in the middle of paradise or a paradise in the middle of chaos. Transmuting oneself comes before transforming the world. The next chapter of The Kybalion deals with the nature of the ALL, the divine mind from which, for the Hermeticists, everything emanates.