Matter is spirit named.

Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.

Some people worry that to say we are nothing but matter is to deny that we think or feel. It’s not. The strange fact is that, when suitably arranged, matter thinks and feels.

It is alone that part of the external universe which we call material which acts on man through his senses — that part of which we ordinarily feel our knowledge to be the surest; but in reality, strangely enough, as will soon appear, this is one of the aspects of the external world, of which we can know nothing.

When making the analysis of matter we impliedly admitted two propositions: first, that sensation is the tertium quid which is interposed between the excitant of our sensory nerves and ourselves; secondly, that the aggregate of our sensations is all we can know of the outer world, so that it is correct to define this last as the collection of our present, past, and possible sensations.

It is logical to assert that all matter possesses a property which is essentially akin to sensation, the property of reflection.

Without a subject there is no object in the world, without understanding there is nothing to understand, without mind no matter. You think that matter comes first, and then what we call mind. Where is this matter? Where have you ever seen matter? You see oak, fir, slate, and granite, and all sorts of other materies, as the old architects called them, never matter. Matter is the creation of the mind, not the reverse. Our entire world is thought, not wood and stone. We learn to think or reflect upon the thoughts, which the Thinker of the world, invisible, yet everywhere visible, has first thought. What we see, hear, taste, and feel, is all within us, not without. Sugar is not sweet, we are sweet. The sky is not painted blue, we are blue. Nothing is large or small, heavy or light, except as to ourselves. Man is the measure of all things, as an ancient Greek philosopher asserted; and man has inferred, discovered, and named matter. And how did he do it? He called everything, out of which he made anything, matter; materia first meant nothing more than wood used for building, out of which man built his dwelling. Here you have the whole secret of matter. It is building-material, oak, pine, birch, whichever you prefer.

Matter and mind have this in common, that certain superficial agitations of matter are expressed in our minds, superficially, in the form of sensations; and on the other hand, the mind, in order to act upon the body, must descend little by little toward matter and become spatialized. It follows that the intelligence, although turned toward external things, can still be exerted on things internal, provided that it does not claim to plunge too deeply.

Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.

Is not our body in itself nothing but a common central effect of our senses — if we have mastery over our senses — if we are able to transform them into activity at will — to center them at a common point, then it only depends on us — to give ourselves the body we want.

Indeed, in our senses are nothing other than modifications of the mental organ — of the absolute element — then with mastery over this element we shall also be able to modify and direct our senses as we please.

I do not profess to know what matter is in itself, and feel no confidence in the divination of those esprits forts who, leading a life of vice, thought the universe must be composed of nothing but dice and billiard-balls. I wait for the men of science to tell me what matter is, in so far as they can discover it, and am not at all surprised or troubled at the abstractness and vagueness of their ultimate conceptions : how should our notions of things so remote from the scale and scope of our senses be anything but schematic ? But whatever matter may be, I call it matter boldly, as I call my acquaintances Smith
and Jones without knowing their secrets : whatever it may be, it must present the aspects and undergo the motions of the gross objects that fill the world : and if belief in the existence of hidden parts and movements in nature be metaphysics, then the kitchen-maid is a metaphysician whenever she peels a potato.

The matter is the ink with which the consciousness writes its self-experience.

Thought is matter as much as the floor, the wall, the telephone, are matter. Energy functioning in a pattern becomes matter. That is all life is … Matter and energy are interrelated. The one cannot exist without the other, and the more harmony there is between the two, the more balance, the more active the brain cells are. Thought has set up this pattern of pleasure, pain, fear, and has been functioning inside it for thousands of years and cannot break the pattern because it has created it.

There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it, but when our bodies are purified, we shall see that it is all matter.