The Kybalion

Key Words of the Book

THE ALL

The name of the ultimate reality that contains or grounds everything else. IV reasons that it must be infinite, eternal, and immutable, and identifies it as infinite living mind. THE ALL is therefore not merely the sum of the changing objects presently visible. V-VII explain how a changing universe can depend on an unchanging source. The capitals mark a technical use and help distinguish the name from the ordinary word all.

Mind and mentalism

Mentalism is the claim that reality is fundamentally mental. It is stronger than the observation that a person's attitudes shape an experience. Mind at the ultimate level is not equated with the ordinary thinking of an individual person. The dependence of finite minds on the infinite mind is part of the doctrine, and VII explicitly resists identifying any one manifestation with the whole. See II and IV-VII.

Spirit

Spirit names the living and intelligent nature of the ultimate source. The book admits that it cannot define spirit adequately; the word indicates something beyond finite categories. It does not introduce an independent second substance alongside THE ALL. Readers should distinguish this use from the book's subordinate spiritual beings and from the ether discussed in its physical examples. See IV-V and VIII.

Substance and reality

Substance means what underlies appearances. Reality has two related levels of use: the absolute reality of the source, and the relative reality within which finite beings act. A thing may be dependent and changing without being ineffective. VI makes this qualification explicit, preventing the account of substance in IV from becoming a license to disregard ordinary consequences.

Correspondence

The principle of relevant likeness between different planes. It lets the author move from a familiar case, such as a person imagining a character, to a proposed cosmic relation. Correspondence is also the method used to make the unknown conceivable. Whether a particular inference succeeds depends on the likeness carrying the conclusion required, rather than merely producing an attractive image. See II, V, VII-VIII.

Plane and degree

A plane is a grouping of states or degrees of manifestation. VIII says that the divisions are partly arbitrary conveniences of study and are not spatial places. Higher and lower therefore indicate positions in a hierarchy of development. Degree is the continuous difference that permits the author to connect categories that might otherwise seem separate. This vocabulary supports the claim that all planes belong to one reality.

Vibration

The word links physical motion, states of mind, and levels of spirit. In ordinary physical uses it can refer to a recurring motion with a measurable frequency. In the book's extended uses it becomes a general explanation of differences in reality. The reader should notice when a passage changes from the first use to the second. A mental vibration is not supplied with the same measure as a physical oscillation. See II and IX.

Polarity

The relation of two opposed ends within a shared kind or scale. Heat and cold supply the leading example. The proposed mental art depends on moving along a relevant scale toward a desired state. The qualification within a shared kind matters: X does not make every state interchangeable with every other state. Its more ambitious claim is that opposed emotions can be treated in a way analogous to temperatures. See II, X, and XV.

Rhythm

The pattern of advance and return between poles. It is illustrated by pendulums, seasons, cosmic creation, and moods. The images differ in physical mechanism and in the precision of their recurrence. XI brings them together as manifestations of one principle. Neutralization is the proposed way of limiting a rhythm's effect on conscious action while acknowledging that the rhythm itself continues.

Cause and effect

The principle that every event belongs to a lawful order. Chance is interpreted as a name for causes not yet recognized. Freedom is then described as greater self-direction within that order, rather than the absence of causation. The master becomes a more deliberate cause while remaining an effect of higher conditions. This relation is developed in XII and repeated in XV.

Gender

The book's name for complementary initiating and generating functions. It extends them beyond bodily sex to mind and the cosmos. Masculine and feminine are the traditional labels it assigns to the two functions. The model is meant to operate within each individual, but its symbolism is still an interpretive choice. The physical examples in XIII do not establish that particles or forces literally have those identities.

The I and the Me

In XIV the I directs and witnesses; the Me receives impressions and produces mental forms. This is an introspective division of functions, which the book interprets through its gender principle. The same passage also connects being and becoming to the pair. Those additional associations are part of the model and should not be confused with separate evidence for its universality.