The Kybalion

Will and attention

Will supplies direction; attention is the sustained orientation toward a chosen object or state. In the practical chapters they work together: the pupil intends a change and fixes attention in the desired direction. The book often treats this as evidence of a wider mental power. The ordinary act of choosing a focus and the extraordinary claim of directly controlling distant conditions are different levels of assertion. See XIV-XV.

Transmutation and polarization

Transmutation names the change of a mental condition; polarization is a principal method for making that change by moving toward a relevant pole. The alchemical vocabulary gives the mental operation the dignity and promise of transformation from base metal into gold. The analogy is central to III and returns in XV, where the practical programme is summarized.

Neutralization and compensation

Neutralization is counterbalancing an effect or moving to a standpoint less subject to it. Compensation is the proposed balance between opposite swings, extended in XI from mechanics to pleasure and pain. These are different ideas: the first concerns a way of responding, while the second concerns a supposed structure of experience. The chapter's appeal to earlier lives makes the second harder to assess from a single observable life.

Involution and evolution

Involution is the movement of manifestation toward material limitation. Evolution is the return toward fuller spiritual realization. The book pictures the pair as outpouring and indrawing, or as concentration and release of divine attention. These are terms in its cosmology. They should not be silently substituted for the meanings of evolution and development in modern biology. See VII and XI.

Mastery

Mastery is increased understanding and deliberate participation within law. The recurring contrast is between a person carried along by moods or circumstances and a person who recognizes an influence and responds intentionally. VI limits the term: a finite master remains subject to the relative conditions of life. XII and XV express the same limit by placing every master within a hierarchy of causes.