October 16 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT The MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

Cosmic Consciousness - Illumination (Continued)

"Illumination will come as man more and more realizes his Unity with the Whole, and as he constantly endeavors to let the Truth operate through him.  But since the Whole is at the point of the Inner Mentality, it will be here alone that he will contact It.  "Speak to Him, thou, for He hears."  Always in such degree as one has spiritual sense, he realizes universality in his own soul.  The great mystics have had that sense and have felt the possibility of an immediate communion with the Universal Spirit.  This essence has run through all theologies and has been the cause of much of their vitality.  Theology with all its weakness has been stronger in its strength than it has been weak in its weakness, because the vital elements in it have been greater than the devitalizing ones.  It would not have lived unless this were true.

The only God man knows is the God of his own Inner Life; he can know no other.  To assume that man can know a God outside himself is to assume that he can know something of which he cannot be conscious. This does not mean that man is God; it means that the only God that man knows is within, and the only life man has is from within. God is not external but is Indwelling, at the very center of man's life.  This is why Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is within and why He prayed:  "Our Father which art in Heaven."

The great mystics like Jesus have taught that as we enter into the One, the One enters into us and becomes us and is us.  They have taught the "Mystical Marriage," the union of the soul of man with the Soul of God, and the Unity of all Life.  The great mystics while sensing this Unity - the Universality of all things - have also sensed the individualization of Being and the individuality of Man as a Divine Reality.  Tagore, in seeking to explain this, says that the individual is immersed in, but not lost in, Nirvana, and he uses the illustration..."as an arrow is lost in its mark," still remaining an arrow.  The mysticism of Buddha did not teach the annihilation of the soul, but the eternality of an ever-expanding principle of the soul."

October 13 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT The MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

Cosmic Consciousness - Illumination

"Dr. Bucke defines Cosmic Consciousness as:  "One's consciousness of his unity with the Whole."  The mystic intuitively perceives Truth, and often without any process of reasoning - immediately is aware, with what Swedenborg called a sort of "interior awareness," a spiritual sense.

There can and does descend into our minds - embody and personify in our person - a Divinity, a Unity, the Spirit of God, the direct incarnation of the Original Thing, in us - the mystical presentation of Christ.

Dean Inge, perhaps the best thinker in the Anglican Church of today, tells us that Plotinus had seven distinct periods of cosmic consciousness, in which state he was so completely unified with the Universe that he became One with It.  His spiritual philosophy was a result of these experiences.  Plotinus, you will recall, was one of the greatest of the Neo-Platonic Philosophers.

Dr. Buck, the author of that most rational book, "Cosmic Consciousness," cites many instances of known and authentic records of people who have had definite Cosmic experiences.  In his scientific approach to this subject, he calls attention to the necessity of distinguishing between psychic revelations and Cosmic Consciousness.

Reports of the experiences of most psychics are contradictory.  While on the other hand, the experiences of those who have entered into Cosmic Consciousness - over a period of thousands of years - tell us an identical story, once we get the key to their language - all tell the same story of Reality.  The psychic may or may not be true; the spiritual is always true. The psychic realm is the realm of the subconscious, or relative first cause.   The spiritual is the realm of First Cause.  Therefore, we may read Buddha, Jesus, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Swedenborg, Emerson, Whitman, Browning or any of the other great mystics, no matter in what age they have lived, and we shall find the same Ultimate.  By reading the writings of most psychics, we enter confusion; therefore, we must understand clearly this vital difference between psychism and mysticism.  One may or may not be true; the other is always true."

October 12 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT The MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

Evolution (Concluded)

"Evolution, then, is not a thing in itself; it is an effect.  Behind all objective form, there is a subjective likeness which exactly balances and is the prototype of the form.  The thing involved perfectly balances the thing evolving from it.  Evolution is the time and the process through which Spirit unfolds!  In so far as any individual understands this mental Law, he is able to use it.  We must learn how It works and comply with the way It works.  Always, It is an obedient servant.  As a man sows, so also shall he reap.  Involution and evolution, the thought and the thing, the Word and the Law, the purpose and the execution...this is the sequence.

While there is liberty in the evolving principle, it is always in accord with certain fundamental laws of necessity.  It seems as though behind evolution there is an irresistible pressure, compelling more, better, higher and greater things.  For instance, if we study the evolution of locomotion, from the rising of man from the clod, we see him riding upon a horse, in a cart, in a wagon, and so on to the automobile and the airplane.   What is this but the evolution of locomotion, the unfolding through man's mind of the possibility of travel?  If we watch the evolution of travel by water, we find the same thing from the raft to modern ships.

What is the inevitable end of locomotion?  Could it be other than that we shall ultimately do away with ever visible means of transportation?  When we shall have unified with Omnipresence, we shall be omnipresent.

When we shall have arrived at a sufficient understanding,  our thought will take us where we wish to be.  When we know enough, we shall be able to pass on to another plane and come back again, if we wish to do so.  When we know enough to multiply the loaves and fishes, we shall do so.  When we know enough to walk on the water, we shall be able to do that and it will all be in accordance with natural law in a spiritual world."

September 23 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT The MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

What Is a Mystic? (Continued)

"The teaching of the mystics has been that there should be conscious courting of the Divine Presence.  There should be a conscious receptivitiy to It, but a balanced one.  As one of the Apostles said, in substance, that he would rather speak ten words with his understanding than ten thousand with confusion.  "God is not the author of confusion but of peace."  Unlike the great psychics of the ages, who have been more or less confused, the great mystics have been intensely and pre-eminently the sane people, sound people.

The philosophy of Jesus will remain sound when the belief in a material universe shall have been rolled up like a scroll and numbered with the things once thought to be real.  So will be the philosophy of Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Emerson and Walt Whitman, and the philosophy we are writing about today.  But the more or less unconscious disclosures of many psychics are not entire true, even in the day in which they are given.  While psychism is a most interesting field of study, we should understand it for what it is worth.

It is through the teachings of the illumined that the Spiritual Universe reveals Itself, imparting to us what we know about God.  What we directly experience ourselves, and what we believe others have experienced, is all we can know about God.

Jesus taught a Power transcendent, triumphant, absolute, positive, against which lesser laws meant nothing.  By Its very Presence It heals.  The mystics did not contend or argue with people.  There was nothing to argue about.  THEY SAW and KNEW.  They are the great revealers to man of the nature of the Universe, and the relationship of man to God."

September 22 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT the MYSTICS TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

What is a Mystic? (continued)

"Man has compelled nature to do his bidding.  He has harnessed electricity, caught the wind, trapped steam, and made them do his will.  He has invented machines to do the work of thousands.  He has belted the globe with his traffic and built up a wonderful civilization; but in a few cases has he conquered his own soul.  The mystic has revealed things that do not pass as ships in the night.  He has revealed Eternal Verities and has plainly taught us that there is a Living Presence indwelling ALL.  This constitutes the greatest intellectual and spiritual heritage of the ages.  The balance of our knowledge of God must come as a direct impartation from Him.  We must learn it for ourselves.

The mystic does not read human thought, but rather he senses the atmosphere of God.  The mystics of every age have seen, sensed and taught THE SAME TRUTH!  Psychic experiences, on the other hand, bear the exact opposite testimony, as they more or less contradict each other, for each psychic sees a different kind of mental picture.  But the mystic experiences of the ages have revealed ONE AND THE SAME TRUTH!

A psychic sees largely through his own, or another's subjective mentality.  Consequently, his impressions are more or less colored by the vibration of his own or another's thought.  He is subject to hallucinations and false impressions of every description.  That is why, generally speaking, no two psychics see the same thing.  Mystics have all sensed one identical Reality, and their testimony is in no way confusing, because the Spirit within them has borne witness to the same Truth.

The mystics have been perfectly normal people.  They did not think of themselves as mystics, that was their language.  It was natural to them - perfectly normal.  They have been people like Jacob Boehme, a cobbler, pegging away at his shoes, who, looking up, saw in the geranium plant the reflection of the Cosmos - the very soul of God; like Jesus looking into the heart of nature; like Moses reading God's Law from a burning bush."

September 21 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT the MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

What Is a Mystic?

"A mystic is not a mysterious person but is one who has a deep, inner sense of Life and of his unity with the Whole.  Mysticism and psychism are entirely different.  One is real while the other may, or may not, be an illusion.  There is nothing mysterious in the Truth, so far as It is understood, but all things seem mysterious until we understand them.

A mystic is one who intuitively perceives Truth and, without mental process, arrives at Spiritual Realization.  It is from the teachings of the great mystics that the best in the philosophy of the world has come.  Who was there who could have taught such men as these?  By what process of mentality did they arrive at their profound conclusions?  We are compelled to recognize that Spirit alone was their Teacher; they were indeed taught of God.

Our great religions have been given by a few who climbed the heights of spiritual vision and caught a fleeting glimpse of Ultimate Reality.  No living soul could have taught them what they know.

The great poets have been true mystics who, through their poems, have revealed the Presence of God.  Men like Robert Browning, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Homer, Walt Whitman, Edward Rowland Sill, and others of like nature, have given us poetry which is immortal, because they had a spiritual sense of life.

Great spiritual philosophers are mystics.  The old prophets were mystics - David, Solomon, Jesus, Plotinus, and a score of others, all had the same experience - the sense of a Living Presence.  The greatest music ever composed was written by the hand of a mystic, and the highest and best in art has come from men of spiritual perception."

September 9 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

FROM The TEACHINGS of JESUS
Ernest Holmes

The New Birth (John 3:3-9)

""Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."  Jesus is referring to the heavenly birth, which means being born into the knowledge of Truth.  He refers to this as being born of water and Spirit.

The symbol of water is used to express the idea of a complete immersion in Spirit.  As water flows in and around, so we are immersed in an everlasting Spirit which flows around, in and through us.  To be immersed in water symbolizes our recognition that we are surrounded by pure Spirit.  It is the outward sign of an inner conviction.  But water alone cannot make us completely clean or whole.  We must be born of the Spirit, for "that which is born of the spirit is Spirit."

Man partakes of the Divine nature and the Divine nature is man.  The recognition of this is being born of the Spirit.  But we cannot be born of the spirit unless we do the will of the Spirit and the will of the Spirit is goodness, peace, mercy, justice and truth.  It is conscious union with God.

The new birth comes not by observation nor by loud proclamation, but through an inner sense of reality.  We cannot tell where this comes from, if we look to outward things, as it proceeds from the innermost parts of our own being.

Heaven (John 3:13)

"And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he hath came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven."  Here is another of those hidden meanings which places Jesus among the great mystics.  He says that no man can go to heaven unless he came from heaven, and that he can neither go to, nor come from, heaven unless he is already there!

This is in line with the idea that the Truth knows neither yesterday, today nor tomorrow.  It knows sequence but not time.  Only that can return to heaven which was born in heaven, and since heaven is not a place, but a state of consciousness, the return must be a recognition that heaven is already within.  The son of man, who is also the son of God, is already in heaven and knows it not.

The Son of Man (John 3:14)

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so Jesus tells us must the son of man also be lifted up.  By looking on and believing in this son, we are saved.  Jesus could not have been referring to his own personality, for he knew that this would soon be taken from the sight of humanity.  We must look for a deeper meaning.

We must be lifted up, that is we must realize our Divine nature and relationship to the Truth of God.  This relationship is one of complete unity.  The cross represents the tree of life and may also be thought of as the tree of unity.

When Moses lifted up the serpent, those who looked upon it were healed.  This understanding produced a consciousness of unity, which had healing power.  The Life Principle is either looked up on as material or spiritual.  When looked upon as material, it casts us from the Garden of Eden - the garden of the soul.  The Life Principle viewed only as matter is death, but viewed as life and unity, It becomes life everlasting.  Moses elevated the Life Principle and Jesus did the same.  The son of man must be lifted up, even as Moses lifted up the Life Principle, symbolized by the serpent.

We are reminded here of another symbol, one used in the Old Testament, that of the serpent which cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden.  The serpent meant the outer rim of spiritual existence - the Life Principle viewed from an isolated and materialistic basis.  The worship of material existence, apart from God, cast Adam and Eve from the Garden of Perfection.  The attempt to live in effects, apart from True Cause, always does this.

The story of the Fall, taken literally, would be ridiculous to the point of absurdity; hence it is necessary to look for a deeper meaning.  The writer was trying to teach a Cosmic lesson ... the lesson of right and wrong.  The Garden of Eden typifies life in its pure essence.  Adam means man in general, generic man.  Man exists in pure Life and has all of Its agencies at his command.  This si the meaning of his being told to till the soil and enjoy the fruits of his labor. 

The Tree of Life is our real being, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil means the possibility of dual choice - that is, we can choose even that which is not for our best good.  Man is warned not to eat of the fruit of this tree, for it  is destructive.

Eve, the woman in the case, was made from a rib of Adam.  this story suggests the dual nature of man as a psychological being.  The woman is made from the man.  She must have been in him else she could not have been made out of him, and the story clearly states that she was taken from his being.

Adam and Eve are potential in all of us.  The serpent represents the Life Principle, viewed from a material basis, which beguiles us in this way:  he says that evil is as real as good; that the devil has equal power with God; that negation equals positive goodness, and that the Universe is dual in Its Nature.  From the acceptance of this argument, we experience both good and evil.  And should we come full-orbed into individuality, without having learned the lesson of unity, we should live forever in a state of bondage.  This is the meaning of God saying, "He shall become as one of us and live forever."  The eternal Mind does not wish us to live forever in bondage, and this is what would happen unless we first learn the lesson of right and wrong.

And so that part of us which can be fooled eats of the fruit of dual experience and in so doing reveals its own nakedness.  The native state of man is one of purity, peace and perfection and it is only when we compare these with impurity, distress and imperfection, that we are revealed as naked.  Emerson tells us that virtue does not know it is virtuous.  It is only when virtue tastes of impurities that it becomes naked and must hide from itself.

The Voice of God, "walking in the garden in the cool of the day," means the introspective and meditative part of us, which in its moments of pure intuition and reason, sees the illusion of a life apart from God or Good.  Error is ever a coward before Truth, and cannot hide itself from Reality, which sees through everything, encompasses all and penetrates even the prison walls of the mind with Its clear effulgence.

The conversation between God and Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden, represents the arguments that go on in our own minds, when we try to  realize the truth.  These arguments are familiar to all.  The expulsion from the Garden is a necessary and logical outcome of tasting of dual experience.  If we believe in both good and evil, we must experience both.

But, lest we should become discouraged, we remember that Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness and those who looked upon it were healed.  The serpent means the Life Principle.  Viewed from a material basis alone, it casts us from a perfect state.  Lifted up, that is, viewed from a true meaning of the Unity of God, it heals.  Here is the choice again, only stated in different words.  The difference is not in the thing itself, but in the way we look at it.

The son of man is every man who ever lived or ever will live.  Our life is from Spirit, not from matter.  This viewpoint is the truth and truth alone makes free.  We come into everlasting life as we elevate this inner principle to a sense of the unity of man with God.  Each must lift himself to the cross of the tree of Life, thus unifying himself with Reality.  The concept is glorious and the reward certain.  The revelation of the self to the self - this is the great lesson of lessons."