September 28 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT the MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

Individuality

"The higher the sense of Truth, the greater will be the realization of the uniqueness of individual character and personality.  The real Self is God-given and cannot be denied.  It is the place where God comes to a point of Individualized and Personified Expression.  "I am the light of the world."

Individuality means self-choice, volition, conscious mind, personified Spirit, complete freedom and a Power to back up that freedom.  There could not be a mechanical or an unspontaneous individuality.  Individuality must be created in the image of Perfection and let alone to make this stupendous discovery for itself; it emerges from the Universal.  Psychology teaches the personification of this individuality, which is true as far as it goes, but metaphysics universalizes it by unifying it with the Whole.  There is a Universal nature of Man, inherent within him, which causes the manifestation of his personality.  The Spirit of God.

We have now discovered a unity with the Whole on the three sides of life, or from all three modes of expression.  We are one with the body of the physical world; One with the Creative Law of the Universe in the mental world; and One with the Spirit of God in the conscious world.

Could we ask or hope for more?  Would it be possible for more to be given?  We could not ask for more and no greater freedom could be given.  From now on we shall expand, grow and express only to the degree that we consciously cooperate with the Whole."

May 28 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Seeing Perfection ~ Ernest Holmes

"When Jesus said to the man, "Stretch forth thine hand," he undoubtedly saw a perfect hand!  If everything is mental, and if Jesus saw an imperfect hand instead of a perfect one, no good would have resulted, according to the law of cause and effect. A practitioner does not treat a sick man, he deals only with the idea, a spiritual man; otherwise, he would enter into the vibration of suffering and might himself experience the result of such vibration.  From what we know, Jesus must have seen only the perfect hand.  Even though he might have recognized the false condition, as far as his word of healing was concerned, it must have been a recognition of perfection...else it could not have healed.

Healing is not creating a perfect idea or a perfect body; it is revealing an idea which is already perfect.  Healing is not a process, it is a revelation, through the thought of the practitioner to the thought of the patient.  There may be a process in healing, but not a process of healing.  The process in healing is the mental work and the time it takes the practitioner to convince himself of the perfectness of his patient; and the length of time it takes the patient to realize this perfectness.

Back of what we call the human body, there must be a Divine Body.  It is not necessary to visualize this spiritual body, but we should sense body as a spiritual idea, that the flow and circulation of life through it is complete.  It is not inhibited...not congested.

It is necessary that the practitioner believe in a perfect body.  He cannot realize this unless he has already become convinced that the perfect body IS there.  If he has come to this conclusion, he must not deny it.  There is a perfect heart and a perfect idea of heart, a perfect head and a perfect idea of a head, perfect lungs and a perfect idea of lungs.  The practitioner must realize that back of the appearance is the Reality, and it is his business to uncover this Reality.  He does this through a process of obliterating false thought.  He must deny false conclusions, bring out the evidence of perfection, and produce the healing.  Disease is a fact but not a truth; it is an experience but not a spiritual reality.

We must transcend the appearance, even though we admit it as a fact.  We are not so cold-blooded as to say to a person with pain that there is no such thing as pain.  That is not our idea or purpose.  We admit the fact.  IT IS QUITE A DIFFERENT THING TO ADMIT ITS NECESSITY.  We admit that there is unhappiness, but it would be unthinkable to admit that one has to be unhappy.  Can it be true that there could be a Universal necessity for unhappiness.  IT CANNOT.  And the time will come when no one will be unhappy!  I do not know when it will come.  I am not going to wait for it to come, but it is certain that such a time will arrive; and it will come to you and to me NOW in such degree as we will let it come.  We shall be able to let it come in such degree as we are able to convince our consciousness that it is there, and when it finally does come, we shall find that it was always there!

Disease, accordingly, is a fact but not a truth.  It is not an eternal verity.  It was a fact in human experience for ages that people did not broadcast over a radio, but it was not a truth that they could not.  It was not a divine Reality, because had they known how to manufacture a radio and talk over it, they could have broadcast in any age.  So we must try to see and sense that always, back of the appearance, PERFECTION IS."

February 29 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

GENERAL SUMMARY ~ Ernest Holmes

"The subjective mind of man is part of the Universal Subjective Mind of God.  It is the place where every man individualizes himself on the subjective side of life.  It is his use of the Law of Cause and Effect.  It is his use of the Law of Karma.  It is the Law of the Whole, now individualized as a law of the apparent part.  It may produce either freedom or bondage according to the way that it is used.  Man's use of the Universal Law makes it appear as thought his subjective mind were an entity of itself.  It never is, however, and this is one of the main points we should remember.  It is not separated from the Universal, but is, in a certain sense, the property of the individual in the Universal.  God and man are One, but God is greater than man.  The Whole is greater than Its parts.

The Universal Subjectivity is Mind in an abstract and formless state.  That is, it is a potential energy and a latent power, which means that It is unformed, but always ready to take form.  It is Mind and Substance in an unformed or uncreated state of being.  It is ready to become molded into creativeness.  It is unexpressed Mind.  It waits to be called into form or expression.  It exists in its original state, invisible but potential with all possible form.  A creative, universal energy waiting to be used, to be operated upon.  Willing, but having no volition of Its own.  Ready, but having no initiative.  Formless, but ready to take form.

Mind in Its subjective state is Universal.  Mind in Its subjective state cannot act until It is set in motion by mind in a conscious state.  Therefore Universal Subjective Mind is a doer and not a self-conscious knower.  It knows how to do but It does not have any conscious knowledge that It is doing.  Man calls It forth into expression.

In Universal Mind is contained the essence of everything that ever was, is or shall be.  The seen and the unseen are in It and governed by It.  It is the sole and only Creative Agency in the universe and all other apparent creative agencies are It working in different ways.  Things exist in the Universal Mind as ideas.  Ideas take form and become things in the concrete or the visible world.  Thought calls things forth from the universal into expression.

The correct understanding that Mind in Its unformed state can be called forth into individual use is key to all proper mental and spiritual work from a practical viewpoint.  To know that we are surrounded by such a creativeness is not enough, however, we must use this knowledge for definite purposes if we expect to make conscious use of the law for personal self-expression.  In this limitless Medium the potential of all our desires exists in an unformed state.  The Unformed is ready to take form, but having no intention of Its own, because It is not self-knowing, form must be imposed upon It.  Form is imposed upon It by the self-knowing mind of God and of man.  Man in the little world. God in the Great World.

The invisible essence of Mind is Substance.  That is, an unformed stuff, an energy.  It is energy plus intelligence.  Intelligence is conscious energy working upon unformed substance in accord with law.  When man makes a demand upon himself or demand upon the Universe which flows through the self, he is making a demand upon Original Mind and Original Energy.  Thus his demand causes Original Mind and Energy to produce certain specific things for him.  Thus is a new creation produced by the same Creative Force or energy that produces all things.  The Mind that man uses to conceive new ideas is the Original Mind of God.  There are not two minds but One.  The Universal and the individual are one in Essence.  Any apparent difference is in degree only."

February 18 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Spirit, Soul and Body (continued) ~ Ernest Holmes

"There can be no real enjoyment of life until we see that everything is animated by the Spirit, and as we see that things are thus animated, we are beholding the real Universe. The Essence of Reality is invisible, but the substance of the invisible is seen and heard, and is a part of the everyday life of all!

We find that on the subjective or soul side, man is subconscious; but subconscious does not mean unconscious.  Subconscious merely means subjective to the conscious thought, compelled by reason of its subjectivity to receive what is put into it. It is Karmic Law, because it is the use we are making of Universal Subjectivity.  Karma means the Law of Cause and Effect.  Soul contains the memory because It is the receptacle for the seeds of our thought, and because It is the seat of memory it contains our inherited tendencies. It also contains the race-suggestion, for we are not dealing with a separated or isolated subjective mind, but with the One Subjective Mind - there is a vast difference between thinking of having three or four minds, and thinking of One Mind which we all use.

We treat of soul as being that part of our mental being which is subjective to the conscious mind.  From this viewpoint, the individual soul is an effect and not a cause.  This understanding of soul life is in accord with the deepest thought of the ages, and is a legitimate point of view in the light of recent investigations, in both the psychological and metaphysical fields.

The soul is the seat of memory, the mirror of mind in the individual. It is the creative power within us, creating from the patterns given it, and from the memories it contains.  We gather soul, or subjective force, as we accumulate the right kind of experiences.  The law of the soul is subject to the conscious spirit; tendencies set in motion in the soul, or subjective life, tend to produce their like in the objective world. From this is deduced the possibility of the healing power of the spoken word, operating thorough mental law, for the law of the mind is always subjective.

The soul, being the seat of memory, already contains a record of everything that has ever happened to us.  These memories as a whole, constitute the subjective tendency of the individual life; this tendency can be changed through constant effort and a determined persistency of purpose. The soul life of all people merges, more or less, and this creates the soul life of the race - the collective subjectivity of all humanity - called by some the "collective unconscious."  This "collective unconscious" contains a record of all human events that have ever transpired.  We are all, more or less, subject to this collective thought, since it acts as a powerful race suggestion.   The sum total of all erroneous human belief, binds until the individual mentally lifts himself above the law of averages into the higher law of Spiritual Individualism.

In studying man's relationship o the Universal, we have discovered how the spirit and soul of man are like the Spirit and Soul of the Universe.  Let us now consider the idea of body.  Body - effect, affairs, conditions, health, disease, destiny, riches, poverty, business, vocation, profession, results - any word which stands for the externalization of man's thought and endeavor, we class as a part of this body.

Man's outward life is a result of the subjective state of his thought. The thinker is conscious mind but when he thinks he lets fall the forms of his thought into Subjective Mind, which is the Universal Medium of all thought and action and, as a result of this, the Creative Medium at once sets to work to produce the thing outlined.

Plotinus, perhaps the greatest of the Neo-Platonic philosophers, in personifying Nature said:  "I do not argue, I contemplate; and as I contemplate, I left fall the forms of my thought," this is the manner in which Nature creates - It contemplates.  As a result of Its contemplation, It lets fall the seed of Its thought into the Universal Subjective which, being Law, produces the object thought about.  We must expect to find - and it is exactly what we do find - the same principle reproduced in man.  This means that whatever man thinks (whether it is what he calls good or bad) falls into this Universal Creative Medium, is accepted by It, is at once acted upon and unless neutralized tends to take objective form.

The objective man is body.  By objective or physical man, we mean the man who is formed, who has flesh and blood.  This physical man is in unity with all other physical or objective elements in the Universe, and in unity with the invisible Source from which they come. We analyze the body and find it is made of the same stuff from which a brick is made, not different in its essence, but different in its composition, its vibration.  There is One Universal Substance whose business it is to take form in multiplicity.

We are told that matter is not a solid, stationary thing; but a constantly flowing formless substance, which is forever coming and going - "an etheric whirl of energy" it has been called.  Whatever its nature is, it is as indestructible as God, as eternal as Timeless Being; nothing can be added to or taken from it.  The bodies we now have were not with us a short time ago; we discard many of them on our path through this life; for the substance of which they are composed is in a constant state of flow - a flowing substance, taking the form that Mind gives it.  How about the matter from which other things than the body are made?  It is all the same - ONE SUBSTANCE in the Universe, taking different forms and shapes and becoming different things.  Unity is expressed in multiplicity.

The last analysis of matter resolves it into a universal ether, and leaves nothing more than a stuff which may be operated upon; a force and energy, without volition, ready to become molded.  In the theoretical beginning of creation, the world was "without form and void."  There is no difference in the ultimate and minute particles which take innumerable forms - only a difference in the arrangement.  Our bodies are One with the Whole Body of the Universe; seeds, plants, cabbages and kings are all made of the same substance.  Minerals, solids, and liquids are made from this primordial Substance which is forever flowing into form and forever flowing out again into the void. 

Nothing could give form to a formless stuff, which has no mind of its own, but some Intelligence operating through it.  Here, then, we come back to the Word as the starting point of all Creation - God's Word in the Great Creation, the Great World, and man's word in the small world; One Spirit, One Mind, and One Substance.  One Law, but many ideas, one Power but many ways of using It.  One God, in Whom we all live, and One Law, which we all use.  ONE, ONE, ONE!!  No greater unity could be conceived than that which is already given.

So we find that man is one with the physical universe in which he lives.  The physical universe has no self-determination; we find that man's physical body is a latent mass of matter.  Our body is really one with the Body of God, with the physical universe, but body does not know it is body.  If feet knew they were feet with the physical capacity to walk, they might be cut off and still be able to run down the street on an errand.  IT IS ONE THING TO SAY THAT OUR FEET DO NOT KNOW THEY ARE FEET AND QUITE ANOTHER THING TO SAY THAT THEY ARE ILLUSIONS, yet all are agreed that they have no intelligence of their own.  Of itself, the physical universe is an effect.  So it is with the physical part of man which we call his body."

February 13 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Immortality ~ Ernest Holmes

Suppose we should be able to view the world, not as we do now from one plane but from ten different planes, what would happen?  We should certainly see ten times as much as we do now.  The present hypothesis of science is, that ether is more solid than matter; and this means that there could be a form within the very form that one's body now occupies in space; there might be innumerable bodies each within the other; and each would be just as real as the one we now think we occupy.  The Universe as we see it is not even a fractional part of the Universe that actually is, "Eye hath not seen...etc..." because it sees only on one plane and only in part.

From the standpoint of immortality we may have a body within a body to infinity.  When this physical body is rendered useless and is no longer a fit instrument through which to function, another one may be already there!

The physical disappearance of Jesus after his Resurrection was the result of the spiritualization of his consciousness.  This so quickened his mentality that his body disintegrated, and his followers could not see him because he was on another plane.  Planes are not places; they are states of consciousness.

Is it apparent that Spirit can know nothing outside Itself; that whatever the Spirit knows must be a definite mental image, concept or idea, in the Consciousness of the Spirit?  Is it clear that as the Self-Consciousness of Spirit knows within Itself, It knows upon Itself as Law?

Is it clear that the Law can never say "I will not," but can only act as instructed?  And is it clear that as the Spirit lets fall the form of Its thoughts into the Soul or Subjectivity of the Universe, these thoughts must manifest as things?  As Form? As Body?

A Divine Mental Picture

As we look at the many millions of forms all of different shape and color, and yet know that they all come from One Stuff, are we not compelled to accept the fact that there is a specific cause, or concrete mental image back of every idea or thing, a Divine Mental Picture?  in the subjective world, there must be a correspondent of everything in the objective world; and since the subjective world is a receptive or plastic substance, this correspondence can find its initial starting point only in real Intelligence.  Therefore, Intelligence is the ultimate creative agency of the Universe!

February 10 ~ The Science of Mind

Form Within the Formless ~ Ernest Holmes

"Our physical body is like other physical manifestations.  The idea of body is an image derived from the fountain of all ideas.  The form is a materialization from the Substance of all forms.  All bodies are made out of the same stuff. This one stuff is an inanimate and infinite stuff, and is equally distributed in the universe - much like the modern idea of the ether of space - and IT IS THE NATURE OF THIS STUFFF TO TAKE FORM!  Therefore, form is entirely in the realm of effect.  Form comes and goes but it is not self-knowing.  Form is within the formless.  Form is not an illusion, even when it is the form of disease; it then represents a false conclusion, but is as real as it is supposed to be.  If the formless did not take form Spirit would never arrive at self-realization. 

The Formless takes form in what we call "time."  "Time is a sequence of events in a unitary wholeness;" it is recollection, attention, and anticipation - past, present, and future - simply the measure of experience.  Of course time is real, but never a thing of itself.  If the Timeless did not manifest in what we call time, it would never come to self-fruition.  Therefore we have form and time, and what we call space, which is never a thing of itself but the possibility of outline.  If there were not such outline we would walk through each other without recognition.  Form is real as form but is not self-conscious, it is subjective to the power that created it.  Forms come and go but the Power back of them is Changeless.  Form is temporary but Mind is eternal."

January 31 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Metaphysics and Physics ~ Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind

The laws of Mind, or spirit, are not different from the laws of chemistry and physics.  Metaphysics begins where physics leaves off.  Everything is movement; everything we can take hold of and analyze, all things in the physical world or the world of form are in a certain rate of vibration and are an effect.  This is the result of "an Infinite Thinker thinking mathematically."

To reduce this proposition to the practical life of the individual, our belief is that anything the mind thinks, it can unthink.  If, therefore, by the law of cause and effect we have produced unpleasant conditions, we should be able by this same law to produce an entirely different effect.

Another principle which is fundamental to our practice is, that not only what is set in motion can be changed; but that the Truth known is demonstrated.  The knowledge of Truth and its demonstration is both simultaneous and instantaneous.  Since we are dealing with that which is Limitless, knowing no big and no little, the possibility of our demonstration rests not in the Principle, but in our acknowledgment of, and embodiment in it, of the ideas we desire experienced!  The saying of "peace" will not produce peace unless back of the word is a realization of the meaning of peace.  So in the simplicity of our own language, we try to convince ourselves of the reality of that for which we are treating, knowing that in such degree as we have an embodiment of the idea, it is thrown into a mechanical field and must operate.

"Spirit is the Power that knows Itself."  Whatever that power within us is that knows itself, constitutes the part of us which is spirit or spiritual.  To be self-conscious, is to be a spiritual entity.  Mind, in Its self-conscious form, cannot be differentiated from Spirit.  Mind, in Its subjective or subconscious state, is the Law of Spirit.  Man is a spirit while God is The Spirit.  Man is an individual, while God is the Universal, but since the individual comes from and is in the Universal, it follows that man is a little world within himself.  This is what Jesus meant when he said that man has inherent life within himself.  The meaning of inherent life is real life...creative life.

No limit can be placed upon the spirit of man.  It merges with the Universal Spirit for the two are really One.  God is in us as we are in God - the same essence, the degree apparently different.  The one finite and  the other Infinite, and since the Infinite cannot come from the finite, it follows that the finite must come from the Infinite - a little circle within the big circle. 

Metaphysically, we recognize the Universal Spirit as the Source of all life and inspiration; an Infinite Self-Knowingness, which we grasp only in part but which is ever available, since the Infinite is omnipresent.  The mind of man is an extension of the Eternal Mind or Spirit, and his evolution is the unfolding of this everlasting Mind or Spirit through his thought.

Only One Mind

There is no such thing as your mind, my mind and God's Mind.  There is only Mind, in which we all "live and move and have our being."

Things are ideas in form.  What else could they be?  There is nothing from which to make things except ideas.  In the beginning, we behold nothing visible; there is only an Infinite Possibility, a Limitless Imagination, a Consciousness - the only action of this Consciousness being Idea.

That  which we call our subjective mind is, in reality, our identity in Infinite Mind.  It is the result  of our mental attitudes. It is our mental atmosphere, or center, in Universal Subjective Mind, in which are retained all of the images, impressions, inherited tendencies and race suggestions.  We see then that our subjective mind is the medium through which experiences come to us.

There is One First Cause - Spirit, Soul and Body - Cause, Medium, and Effect; the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  Not three gods, but the Triune Nature of the One God, the One Cause.  We think of Spirit as Absolute, Self-Conscious Intelligence.  We think of Soul as receptive to Intelligence and the Intelligence as always acting upon It.  Spirit and Soul inter-sphere each other and both have omnipresence.  The Spirit of the Universe permeates the Soul of the Universe, forever impregnating It with ideas.  The Soul of the Universe is the "Holy Womb of Nature," producing the forms which appear in the manifest universe.

The Body of the Universe is the result of the thought of Spirit, operating through the medium of soul  The Father is Absolute, Positive Intelligence; the Son is the Offspring of the Father; the Holy ghost is "The Servant of the Eternal Spirit throughout the ages."  Spirit is Absolute Intelligence, operating through the Soul of Receptive Intelligence, impregnating It with "the Divine Ideas."

The "Personalness" of God

We should think of God, not only as Principle, forever pushing forward into expression; but as Infinite Person.  In other words, if we merely think of an abstract Principle, and a mathematical Law of Cause and Effect, we shall lose all warmth and color.  We should be very careful in abstracting the Principle not to forget the Essence.

There is something in the human mind that desires to think of God or Spirit as Person.  Anything which has been in the human mind since time began - anything we are unable to erase from the human mind as a deep urge - arises out of Reality.

Let us not forget that there is inherent necessity for warmth and color.  The Universe is more than an inexorable Law of Cause and Effect.  PERSONALITY CANNOT EMERGE FROM A PRINCIPLE WHICH DOES NOT CONTAIN THE INHERENT POSSIBILITY OF PERSONALITY.  In each one of us, to each one of us, through each one of us, something is personalized and that which is personalized is personal to its own personification!  Spiritual evolution should make the Infinite not more distant; but more intimate.