March 21 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

IMMORTALITY

Ernest Holmes

The Meaning of Immortality

"To most of us, immortality means that we shall persist after the experience of physical death, retaining a full recognition of ourselves, and having the ability to recognize others.  If our full capacities go with us beyond the grave, we must be able to think consciously, to will, to know and to be known, to communicate and to receive communications.  We must be able to see and be seen, to understand and to be understood.  In fact, if one is really to continue as a self-conscious personality beyond this life, he can do so only if he maintains a continuous stream of the same consciousness and self-knowingness that he now possesses.

Personal identity of course postulates memory, which binds into one sequence the old life and the new.  This means that man must carry with him - after the experience of physical death - a complete remembrance, for it is to this alone that we must look for the link which binds one event to another, making life a continuous stream of self-conscious expression.  To suppose that man can forget, and still maintain a self-conscious identity, is to suppose that one could cut off his entire past without destroying the logical sequence of personality.  Where is this faculty?  Cut a man into the smallest bits, analyze and dissect every atom of his physical being, and you will never find memory.  There is something about the personality which not only performs its functions, but also remembers what it has done, and which can anticipate future events.  What is it?  It is the thing we are talking about, the non-physical faculty of perception, the thing that knows...The Knower.  Individuality might remain without remembrance, but not so with personality for what we are is the result of what we have been, the result of what has gone before.

We are not content with the thought that immortality is merely the result of one's life and work, which he has left behind; for instance, that he immortalizes himself in his offspring - we still ask "What of the man?"  Man, then, if he is to have an immortality worthy of the name, must continue as he now is beyond the grave.  DEATH CANNOT ROB HIM OF ANYTHING IF HE BE IMMORTAL!"

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."