Summary of Part Two: Spiritual Mind Healing ~ Ernest Holmes
First Division: Ideation
A recognition of the Power, and the thought and purpose back of mind healing.
"The possibility of spiritual mind healing, changing environment, controlling conditions, etc., through the power of right thinking, rests entirely upon the theory that we are surrounded by a Universal Mind, which reacts to our thought - and always according to Law.
Spiritual Man is Perfect, but his individual use of Life and Law enables him to cover a perfect idea with an apparently imperfect cloak.
Sickness is not a spiritual Reality; it is an experience - an effect and not a cause. The body, devoid of mentality, could neither know nor experience sensation; it is entirely an effect. The body of man is made from the same undifferentiated Spiritual Substance from which all Creation is formed.
Man comes into objectivity with the tendency of the race already subjectified within him, through race-suggestion. The race experiences sickness and limitation, and this suggestion is more or less operative through all people. It works through the subjective race thought and operates through the individual.
Man need not consciously think negation in order to produce physical disturbance, but the physical correspondent is a logical outcome of what he thinks. Thus we see not only how important it is to entertain right thoughts, but also the necessity for having a constructive basis for our thinking.
We find that prayer is essential to happiness, for righteous prayer sets the law of the Spirit of life in motion for our good. Prayer is essential to the conscious well-being of the soul. Prayer has stimulated countless millions to higher thoughts and better lives. Prayer is its own answer. Before our prayer is framed in words the possibility of its answer already exists.
We find that faith in God is a spiritual quality of the mind; and an understanding faith is based on Immutable Principle. Its action is higher than that of the intellect, because it is born of intuition.
One should have faith in himself, faith in his fellowman, in the Universe, and in God. Our mind must be steady in its conviction that our life is some part of God, and that the Spirit is incarnated in us. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen."
A spiritual practitioner is one who recognizes man as a Spiritual Reality. Since there is but One Mind, the practitioner makes this recognition within his own mind. Through the medium of the One Mind, his statements rise to objective conditions in his patient, according to his belief and the patient's receptivity. Healing is accomplished through the act of setting Subjective Law in motion. The more spiritual or Godlike the mentality of the practitioner, the more powerful the treatment.
A mental treatment begins and ends within the thought of the practitioner, because he is in the same Mind in which his patient lives. Treatment is the act of inducing right concepts on the subjective side of life.
Absent and present treatments are the same, for there is no absence in the One Presence. So far as the practitioner is concerned, there is no difference between an absent and a present treatment. He needs only to know whom he wishes to help, realizing that in the field of Mind and Spirit there is no apartness, and then he speaks the word for the other person, in full confidence that the Law will operate upon it. He is not concerned where the person is whom he desires to help, or what he may be doing at that particular time. He is concerned only with his own thought relative to his person, endeavoring to bring out in his own mind the realization that this person is a spiritual entity, governed by a perfect Law, directed by positive Intelligence, and animated by Divine Life, Love, and Law.
There is no personal responsibility in healing. We should not feel that we put the power into the word. The practitioner directs the Power and lets It work. One does not hold thought in mental healing; he looses thought. A practitioner does not try to suggest, hypnotize or mentally influence; he simply seeks to know that man is now a spiritual being, and he holds to that belief no matter what the appearance may be. Right mental treatment does not tire the one giving the treatment.
Personal magnetism has nothing to do with mental healing. The whole basis of the possibility of mental healing rests upon the premise that we all live in One Creative Mind which reacts to our belief. It is as though there were a Universal Ear, listening to and hearing everything that we say, feel or think, and reacting to it.
Healing is not a process but a revelation; for the revealing of the perfect man always heals. The process, if there is one, is the time and thought that it takes to arrive at the correct understanding of man's perfect state in Spirit.
Anyone can heal who believes that he can, and who will take the time to set that belief in motion through the Law. To daily see the perfect man, and to daily declare for his objective appearance, is correct mental practice and will heal.
A treatment recognizes that all is Mind, and that everything is mental. It dissolves all disease into thought; neutralizes the false thought and recognizes the true. Nothing can stop it from operating except a lack of faith in the reality of Truth and man's ability to use It.
In giving mental treatment, the practitioner first realizes his own being as spiritual; he then recognizes the spiritual state of his patient's being; then he attacks the false claim and brings the evidence of Truth to bear against it, thinking in such a manner as to completely destroy the false claim and realize the Truth. In such degree as this acknowledgment is complete, petition is transmuted into acceptance, and the mind actually feels that the object of its desire is already an accomplished fact.
The greatest good that can come to anyone is the forming within him of an absolute certainty of himself, and of his relationship to the Universe, forever removing the sense of heaven as being outside himself.
Such an understanding teaches us that there can never come a time when we shall stop progressing; that age is an illusion, that limitation is a mistake, that unhappiness is ignorance. This understanding will rob man of his loneliness and give him a sense of security which knows no fear, a peace without which no life can be happy, a poise which is founded on this peace, and a power which is the result of the union of peace with poise."
