March 31 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

GENERAL SUMMARY ~ Ernest Holmes

"No form is permanent.  All forms return into the Formless.  The Formless is Eternal.  All form is temporary.  There is an eternal play of Life upon Itself.  This is necessary in order that Mind may be expressed.  Man is an expression of Original Mind and he can call temporary forms into being if he wills to.  Indeed he cannot stop doing this and thereby hangs the tale of good and evil.

Through our own individualized subjective mind we contact the Law of the Universe and make use of the Mind of God.  Our conscious mind is limited, but the Subjective part of us, being Universal, is without limit.  This Limitless Medium we may use for whatsoever purpose we will.  If we use It for destructive purposes we shall bring destruction upon ourselves.  The Universe is fool proof.  But there is no liability in using any creative power if we use it constructively.

We can tap the reservoirs of the Universal Mind through the use of our own thought.  We can use this power for the healing of the physical body or for the changing and the control of conditions around us, the reason being that both body and affairs are fluent.  They are Mind held in form.

Man's mind is the Mind of God functioning at the level of man's understanding of his place in the Universe.  Man contacts the Mind of God at the center of his own being.  It is useless to seek elsewhere.  "The Highest God and the innermost God is One God."  Through the medium of Mind man unifies with the Universe and contacts a Power that can do anything for him that he is able to conceive of Its doing. Of course, this Power will never deny Its own Nature.

This Law of Mind is man's access to the Original Creative Genius of the Universe, and has no intention for us other than the intention that we give It.  The Will of Spirit is already imposed upon It to do all those things which we call the automatic processes of nature, whether in our physical bodies or in the physical body of the Universe.

The Spirit has already ordained that nature shall be perfect.  It would be impossible for Spirit to ordain anything else since, in order to be at all, It must be perfect in Its nature.  God is Will and Representation.  A perfect cause must produce a perfect effect.  The normal functions of life are harmonious but we interfere with these in our ignorance and thus bring discord into temporary being.  In the life process of automatic functioning both in our bodies and throughout the universe as a whole the laws of being are set and immutable.  While in the use that we make of the Law of cause and effect in our individual experience we are responsible.  We are given, or by the necessity of our nature have, the power and the necessity of using the Law as though It existed solely for us.  It goes in the direction - in our mental affairs - that we give It. It can have no other direction for us and know no other. But, of course, in the Great Whole, the Universe is not run on the scale of man's ignorance.  Knowledge alone can free man from an ignorant and self-imposed bondage.

But so far as man is concerned, outside of the automatic and necessary functions of Universal Mind, man is free to do as he wills and the Universal Mind, as Law, can know about the individual only what he knows about himself.  The cosmic engine is started but man guides it in his own life.  It goes for him in the direction in which it is driven. This driving is not by force but by agreement, unification and acquiescence.  We must believe.  On this hangs all the law and the prophets.  Heaven and hell are tied up in man's beliefs.  It is the law of his life."

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 23 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Oneness with All Law ~ Ernest Holmes  

"When we know our Oneness with God and Law, what a great burden is removed.  Any sense of opposition is removed from the consciousness which perceives Unity.  That which we call OUR subjective mind is but a point in Universal Mind where our personality maintains its individualized expression of Spirit.  If we think of ourselves as being separated from the Universe, we shall be limited by this thought, for it is a belief in separation from God which binds and limits.  WE ARE BOUND BY NOTHING EXCEPT BELIEF.  "They could not enter in because of their unbelief, and because they limited the Holy One of Israel."

There is but One Mind.  Here is the point:  everything we experience, touch, taste, handle and smell - environment, bodies, conditions, money, happiness, friends  - all are effects.  Is it clear that the infinite and limitless possibilities of that One of which man is a part, depend in man's expression, upon his own concept?  If he is a point of personality in Limitless Mind, which he is; and if all his life must be drawn from this One Mind, which it must be, there cannot be anything else, can there?  And if there is nothing else, if there is nothing to move save Mind - and if man is a thinking center in Mind- nothing is going to happen TO him that does not happen THROUGH him, whether it be the result of his own erroneous conclusions, those of his grandfather, or those of the race to which he belongs!  This is not in any sense fatalistic, for WE MAY CHANGE THE TREND OF CAUSATION WHICH IAS BEEN SET IN MOTION AT ANY TIME WE DECIDE TO DO SO.

Everything comes from Intelligence.  There is nothing but Unity; there is nothing but freedom; there is nothing but completeness; there is nothing but Totality. Begin at the beginning and reason this out, time after time, until all doubt disappears. It is necessary that each one do this for himself.

Such is the power of right thinking that it cancels and erases everything unlike itself.  It answers every question, solves all problems, is the solution to every difficulty.  It is like the sunlight of Eternal Truth bursting through the clouds of obscurity and bathing all life in a celestial glory.  It is the Absolute with which we are dealing and nothing less."