October 20 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT The MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

Cosmic Consciousness ~ Illumination (Concluded)

"In moments of deepest realization, the great mystics have sensed that One Life flows through all, and that all are some part of that Life.  They have also seen Substance, a fine, white, brilliant stuff, forever falling into everything; a Substance indestructible and eternal.  It is at such times of complete realization that they have been blinded by the LIGHT of which we have been speaking.

Remember, all of this takes place in a perfectly normal state of mind and has nothing whatever to do with the psychic state.  It is not an illusion but a reality; and it is during these periods that real revelations come.  Perhaps a good illustration would be to suppose a large group of people in a room together, but unaware of each other's presence; each is busy with his own personal affairs, suddenly the room is illuminated for a second and they all see each other.  Afterwards they try to tell what they saw.  In flashes of illumination, the inspired have seen into the very center of Reality, and have brought back with them a picture of what they saw and felt.  Briefly, these have been their conclusions:  they have been firmly convinced of immortality...immortality NOW, not to be achieved at some future date; individuality, God as personal to the individual; the inevitable overcoming of all evil by good.

Therefore, they have taught that in such degree as one's concept of God is sufficient, evil disappears.  How are we going to make this practical, other than feeling this in our meditation for practical work, for healing, for demonstration?  This is what we mean by a method, a procedure a technique and a realization:  that accompanying the method and technique should always come as much of the realization as we can generate at that time.  In the method and the technique, something is said.  This is a moving thing, but when we reach that other place - illumination - nothing is said...something is FELT."

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."

September 8 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

MEDITATIONS for Self-Help

By Ernest Holmes

The Inner Light

The Light of Heaven shines through me and illumines my path.

The Light Eternal is my guide and my protection.

In that Light there is no darkness at all.

It is a Perfect Light shining from the altar of a perfect Love.

O Light and Love within me, Thou art welcome.

Light shines through me and illumines the Way.

February 17 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Punishment and Reward ~ Ernest Holmes

"Before we leave this subject of bondage and freedom, we wish to make clear that there is no sin but a mistake, and no punishment but an inevitable consequence.  Wrong doing must be punished, for the Law of Cause and Effect must be eternally operative. Right acts are rewarded in the same manner.

We do not say that man cannot sin; what we say is, that he does sin - or make mistakes - and he is thereby automatically punished AS LONG AS HE CONTINUES TO MAKE MISTAKES; but bondage is not real to the Universe and sin is not real to God. This does not mean that we can do whatever we wish, with disregard for the consequences; nor does the fact that we are punished for our mistakes mean that there is an evil power in the Universe; it does mean that there is an immutable Law of Cause and Effect running through everything. We are not punished for our sins but by them.  Sin is its own punishment and righteousness is its own reward!

The age-long discussion of the problem of evil will never be answered until we realize that evil is not a thing of itself.  It is simply a misuse of the Law of Freedom.  The problem of evil will be met only to the degree that we cease doing evil and do good, for the evil will disappear when we no longer indulge in it.  When the whole world sees the right and does it; then, and not until then, will the problem of evil be solved for the entire race.

Spirit, Soul, and Body

It is necessary that we understand the Unity of all life, the Unity of God and man on all three planes.  We have studied Universal Spirit; Universal Subjectivity, which is called the Soul of the Universe, and Universal Spirit in manifestation, which is called the physical Universe, or the Body of God.

Studying man, we find that his body - like the physical Universe - devoid of mind or intelligence, has no volition.  It may be permeated with intelligence, but it is not intelligent.  It is one with the Body of God, the physical universe.

What did we learn about the Soul of the Universe?  Remember the qualities that were discussed under the head of Subjectivity, and you will find all of them depicted in what is called the subjective nature of man; for our subconscious or subjective mind reproduces all of the attributes belonging to Universal Subjective Mind.  When we turn to the spirit of man, we find that it is one with the Spirit of God, i.e., man is a self-conscious, thinking, choosing center of individualized intelligence, or God-Consciousness, in the great Whole.

So we find that man is one with everything physical in the physical world; one with the Soul of the Universe in the subjective world; and one with the Spirit of God in the conscious world.  Through that which we call our objective or conscious mind, comes what we know of God and Life.  The objective, or conscious mind is the spiritual mind for which we have been looking, but it is not fully developed.  If this were not so, there would be no mind with which to look.  The objective mind must be the spiritual mind of man, since it is the only thing about him which knows that he has life and is conscious of itself!

The whole of Spirit is potentially focused in our individual objective consciousness, but we have not yet evolved to a realization of this, except in a slight degree.  We approach and contact the Larger Spirit through our own spirit or conscious mind.  The doorway to the Absolute stands open at the center of our intuitive perception. We enter the Absolute through that which appears to be finite, because the finite must be drawn from the Infinite.  This Spirit which animates us is the same Spirit which animates all life and everything that lives. Emerson said that we animate what we see and see what we animate, the reason for this being that only as we truly see can the Divine Harmony be reflected through us and animate that which is seen.

The spirit of man is equipped with decision, will, choice, volition, intellect and purpose.  It is the microcosm within the Macrocosm, which means the little world within the big world.  It is also called the image of God; it is Sonship, the Sonship of the Father; it is Emmanuel or God with us; it is the Christ or Logos, which means the Word, it can reason both inductively and deductively.

The spirit of man seems to have an external and in internal perception.  Its external perception is by appearance; its internal, through intuition. Appearances would limit the future possibility of man to the uses he has already made of Life, and thus circumscribe the Infinite, hence we are told to judge righteously and not by appearances.  Plotinus tells us that there are three ways by which we gather knowledge:  through science, through opinion, and through intuition or illumination.  These channels represent spiritual capacities since each is an avenue leading to self-knowingness, and self-knowingness is the very nature and essence of Spirit.  Science is spirit inducing Its own laws.  Intuition is Spirit knowing Itself. Opinion is our estimate of Reality.  All are spiritual faculties and should be so considered in the study of this Science.  The race is growing into a broader divinity, from age to age, as more and more of Reality opens before its onward march in its eternal progress.

We should think of our spirit as being some part of the Universal Spirit, and of our minds as open to the Divine Influx.  As any specific knowledge must come  from the center of all knowledge, it follows that whenever and wherever the mind of man is open to the Divine Influx, it will receive instruction directly from the center and source of All.  Science, invention, art, literature, philosophy and religion, have one common center from which, through experience, is drawn all knowledge.

We should neither separate Spirit from matter...physical form from that which gives form...nor Life from living.  To supposed that one must retire from the world to be spiritual is one of the greatest possible mistakes.  This is directly opposed to the self-evident truth that Spirit enjoys Itself only in Its own works, which is Its self-manifestation  We enter into the Spirit of Life only as we enter into the spirit of living."