October 15 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT The MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

Cosmic Consciousness - Illumination (Continued)

"The intelligence in an animal which directs its actions and tells it where to go to find food and shelter, we call instinct.  It is really Omniscience in the animal.  The same quality, more highly developed, makes a conscious appearance in man and is what we call intuition.  Intuition is God in man, revealing to him the Realities of Being; and just as instinct guides the animal, so would intuition guide man, if he would allow it to do so.

Here again we must be careful not to mistake a psychic impression for an intuitive one.  Psychic impressions may control; intuition remains in the background and waits for recognition.  "Behold I stand at the door and knock."

All arbitrary control of man must have stopped as soon as he came to a point of self-knowingness.  From this point, he must discover himself; but intuition, which is nothing less than God in man, silently awaits his recognition and co-operation.  The Spirit is  always with us if we would but sense Its Presence.  Mystics have felt this wonderful Power working from within; and have responded to It; and as certain evidence that they were not laboring under delusions, THEY HAVE ALL SENSED THE SAME THING.  Had the impressions been psychic only, each would have seen and sensed a different thing, for each would merely have been seeing through the darkness of his own subjective mentality.

Cosmic Consciousness is not a mystery, it is the Self-Knowingness of God through man.  The more complete the operation of that Power, the more complete is man's conscious mentality, for the illumined do not become less, but more, themselves.  The greater the consciousness of God, the more complete must be the realization of the True Self - the Divine Reality."

August 30 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

MEDITATIONS

By Ernest Holmes

(The following meditation is printed just as it was given in class and group work.)

Perfect Intelligence Directs My Thought

We now let go of everything and enter into a state of peace.  We know the Spirit within us is God, the Living Spirit Almighty...that God Who is Infinite, Perfect and Complete, never needed anything, never had any trouble, never could destroy; the God Who never operated against Himself, Who never condemned Himself--the Spirit that fashions each of us from His own perfect Being.  "All in all, we know Thee, God, omnipresent, full and free; one with every pathway trod, our immortal destiny."

That Infinite Wholeness is perfect peace within us.  That Infinite Intelligence is working through us and our affairs; our thought is inspired, guided, governed and directed by Divine Wisdom.  That Infinite Wholeness is the circulation of ideas, of intelligence, wisdom, truth and life.  It is the elimination of every conception of confusion.  It is the assimilation of that which is whole, happy, perfect.  The Divine Intelligence is the government of our affairs.  Each has within himself this guide to truth, to reason, to beauty, to right action, to certainty and to peace.

Perfect Intelligence Directs My Thought

August 25 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

MEDITATIONS for Self-Help

By Ernest Holmes

I Was Told to Live

By some inner mystic Presence,

I was told to live and to love, to laugh and to be glad.

I was told to be still and know of the One Almighty Power, in and through all.

I was told to let that Power work through and in me.

I believed that voice and I received my Good.

I am healed - The joy of Life.

August 18 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

MEDITATIONS for Self-Help

By Ernest Holmes 

One with Perfect Action

I am One with Perfect Action.  Everything that I do, say or think is quickened into action through this right understanding and this correct knowing.

The harmonious action of the Great Whole operates through me now and at all times.

I am carried along b this Right Action and am compelled to do the right thing at the right time.

There is nothing in me that can hinder this action from flowing through me.

The action of God is the only action.

May 9 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

The Pearl of Great Price (Matt. 13:45, 46) ~ Ernest Holmes

"The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a pearl of great price, for which a man will sell all that he has, that he may possess it.  This, perhaps, best explains the way of the illumined.  To them, the kingdom of heaven has meant everything, and has been above all else.  We find them going away by themselves that they may more completely enjoy this inner realization of their relationship to the Whole.  A divine companionship has ever attended such, on the pathway of human experience.  The description of the things they have seen, felt and heard, constitutes some of the most valuable lessons the world has ever learned.

The only news we have of Heaven has come through he consciousness of men, and to those few who have penetrated the veil of illusion and entered the realms of deeper reality, we owe a debt that cannot be paid in any other terms than those of appreciation and thanksgiving.

That the illumined have had experiences which the average man cannot conceive of, is certain; and that anyone who wills to know Truth may know it, is evident to all who make the attempt.  But let us not forget that spiritual experiences are normal, natural and rational.  The illumined have always had rational intellects and well-balanced mentalities.

No experience is salutary, unless it be gained while in a normal state of mind.  Too great a warning cannot be given against any attempt to break through the veil, when in any other but a perfectly normal mental state.

Jesus lived in the spiritual world just as normally as we live in the material, and just as consciously.  And what is the spiritual world?  And where is it?  It is right here, could we but see it.  Behind everything material, stands the spiritual, supporting it, and without which there could be no material.

That Which Defiles (Matt. 15:18, 19, 20)

Not what we eat or drink, but what we think, defiles.  The issues of life are from within.  If a man is clean in his mind, then is he clean indeed.  We must keep the mental house free from any thought which contradicts the truth of being.

Life is what consciousness makes it.  This is a great realization.  Experience may appear to disclaim this fact, but the principle involved is an immutable one, and cannot be shaken any more than the integrity of the universe can be violated.

Let each resolve to be true to himself, true to his inner light, true to the Truth as he understands It.  When every man learns to speak the Truth, a complete salvation will come to the world.  If one thinks impurity, then his acts will be impure.  If his thought dwells on purity and Truth, then his acts - reflecting his mind - will make him pure and true.

Every plant which is not of God's planting shall be rooted up.  In the long run, everything that does not belong to the Heavenly Kingdom will be destroyed.  Truth alone can endure.

When the Blind Lead the Blind (Matt. 15:14)

"If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."  We must be careful what kind of thought we are following.  We must test all ideas to see whether they are of the Truth.  It is a mistake to accept every man's philosophy simply because it sounds plausible.  We are to be on guard against accepting that which is not true.  And let us remember this:  the Truth is simple, direct and always self-evident.

False ideas heaped  upon false ideas make bad matters worse.  The whole confusion of the world arises from the fundamental errors of thought.  Chief among these errors - and the father to a greater part of the others - is a belief in duality.  The belief in duality supposes that evil is equal to good:  that a suppositional devil divides, with Good, the kingdom of Truth.  Such things cannot be.  Remember the teachings of Moses, that "God is One."  If, on the other hand, we accept that evil has a power equal to good, then we must fall into the ditch of our own confusion.

To believe in the good alone, may seem fallacious to many, but he who thus believes will find his path lighted by a torch which flickers not, nor fails."

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."