July 2 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

MENTAL EQUIVALENTS
By Ernest Holmes

"Spiritual knowing is correct mental treating.  Love is the impulsion of mental treatment.  A consciousness of the Divine Presence in the one we are seeking to help is necessary, for we must provide different mental equivalents for healing than those which create disease.

If the manifest universe is the outward form of the thought of Spirit; if it is a result of the Self-Knowingness of God, and if we are of like nature to the Supreme Mind, then it follows that in giving mental treatment we are going through a mental process of self-knowing.  Consequently, only that kind of treatment will be effective that knows it will be effective.  This is the true meaning of faith for faith is not a foolish fancy, it is a dynamic fact.

The treatment will find an outward correspondence in the objective world which will exactly equal its inward conviction, when it is given, plus the necessity of its finding mental acceptance by the one for whom it is given.  The more we think this over the more rational it will appear to be.

Faith in God is such a complete conviction that the Spirit will make the gift, that there is no longer any subjective contradiction.  This faith can exist only in such degree as the conviction is in line with Reality.  We cannot believe that any law of the Universe will ever change its own nature because we desire it to do so.  AS WE COME INTO THE SPIRITUAL REALM - which is a perfectly natural and normal realm - WE HAVE TO COME INTO IT IN ITS OWN NATURE.  It is a unity.  There must be nothing vicious in it.  Remember what Jesus said?  "Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother and then come and offer thy gift."  Why?  Because we cannot enter into peace while we are in a state of confusion.  It cannot be done.  We cannot manifest love when we have a mental equivalent of hate in our hearts and minds."

June 4 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Do Not Try to Go Beyond Your Understanding ~ Ernest Holmes

"Since our spiritual understanding is not sufficient to enable us to mentally set bones, we call in a surgeon; since we cannot walk on the water, we take a boat.  We can go only as far as our spiritual knowledge takes us.  Principle is Infinite, but we shall demonstrate Its power only at the level of our concept of It.  Every day we shall have made new discoveries - laws which have always existed but which have not as yet been utilized.

Do not let any one discourage or belittle your efforts by asking, "Why don't you walk on the water?  Jesus did."  Do not be sidetracked by any of these futile suggestions, these mental obstructions which an unbeliever would seek to throw in your path.  If we had the understanding which Jesus had, we would be able to walk on the water.  I am not at all confused by the fact that we do not do this today.  Someday one will come along who knows how to walk on or over the water.

We are probably on the verge of a great spiritual awakening.  People are so tired of looking for things where they do not exist, that they are going to more and more completely open their thought to the realization that Spirit is an active Presence.  But if we spend our entire time trying to find out why It does not work, we shall never find out how and why It does work.  Arguing is often a waste of time.  Somehow there must come to each individual an interior conviction, that we are One with the Universe, and that the Spirit flows through us at the lever of our recognition and embodiment of It.  For this is "the way, the truth and the life."

People say:  "I can't take off my glasses."  Then wear them but begin to make the declaration that there is One Perfect Vision seeing through you.  This the Truth.  If this statement becomes a subjective realization, you will be healed, will no longer need glasses.

If a plaster will relieve, use it.  If a pill does any good, take it, but gradually try to lead the thought from where it is into the higher realms of consciousness where the soul recognizes its own I-Am-ness.

Suppose one is unable to convince himself of the Truth of the statement which he makes, how is he going to bring himself to a place of belief?  By repeating his affirmation, dwelling on its meaning, meditating up on the spiritual significance of it, until the subjective state of his thinking becomes clarified.  This is the only reason for repeating treatments, for one treatment would heal if there were no subjective doubts.  Repeated treatments induce, within consciousness, a definite concept of an already established truth, even though the fact may not as yet have become objectified.  This is why mental healing is scientific.  There is no room for doubt in a treatment.

Realize that you treat with your understanding; by your own choice you decide to give a treatment, but the treatment becomes operative through the Law.  Never say:  "I am not good enough to treat."  In God there are no good, better or best.

Do not allow yourself to become superstitious, for you are dealing with a normal, natural law in the mental and spiritual world.  This law is just as real as any other known law.  Never say:  "I am not sure that I have enough power to treat."  You can never heal with this mental attitude, for that implies that you think you are doing the healing.  Rather, say:  "As I let fall the forms of my thought, they are operated upon by Principles in which I believe.  This is the law of God, the law of man, and the law of the Universe."  Never say, or think:  "This disease is hard to heal, while that presented yesterday was easy."  If you find yourself saying this, at once heal yourself.  Such a belief comes from the thought that we are dealing with a limited power, and that such power knows degrees of discomfort.  The truth is that there is but One Power and that Power knows only Perfection."

February 12 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Unity and Multiplicity ~ Ernest Holmes

"The stuff out of which our human bodies are made is the same etheric substance from which all things are made. The One Mind conceives all things.  From Unity - which is the One, back of all things, through the One Law, which is the Medium of all action - multiplicity is manifested, but the many never contradict the Unity of the whole.  When we realize that we are dealing with an Infinite Intelligence, and with an Infinite Law within this Intelligence, we see that no limit should be placed upon the Creative Principle.

Could we understand Absolute Causation, we should perceive It to be pure Intelligence operating through perfect Law, and producing effects which live and have their being, not by virtue of an isolated life buy by reason of a Universal Unity which permeates all things.  We should then see that the world of multiplicity is deep-rooted in a Universe of Unity; that nothing happens by chance; that we live under a government of Law - from the vast planetary system to a garden of roses; from the Archangel (the Christ), to the saint and the sinner; through good an in what is called evil.  Thorough cosmic activities and in human destinies, we behold the vast objective panorama of invisible, but adequate, subjective causes.

We should not separate Life from living, Spirit from matter, nor Divine Principle from a Universal Creation.  God is "All in all."  That is, God IS, and is in everything.  The gardener finds a divine idea concealed in the seed; loosed into action this idea produces a plant.  The geologist finds the imprint of invisible forces in the rock.  The evolutionist reads the history of cosmic activities on this planet, as he deciphers the unfolding of an Intelligent Life Force carrying creation forward to its consummation point here, which is the production of self-conscious life.  The scientist finds an energy concealed in the atom, and the spiritual genius discloses an intuitive knowledge, which can be accounted for only on the theory that we lie in "the lap of an Infinite Intelligence."

So close is the union of creation with the Creator, that it is impossible to say where one begins and the other leaves off.  Emerson tells us that nature is Spirit reduced to Its greatest thinness; and Spinoza says that Mind and matter are the same thing; while Jesus proclaimed that the very words which he spoke were Spirit and were life.  Robert Browning writes of the spark which we may desecrate, but never quite lose, and he further announces that all are gods, "though in the germ."  Wordsworth sings that Heaven is that native home of all mankind, and Tennyson exclaims that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams, while Shakespeare perceived sermons in stones and good in everything.

We are on the verge of disclosing a spiritual Universe, and will ultimately conclude that what we call the physical universe is a spontaneous emergence, through evolution of inner forces which cannot be explained, but which must be accepted.  How, then, can we doubt that the very mind which we now use is the Intelligent Principle from which all life draws its power to be and its intelligence to express?

The furtherance of evolution depends upon our ability to sense a unity with Nature and her forces.  When the knowledge of this unity comes alike to all, the tread of armies will cease and the bugle call will echo the soft notes of brotherly love."

February 4 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

How Can Spirit Create? ~ Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind

"No one has ever plumbed the depths of either the conscious or the subjective life.  In both directions we reach out to Infinity, and, since we cannot encompass Infinity, we shall always be expanding and always enlarging our capacity to know and to experience.  We do not need to ask why these things are so.  There can be no reason given as to why  the Truth is true.  How can Spirit of Itself create a new form?  I do not know.  As Newton said, the fact that we are able to announce the mystery is the mystery.  We do not say to the physicist who has studied and photographed the atom "WHY does it act as it does?"  He knows no more about the reason for its action than we do.  All that he knows is, that he has learned something of the way the laws of its nature operate.  We do not create laws and principles, but discover and make use of them.  Let us accept this position relative to the laws of Mind an Spirit and see what we can do with them, rather than how we may contradict their existence."