September 21 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

WHAT the MYSTICS HAVE TAUGHT
Ernest Holmes

What Is a Mystic?

"A mystic is not a mysterious person but is one who has a deep, inner sense of Life and of his unity with the Whole.  Mysticism and psychism are entirely different.  One is real while the other may, or may not, be an illusion.  There is nothing mysterious in the Truth, so far as It is understood, but all things seem mysterious until we understand them.

A mystic is one who intuitively perceives Truth and, without mental process, arrives at Spiritual Realization.  It is from the teachings of the great mystics that the best in the philosophy of the world has come.  Who was there who could have taught such men as these?  By what process of mentality did they arrive at their profound conclusions?  We are compelled to recognize that Spirit alone was their Teacher; they were indeed taught of God.

Our great religions have been given by a few who climbed the heights of spiritual vision and caught a fleeting glimpse of Ultimate Reality.  No living soul could have taught them what they know.

The great poets have been true mystics who, through their poems, have revealed the Presence of God.  Men like Robert Browning, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Homer, Walt Whitman, Edward Rowland Sill, and others of like nature, have given us poetry which is immortal, because they had a spiritual sense of life.

Great spiritual philosophers are mystics.  The old prophets were mystics - David, Solomon, Jesus, Plotinus, and a score of others, all had the same experience - the sense of a Living Presence.  The greatest music ever composed was written by the hand of a mystic, and the highest and best in art has come from men of spiritual perception."

May 12 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Only Our Own Concepts Limit Us ~ Ernest Holmes

“Realizing that conscious thought operates through a Power which is Infinite, we see there can be no limit to the power to heal, other than the limit of our ability to conceive that Power as healing.  We are limited, not by Principle, but by our own inability to see perfection.  Our thought can bring out a condition as perfect as we can conceive.  Therefore, the man whose thought is the most God-like – that is, the truest, the highest, the most noble, the most complete, the most peaceful – will be the best healer.  His thought reflects a greater perfection.  That is why we cannot divorce true mental healing from true spiritual work.  When thought reaches a higher degree of perfection, as the race consciousness unfolds and evolves, it will bring out a still greater development of life than we know now.”

April 4 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Nothing Can Be Hidden (Luke 12:2) ~ Ernest Holmes

"In saying, "there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known," Jesus was referring to the Mind that knows; to the all-seeing eye, from which nothing is concealed.  The cosmic Ear hears everything, the Eternal Mind knows all things, and the Law of cause and effect brings everything to pass in due time.

A Man's Foes (Matt. 10:36)

"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."  There are no enemies external to our own mind.  This is one of the most difficult problems to understand, and - simple as it sounds - it penetrates the depths of creative causation.  Nothing can happen to us unless it happens through us.  That which we refuse to accept, to us cannot be, and that which to us is, cannot help becoming a reality in our lives.  But someone will say, "I did not conceive of this evil which came upon me; it was not in my mind."  The question then arises, "Can any particular evil be real to one, if he refuses to entertain it in his thought?"  The answer must forever be, it cannot.  This is one of those "hard sayings" which it is difficult to understand, but the principle involved is plain.

If we can divorce our lives from the thought of evil - from receptivity to it - if we can bring our mentality to a place where it no longer conceives evil, then evil cannot exist for us.  The proof of this doctrine remains for individual conviction, through experience, but it is well worth trying.

The Reward of True Visioning (Matt.  10:41)

"He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man, in the name of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man's reward."  There comes to each the logical and exact result of his own receptivity.  To each, life brings the reward of his own visioning; to the pure, all is pure.  To the righteous, all is righteous, and to the good, all is good. The reward of merit is an objective outcome of merit itself and not a thing superimposed by any Divine Mandate.  Each man is rewarded not for virtue but through virtue.

Wisdom Is Justified of her Children (Matt. 11:18, 19)

"Wisdom is justified of her children."  Jesus had been questioning his hearers about John the Baptist.  "For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say He hath a devil.  The Son of a man came eating and drinking, and they say, "Behold a man gluttonous, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.  But, wisdom is justified of her children."

This shows that the world ever finds some flaw in human character.  If a man fasts, he is possessed of peculiar ideas; and if he feasts, he is a materialist and a glutton.  But Jesus would have us understand that virtue consists neither in eating nor drinking, nor yet in abstaining from eating and drinking.  "Wisdom is justified of her children."  A man may desire to fast and be wise, or he may desire to feast and still be wise.  VIRTUE IS INDEPENDENT OF ANY MATERIAL FORM WHICH IT MAY TAKE.  The children of wisdom look to the inner, and not to the outer, for justification.  Wisdom knows neither publican nor sinner, but is conscious only of herself, though she may dress in many garments.

If one believes that virtue consists in fasting, then virtue appears to him through fasting; but to him who finds no virtue in fasting, feasting may appear to be a greater virtue.  We are over-concerned with non-essentials, straining at gnats, while swallowing mountains of superstition."

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."