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."

July 14 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

THE LAW OF ATTRACTION
By Ernest Holmes

Thought Atmosphere

"Spiritual mind healing is a result of the constructive use of a mental law, which the world is gradually beginning to understand.  Since we are thinking beings and cannot stop thinking, and since Creative Mind receives our thought and cannot stop creating, It must always be creating something for us.  What It will make depends wholly upon what we are thinking, and what we shall attract will depend upon that on which our thoughts dwell.

Thought can attract to us that which we first mentally embody, that  which has become a part of our mental makeup, a part of our inner understanding.  Every person is surrounded by a thought atmosphere.  This mental atmosphere is the direct result of his conscious and unconscious thought, which, in its turn,becomes the direct reason for, and cause of, that which comes into his life.  Thorough this power we are either attracting or repelling.  Like attracts like and it is also true that we may become attracted to something which is greater than our previous experience, by first embodying the atmosphere of our desire.

Taking as the starting point the idea that the essence of man's life is God, it follows that he uses the same creative process.  Everything originates in the One, comes form the same Source and returns again to It.  As God's thought makes worlds, and peoples them with living things, so our thought makes our world and peoples it with our experiences.  By the activity of our thought, things come into our life and we are limited only because we have not known the Truth.  We have thought that outside things controlled us, when all the time we have had that within which could have changed everything and given us freedom from bondage.

Everyone automatically attracts to himself just what he is, and we may set it down that wherever we are, however intolerable the situation may be, we are just where we belong.  There is no power in the universe but ourselves that can free us.  Someone may help us on the road to realization, but substantiality and permanence can come only through the consciousness of our own life and thought.  Man must bring himself to the place in mind where there is no misfortune, no calamity, no accident, no trouble, no confusion; where there is nothing but plenty, peace, power Life and Truth.  He should definitely, daily (using his own name) declare the Truth about himself, realizing that he is reflecting his statements into Consciousness and that they will be operated upon by It.

This is called, in mysticism, High Invocation; invoking the Divine Mind, implanting within It, seeds of thought relative to oneself.  And this is why some of the teachers of olden times used to instruct their pupils to cross their hands over their chests and say:  "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful me!" definitely teaching them that as they mentally held themselves, so they would be held.  "Act as though I am and I will be."

One of the ancient sayings is that "To the man who can perfectly practice inaction, all things are possible."  This sounds like a contradiction until one penetrates its inner meaning, for it is only when one completely practices inaction that he arrives at the point of the true actor, for he then realizes that the act and the actor are one and the same; that cause and effect are the same; which is simply a different way of saying:  "Know the truth and the truth shall make you free."  To reduce the whole thing to its simplest form, whatever one reflects into Mind tends to take form."

June 10 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Treating Pain ~ Ernest Holmes

"Use the thought of peace with the realization of a Perfect Presence.  Many times, just the statement:  "Right where pain seems to operate, the Presence of God is," will instantly obliterate the pain.  The perfect realization of this Presence would always do so.  Know that in this Presence there is no tension, no struggle, no fear, there is no sense of conflict.  Know this until there comes to your consciousness a deep, calm sense of peace and ease, and until every thought of pain is eliminated.

Healing takes place to the degree that we send down the right kind of thoughts into subjectivity.  We mean, by thinking consciously and with deep feeling (knowing) we implant the right idea in Mind, and Mind reproduces this idea, as effect, in the body.  We must realize that we are using a Power, compared to which the united intelligence of the human race is as nothing.  The practitioner involves an idea in Mind; it is the Law which creates.  As the practitioner treats his own mentality, which is simply a point in Mind, he reaches the mentality of his patient.  The practitioner can erase the thought of pain from the patient's mentality when he has first neutralized the idea in his own thought."

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 27 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Different Methods of Treatment ~ Ernest Holmes

"Although several methods of treatment are used, there are but two distinct methods; one is called the argumentative and the other realization.

The argumentative method is just what the word implies, though the argument is never with another person - it is a process of mental reasoning in which the practitioner argues to himself about his patient.  He is presenting a logical argument to Universal Mind, or Principle, and if it carries with it complete evidence in favor of his patient, the patient should be healed.

The realization method is one whereby the practitioner realizes within himself - without the necessity of step by step building up a conclusion - the perfect state of his patient. It is purely a spiritual and meditative process of contemplating the perfect man, and if the practitioner arrives at a perfect embodiment of the idea, without confusion or doubt, it will at once produce a healing.  Treatment is for the purpose of inducing an inner realization of perfection in the mentality of the practitioner, which inner realization, acting through Mind, operates through the patient.

Another illustration:  Let us suppose that Mary is sick and John is the practitioner.  She comes to him, saying:  "I am sick"  He understands the power of Mind; she does not understand it.  He does not try to hold a thought over her or for her, nor suggest one to her.  He speaks her name and makes his declarations about this name.  He contradicts what appears to be wrong and declares the truth about her.  What happens?  His word, operative through Universal Mind, sets a law in motion, on the subjective side of life, which objectifies through her body as healing.

Mary thinks a miracle has been performed.  No miracle has been enacted. John has used a law, which all men may use if they will.  If Mary had been perfectly well, and her need had been for a position, the treatment would be of like nature; John would have declared into Mind what should be done for Mary.  There is only One Law; Mary could set It in operation for herself if she understood Its nature; sooner or later she must come to understand and make conscious use of this Law.

Between "John" and "Mary" there is One Universal Medium, which is also in John and in Mary.  It is not only between them but in them and around them.  As John, right where he is, knows the Truth, since there is only One, he is at the same time knowing the Truth right where Mary is, because his word is operative through a field which is not divided, but a complete Unit or Whole.  As he knows within himself, he is knowing within the same Mind which operates through the person whom he mentions in his treatment, no matter where that person may be.  There is no absent treatment, as opposed to a present treatment.  When you know in one place, you know everywhere.  When you give a treatment, you never send out a thought, or hold a thought, or make a suggestion.  A treatment is a conscious movement of thought, and the work begins and ends in the thought of the one giving the treatment.  The practitioner must do the work within himself.  He must know the Truth within himself, and as he does this the Law unfolds; a thing which is known by any part of Universal Mind is known by every part of It, for It is an undivided Whole.

If one were treating "Henry Black," who is in another city, he would say:  "I am treating Henry Black of such and such a place."  Then he would forget all about Henry Black as a personality and give the treatment.  It is not necessary to specify the trouble.  Occasionally, there might be reason to mention a thing, in denying its existence, but this is not the best method.  Of course, there are certain thoughts back of certain things, and a knowledge of the disease might better enable some practitioners to know what thought to deny.

Another illustration of the difference between the argumentative method of treatment and the realization method, will be found in the following:

Mary Jones come to John Smith and says, "I have tuberculosis."  In answer to this, he states:  "the word I now speak is for Mary Jones.  She is a perfect and complete manifestation of Pure Spirit, and Pure Spirit cannot be diseased, consequently, she is not diseased."  This is an argument in the mind of "John Smith" trying to bring out the evidence in favor of "Mary Jones'" perfection; it is an argument which produces certain conclusions in his mind, and as a result it sets a certain law in motion for Mary Jones.  As John does this, day after day, he gradually becomes convinced of her spiritual perfection.  This is the argumentative method of treating.  All argumentative statements merely conduct the mind of the practitioner to a place where he believes what he is saying!

In using the method of realization, "John Smith" would say:  "The word that I now speak is for Mary Jones."  Then he would begin to realize the Perfect Presence, the ONLY Perfect Presence.  "God is all there is; there is nothing else.  God is in Mary Jones, she is now a perfect being, she is now a spiritual being."

It makes no difference, however, which method one uses as each produces the same results.  One method is a logical argument in the mind of the practitioner, by which he convinces himself of the Truth of Being; the other is the instant cutting through of all appearances to the Reality back of all things.  Undoubtedly, when we can pursue only the way of pure realization, we will have attained the ideal method.

But since we do not at all times realize man's perfection, we go through this process called "treating" to find it out.  Do not be afraid of this scientific approach; do not be afraid to set down on one side all of the negative appearances, admitting them as a condition; and on the other side bringing all the arguments, one at a time, which offset these apparent conditions, and finally realization will come.

This argumentative method of treatment is a series of affirmations and denials, for the purpose of building up in the mind of the practitioner a state of realization and acceptance.  The power is in the realization, but there is also power in the argument.  The one giving the treatment believes that there is a Power and a Presence that responds to his thought.   No matter what all the world believes, no matter what anyone says, he must believe that this Power does respond to his word.  As Jesus said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."  This is conviction, and if a practitioner does not have such conviction he must acquire it.  After much experience, he will learn how best to build up a faith in the Power of Spirit.  We are to approach this Presence simply, directly and easily, for It is within us.  We can never get outside ourselves; we shall always be interior in our comprehension, we are here and It also is here.

In giving spiritual treatments we find that the more completely the mind turns away from lack, the more completely the thought stops trying to figure out how the demonstration can be made, the more completely it refrains from will power, and, strange as it may seem, the less it tries to concentrate, THE MORE POWER IT HAS.  Treatment has nothing to do with any effort which attempts to concentrate the Energy of God.  The Energy of God is already concentrated everywhere.  The gardener does not will potatoes and cabbages into being, but he has a willingness to comply with the law of nature, and provides the conditions which make it possible for this law to produce them."

April 22 ~ The Science of Mind in a Year

Treatment Not Explained in the Bible ~ Ernest Holmes

"From beginning to end, in one way or another, the Bible teaches the law of cause and effect, based upon the premise that the Universe is a spiritual system, that the Infinite creates by the power of Its word or the contemplation of Its consciousness, and, as a complement to this, that man reproduces the Universal on an individual scale.

The bible does not tell us how to give a treatment.  It is only within the last hundred years that the science which we are studying has been given to the world.  It is not an old system of thought.  The old systems of thought did contain the Truth, but one would never learn how to give an effective mental treatment by studying them.  We would no more learn how to give a treatment by studying the Bible, than we would learn how to psycho-analyze a person.  The principle of spiritual treatment is implied in the Bible as well as in other sacred writings of antiquity, but one could not learn how to give a treatment from reading any of these Scared Books.  From all of these sources we gain a tremendous spiritual inspiration, but they do not teach how to give a treatment.

What Is a Practitioner?

The one who attempts to heal himself or another through a recognition of the creative power of Mind and the ever availability of Good, is a mental or spiritual practitioner.  Such a one refuses to allow negative thoughts to control his consciousness.   He endeavors to greet the divinity in every man he meets.

The one seeking to demonstrate the power of spiritual realization in everyday affairs should believe in Divine guidance.  He should affirm that his mind is continually impressed with the images of right action, and that everything in his life is controlled by love, harmony and peace; that everything he does prospers, and that the Eternal Energy back of all things animates everything which he undertakes.  Every objective evidence contrary to good should be resolutely denied, and in its place should come a sense of right action.  He should feel a unity of Spirit in all people, and running through all events.  He should declare that the Spirit within him is God, quickening into right action everything he touches, bringing the best out of all his experiences, and forever guiding and sustaining.  The greatest good which his mind is able to conceive should be affirmed as a part of his everyday experience.  No matter what the occupation of such a man, he is a mental and spiritual practitioner, and from such daily meditation he should venture forth into a life of action, with the will to do, the determination to be, and a joy in becoming!

The professional mental and spiritual practitioner is one who has dedicated his life - his time, his energies, his intelligence - to helping others, through mental and spiritual means and methods."