The Science of Mind

by Ernest Holmes

When we plant a seed in the ground, we do not have a great sensation, and it is not probable that the soil has any sensation. But the seed, planted in the creative soil, will, nevertheless, produce a plant. "What is true on one plane is true on all." Know that you are doing things just as definitely as the gardener. It is the person who knows what he is doing who gets results.

  HOW TO REMOVE DOUBT

  All thoughts of doubt concerning one's ability to heal come from the belief that it is the personality which does the healing, and not the Law. Never say: "I am not good enough to heal," or "I do not know enough to heal," or "I haven't understanding enough to heal." Know that you are dealing with Law and that It is the Actor. Recognize all such arguments as some form of suggestion and refuse to let them operate through you. You can heal; but you must know that you can.

  The day will come when the entire world will believe the Truth, because of the great neutralizing power which It is exercising upon the race consciousness.

  THE TRUTH DEMONSTRATES ITSELF

  The reason people do not get better results is that they do not understand that principle works independently; the Truth demonstrates Itself. At the root of every one's personality there is One Common Mind. There is but One Subjectivity in the Universe, and all use It. Think of yourself as being in Mind as a sponge is in the water; you are in It and It is in you.

  DISEASE IS MENTAL

  Every disease that comes up through subjectivity, or appears in the body, must come up through Mind. Bodies, of themselves, do not get sick. For instance, when the Life Principle deserts the body, it is what we call a corpse—a lifeless and inanimate thing; it no longer becomes sick; we understand that it could not get sick unless there were intelligence there to cognize the trouble.

  Since the body, of itself, cannot become ill, or hurt, or contract disease, unless there is intelligence there to recognize and feel it, disease is primarily a mental thing. Without mentality it is not; and yet with mentality it appears to be.

  For instance, a contagious disease is physically contagious between two living people; but it is not contagious between two dead people. There must be intelligence, even in a contagious disease, for the body to contract it. The dead body cannot catch it from the living because the intelligence has departed.

  THE MEDIUM OF HEALING

  The thing to remember always is, that there is just One Subjective Mind in the Universe. This is a point that people often do not realize, and because they do not, they cannot see how a person may be treated without touching him; or that a person can be healed at a distance through absent treatment.

  If there is but One Subjective Mind in the Universe (and we all remember the meaning of Subjective Mind; It is Deductive, Receptive, Plastic, Neutral, Impersonal and Creative; It is the Stuff from which all things are formed)—you can impress upon It a certain image of thought, or a certain process of realization, and you will get a result; for it is the Actor.

  DEPEND ON PRINCIPLE

  Through the proper use of this great Subjective Law you can impress upon It a definite idea; and if you, yourself, do not withdraw that idea, or neutralize it by an opposite one, the law will bring it into manifestation.

  What we need, then, is to learn the law governing this Principle. When you give a treatment, you are definitely setting in motion a Universal law which must not only accept what you say, but the way in which you say it. If your treatment is given with a sense of struggle, it will manifest that way; if it is given with a sense of peace, then it will manifest in that manner.

  Remember that you need assume no personal responsibility for the recovery of your patient. All that you have to do is to make certain statements which Mind is going to carry into effect through him.

  One who understands the use of Divine Principle never tries to suggest, hypnotize nor personally influence any one; he is always impersonal in his work; he is stating in Mind directly what he wishes to have done.

  When you have occasion to treat yourself, call your own name and then proceed with the treatment, as though you were treating some one else.

  Disease will be healed, provided you get at its cause and remove it, and provided the one for whom you are working is willing to surrender that cause. You cannot heal any one of his trouble if it is the result of some mental attitude which he will not surrender. In this case, find out what the mental attitude is and remove it. It is a practitioner's duty to uncover false ideas of Life and replace them with the Truth. If this can be done before the disease destroys the body, a healing will always follow.

  DEFINITE WORK IN HEALING

  Principle is the Power that made everything; it is Absolute; It will not and cannot be denied. The only thing that can deny God is yourself.

  Do not think of disease as an entity, but as an impersonal thought-force. In healing, you are separating the false from the true; the work is definite and dynamic, and is consciously done with a clear purpose always in mind.

  If your own thought is clear, and you are able to completely realize the presence of Spirit in your patient, all the power on earth cannot hinder you from healing.

  REPEATING TREATMENTS

  Always come to a complete conclusion while giving a treatment; always feel that is it is done, complete and perfect. In the intervals between treatments, do not carry the thought of the patient around with you; to do so is to doubt, and this mental attitude must be completely overcome. Each treatment is a complete statement of the Reality of Being. The treatment should be repeated daily until a healing takes place. If it takes five minutes, five hours, five days or five years, the treatment must be kept up until a healing is accomplished. This is the only method that we know. It is not enough to say that everything is all right; this is true in principle, but in fact, it is only as true as we make it. Treat until you get results. A healing takes place when the patient is no longer sick, and until that time mental work must be done.

  REMOVE THE COMPLEX

  Suppose one is constantly saying: "Everything is all wrong in the world; people are wrong; things are wrong; conditions are wrong; every one is sick; every one is unhappy; nothing is worth while." You, as a practitioner, must remove this complex; for these inner emotions create outer conditions in and through the body and are what cause a great deal of the sickness in the world.

  Treatment straightens out consciousness by clear thinking. When the inner consciousness agrees with the Truth, when there is no longer anything within which denies the outer word of Truth, then, and not until then, a demonstration takes place. Specifically go over the thoughts that are wrong and use the power of your word to heal them.

  HEALING PAIN

  Use the thought of peace and the realization of a Perfect Presence; know that in this Presence there is no tension, there is no struggle, there is no fear, there is no sense of conflict. Know this until there comes to your own consciousness a deep, calm sense of peace and ease, and until every thought of pain is eliminated.

  Do the same in the case of fever; treat until it is gone; usually it will go like heat off a stove.

  HEADACHE

  Suppose that every little while you have a headache. A physician may say that it is caused by some nerve strain; a chiropractor may say that it is something out of joint; the osteopath may say that it is something else; and some other practitioner may say that it is something else; for each has found some twist in the body to fit his theory. All of these twists may be there; but the body could not twist unless you were there to twist it. The metaphysician goes to the twister and untwists his thought, thus freeing the twists in the body. We recognize all the good that doctors are doing, but we insist that the mentality must also be taken into account.

  Back of nearly every disorder there is some complex, or mental knot, that needs to be untied; generally, some suppressed emotion which, perhaps, is centered around the affections —the likes and dislikes, the loves and passions, and everything that goes with them. All these knots must be untied and it is the business of the practitio
ner to untie them.

  WHAT RIGHT THOUGHT DOES

  Right thought, constantly poured into consciousness, will eventually purify it. Disease is like a bottle of impure water; healing might be likened to the process of dropping pure water into the bottle, a drop at a time, until the whole is clean and pure. Some one might ask why the bottle could not be turned upside down and at once drain out all the impurities. Sometimes this happens, but not often; meanwhile, a drop at a time will finally eliminate the impurities and produce a healing.

  In treating, go beyond the disease and supply a spiritual consciousness; never leave a person without the Great Realization of Life and Love, of God and Perfection, of Truth and Wisdom, of Power and Reality. Sense the Divine Presence in and through the patient at all times.

  HOW HABITS ARE HEALED

  What is a habit? A habit is the form that desire takes; it is a desire for something that will give satisfaction. At the root of all habit is one basic thing, the desire to express life. There is an urge to express in all people, and this urge, operating through the channels of Creative Mind, looses energy into action and compels the individual to do something.

  Back of all desire is the impulse of Spirit to express. In man, this impulse must express at the level of his consciousness:

  "For each, for the joy of the working and each in his separate star,

  Shall paint the thing as he sees It for the God of things as they are."

  Some express constructively and some destructively.

  Suppose a man who has the liquor habit comes to you to be healed. You would not pray that he be healed, for you would know that you are dealing with a man who has the desire to express life and who thinks that he must express it in terms of intoxication. He once thought this expressed reality to him; he now knows that it does not, but he has not the will power to stop; for the habit has appeared to take complete possession of him. (It is well to remember that unless we control thought, it will control us.)

  In giving the treatment, first recognize who and what he is, saying something like this: "He is the full and complete expression of the Truth, and, as such, he is free from any sense of limitation. He is free from any delusion or fear of delusion. He knows that the Spirit of Truth within him is complete and always satisfied. That thing which calls itself the liquor habit has no power over him and cannot operate through him. By the power of this word, it is now completely destroyed and forever obliterated." Then see him free and satisfied. Wait until you, yourself, are sure of the statements made, realizing that the work is done. This is the treatment.

  THE SEED OF THOUGHT

  Whether we say our thought goes out, or whether we say it is operated upon by Principle, makes no difference; it is very evident that until a thought is created there is no operation. For instance, a person is sick and he remains sick until some one knows that he is well. It is very evident, then, that as the result of some one's thinking he is healed. We know that the thinking sets in motion some law. Whether the word used heals, or whether it simply sets the Law in motion, really makes no difference. The practitioner is in the same Mind in which his patient lives; consequently, since each is in One Mind, the patient is sick in the same Medium and, in a certain sense, in the same Mind in which the practitioner lives; and because this Mind is Indivisible, the practitioner can, in his own mentality, reach the thought which causes the patient to be sick. Whether we say he sends out a thought, or whether he simply thinks a thought, makes no difference. The simplest way is to say that the practitioner realizes within himself upon the One Mind, through the One Medium, in the One Law.

  The practitioner realizes a certain truth for his patient—within himself. Therefore he sets the Law in motion for his patient. (The operation of this Law may be thought of as the same as that of the law whereby water reaches its own level by its own weight.) The practitioner knows within himself; and that self-knowingness rises into the consciousness of his patient. So we do not have to worry about sending out thoughts. It is just like planting a seed in the ground; the practitioner sows the seed and the Creative Mind produces the plant. Does the ground operate on the seed, or does the seed operate upon the soil? We do not know, but we do know that when a seed is put into the ground, something operates upon it and a plant is produced; and that unless a seed is put into the ground, no plant will be produced.

  WHAT CAN BE HEALED

  What should we try to heal mentally? If we were dealing only with the power of our own thought, our limited concept, we could not heal anything mentally; but if we realize that we are dealing with Universal Principle, how can we set any limit to Its Power?

  People are sick because they cover a perfect idea with imperfect thoughts; for sickness is the result of subjectified thinking. Everything which the objective mind has consciously thought has fallen into the subjective. All suggestions received have also fallen into the subjective thought; these suggestions may or may not have been consciously received. This will explain why people may be taken sick with diseases of which they never heard; somewhere, on the subjective side of thought, certain forces have been set in motion which, when objectified, produced certain conditions.

  WHY PEOPLE GET TIRED

  Let a person say to himself; "I have overworked," and at once there will come up through his consciousness a belief in weariness. People who are constantly complaining of being tired are simply hypnotized into this belief through the law of race-suggestion.

  Suppose one had dropped complexes into his subjective thought; suppose desires had torn him, and conflicts had entered into his life; what would have happened? He would have been continually dropping opposing thoughts and concepts into his mentality; and as the mental action took place, they might produce a twisted body; and if over-chaotic, they might produce what is called nervous prostration. It would not, however, be the body that was sick but would be a condition brought about through wrong thought.

  Now, if subjective thought were a thing apart from us, if we did not have conscious access to it, we could not change it; but being the result of the way thought has worked, we can consciously change it. If this were not true mental healing would be impossible.

  THE IDEA MUST TAKE FORM

  Healing, then, takes place to the degree that we send down the right kind of thoughts into subjectivity. This does not mean that we must sit around holding thoughts. We do not hold a seed in our hand when we wish to plant it, and it is the same in healing; we do not hold the thought but seek to realize it and let it work. By thinking consciously and with deep feeling, 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. This should not seem strange; for we know that the united intelligence of the entire race cannot produce a single rosebud, yet any gardener may produce as many roses as he wishes, if he goes about it in the right way. We must remember that what is true on one plane is true on all. Involution and evolution are the law, cause and effect. The practitioner involves an idea in Mind; it is Law and must operate.

  If one wishes to treat a patient, he must first treat himself; as he treats himself, that is, as he treats his own mentality, which is simply a point in Mind, he reaches the mentality of his patient. The practitioner cannot erase the thought in the patient's mentality until he has first neutralized the idea in his own thought.

  RESOLVE THINGS INTO THOUGHTS

  A treatment is a specific thing. If you are treating some one against the belief in scarlet fever, you are making your word operate in such a way as to neutralize a belief in this disease. Each treatment must have, in itself, everything necessary to cover the case. When you treat, resolve things into thoughts; bodies, people, objects and all things. Having resolved everything into thoughts, know that disease is neither person, place nor thing; it has no location, does not belong to any one, cannot operate through any one, is not believed in by any one. Know that it is a false belief, a false image, w
ith no power. Know that the whole thing is mental; then mentally dissolve it.

  HEALING INSANITY

  In treating some one whose mind appears to be deranged, realize that there is but One Mind, which Mind is God, and is Perfect. This is the only Mind that is; It is the Mind of your patient; It is your own Mind. This Mind, being a Complete, Perfect and Indivisible Whole, cannot labor under a delusion, cannot, for one moment, lose Its Self-Consciousness. After you have realized this Truth about Life, realize that it is also true about the one you are treating; his thought is perfect. If you have this realization in your own mentality, knowing there is just the One Mind, there will be no doubts or confusions; and the mentality of the patient will cease to be deranged.

  WHAT A PRACTITIONER DOES

  What a practitioner really does is to take his patient, the disease and everything that appears to be wrong right into his own mentality, and here he dissolves all false appearances and all erroneous conclusions. He takes the condition, not as a reality, but as a belief; and right at the center of his own being he neutralizes the whole false thought, thus healing the condition.

  The more completely the practitioner is convinced of the power of his own word, the more power his word will have. There must be a complete realization that the power of the word, operating as the Truth and the Reality of Being, can do all things. Therefore, the person whose consciousness is the clearest, who has the most complete idea of Life, will be the best healer.