Ernest Holmes

Ernest Shurtleff Holmes was born in rural Maine in the winter of 1887. His family was poor and moved often, making it difficult for him to acquire an education, but they were a wholesome, healthy group. In addition to the Bible and an illustrated Story of the Bible, his family had one other book: Henry Drummond’s Natural Law in the Spiritual World. [51]

In spite of this relative poverty, Ernest was a great reader.  He read, early on, “Self Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and listened to many Chautauqua lectures—sufficient to inspire him to become a public lecturer, himself.

Though Ernest never made it to college, his brother Fenwicke graduated and became a Congregational minister in Venice, California. Ernest came for a visit and stayed for a lifetime.  He helped his brother with the church and, together, they won a political campaign.

Ernest continued to read voraciously, emphasizing the New Thought writers and Transcendentalists.  He also read Eddy’s Science and Health and asked every practitioner he met to share their teachings with him. Another important writer was Thomas Troward, a British judge who had served in the Punjab, India.

In 1917 Fenwicke and Ernest formed the Southern California Metaphysical Institute, with a magazine they called Uplift.  They lectured in Los Angeles and Long Beach, and published their first books in 1919.  The next year they went to New York and offered a series of lectures and classes.  The lectures, offered for free, drew large crowds, many of which paid as much as $25 for the course of lessons that followed.

In 1925 the brothers went their separate ways, with Fenwicke returning to the East Coast and Ernest putting down roots in California.  That was the year that Ernest discovered Emma Curtis Hopkins and experienced her teaching—after which he ranked her with Meister Eckhart as “the greatest of the mystics.”  The next year he published his Science of Mind, the foundation for all his teachings, and for the Church of Religious Science, which he founded decades later.

A New Science

Both of the Holmes brothers were fascinated by the metaphysical.  They both observed and experienced many miraculous events and wonderful mystical connections. They immersed themselves in metaphysical literature. And they both, almost simultaneously, came to the conclusion that metaphysics has to be practiced as a science.  Ernest’s goal was to make it possible for anyone, with any background, to practice it.

We think of metaphysics, perhaps, as something that only the most profound thinkers have known about, but we should remember that we also are thinkers. …

Let us then approach the Science of Mind—the Science of Spiritual Psychology—with awe, but not with fear; with truly a humble thought, but not with a sense that we are unworthy. …

There is nothing supernatural about the study of Life from the metaphysical viewpoint. That which today seems to us supernatural, after it is thoroughly understood, will be found to be spontaneously natural.

We all know that many have been healed of physical disease through prayer. Let us analyze this. Why are some healed through prayer while others are not? … It is superstitious to believe that God will answer the prayer of one above another. …

Since some people have been healed … while others have not, the answer is NOT that God has responded to some and not to others, but that some have responded to God more than others. … [52]

Holmes developed a model of consciousness to explain how such things happen.  He said that the mind had two modes, the objective or conscious state and the subjective or unconscious state, and that the subjective mind is connected to the creative force of the universe, creating the thoughts present in the conscious mind.

The sub conscious (or subjective) state of mind … is that part of mind which is set in motion as a creative thing by the conscious state.

… man has at his disposal—in what he calls his Subjective Mind—a power that seems to be Limitless. This is because … There is but one Subjective Mind, and what we call our subjective mind is really the use we are making of the One Law. Each individual maintains his identity in Law, through his personal use of it. And each is drawing from Life what he thinks into It!

…our thoughts go into a medium that is Infinite in Its ability to do and to be.  Man, by thinking, can bring into his experience whatsoever he desires—if he thinks correctly, and becomes a living embodiment of his thoughts. This is not done by holding thoughts but by knowing the Truth. …

It is impossible to plumb the depths of the individual mind, because the individual mind is really not individual but is individualized. Behind the individual is the Universal, which has no limits. … we all use the creative power of the Universal Mind every time we use our own mind. …

Since this is true, it follows that we cannot say that one thought is creative while another is not. We must say that all thought is creative, according to the nature, impulse, emotion or conviction behind the thought. …

The conscious mind is superior to the subjective and may consciously use it. … [53]

From this model, Holmes synthesized a set of principles and practices from the many teachings he had studied over the previous decades.  From Emerson, for example, he drew “never think about that which is not desired,” and from Hopkins, “deny the reality of anything that is not desirable,” especially sickness, pain, and poverty.  These principles and their practice he described at length in The Science of Mind.

The Practice of Healing

Over the years, Holmes had studied with hundreds of healers, including Emma Hopkins and her students, several Christian Scientists, various yogis and gurus, and anyone else he could persuade to teach him.  From all these lessons, he distilled a basic approach to healing, which he explained in The Science of Mind.

A treatment is an active thing, if we are going to … reduce spiritual treatment to a mental science, then there is a method, a technique and a procedure in mental treatment. …

Start with this simple proposition: The nature of God, of man and of being is perfect, harmonious, whole—Perfect God, Perfect Man, and Perfect Being—and in treatment conform your thought to this idea. Then let the treatment be a moving thing, a series of thoughts or statements followed by realization.

Gradually a conviction dawns that God is all there is, and as this conviction grows the work is done more easily, and with a greater degree of acceptance … When this truth takes hold of our consciousness, and we contact what appears to be imperfect … we shall better know that the manifestation of imperfection has no right to exist. In actual practice, this becomes a series of statements—arguments perhaps—but a series of statements which finally culminate in the mental evidence being in favor of Perfect God, Perfect Man, and Perfect Being.

The way to learn how to treat, is to treat.  At first one has the feeling in treating of wondering if anything is really happening, until he finally realizes that this apparent nothingness with which he deals is the only ultimate something out of which tangible things could be made.

In mental and spiritual treatment, the practitioner endeavors to enter into the consciousness of a state of unity of all life, in which unity exists past, present, and future’ the person for whom he is working and the unborn but potential possibility of the condition for which he works. … He does not seek to force an issue, but rather permits a Creative Intelligence to perform a certain act. [54]

Holmes goes on to explain that this state of unity is comparable to what quantum physicists began to understand during his lifetime. He says, “all forms are theoretically resolvable into a universal energy and substance… made manifest through vibration.” [55]

Holmes makes it clear that the Science of Mind does not deny physical form, but, rather, seeks to explain it—and, having explained it, consciously direct it. Yet, he is adamant that our job is not to “force” the change but to allow the Creative Mind to bring order and harmony and life and intelligence into a situation where it has not been perceived before.

An Institution

The Science of Mind was rewritten and re-released in 1938 and has been the foundation text for students, practitioners, and ministers of Religious Science, since.

Not that Holmes ever wanted to found a church.  Like Emma Hopkins, Nona Brooks, and Charles Fillmore before him, he founded a school—the Institute of Religious Science and Philosophy, in 1927—and was only later, with difficulty, persuaded to form a church. And, like the Unity and Divine Science organizations, his offered a monthly magazine.  His intention:

… to promote that universal consciousness of life which binds together all in one great whole … to show that there is such a thing as Truth, and that it may be known in a degree sufficient to enable the one knowing to live a happy useful life … [56]

The magazine, called Science of Mind continues to tie together the several associations of churches and institutes that call themselves Religious Science.  And, though Ernest passed on in 1960, his articles are still regularly printed in it—along with others by currently active and popular spiritual teachers and leaders.