The UNIVERSE FLOWS

ERNEST HOLMES

The importance of what we might call the technique of treating ourselves and others for betterment of conditions (social relationships, personal life, personality problems)—is, first of all, fundamentally to ourselves as individuals. It is also the impact that we have upon our environment.

The whole thought and idea of war would disappear from the human consciousness if there were enough people who understood the Principle we’re talking about—and used it. The world would solve its problems because enough divine guidance would come down into the intellect and the emotions. The solution lies in spiritual awareness. Spiritual awareness to us is the conscious interior awareness that we are one with the divine Presence—the source of inspiration, illumination, intelligent guidance, and the consciousness that there is such a divine Presence, that there must be a universal Spirit and Mind which we use—and an awareness that there is a Law of Mind in action which acts mathematically, mechanically, but intelligently, having no purpose or intention of its own, but apparently following the consciousness which (mostly unconsciously) directs it. The awareness that each one of us, individually, has access to Intelli-gence as Spirit, and to the reactive, creative Intelligence as Law, is the whole basis of our teaching.

One night many years ago when I was trying to figure this thing out and reading everything in the world—occultism, spiritualism, theosophy, Christian Science, New Thought, everything—someone asked me to treat him. It was midnight and the first time I ever really knew what a treatment was. You can only discover it for yourself by making it work, because what happened then seemed like a miracle to me.

The man woke up in the middle of the night and he felt his whole spine readjust itself—the whole mechanical thing. There was no question but that it was the result of the treatment. I was treating just to know that everything was in place there. That was the first time that the dynamic power of this thing appealed to my imagination. The important thing is that we recognize the Power, that we realize our relationship to it, that we accept it in simplicity.

In considering the control of conditions, your whole treatment is based on two things: identification and reciprocal action of the Spirit or the Law. First of all, though, there has to be the belief and the recognition, because you can’t speak a word with sincerity unless you believe it. So first of all we have the recognition. Jesus based everything on belief—belief in a higher Power. We use a higher Power every time we use a law of Nature, whatever it may be.

The next is identification with the higher Power. I am a part of it; it is a part of me. There is one Mind, that Mind is God, that Mind is my mind now. There is one Life, that Life is God, that Life is my life now. You see, your whole action takes place in the mind, the movement of the mind upon itself. That’s the action and reaction of the whole Universe, the movement of Intelli-gence on itself and of itself, projecting and creating that which it conceives through the Law of its own self-existent recognition, its self-animating, self-propelling, self-sustaining, self-energizing realization.

The first axiom of reason is: “The truth is that which is.” We have to accept, just as we accept gravity, that there are self-existent spiritual and mental truths which, when known, will automatically make us free. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” So there is, first, conviction, belief, faith, acceptance. Next, identification with that which is certainly greater than our intellect, greater than the sum total of human intelligence. The Bible says: “Who made the ear, shall He not hear? Who made the eye, shall He not see? Who made the understanding, shall He not understand?”

Nothing can come out of the treatment that doesn’t go into it. For instance, you can plant a melon seed and you won’t get cucumbers. You’ll get melon, and you’ll get a multiplicity of response of the same type—it won’t convert itself into another type. Everything in Nature is definite, coherent, exact, mathematical, and mechanical in its formation. This is the subjective state of our thought; it’s the sum total of our thinking. It is a mind principle operating through us. This is the treatment; this is the medium; and this is the demonstration. This is the belief; this is what it does to you; and this is what it yields.

But there is our objective word, our choice. It is not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” who enters into the kingdom of wholeness, but rather the one who has harmonized himself with the nature of that kingdom. In other words, your treatment is upon yourself, no matter what you’re working for. Theor-etically, we ought so to live and think that our objective thinking is not interfered with. Every man should speak consciously from an intuitional center in the Mind of the Infinite. That’s the ultimate. That’s what we strive toward. We should theoretically always know the Truth. If we did, we’d make no mistakes.

Once in a while our own consciousness rises to a supreme height. Without our ever being aware of it, miracles seem to take place. But more often in your experience and in mine, we find that a series of statements creates a subjective reaction to those statements, which in turn becomes an affirmation in the Law. That’s the way treatments are cumulative: mental work counts, and we must work until we get results.

Let us be that which we are and “draw the Thing as we see It for the God of Things as They are.” If you want to make mudpies, make them. If you like to build skyscrapers, there’s nothing wrong with skyscrapers. In his poem “The Cry of a Dreamer,” John Boyle O’Reilly wrote:

I am tired of planning and
toiling in the crowded lives
of men;
Heart weary of building and spoiling, and spoiling and
building again.
And I long for the dear old river, where I dreamed my
youth away;
For a dreamer lives forever, and a toiler dies in a day.

The Universe doesn’t toil. It flows. •

Excerpted from The Beverly Hills Lectures by Ernest Holmes, published by DeVorss Publications.