Steeped in Tradition

Dr. Ernest Holmes founded Science of Mind magazine in October 1927, and it has been in continuous publication ever since. In founding this magazine, he demonstrated his faith in his years of independent study, along with his passion for and insights into the world's greatest religious traditions and spiritual truths.

As is the magazine's tradition, the October 2023 issue celebrates Holmes' teachings by offering his thoughts and words to our readers. Rev. Dr. Jesse Jennings curated 31 days of Holmes' wisdom in our Daily Guides, which include quotes from Holmes, Jennings' reflections on the quotes and an affirmation from our founder.

This month's issue includes a transcript from one of Holmes' talks at Asilomar on October 10, 1959, in which he examines the topic of personal responsibility. In a new book of the collected Asilomar lectures, readers find Holmes engaged with both his topic and his audience, demonstrating his character, the depths of his philosophical underpinnings and, yes, his humor. The book, “Ernest Holmes at Asilomar,” is available at https://shop.csl.org/product/ernest-holmes-at-asilomar/.

In this newsletter, we offer just a taste of what Holmes offers in our October issue. And we thank our readers, those who follow us on social media and all who work to ensure the legacy of Holmes continues.

An Adventure of Expression

By Ernest Holmes

Where is our vision set? It is the duty, obligation, responsibility of the self to free the self, to identify all this with God. This is Religious Science and the savior whom Jesus, Buddha manifest. We belong to the Christian faith. We are a Christian religion, but we are more than that, for the Christian religion itself derives much of its grandeur from that which was the product of antiquity before there were any Christians. Jesus drew from the teachings of those who were before him. It doesn’t lessen him in caliber and stature, but rather melts into that larger concept.

It is your duty and mine, if we have one, to identify that Over-Self with this, and we can do it only in such degree as we see It as It is. God is not poor, not weak, not sick, not forlorn or forsaken. It is a glory of majesty and might, presence and power, beauty and light, and a song of triumph in father and mother and son. This Over-Self we must identify with.

Remember this: Religious Science is an adventure of the soul. It is an adventure of the expression of that capacity inherent and latent within us, ready to come forth into the glory and beauty and splendor of our own becoming, as law. We are the enforcement of the law and order of the universe, as individuations. We are the manifestations of the supreme Self without division and innumerable cells without separation, that the multiplicity shall explain and live on and on in unity, and the unity shall find complete self-expression in the multiplicity. We are not poor or weak or unhappy. We are on the progressive pathway of an eternal evolution, on that eternal dawn of a blossoming soul, which shall ever see light.

— Excerpted from the lecture “Personal Responsibility,” which appears in the October 2023 Science of Mind magazine and in “Ernest Holmes at Asilomar”

Let Us Rise

By Ernest Holmes

I find nothing in the universe that says no to reality; there is nothing in any of us that can. Therefore, there must be a transcendence of our own thought that is possible, that has immediate precedence over everything that has ever gone before, everything that everybody ever believed or thought or that all people believed.

“The great are great only because we are on our knees. Let us rise.” [Pierre-Joseph Proudhon] You will discover no greatness outside yourself; that which appears to be greatness in another is merely as much as you have projected from yourself to the other. As that hidden thing is removed, you and I will see, in the other, the more perfect image. We have disclosed it; but we couldn't disclose it until we saw it as it is. And we can't see it as it is until we are as it is — and there isn't any more is-er than that!