Seeing Our Mental Pictures Through

Radiant Living emerged from the American-based philosophical movement New Thought. New Thought activist Phoebe Holmes travelled the world lecturing about Radiant Health Clubs. She apparently visited New Zealand in the 1920s and 1930s. https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/radiant-living/the-origins-of-radiant-living

THE PATHWAY TO SPIRITUAL MASTERY By Phoebe Marie Holmes

Mental Science

The rise into popularity of the teachings of the New Thought or Mental Science has familiarized many persons with the idea of thought-transference in some of its varied forms, until to-day we find that the majority of persons are prepared to admit that “there must be some fire where there is so much smoke.” Telepathy - Sidney A. Weltmer 1910

Lord of a thousand worlds am I,

And I reign since time began;

And night and day, in cyclic sway,

Shall pass while their deeds I scan.

Yet time shall cease ere I find release,

For I AM the soul of Man

Charles H. Orr

 “The fact is, most people pray to a god of their own making, a man-made god, a thing that does not exist, except in their own imagination, and then wonder why their prayers are not answered.” THE PASTOR'S SON by WILLIAM W. WALTER serves as an introduction to Christian Science, Science and Health and it explains the role of a Christian Science Practitioner.

It will be apparent at once to the reader that Walter Williams is merely a transposition of my own name.₁

WILLIAM_W_WALTER ~ THE UNFOLDMENT (1921)

WILLIAM_W_WALTER ~ THE SOWER-THE SEED-THE SOIL (1912) : A Short Story on the Requirements to Healing

WILLIAM_W_WALTER ~ THE DOCTOR'S DAUGHTER  (1908) : A Story on the Fallacy of Drug Healing

 [SEQUEL TO THE PASTOR'S SON]:

Mental Pictures, Distant Healing, Absent Healing --- Health and the Inner Life

To this day, so the anthropologists assure us, there are savage peoples who believe that distant members of the tribe may be telepathically influenced. The principle that "like affects like" is common to both ancient and modern mind cure. For example, an act performed upon a certain part of the body is supposed by some savage peoples to produce a corresponding effect upon an absent individual. In some tribes it has been the custom for the wives of the distant warriors to gather round the fire at home and put themselves through the operations which their liege lords were supposed just then to be going through, and hence to aid them to conquer. There is scarcely a tenet in the mind-cure faith of to-day that cannot be paralleled by a corresponding belief in ancient or savage times. In all ages and among various peoples there have been periods when belief in unusual powers have been prevalent.

Mental Science or Psychology

 “Here is a player-piano. You have been using the wrong rolls of music. You have been playing sad pieces, funeral marches, monotones, chants and wails. Throw those away and put in lively rolls, glees, dances, two steps, jazz music and happy melodies. They will give you a complete change of spirit and you’ll forget all your woes and troubles and build up a new mental condition.”

“Discard your negative rolls and put in positive rolls. Don’t play negative music. Play positive music. The result will be that you will have a new state of mind and life will become pleasant instead of gloomy.”

In Touch With The Sub-Conscious Mind.

Rudyard Kipling {also Rudyard Kipling} tells us in his story of "Kim" how the boy used at times to lose his sense of personality by repeating to himself the question, Who is Kim? Gradually his personality would seem to fade and he would experience a feeling of passing into a grander and a wider life, in which the boy Kim was unknown, while his own conscious individuality remained, only exalted and expanded to an inconceivable extent; and in Tennyson's life by his son we are told that at times the poet had a similar experience[See previous reference >> WedFeb11]. We come into touch with the absolute exactly in proportion as we withdraw ourselves from the relative: they vary inversely to each other.

“I am healthy, happy, wise and free.”

One of the problems of the Mental Science period that led to the New Thought was the use of affirmations. “I am healthy, happy, wise and free” may not be part of your reality. “I am wealthy” may not elicit the emotional attitude related to it. Saying “I am not sick” or “I am not poor” works for some people but for others, the subconscious mind ignores the not and hears sick or poor.

The Self-Talk of the 70’s and 80’s was a re-hash of the New Thought stuff. But similar problems existed. It is necessary to find the syntax that your MIND can absorb and short circuit the little voice in your head that says otherwise.

Positive self-talk is an important self-help technique that you will find comes naturally once you begin to engage in it.

“I am sitting on this happy chair. There is this happy table. And these are happy windows with happy curtains.”

Since all the sentences are about some aspect of the world being happy, there is no conflict between saying that when the person is not feeling happy. An unhappy person can still talk about happy curtains. This is very different from the “I am happy” affirmation, which will contradict someone’s present state if they are unhappy. The word “happy” is a trigger for that state, so using it tends to elicit happy feelings, no matter what it describes, even a chair or a table. When I describe the curtains as “happy,” that connects happiness with the curtains—and with everything else around me that I describe with that word. After that, each time I look at the curtains—and the other things around me—I will think of the word “happy,” and that will tend to elicit that happy feeling.

Since a window can’t be happy, your mind will unconsciously attempt to make meaning out of the word “happy” by applying it to something else. If you are alone, you are the only other available possibility, and even if you are with others, you are still a possibility. All this processing will occur completely unconsciously, so it can’t be countered by your conscious thinking.

ACIM Lesson 29 is interesting. It’s using a similar technique.

God is in everything I see.

God is in this coat hanger.

God is in this magazine.

God is in this finger.

God is in this lamp.

God is in that body.

God is in that door.

God is in that waste basket.

We see in the world what is in our minds, and what we want to recognize is there.

The spirit of the man and the truth he preached.

"Every disease is the invention of man, and has no identity in wisdom; but to those who believe it, it is a truth. If everything man does not understand were blotted out, what is there left, of man? Would he be better, or worse, if nine tenths of all he thinks he knows were blotted out of his mind, and he existed with what is true?

"I contend that he would, as it were, sit on the clouds and see the world beneath him tormented with ideas that form living errors, whose weight is ignorance. Safe from their power he would not return to the world's belief for any consideration.

"In a slight degree, this is my case. I sit as it were in another world or condition, as far above the belief in disease as the heavens are above the earth, and though safe myself, I grieve for the sins of my fellow-man; and I am reminded of the words of Jesus when he beheld the misery of his countrymen: `O Jerusalem'. How oft would I have gathered thee as a hen gathereth her chickens, but ye would not.'

"I hear this truth now pleading with man, to listen to the voice of reason. I know from my own experience with the sick that their troubles are the effect of their own belief; not that their belief is the truth, but their beliefs act upon their minds, bringing them into subjection to their belief, and their troubles are a change that follows.

"Disease is a reality to all mankind; but I do not include myself, because I stand outside of it, where I can see things real to the world and things that are real to wisdom. I know that I can distinguish that which is false from a truth, in religion, or in disease. To me, disease is always false; but to those who believe it, it is a truth, and the errors in religion the same. Until the world is shaken by investigation, so that the rocks and mountains of religious error are removed, and the medical Babylon destroyed, sickness and sorrow will prevail. Feeling as I do, and seeing so many young people go the broad road to destruction, I can say from the bottom of my soul: O Priestcraft! fill up the measure of your cups of iniquity, for on your head will come, sooner or later, the sneers and taunts of the people. Your theory will be overthrown by the voice of wisdom, that will rouse the men of science, who will battle your error, and drive you utterly from the face of the earth. Then there will arise a new science, followed by a new mode of reasoning, which shall teach man that to be wise and well is to unlearn his errors."

The first person of this age who penetrated the depths of truth so far as to discover and bring forth a true science of life, and openly apply it to the healing of the sick.

That man was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, of Belfast, ME[1].

[1]Belfast is a city in Waldo County, Maine, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 6668.

THE TRUE HISTORY
OF
MENTAL SCIENCE.
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE CHURCH OF THE
DIVINE UNITY, BOSTON, MASS., ON SUNDAY
EVENING, FEB. 6, 1887.
By JULIUS A. DRESSER.

Troward and Behrend: Healing

HEALING Now the only conception you can have of yourself in the absolute, or unconditioned, is as purely living Spirit, not hampered by conditions of any sort, and therefore not subject to illness; and when this idea is firmly impressed on the sub-conscious mind, it will externalize it. The reason why this process is not always successful at the first attempt is that all our life we have been holding the false belief in sickness as a substantial entity in itself and thus being a primary cause, instead of being merely a negative condition resulting from the absence of a primary cause; and a belief which has become ingrained from childhood cannot be eradicated at a moment's notice. We often find, therefore, that for some time after a treatment there is an improvement in the patient's health, and then the old symptoms return. This is because the new belief in his own creative faculty has not yet had time to penetrate down to the innermost depths of the subconscious mind, but has only partially entered it. Each succeeding treatment strengthens the subconscious mind in its hold of the new belief until at last a permanent cure is effected. This is the method of self-treatment based on the patient's own knowledge of the law of his being.

Our ordinary conception of ourselves is that of an individual personality which ends where another personality begins, in other words that the two personalities are entirely separate. This is an error. There is no such hard and fast line of demarcation between personalities, and the boundaries between one and another can be increased or reduced in rigidity according to will, in fact they may be temporarily removed so completely that, for the time being, the two personalities become merged into one.

THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE
THOMAS TROWARD
(1909)


The practitioner should have firmly fixed in mind the fact that there is but one mind and but one expression of this one mind although it fills all space with its numberless manifestations. This awareness removes the line of demarcation between patient and healer.

If one hopes to be of any help to a patient one must not give treatment for disease. That would surely intensify the disease! In giving a spiritual treatment the practitioner should utterly dismiss all thoughts of disease and of personality from the mind. To hold the thought on disease would mean MORE disease. Rather the healer should mentally see Life whole, free, at peace and in harmony through the power of the Radiant Christ within.

... Thought is unbelievably fast in its transmission and can span the earth instantly; and it does not lose any of its power in the transmission! In giving an absent treatment the healer should be positive that the thought sent forth reaches the recipient now and with infinite power.

In the Absolute the ONLY time there is the eternal now. To it there is no past; nor is there any future. To it there is only the present. if the practitioner holds the thought that the patient "will be all right," it will always be "will be" for the patient because the healer is postponing the healing until some future time, and there is no future known to the Spirit, as I have said. Did Jesus ever say to any of those who were healed by Him: "You will be healed. Arise and go"? No, not ever. Always He spoke to them in the present tense; always He told them something to this effect: "You ARE WHOLE! Go in Peace!"
HOW TO LIVE LIFE AND LOVE IT
Genevieve Behrend

Thomas Troward on INTUITION and the SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND

Thomas Troward (1847-1916) was an English author whose works influenced the New Thought Movement and mystic Christianity. Troward was a divisional Judge in British-administered India. He advocated the study of comparative religion. Influences on his thinking, as well as his later writing, included the teachings of Christ, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
His work on mental science and religion contributed to the philosophy of Ernest Holmes who founded Religious Science. Of Troward, Holmes said: "This is as near to my own thoughts as I shall ever come".

http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2010/12/reading-emerson-is-like-drinking-water.html

INTUITION The importance of understanding and following the intuition cannot be exaggerated, but I candidly admit the great practical difficulty of keeping the happy mean between the disregard of the interior voice and allowing ourselves to be run away with by groundless fancies. The best guide is the knowledge that comes of personal experience which gradually leads to the acquisition of a sort of inward sense of touch that enables us to distinguish the true from the false, and which appears to grow with the sincere desire for truth and with the recognition of the spirit as its source. The only general principles the writer can deduce from his own experience are that when, in spite of all appearances pointing in the direction of a certain line of conduct, there is still a persistent feeling that it should not be followed, in the majority of instances it will be found that the argument of the objective mind, however correct on the facts objectively known, was deficient from ignorance of facts which could not be objectively known at the time, but which were known to the intuitive faculty. Another principle is that our very first impression of feeling on any subject is generally correct. ...IN TOUCH WITH SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND. For the purpose, then, of getting into touch with our subconscious mind we must endeavour to think of ourselves as pure being, as that entity which interiorly supports the outward manifestation, and doing so we shall realize that the essential quality of pure being must be good. It is in itself pure Life, and as such cannot desire anything detrimental to pure Life under whatever form manifested. Consequently the purer our intentions the more readily we shall place ourself en rapport with our subjective entity; and a fortiori the same applies to that Greater Sub-conscious Mind of which our individual subjective mind is a particular manifestation.
In actual practice the process consists in first forming a clear conception in the objective mind of the idea we wish to convey to the subjective mind: then, when this has been firmly grasped, endeavour to lose sight of all other facts connected with the external personality except the one in question, and then mentally address the subjective mind as though it were an independent entity and impress upon it what you want it to do or to believe.
Everyone must formulate his own way of working, but one method, which is both simple and effective is to say to the subjective mind, "This is what I want you to do; you will now step into my place and do it, bringing all your powers and intelligence to bear, and considering yourself to be none other than myself." Having done this return to the realization of your own objective personality and leave the subjective mind to perform its task in full confidence that, by the law of its nature, it will do so if not hindered by a repetition of contrary messages from the objective mind.
This is not a mere fancy but a truth daily proved by the experience of increasing numbers. The facts have not been fabricated to fit the theory, but the theory has been built up by careful observation of the facts; and since it has been shown both by theory and practice that such is the law of the relation between subjective and objective mind, we find ourselves face to face with a very momentous question.THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCETHOMAS TROWARD
(1909)

Cause and Effect

Scientific PrayerThe Principle Underlying Scientific Prayer
In prayer for a change in condition, physical, mental, or financial, for yourself or another, bear in mind that the fundamental necessity for the answer to prayer is the understanding of the scientific statement:

“Ask, believing you have already received, And you shall receive”

This is not as difficult as it appears on the surface, once you realize that: Everything has, its origin in the mind, and that which you seek outwardly, you already possess.

No one can think a thought in the future.

Your thought of a thing constitutes its origin.

THEREFORE:
The Thought Form of the Thing is already Yours As soon as you think it.

Your steady recognition of this Thought Possession causes the thought to concentrate, to condense, to project itself, and to assume physical form.

If you plant an ACORN, you get an OAK.
If you sow a GRAIN OF CORN, you reap a stalk and MANY kernels of corn.

You always get the manifestation of that which you consciously or unconsciously AFFIRM and CLAIM, habitually declare and expect, or, in other words, “AS YOU SOW.”

Therefore, sow the seeds of—
I AM. . .I OUGHT TO DO. . .I CAN DO... I WILL DO.
Realize:
—that because you ARE you OUGHT to do;
—that because you OUGHT to, you CAN do;
—that because you CAN do, you DO do.

The manifestation of this Truth, even in a small degree, gives you the undisputable understanding that DOMINION IS YOUR CHARTER RIGHT.

You are an heir of First Cause, endowed with all the power He has.

God has given you everything. ALL is yours, and you know that all you have to do is to reach out your mental hand and take it.

This Formula may serve as a pattern to shape your own Prayer or Affirmation into God for the benefit of another or yourself.



Troward tells us that the great lesson he learned from the airplane and wireless telegraphy is the triumph of principle over precedent, the working out of an idea to its logical conclusion in spite of accumulated contrary testimony of all past experience.
Your Invisible Power
by GENEVIEVE BEHREND
1921


“My mind is a center of Divine operation. The Divine operation is always for expansion and fuller expression, and this means the production of something beyond what has gone before, something entirely new, not included in the past experience, though proceeding out of it by an orderly sequence or growth. Therefore, since the Divine cannot change its inherent nature, it must operate in the same manner with me; consequently, in my own special world, of which I am the center, it will move forward to produce new conditions, always in advance of any that have gone before.”
THE DORE LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE[1909]
by Thomas Troward

Genevieve Behrend was the only personal student of Thomas Troward.

Mental Science is not a "get-rich-quick scheme,"

neither does it promise something for nothing. It does, however, promise the one who will comply with its teaching that he shall be able to bring into his life and experience greater possibilities and happier conditions.
I was listening to an old show of Unity-FM on the weekend. Someone mentioned the "Something for Nothing" course, Infomercials etc. I thought this quote of Holmes rather amusing.
On the same show someone mentioned praying to meet your Twin Soul/Soul mate who is then the one that pushes your buttons. That's the wrong idea. There are so many couples that don't push each others buttons. Besides its about your connection to spirit, not theirs. I heard a psychologist mention that thinking there is only one person in the world for you isn't healthy or wise. You've limited yourself. Love means letting go of fear. If someone pushes your buttons maybe there is someone else that won't.

The dream of the "perfect partner" is an attempt to find EXTERNAL integration, while retaining conflicting needs in the self.(URtext)

The Ancients used to teach their pupils to say to themselves
—"Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful me!"—
There is but One Mind.

Here is the point: everything we experience, touch, taste, handle and smell; environment, bodies, conditions, money, happiness, friends; all are effects.
"Instinctive Man within me is perfect and yet I appear to be imperfect. My apparent imperfection must be the result of an imperfect thinking; in reality I am, and always have been, perfect. I will now begin to think differently about myself and see what happens.""God made me perfect but He also made me an individual, which means that I can do with myself as I will. I cannot really destroy my body but I can make it most uncomfortable. Since God made me and made me perfect, each one of the organs of my body represents a perfect idea.""I am perfect, no matter what the appearance may be."Excerpts from:THE SCIENCE OF MIND (1926) BY ERNEST S. HOLMESHolmes started Religious Science. He quotes Emma Curtis Hopkins and Judge Thomas Troward. Troward wrote "Mental Science" around 1900 based on the New Testament and his understanding of Metaphysics from his time in India. Troward had the unique distinction of answering all the Metaphysical questions on his entrance exam based on meditating on the question because he couldn't study for the metaphysical part of it and passed(Some of his answers apparently were quite unique). Troward said similar things to Quimby as New Thought and Mental Science were seemingly similar.

Master Teachers

Students of ACIM would appreciate the works of Phineas Quimby, Thomas Troward, Emma Curtis Hopkins and Julius or Horatio Dresser.
Beauty I'd always missed with these eyes before.
Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore.
Thomas Troward was the father of Mental Science. His books and lectures from the early 1900's are insightful. I find him reminiscent of Kenneth Wapnick discussing A Course in Miracles. The Dressers were great at putting all the pieces and summarizing Mental Science. Emma Curtis Hopkins writes with heart and conviction as she speaks of the "Science of Truth". She truly was the "Teacher of Teachers" in it's every day practical applications.
Gazing at people, some hand in hand,
Just what I'm going through they can't understand.
Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend,
Just what you want to be, you will be in the end.
New Age stuff, no. Really new age stuff. What they taught was the power within and how to harness it. How to see the Good in all and make the world a little Lighter. Those with an internal frame of reference, such as myself, will resonate to it. Those with an external frame of reference will seek outside themselves. The lure of much of the New Age.

Cold hearted orb
That rules the night
Removes the colours
From our sight
Red is gray and
Yellow white
But we decide
Which is right
And
Which is an Illusion