Plain-English guides to Science of Mind, New Thought, and the spiritual principles taught at the Center for Spiritual Living San Jose.
Science of Mind is a spiritual philosophy, set down by Ernest Holmes in 1926, that teaches one Divine Intelligence is present in and through everything, and that our habitual thinking shapes our experience of life. It is practiced through meditation, affirmative prayer, and study, and it welcomes people from every faith background, or none.
Affirmative prayer, also called Spiritual Mind Treatment, declares spiritual Truth instead of pleading for help. It moves through five steps: Recognition, Unification, Realization, Thanksgiving, and Release. Rather than asking a distant God to step in, it recognizes and accepts the good that Divine Presence has already provided.
No, meditation is not a sin. It is simply quieting the mind to become aware of God’s presence, a practice found in every major faith, including Christianity. In Science of Mind, sin only means missing the mark, and a practice that draws you closer to the Divine can only bless you.
New Thought is a 19th-century American spiritual philosophy, rooted in Emerson, Emma Curtis Hopkins, and Ernest Holmes, that teaches one indwelling God and the creative power of thought. The New Age movement is a broader and later collection of metaphysical practices. They overlap, but they are not the same thing.
Ernest Holmes (1887-1960) founded the Science of Mind philosophy and wrote its 1926 textbook, The Science of Mind. His central teaching, that one Divine Intelligence expresses through every person and that changed thinking produces a changed life, is still the foundation of Centers for Spiritual Living worldwide.
