A Synthesis of Several Traditions

Ernest Holmes first published The Science of Mind in 1926, drawing together several strands he had encountered across a broad reading life: New England Transcendentalism, Christian Science's teaching on the primacy of mind over material circumstance, comparative material on Hinduism and other world religions, and the wider New Thought movement that had grown since the nineteenth century out of the mental healing practice of Phineas Quimby. Rather than presenting this synthesis as a devotional scripture in the traditional sense, Holmes wrote it as a systematic textbook, organized into a philosophy section, a section on faith, and a practical treatment section, meant to be studied and applied rather than simply read. Its central teaching holds that a single universal creative Mind, sometimes described as Law, underlies all experience, and that an individual's own thought and belief engage and direct that Mind, expressed practically through a structured contemplative practice Holmes called spiritual mind treatment, intended to change circumstances by first changing the thought held about them. Holmes described the practice as working through a definite, structured sequence of recognition, unification, realization, thanksgiving and release, presenting spiritual mind treatment as a repeatable technique rather than as an occasional devotional exercise.