Chapter 11 of The Science of Mind goes into great detail about the spiritual treatments that practitioners of Religious Science are meant to administer. Such treatments have always been an important part of the church structure of Religious Science, and some Practitioners in the church have gone on to great fame - most notably Louise Hay and Marianne Williamson. I have never had such a treatement, though I really would like to experience it. I know of only one practitioner at work in Sydney, however .
According to Holmes the purpose of a treatment is to help the subject once more become a properly functioning channel of God's perfect energy. The Practitioner never actually cures anything - she merely reminds the subject of their own innate perfection. With Holmes (as with most of the schools of New Thought), God lives in us, and we live in God. Perfection, abundance and perfect health are our natural states of being, and spirituality is merely re-aligning ourselves with that perfection.
No-one can possibly be separate from the Divine, according to The Science of Mind. People may be confused, they may have forgotten their real being, but the spark remains in us always, no matter how separated we may feel.
My knowledge of conventional theology is really not sufficient to know whether or not this is all heretical, but I suspect it might be. I'd love one of my readers to enlighten me. But as a personal theology it seems deeply comforting and spiritually satisfying - and, as usual, it doesn't seem to be too far removed from Christian Science.
Cure is effected by the practitioner refusing to see bad in their subject. Holmes seems to be saying that the God that is within us can be brought back to the fore merely by being recognised and affirmed. Any other state of being is illusory.
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