Sunday, March 14, 2010

The Spirit in The Science of Mind



In Holmes' universe, the spirit is the energy of God that inhabits us, the energy of the Creative force that inhabits our material bodies. If we can become more and more aware of this Spirit, and follow its dictates more closely, then our lives can become more successful.
Reading these pages I am reminded, not for the first time, of the great Catholic mystics such as Teresa of Avila and Brother Lawrence, both of who made similar statements, though based in a more conventional theological understanding.
In The Science of Mind, the Spirit represents true Divinity, the very essence of God, and so must remain inexplicable and unknowable. It remains separate from the Universal Laws, which were created by God to be learned, and so to be known by us, and comprehensible to us. The Spirit remains, however, a very different thing conceptually. The Spirit's realm is that of the mystical, the intuitive. Only faith can be applied to Spirit - attempts to understand it using science and rationality are pointless.
More than the conventional use of Biblical language and the constant references to Jesus and God, it is this constant concern with the spirit that marks The Science of Mind out as a religious text, rather than purely a text of instruction. Indeed, the book is overtly, and almost entirely, mystical in its outlook, and the use of the term "Science" in its title is misleading at best. The Science of Mind has very little indeed to do with Science as we might understand that word.

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