Universal Subjectivity or Cause & Effect

  I posted this in the Teachings of the Masters room at One Light Many Windows in response to a special topic during October 2009 on prayer.  This is really what I consider to be the core of Holmes' metaphysics and one of the best sections I have read in the textbook - The Science of Mind - A Philosophy, A Faith, A Way of Life, textbook by Ernest Holmes' (explaining his philosophy).  This is from Ch 21 “Some Phases of the Subjective Life”, pgs 347-356.

The Subjective Mind

Ernest Holmes taught that we have a dual aspect of mentality but that it was not two minds.  We have an objective and a subjective state of consciousness.  The objective mind is that part of the mentality which functions consciously.  It is the part of us which is self-knowing and without it we would not be self-conscious entities.  Our conscious mind is the place where we consciously live and are aware that we are living.  To him, this is Spirit.

Our subjective mind is our mental emanation in Universal Subjectivity.  It is our individual use of mental law.  We certainly do not wish to deviate from that which psychology teaches about the mind of man in its conscious, subconscious, or subjective states.  We merely wish to add this:  the reason we have a subjective mind is that Subjectivity existed in the Universe prior to our use of it; and where we use It, It forms around us a subjective personification of ourselves, which is a result of the action and the reaction of our thought.

The subjective mind is the seat of memory and contains a remembrance of everything that has ever happened to the outer man.  It also contains the family and race characteristics.  It retains these memories, in a certain sense, as mental pictures.  The subjective mind might be compared to a picture gallery, upon whose walls are hung the pictures of all the people whom the individual has ever known, and all the incidents which he has ever experienced.

Race-Suggestion

Race-suggestion is a very real thing, and each individual carries around with him (and has written into his mentality) many impressions which he never consciously thought of or experienced.  When we realize that the individual's subjectivity is his use of the One Subjective Mind, we shall see that a subjective unity is maintained between all people, and that individual mentalities who are in sympathetic vibration with each other, more or less mingle and receive suggestions from each other.  This is the meaning of mental influence, which is indeed a very real thing.

Just as each person, place or thing has a subjective atmosphere or remembrance, so each town, city or nation has its individual atmosphere.  Some towns are bustling with life and action while others seem dead.  Some are filled with a spirit of culture, while others are filled with a spirit of commerce.  This is the result of the mentalities of those who live in such places.  Just as a city has its atmosphere, so does an entire nation.  The combined thought of those who inhabit a nation creates a national consciousness which we speak of as the psychology of that people.

Subjective Mind, being Universal, the history of the race is written in the mental atmosphere of the globe on which we live.  That is, everything which has ever happened on this planet has left its imprint on the walls of time; and could we walk down their corridors and read the writings, we should be reading the race history.  This should seem simple when we realize that the vibrations of the human voice can be preserved on the receptive phonograph disc, or the sound film, and reproduced at will.  If we were to impress on of these discs, or a strip of the sound film, and lay it away for years (properly protecting it) it would still reproduce these vibrations.  It is not difficult, then, to understand how the walls of time may be hung with the pictures of human events, and how one who sees these pictures may read race history.  There is a tendency, on the part of all of us, to reproduce the accumulated subjective experiences of the human race.

Subjective Mind and Inspiration

Since the individual subjective mind is the storehouse of memory, it retains all that the eye has seen, the ear heard, or the mentality conceived.  Since it contains much that the outer man never consciously knew, and is the receptacle of much of the race knowledge through unconscious communication, it must (and does) have a knowledge that far surpasses the objective faculties.

Realizing that the subjective draws to itself everything that it is in sympathy with, we see that anyone who is sympathetically inclined toward the race, or vibrates to the race-thought, might pick up the entire race-emotion and experience and - if he were able to bring it to the surface - could consciously depict it.  Many of the world's orators, actors and writers have been able to do this, which explains why some of them have been so erratic, for they have been more or less controlled by the emotions which they have contacted.

Anyone contacting the subjective side of the race-mentality, with the ability to bring it to the surface, will have at his disposal an emotional knowledge that many lifetimes of hard study could not accumulate.  But IF ONE HAD TO SURRENDER HIS INDIVIDUALITY IN THE PROCESS, HE WOULD BETTER REMAIN IGNORANT.

There is, of course, a much deeper seat of knowledge than the subjective mind, which is the Spirit; direct contact with the Spirit is Illumination.

Mental Atmospheres

Each person has a mental atmosphere which is the result of all that he has thought, said and done, and consciously or unconsciously perceived.  The mental atmosphere is very real, and is that subtle influence which constitutes the power of personal attraction, for personal attraction has but little to do with looks.  It goes much deeper and is almost entirely subjective.  This will explain our likes and dislikes for those with whom we come in daily contact.  We meet some only to turn away without a word, while others we are at once drawn toward, and without any apparent reason.  This is the result of their mental atmosphere or thought vibration.  No matter what the lips may be saying, the inner thought outspeaks them, and the unspoken word often carries more than the spoken.

Tuning in on Thought

Thought-transference, or telepathy, is such a commonly known fact that it is not our purpose to do other than discuss it briefly.  However, there are some facts which might be overlooked unless we give them careful attention.  The main fact to emphasize is that mental telepathy would not be possible, unless there were a medium through which it could operate.  This medium is Universal Mind, and it is through this medium, or avenue, that all thought-transference, or mental telepathy, takes place.

Telepathy is the act of reading subjective thought, or of receiving conscious thought from another without audible words being spoken.  But there must be a mental tuning in, so to speak, just as there must be in radio.  We are surrounded by all sorts of vibrations and if we wish to catch any of them distinctly, we must tune in.  Even then, there is a great deal of interference and we do not always get the messages clearly.  We often get the wrong one, and sometimes many of the vibrations come together and seem to be nothing but a lot of noises, without any particular reason for being.  It is only when the instrument is properly adjusted to some individual vibration that a clear message may be received.

This is true of mental telepathy, which is the transmission of thought; the receiver must tune in.  It does not follow, however, that the sender knows that this is taking place, any more than a radio speaker knows how many are tuned in to hear his address.  In other words, one might pick up thoughts just as he picks up radio messages.  Some have the ability to tune in on thought and read it more or less accurately.  These people we call psychics, but all people are really psychic, since all have a soul or subjective mind.  What we really mean is that a psychic, or medium, is one who has the ability to objectify that which is subjective - to bring to the surface of conscious thought that which lies below the threshold of the outer mind.  The medium reads the book of remembrance and it is marvelous how far-reaching this book may be.  Whatever may have happened at any time on this plane remains within its subjective atmosphere as a memory picture of the experiences of those who have lived here.  These pictures, or vibrations, may be clearly discerned by those who can read them.

Since the Universal Subjectivity is a Unity it follows that all of these pictures exist at any and every point within It.  Consequently, we may contact at the point of our own subjective mind (which is a point in Universal Subjective Mind) every incident which has ever transpired on this planet.  We might even see a picture which was enacted two thousand years ago in some Roman area, for the atmosphere contains such pictures.

Each person in his objective state is a distinct and individualized center in Universal Mind, but in his subjective state (in his stream of consciousness, or at his rate of vibration) each is Universal, because of the Indivisibility of Mind.  Wherever and whenever any individual contacts another upon the side of life, if he is a psychic (if he objectifies subjectivity) he may see a thought form of that person, but it does not necessarily follow that he would really be seeing the person.

We need not be astonished when a psychic gives us the complete history of our family, even to reciting the things that engaged the attention of our ancestors while they were on earth.  The psychic is merely reading from the subjective remembrance.

Streams of Consciousness

Each being an individual entity in Mind is known by the name he bears, and by the vibration which he emanates; for while we are all in One Mind or Spirit, each has a separate and individualized personality.

According to the Unity of Mind, thought is everywhere present, and so long as it persists it will remain present.  What is known in one place, may be known in all places.  Time, space and obstructions are unknown to Mind and thought.  It follows, that anyone tuning into our thought, will enter into our stream of consciousness, no matter where we are and no matter where he may be.  If we still persist after the body shall have suffered physical death (and we are convinced that we shall) this law must still hold good, for past and present are one and the same in Mind.  Time is only the measure of an experience, and space, of itself, is not apart from, but is in, Mind.

A psychic can enter the stream of thought of anyone whose vibration he can mentally contact, be that person in the flesh or out of it; and since we are all psychic - all having a soul element - we are all doubtless communicating with each other to the degree that we sympathetically vibrate toward each other.  We do not all have the ability to objectify psychic impressions, and ordinarily they never come to the surface.  However, they are there just the same.  This is why we often feel uneasy in the presence of certain people, or when we mentally contact some condition and are aware of a disturbed inner feeling, without any apparent reason.

There are many normal psychics who can, while in a perfectly objective state, read people's thoughts and perform many other wonderful feats of the mind.  This is normal and no harm can come from it.  It is, indeed, one of Nature's ways of working and is most interesting.  Any psychic power which can be used while in a normal state of mind is harmless and helpful; by this we mean one that can be used while one is in a conscious state.

The Spirit of Prophecy

We have explained how it is that the psychic vision can look into the past and see what has transpired - by reason of the fact that it is dealing with a field in which there is no past, no present and no future, but merely a continuation of being.  Because this is so, any incident which has transpired in the past is an active thing in the present, unless the vibration is neutralized, when it no longer has existence anywhere.

 Just as it is true, apparently, that the incidents of the past continually rehearse themselves in the same manner that a picture hanging on the wall for the next ten thousand years (if nothing happens to it) will look just as it does now, so anyone contacting a previous incident, clairvoyantly, will see it as though it as though it were now transpiring … not past.  This is the way in which clairvoyant vision operates.  The continuation of the past, through the present, into the future, is a movement of causation passing from cause to effect; and because the movement is first set in motion in a field of Mind which is purely subjective, both cause and effect will exist at any point during the sequence of this movement.  The clairvoyant vision, then, contacting it at any point - even before the final outcome - will see the final outcome.

There is nothing fatalistic about this.  A thing can appear to be fatalistic without necessarily being so.  This we should understand, because the human mind in its ignorance has created great psychic laws for itself.  Therefore, if one has been told anything in the way of a prophecy which is negative, it should be directly refuted, because that negation exists in the realm of subjective causation … not spiritual causation.

To repeat this in a clearer way, perhaps:  Subjective Mind can deduce only; It has no power of initiative or self-choice, and is compelled by Its very nature to retain all the suggestions which It receives.  The best illustration of this is in the creative soil, in which the gardener plants his seed.  The soil does not argue nor deny, but goes to work on the seed and begins to create a plant which will represent the type of manifestation inherent, as idea, in the seed; from a cucumber seed, we get cucumbers, and from a cabbage seed, we get cabbages.  Always the law maintains the individuality of the seed as it creates the plant; never does it contradict the right of the seed to be what it really is.  Involved within the seed is the idea of the plant, as are also those lesser ideas which are to act as a medium between the seed and the plant.  Involved within the seed are both cause and effect, but the seed must first be placed within the creative soil if we wish to see the plant.  In the creative soil (or in the seed) the full and perfect idea of the plant must exist as a completed thing, else it could never be brought into manifestation.  The idea of the full-grown plant must exist somewhere in the seed and soil, if it is ever going to materialize.

This teaches us a lesson in subjectivity.  Thoughts going into the subjective are like seeds; they act through the creative medium of Mind and must have, within themselves, the full power to develop and to express; but how could they express unless they were already known to Mind?  THEY COULD NOT, so Mind must view the thought as already completed in the thing; and Mind must also contain the avenue through which the idea is to be expressed.  EVERY THOUGHT SETS THE FULFILLMENT OF ITS DESIRE IN MOTION IN MIND, AND MIND SEES THE THING AS ALREADY DONE !

Mental tendencies set in motion cast their shadows before, and a psychic often sees the complete manifestation of an idea before it has had time to materialize in the objective world.  This is what constitutes the average spirit of prophecy, for prophecy is the reading of subjective tendencies and seeing them as already accomplished facts.  The subjective mind can deduce only, but its power of logic and sequence appears to be perfect.

For illustration, suppose there is a window one mile distant; I am throwing a ball at this window and the ball is halfway to it, going at the rate of one mile a minute.  Now you come into the picture, see the ball, measure the distance, compute the speed with which the ball is passing through the air and say: “The ball is halfway to the window, it is traveling at the rate of one mile a minute and in just one half a minute the window is going to be broken by the ball passing through it”.  Let us suppose that you are the only one who sees the ball, for the rest are looking at the window, and in half a minute it is broken.  How did you prophesy that the window would be broken?  By drawing a logical conclusion from an already established premise.

A similar thing takes place when a psychic exercises the spirit of prophecy, because he is getting his own subjective contact with the condition and simply interpreting what comes to him; but this is the logical, deductive, conclusive power of his subjective thought - seeing a thing completed, by first seeing a tendency set in motion and computing the time it will take to complete it.  There are but few, however, who possess any reliable spirit of prophecy.

Note - Attached below is a clip about the Akashic Records, from the organization which preserves Edgar Cayce's work - the Association for Research and Enlightenment and it parallels and mirrors Ernest Holmes writing here.