Extension Study Course is an Amazing Resource!
Volume Three Assists Serious Students of Science of Mind
By Jeannette Quinn Bisbee
Do you remember the first time you fell in love with Science of Mind? Do you remember the pivotal moment when you knew the principles you were hearing about at one of your local Centers for Spiritual Living applied directly to you? Or do you remember reading the Science of Mind textbook the first time and starting to practice what Ernest Holmes was teaching you? Do you still remember when you truly and deeply accepted that you could change your thinking and that the conditions, situations, and obstacles in your life could be directly overcome by YOU working with the One Mind?
Do you remember how amazing that felt? How uplifted you felt? How miraculous life seemed?
But, have you ever arrived at a place where that first rush of understanding has gotten muddied? Have you gotten bogged down in some condition, or relationship, or illness that seems to be unchangeable? Have you ever begun to think that maybe some of those earlier successes or revelations are not quite as available to you in this moment?
Or do you live somewhere where there is no Center? Where you know no one who knows anything about Science of Mind, New Thought, metaphysical principles, or Ernest Holmes? Do you feel like you are wandering in your own ‘mental desert’ cut off from a relationship and interaction with the principles of Science of Mind?
Then I would urge you strongly to read and study the Extension Study Course in the Science of Mind now available both in print and for download through the Science of Mind Archives. This Home Study Course was first written in 1939, revised in 1953 and re-released in 1984 in a shortened and condensed version called Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life. The entire course, all four volumes, all 48 lessons are now available, but this blog is a review of the Volume Three, Lessons 25-36. And, with every volume and every lesson you, the practitioner, are being taken ever deeper and deeper into to how to truly change your thinking and change your life…..
Maybe, right now, you are saying to yourself, “Well, I guess this book doesn’t really apply to me. I’m not a practitioner.” But that is one of the first things you learn when you work your way through this Home Study Course—everyone is a practitioner. Everyone!!!! Unfortunately, for most people—they are practicing the principles in ignorance of how they work, and, thus, they are only expanding negative, unwanted, draining, demanding, and demoralizing experiences in their daily life. So this volume, this course, these teachings are for EVERYONE who wants to experience a more positive and joyous daily experience.
In his introduction to Lesson 31, Ernest Holmes says,
“With God all things are possible. Why, then, is that everyone appears to be limited? Since God is perfect, why are we imperfect; God is good, so why should evil exist? I do not think that there is any answer to these questions other than that we all are individuals with the right of choice. We are all on the pathway of self-discovery….And is it not wonderful that the discovery of God and the real self become one and the same thing, and are an intimate, personal something to each one us? While your God and my God is the same God, each approaches the Divine Presence in his own way…..” (pg. 98)
From Volume One, which looked at the spiritual principles in back of—not only the Science of Mind—but in back of all the religious and spiritual teachings from around the world, and then onto Volume Two, which began to study the skills of how one practices spiritual principles and techniques and becomes a PRACTITIONER—we move in Volume Three to the nuances, the details, and the challenges of one who is LIVING by the all of the principles. Some of those challenges are knowing the truth about disease, how to treat specific conditions, and what kinds of things can be healed, and what are the secret or hidden aspects to successful treatments. Ernest Holmes and Reginald Armor guide us in techniques and spiritual practices about treating successfully, about how to draw upon faith when it falsely appears that we have none, and how to live Science of Mind on a daily, ongoing basis.
Anyone who is a serious student of Science of Mind has probably made the commitment to read the whole Science of Mind text book and work with it each day. It might even have been a New Year’s resolution for some of us at one time. And, then, you start to work through the textbook, and it gets complicated or a little unclear—maybe you even felt like you were over your head and you have wished you had someone to talk it over with…to guide you through and help you to understand the teachings. You’ve taken classes and workshops, but you still crave MORE……
This is the MORE! Each lesson is about ten pages. It goes over a main principle. It follows up the principle with detailed questions—and, then, even more detailed answers!! The lesson has supplemental articles on related topics (some of which are so good like the ones, “Your Spiritual Bank Account” or “What Do We See in the Mirror?”), and it has meditations, sample prayers and treatments, and a wonderful comparison of some of the spiritual principles found in metaphysical texts from around the world. In Volume Three Holmes and Armor guide students to look at the metaphysical teachings found in Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Taoism, Gnosticism, and Hermes—to show that all the great religions and spiritual traditions are all talking about the same thing.
“I have a method which will work for you if you will let it. Just forget all the past. Forgive yourself and everyone else for everything that has ever happened. Try to feel that everyone is doing about the best he can. Come to realize that while you were born into this world through your parents, you really are a spirit. You really are born out of Life. The thing that entered into you when you were born was God, the living spirit. Why not get back to the true center of your being and think and act and live from the point of view that you are one with everything because you are one with God?….Go back in your thought and your imagination to this central idea: I am one with God; all people are one with God. We all live in God. When I meet others it is God in them I meet—God individualized, God personalized, God as my friend….” (pg. 63)
Here Ernest Holmes in lovely, understandable, simple, everyday language expresses the truth of what he thought Jesus was trying to show the world. And, for Ernest, Christ is not a man, or the beginning of Christianity—he is the master teacher who has so much to share with each of us about how to practice and how to LIVE our thoughts and create our human, perfect LIFE!
This book is filled with so much direct how-to material. Word has already come back to the Archives that partnerships or small groups are springing up to study these volumes as a way to really live and practice Science of Mind. We know that these will be a resource that you will return to again and again as you expand your wisdom and the daily joy of your human and spiritual life. Enjoy!
Click on the link below to purchase Volume 3:
http://www.scienceofmindarchives.org/e-store/item/1079-extension-study-course-v3-hard-copy
Click on the link below to purchase the four volume set for $120 (shipping included):
http://www.scienceofmindarchives.org/e-store/item/1081-extension-study-course-v1-4-hard-copy
Jeannette Quinn Bisbee RScP has been published in Science of Mind magazine, and was an Insight Speaker at the 2013 Asilomar Convention. Her passion is the Archives, and she contributes this blog twice monthly highlighting for readers around the world the wonderful projects and items available in the Science of Mind Archives. She is currently involved in a book project based on material from the Archives and Science of Mind magazine.