Dream Align Rewire

New Thought · 1887-1960

Ernest Holmes

Ernest Holmes founded Religious Science and wrote 'The Science of Mind.' He systematised mental and spiritual laws into a comprehensive philosophy, teaching that thought is creative and that understanding one's divine nature unlocks unlimited potential.

About Ernest Holmes

Who was Ernest Holmes?

Ernest Shurtleff Holmes was born in 1887 in rural Maine, the youngest of nine children. Largely self-educated, he read voraciously in Emerson, Troward, Quimby, and the emerging field of psychology before moving to California as a young man. He founded the Institute of Religious Science in Los Angeles in 1927 and built it into one of the most systematically developed metaphysical movements of the twentieth century, eventually becoming Religious Science International.

His magnum opus, 'The Science of Mind,' published in 1926 and revised in 1938, is the most comprehensive attempt in the New Thought tradition to systematise spiritual and mental law into a single coherent philosophy. Holmes drew from a remarkable range of sources - Eastern Vedanta, Christian mysticism, Troward's mental science, Emerson's Transcendentalism, and the early psychology of William James - and synthesised them into what he called a science of consciousness.

His central practice was the 'treatment' - a specific form of affirmative prayer in which the practitioner declares the desired condition to be spiritually true now, reasons through the logic of why it must be so, and releases the outcome in complete confidence. This is not petition but declaration. Holmes distinguished his approach from supplication by insisting that the practitioner is not asking a power outside themselves to act but recognising a power already present within universal mind.

From the DAR perspective, the treatment maps directly onto what CBT calls a behavioural experiment: acting from the assumption that the desired state is already real in order to generate the evidence and neurological patterns that confirm it. Holmes systematised what his predecessors had described intuitively. The 'Science of Mind' reads as a proto-cognitive textbook - a rigorous mapping of the relationship between belief, feeling, and manifested condition that anticipates the cognitive model by several decades. His influence on Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer, and the broader self-help tradition of the late twentieth century is foundational.

The Dream.Align.Rewire Perspective

The neuroscience behind Holmes's teaching

Holmes' 'treatment' - his term for affirmative prayer - is structurally identical to a CBT technique called a behavioural experiment: acting 'as if' the desired state were already true in order to gather evidence that it is. He systematised New Thought into something that reads like a proto-cognitive model. The Science of Mind is essentially a comprehensive manual for belief change, written before the field of cognitive science existed.

Who This Is For

You'll get the most from Holmes's work if…

  • ✓You want the most systematically complete New Thought framework ever written
  • ✓You have a background in psychology, philosophy, or coaching and want the metaphysical predecessor to CBT
  • ✓You are interested in affirmative prayer as a structured belief-change practice rather than a religious ritual
  • ✓You have studied multiple New Thought teachers and want to see their ideas synthesised in one rigorous place
  • ✓You find inspiration insufficient and want a philosophical framework with enough rigour to build a practice on
  • ✓You want to understand what 'treatment' means as a technical practice, not just a spiritual declaration

The Works

Holmes's classic works

Creative Mind

First published 1919

Holmes' first book, written during the Spanish flu pandemic and published in 1919, presenting the foundational philosophy of mind as the primary creative power in accessible, elegant form. Significantly shorter than The Science of Mind, it serves as the clearest entry point into his system for new readers.

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Creative Mind and Success

First published 1922

The companion volume to Creative Mind, applying Holmes' foundational philosophy specifically to business, career, and material achievement. Structured as short, two-to-three-page sections designed for daily contemplation and practical application - each one self-contained and immediately actionable.

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The Science of Mind

First published 1926

Holmes' comprehensive systematisation of spiritual and mental laws, presenting a complete philosophy of mind and a practical methodology for belief change. His 'treatment' technique - affirmative rather than petitionary prayer - is structurally identical to the CBT technique of behavioural experiments.

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The Annotated Edition

Read the original - with Christie's annotations

Written under Lesley Christie's pen name Christie L. Russell, the annotated edition of Ernest Holmes's key works adds the neuroscience, NLP, and CBT commentary that places each passage in its modern context - making century-old wisdom immediately actionable.

Annotated edition - coming soonJoin the list to be notified when it publishes.

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Questions Answered

Questions about Ernest Holmes

Was Ernest Holmes formally trained in theology or psychology?+
Neither. Holmes was almost entirely self-educated. He grew up in rural Maine in a farming family, left school early, and educated himself in public libraries. His intellectual formation came from reading Emerson, Thomas Troward, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, and the early psychology of William James - none of whom he studied formally. He moved to California as a young man with his brother Fenwicke, took a job as city purchasing agent and playground director for Venice, California, and used his light administrative duties to read philosophy in his office. His only formal teacher was Emma Curtis Hopkins, whom he studied under in New York in 1924. The absence of formal academic credentials was a recurring criticism from mainline religious institutions, but it also gave Holmes complete freedom to synthesise across traditions without the constraints of institutional orthodoxy.
How did Holmes' meeting with Emma Curtis Hopkins change The Science of Mind?+
Holmes had been developing a dry, mechanistic model of mind - useful and systematic, but somewhat cold. Hopkins, who had been Mary Baker Eddy's editor and then built her own independent New Thought teaching network as the 'Teacher of Teachers,' brought a mystical warmth and genuine spiritual interiority that Holmes found transformative. After studying with her in 1924, he moved away from the machine metaphor of mind-as-engine and toward the living, relational engagement with Universal Mind that characterises the final version of The Science of Mind. The difference is palpable in the text: the 1926 version - produced after Hopkins - has a depth of spiritual feeling that a purely mechanical model could not sustain. Hopkins is underacknowledged as a shaping influence on the most systematically significant New Thought textbook of the twentieth century.
Is Religious Science the same as Christian Science?+
No, and Holmes was clear that they were distinct. Christian Science, founded by Mary Baker Eddy, maintains doctrinal authority structures, a specific creedal theology, and a church hierarchy with an authorised scripture (Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures). Religious Science - which Holmes founded as the Institute of Religious Science in 1927 - has no creed, no authorised scripture beyond The Science of Mind as a teaching text, and no requirement for Christian belief or any other specific theological position. Holmes explicitly described his work as a science of consciousness applicable to people of any religious background or none. The institutional structure, the theological content, and the relationship to conventional Christianity are all fundamentally different.

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