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I
first encountered New Thought, though I didn’t know
it by that term, almost twenty years ago during a particularly
depressing period of my life. A friend gave me some
audio tapes that were intended to pick up my spirits.
I listened to them repeatedly during my daily walks
to my university classes and gradually integrated into
my psyche the ideas presented. Among many other things,
the tapes taught me that the only limits are the ones
I impose on myself and that my inner thoughts play an
integral role in my outer experience. As it dawned on
me that I alone was responsible for my moods, my despondency
began to lift. In time, I became aware that my daily
regimen was strengthening and healing both my soul and
body.
At that point I had been on what I called My Quest
for several years. Consumed with finding the truth about
God, I enrolled in a philosophy class called “Faith
and Reason,” an exploration of the philosophical arguments
for and against the existence of God. I had no inkling
of the chaos this choice would produce in my soul.
Having difficulty early in the quarter with an assigned
paper, I arranged to speak to my professor. To my comment
concerning a belief in God he incredulously responded,
“You still believe in God? Why?” I was not sure what
to say. I went home and began to think. I had often
questioned the truth of different religious denominations
but had never questioned the truth of God. Why? I suppose
it was because I grew up with God. There was never a
time that I wasn’t exposed to the truth of the existence
of God. I realized the importance of questioning this
belief. In fact, it was imperative that I question where
this belief came from and why I believed. At that point
I made the philosophically-skeptical move of suspending
all my beliefs about God.
I truly no longer knew if there was a God, but, as do
all rigorous skeptics, I continued to question. I spent
about a month in this skeptical place, searching my
soul, my mind and my memory. I remembered incidents
from the distant past—-times when I felt I had received
answers to my prayers and more recently, when I believed
that God had carried me because I hadn’t had strength
of my own to sustain me. I decided that yes, there is
a God, but I realized that I no longer had a belief
as to exactly what God is. I could no longer accept
a God who set up a narrow way that few are able to find,
as the Bible says and as many religions teach, and then
sentences to hell, purgatory or a lower kingdom of heaven
those who do not find it. I could not accept a vengeful,
angry God so easily hurt by his children’s mistakes
(sins) that he would punish them with everlasting damnation.
I could, however, accept a loving God who cares about
his children, and gently guides them, talks to them,
listens to them, and provides for their needs. A God
who would joyously welcome them back into its presence.
It was clear that this God was not the God taught in
the various Christian churches I had attended. As I
no longer felt connected to the people or the teachings
of the church I had been attending, I was for the first
time in my life without a church and a religion. But
I did have God. I put church behind me and withdrew
into my college studies.
I spent the next 18 months or so focusing on school,
my social relationships, my children, and my psyche.
As I processed what I believed about God and organized
religion, I became increasingly convinced that somehow
God and humanity are integrally connected. My quest
then became one of finding the truth about that connection.
During this time a college friend invited me to visit
his church, and I accepted. I went with him a few times,
but while I enjoyed the messages, the service as a whole
lacked the spirit and life I had felt at the evangelical
churches I had attended. During one service the guest
speaker, a minister at our city’s sole African-American
Baptist church, invited the congregation to visit. My
friend and I accepted that offer, and, along with my
daughter, found ourselves the only white people in attendance.
It was just like I had seen in the movies —-lots of
beautiful voices joyfully singing songs of praise to
Jesus and audience participation by way of numerous
shouts of “Amen, brother!” Though I enjoyed the service,
I felt like an outsider and could not see myself attending
on a regular basis. I again felt a familiar disillusionment,
and so once more I put church into the back of my mind.
It wasn’t long, though, before the song of the Eternal
Voice that Ernest Holmes speaks of began echoing loudly
through my being. My spiritual life again became my
priority.
It was now 1990. In the midst of completing a degree
in philosophy I had a wide range of classes from which
to pick. I have no memory of what prompted me to sign
up for a class on Taoism. In retrospect, I credit inspiration,
for the resonance I felt with this philosophy stimulated
me to continue my quest for God, eventually leading
me to New Thought.
I began questioning again and was consumed with knowing
the truth about God and about my relationship to God.
Is there a God? If so, is God a He, a She, or an It?
the Universe, an energy, or The Force of Star Wars?
Is there more than one God? Is God personal or impersonal?
What are the characteristics of God? Does God care about
me, about the people of our world, about the world itself?
If so, how can He/She/It allow such horrible things
to take place? If God created everything that exists
and God is Love, then how can evil exist? Who was I?
How did I fit into the scheme of things? Was I a child
of God, in the sense that God is my Father in Heaven?
Was I just one of God’s myriad creations, one of the
ten thousand things, as taught in Taoism, or did I evolve
from lower forms as Darwin thought?
Being without a church or support group for a couple
of years had been acceptable, but sometime during the
summer of 1990, I became aware that a listlessness had
been building for some time and determined it was a
symptom of an inner emptiness. There seemed to be a
spiritual hole in me that badly needed filling. At times
I missed the spirit and the atmosphere of my previous
church, but as I no longer accepted their fundamentalist
teachings, I knew that I would not feel comfortable
attending.
So, I decided to go church shopping. Because of the
radical changes I had made in my beliefs, I was certain
that no traditional Christian church would fill my needs.
I also was fairly certain I would not find a church
that taught Taoism but hoped to find something I could
resonate with in some way. I got out the Yellow Pages
and began looking through the listings. I ran across
the name of a church I had never heard of before—-the
Church of Religious Science—-and called the number listed.
I asked the man who answered if the church was a Christian
church and what they believed. I became progressively
excited as he answered my many questions, for he described
exactly what I, through my many studies, had come to
believe. I had again encountered New Thought.
Over the next twelve years I attended several different
New Thought churches on a regular basis and read numerous
books of a New Thought bent. After studying these numerous
works and attending classes at one of the churches,
I became increasingly interested in the origin of New
Thought’s various principles. To my mind, a church needs
to be based on some sort of authority. The New Thought
churches I attended were not Christian per se, though
they talked about God and Jesus. But it was a different
kind of God and a different Jesus than had been taught
to me in the Bible-based churches I had attended in
the past. Since the theology of New Thought, if it can
be called such, was so different than that of these
mainstream churches, I wondered on what authority they
based their beliefs. It felt like truth. It felt good
in my head and in my heart. Still, I needed to know
from where and from whom these ideas came.
I could readily see that some of their teachings were
of a Christian bent, and I recognized from my college
years that many New Thought ideas parallel the views
of various Western philosophers, both ancient and modern.
Having written my Master’s thesis on Taoism and Zen
Buddhism, I also recognized that New Thought contains
some Eastern ideas. The origins of some principles of
New Thought were unknown to me, though, and after launching
my search, I discovered them in various Western philosophies
and in the one major Eastern philosophy I had not yet
studied—-Hinduism. I found some in the pioneering work
of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby in the field of mental healing.
Most surprising of all, I found that many were actually
Bible-based.
Inasmuch as all of these philosophies are old—-Hinduism
being as old as twelve thousand years—-New Thought definitely
is not new. So why is it called New Thought? The search
for the answer to that question took me to nineteenth
century American history, specifically to the history
of New England, and the beginnings of a movement known
as Transcendentalism, the first American philosophy.
While the term Transcendentalism is unfamiliar to most,
many recognize the names of the two most famous transcendentalists—-Ralph
Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Even if one doesn’t
know that it was Thoreau who said it, the notion of
marching to the beat of a different drummer is likely
a familiar one.
Transcendentalism played a huge role in the development
of New Thought, especially the forms known as Unity
and Religious Science, whose founders were profoundly
influenced by Emerson. My years of research also turned
up connections with Idealism, a philosophy espoused
by such notable minds as Plato, Socrates, Pythagorus,
Rene Descartes, and many others who are generally unknown
outside of philosophical circles.
One of the first New Thought writers, Warren Felt Evans,
refers to many other philosophers, mystics and esoteric
philosophies in his writings. Ernest Holmes, founder
of Religious Science, and Charles Fillmore, cofounder
of Unity, the two largest New Thought groups in existence
today, consider their philosophies to be syntheses of
the many truths contained in the world’s philosophies.
All the many minds of these various philosophies espouse
what the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz calls
philosophia perennis—-the perennial philosophy—-which,
according to Aldous Huxley, is immemorial and universal.
He defines the perennial philosophy as
the
metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial
to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology
that finds in the soul something similar to, or even
identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places
man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and
transcendent Ground of all being. The Perennial Philosophy
is primarily concerned with the one, divine Reality
substantial to the manifold world of things and lives
and minds. But the nature of this one Reality is such
that it cannot be directly and immediately apprehended
except by those who have chosen to fulfill certain
conditions, making themselves loving, pure in heart,
and poor in spirit.
The
teachings of the many minds that make up the perennial
philosophy, which I believe forms the basis of New Thought,
are studied in depth in the chapters that follow.
Chapter two discusses what New Thought is, why it is
considered to be scientific, whether or not it is Christian,
and how it got its name. Chapter three discusses the
founders of the three main New Thought groups, how these
groups came to be formed, and what they believe. The
reader who is familiar with New Thought philosophy may
wish to read chapter one, which sets out historical,
psychological and philosophical background to New Thought,
and then skip to chapter four, which should be read
before any of the later chapters. Each succeeding chapter
follows one of the roads that the founders of the New
Thought philosophy traveled in developing their philosophies.
Chapter thirteen looks at the many divine laws that
New Thought encompasses, and chapter fourteen discusses
specifically the perennial philosophy and its connection
with science and New Thought.
Inasmuch as many of the minds we visit on this journey
taught the same or very similar concepts, these concepts
are discussed in detail in the beginning but are touched
on only briefly later in our journey. This is not because
one mind is more important than another, but because
I do not wish to bore the reader with repetitive themes.
The writing of this book entailed massive amounts of
research. I undertook this endeavor for my own knowledge
and interest, and have not followed the commonly-accepted
practice of using endnotes, mainly because I find them
extremely irritating. Instead, I have noted the author
or work within the chapter text and provided a complete
bibliography of source materials at the back of this
book.
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