Product Description

More than ever, people the world over are making a conscious attempt to find meaning in their lives. The excessive materialism of the late 20th century has proven an inadequate substitute for God. As we have acquired more things, we have developed an ever-growing emptiness. Even the popular media today are telling us there is a great hunger for the inner peace that comes from prayerful communion with a higher power. Can We Talk to God? offers readers a framework for prayer that is compatible with traditional religion, yet moves beyond it in the recognition of a divine presence within each person. This book sets forth the teaching of Ernest Holmes, called Science of Mind, which is a synthesis of the greatest ideas of religion, science and philosophy. Originally published in 1934 as The Ebell Lectures on Spiritual Science, it is as fresh and profound today as it was then, offering readers answers to such important questions as:

What is the nature of God?
What is our relationship to God?
How do we communicate with God?
What is the secret of spiritual power?
Where is humanity headed?
How can a prayer be used to help ourselves and others?

Many readers wonder, "Can I talk to God?" This beautiful book answers with a resounding YES!, and shows readers the way. The method of prayer it teaches will open the door to healthier, happier living.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #204629 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 125 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781558747364
• BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
• Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

About the Author
ERNEST HOLMES (1887-1960) was the founder of the Science of Mind philosophy and movement. Ernest Holmes's teachings are based on both Eastern and Western traditions, and the empirical laws of science and metaphysics. Science of Mind is a spiritual philosophy that people throughout the world have come to know as a positive, supportive approach to life. These ancient truths have kept pace with and proven their relevancy in today's global village and its expanding technology and warp-speed changes. Author of The Science of Mind, the seminal book on his teachings, Holmes also founded the monthly periodical, Science of Mind magazine, which has been in continuous monthly publication since 1927. Through lectures, radio, television programs, tape recordings, books and magazines, Ernest Holmes has introduced millions of people to the simple principles of successful living that he called "the Science of Mind." His other works include Creative Mind, This Thing Called You, La Ciencia de la Mente, Effective Prayer, This Thing Called Life, Words That Heal Today and How to Change Your Life.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

Can We Talk to God?

Can we talk to God? We all know we can talk at God, but it is a different proposition to consider whether we can talk to God. I am considering the topic from the standpoint of communication. Unless we are conscious that we are talking to God and God is conscious that He is being talked to, we certainly cannot communicate with God. There can be no real communication without a reciprocity of ideas. Either we can talk to God or we cannot. If we cannot, we may as well realize it and no longer try, and if we can, we feel certain that a little conversation with the Deity would do us more good than much conversation with each other.

In the old order of thought, we talked at God. We felt as though our prayers ascended and hit the Divine ear, and if this were true, they must too often have hit this Divine ear with a discordant note.

In the new idea of life, we are thinking of God as a Universal Principle, Intelligence, and Power; as the essence and energy of being. We are thinking of God—or attempting to, at least—in universal terms, but it is impossible for the finite to grasp the meaning of the Infinite. The Infinite signifies that which is beyond human knowledge. We are thinking of God as a universal and infinite Being, as perfect law, the immutable law of cause and effect, and in doing this, discarding the ancient idea of a huge person in the nature of the Deity, we are undoubtedly losing something; we are losing the sense of personal contact with this invisible power, and we are liable to think of God only as law, or as an Infinite It. Now an Infinite It is a very adequate thing in certain respects, but in other respects it is very inadequate. We could not derive much comfort, pleasure or joy from talking to the principle of chemical affinity (yet we do derive a great benefit from learning that such a law exists). Neither can we hope to get much satisfaction from thinking of God only as an Infinite It.

We are intelligent; we think, know and understand, at least, something. Can we suppose that we are accidents? Can we believe that the works of William Shakespeare are the result of an explosion in a type factory?

There must be, and there is, a Universal consciousness which directly responds to our thought and is in contact with it. Not only does the human heart long for such a possibility, but the human mind comprehends, understands, senses, feels and knows it. There are moments when the individual consciousness feels itself merged with the Universal, then it knows and no longer asks for explanations. The heart longs for, the mind comprehends and the intellect needs such a contact—the influx of divine ideas stimulating the will to divine purposefulness. It is fundamental to our belief that there is a Presence in the universe with which we may consciously communicate and which will consciously respond to such communication. We hold this as fundamental to any consistent philosophy or religion, not only because we long for and actually need it, but because such a Presence is an inevitable necessity.

How can we assume that, with our finite minds, or even the united intelligence of finite minds, we comprehend all there is? How can we assume that a finite mind constitutes the only intelligence in the universe, or that there is nothing beyond our present comprehension? How can we assume that we could be, unless Being itself is a fact? Could we recognize anything unless Being itself is a fact? Could we recognize anything unless that which recognizes existed before the thing which is recognized? With what is it, then, that we recognize unless it is with some intelligence within us that is in unity with the great and final Intelligence, the Eternal Being? We have not, cannot and never shall exhaust Its totality. But we must assume that this final Being is conscious of us as part of Itself, and if this be true, it must be true that we can communicate with It. But we realize that we cannot communicate with a God external to our own nature of being, for the simple reason that we cannot know anything beyond our own knowledge. In other words, there is an Intelligence and a responsive Presence in the universe. There is a God who knows, cares, understands and responds, but only through our own nature.

We must be careful, in the transition from the old to the new, not to knock props from under us which perhaps we still need; not to rob people of their God unless we can give them a better one, for that is the most destructive thing in the world. I would rather see someone with a poor idea of Deity, than to see him or her have no concept of Deity at all, because we must all interpret God through our perception of the Divine Being. In the transition, then, let us be careful that in place of every false supposition which we once had, we shall find a divine reality which is an eternal verity. There was never any counterfeit made until after there had been a proven reality, and the idea which has been instinctive in the mind of humanity—the idea of our personal relationship to the Deity—is not there without a reason. It is a proclamation that the Deity indwells our own soul and that we are intuitively conscious of this Divine Fact.

That instinctive sense of the Divine Presence which is inherent in us all is there because it is true, and in the state of each person's intellectual capacity to perceive truth, it comes out, and to each of us becomes our God. It is forever proclaiming its own being. There is a Power and a Presence in the universe which responds to us so completely, so perfectly, that we shall be amazed when we realize how completely, and how perfectly, but it can only operate for us through us. Our communication with God must of necessity be, and always remain, an inner light; we communicate with the indwelling God.

I doubt not that there is a God beyond our finite comprehension, for the nature of God is to be universal, but it is the nature of humankind to be so constituted that we can know nothing outside the confines of our own knowledge; this is self-evident. Hence, the only God we can know is the God which we sense, and since this is an inner light, it is God in and through us. This is the only God we can know; this is the God who responds to us, and I sense that in every altruistic act, in every true charity which is love, in every expression of right emotion, that this is God-action through the individual, a direct response. And it is logical to suppose that since the nature of God is constructive, is goodness, peace, purity and love, light and wisdom, that we truly communicate with the divine only as we truly approach the nature of reality through harmony, through receptivity, peace and joy. And I can see that as our mental attitudes hinder the divine from flowing through us we do not approach God consciously; therefore we do not contact harmony subjectively, and hence we suffer objectively. This is the immutable Law of Cause and Effect.

There is something in us that longs for the sympathetic understanding, the kindly response, the sense of a presence which is warm, pulsating and colorful. We must have it, and I sense that as we meet each other in love and friendship, in the warmth of a handshake and in good fellowship, it is God. What else could it be? The hand that gives is the hand of God, and the eye that sees is the eye of God. In each other, through each other, we contact God, but God is more than this. If this were the only God there is, then the artist would have painted a picture and stepped into it, being completely lost in his own work. Now, do we say that art is greater than the artist or thought greater than the mind which conceived it? The poem is not the poet, who has breathed into, animated and created it, and it will stay, so long as his or her consciousness exists, but he or she has not stepped into it; some day he will write another and a better poem. Neither is God absorbed by law or creation.

I think that as we contact each other we are contacting a definite, direct manifestation of Deity; when we talk to each other, I think that God is talking to God; but I do not think that this is the only God there is. If it were, our finite knowledge would have exhausted the Infinite and there would be no God beyond our conversation.

We long for a conscious approach to the Infinite. It is as necessary to the nature and the intellect of humankind as food is to the well-being of our physical bodies, this Divine nourishment. What is true on one plane is true on all. Those of us who are seeking to understand the truth, and the breadth, width and depth of Science of Mind must realize that these things are possible. Of what ultimate value would a religion or philosophy be to the world which simply taught it a few laws of cause and effect, or how to heal a pain? This is good and wonderful, but unless it teaches how to live and how to be, unless it gives something which is a divine certainty of life and being, it is useless.

Prosperity is inevitable if a person's mind is right. Nothing can stop it. Healing is inevitable if a person is in harmony with life. There is nothing that can stop it. It is a law. We are to use consciously this law, but we can use it only to the degree in which our consciousness is unified with Truth. But we must not go searching after God. God is in you and in me. Therefore we each must penetrate more deeply into our own nature, and just so surely as we do, we will have a very marvelous experience. We will find a depth to ourself that we have never realized. It will be a sane, spiritual experience. We will sense a something within that we never dreamed of. We have read about it, but we never dreamed it was within us. This is where we meet God. And we are going to learn this: that we can talk to God just as consciously as we talk to people, and that if we expect it, believe it and feel it, we will receive just as direct a response. We will not receive an audible word because God's audible word is placed, in th...

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Customer Reviews

Can We Listen to God?
I remember taking this book with me to the beach one day. It was a perfectly dreary day. Fog, Haze, you name it. It really was a crappy day for the beach. At the time, I was studying to become a Religious Science Practitioner and I wanted to do some "homework" while hanging out on the beach. I began to really enjoy Ernest Holmes' writing. Not only was it inspiring and deep, it triggered within me a knowing, a feeling, a deep, inner sensing that behind his words was the Infinite Love, the Immeasureable Peace, the Inexhaustible Joy that is God Itself. This book was no exception. He made the point that most people talk "at" God. This, for a lot of people, is called praying. They express to the Divine what they want, what they need, what they would like to see appear in their lives. This is fine, but it only goes so far. It also makes it seem as though our good is separate from us. Holmes' suggests "affirmative prayer" where we are in posession of what we want, need, and desire now. Our good is not in some future place...our good is not withheld from us...affirmative prayer is to "align" our mind, our heart, and our soul with the One Mind, the One Heart, the One Soul of God Itself. We become in posession of what we desire now mentally and emotionally. This is not trying to trick the mind or deceive the mind or even hypnotize the mind. This is simply believing that what we desire is ours now. How could it be anything but? If we are able to have the thought of our good, our good is ours and must come to us, through us.

Anyway, I put the book aside and decided to meditate upon some of the words that I found particularly meaningful. I closed my eyes to all the dreariness that was the beach that day and I began to breathe in...and I began to breathe out...I got in a rhythm of my breathing with the the waves crashing up on shore. I began to mentally and emotionally sense the Presence of the One Creative Power. I began to feel the Truth behind the Bible verses, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all things will be added unto you..." and "The Kingdom of God is not here or there, it is within..." And in my mind I just knew that I was One with God; that the eye with which I see God, is the same eye with which God sees me.

After about twenty minutes of the best meditation I ever had, Iopened my eyes and all I see was Golden Light. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Everything appeared to be lit up from the inside. I told my buddy who I went to the beach with, "It sure did clear up, didn't it?" He looked at me like I had six heads, "Uhhhh...yeah, whatever, John. It's a miserable day out today..." I was astonished that he would say that. Everything looked so bright, so beautiful, so filled to overflowing with Light and then slowly my eyes adjusted and the Light disappeared from sight. The clouds, the haze, the fog took over.

I often wondered about that experience and I came to the conclusion that what I was seeing, the Golden Light, was Infinitely more real than the gray haze. We don't sense God, or feel God in our activities because we "pretend" that God isn't present. We talk "at" God rather than "to" God because we think God is too busy to concern Itself with us. But just like waves that rise up out of the ocean are manifestations of the ocean and can never be separate from their Source, we arise up out of Spirit and we are never once separate from our Good which is also our God.

God is here.
God is now.
God is speaking to you now...are you listening? I was directed to writing this review. You were directed to read it. God is here. Sense the Presence, Feel the Presence, Know the Presence and know, feel, and sense that It is right where you are.

Get this great book...get two...get three...start a study group...a prayer circle where everyone participates in affirmative prayer and expect miracles to happen, because y'know what, they will!

Peace & Blessings to all,
john, 'the Light coach'

Anybody Who Prays to God Should Read This
This book is very interesting and I feel that anyone who prays to God should read this!

Can We Talk to God?
Excellent book -- well written. Explains in easy-to-understand words how to develop a personal relationship with Spirit.