Rev. Murray’s Rev. W. John Murray
ANSWERS TO STUDY QUESTIONS
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
LESSON I
1. Life is the animating Principle of the Universe, the sustaining power of Being proceeding from the Creator.
2. God is the Source of all Life.
3. Religion is the consciousness of God within the soul and its function is to bind together man and his Maker.
4. Health is wholeness, soundness; the perfect manifestation of Life and the perfect functioning of the physical.
5. Man is spirit and is an emanation from the one and only Spirit. Therefore man is spiritual and not material.
6. Mind is the functioning or distributing power of the soul. It is the master of the body and the source of creative power through thought. It is the mind that apperceives, and nothing exists for us except as apprehended by the mind.
7. We have the power through the mind and the will, directed by the soul, to accomplish or to be whatever we desire.
LESSON II
1. We do our thinking with the mind through the brain.
2. The brain is not the source of thought but the instrument of the mind.
3. The difference between man and all other creatures of the earth lies largely in the fact that man’s mind alone has the power of word-making, and that man alone expresses thought in articulare speech.
4. The theory of man’s ascent through all forms and species of animal life is unprovable because of the law confining each species to its own sphere, but particularly because Man has the Logos, or the Word.
5. Because the brain is but the instrument of the mind. Confusion of terms frequently produces the impression of brain power when mind power is meant.
6. The influence of the mind upon the body is powerful enough to cause even death, or to suspend pain that amounts to agony. Mental influence cures “hopeless” paralytics and makes giants of weaklings.
7. We can be sickly or well, strong or weak, prosperous or otherwise, according to the direction given to Thought by the mind, which always dominates matter.
8. When it is ordered by the mind acting under the direction of the soul. Whenever mind diverts thought from the soul’s purposes it becomes destructive.
9. It is within the power of each of us to use the mind so as to produce the best results possible for the realization of our desires and ambitions. The comprehension of the immense powers of mind, operating under the direction of the soul, which in turn is under the influence of Spirit, enables us to bring about the conditions we desire, providing we desire with intensity.
LESSON III
1. The discovery of the nature and functions of the subjective mind has revealed the power man has over his body and his activities through mental suggestion to the subconscious.
2. The objective mind is the mind that sees, thinks, reasons, wills and determines from facts placed before it. The subconscious or subjective mind does not reason but acts entirely on suggestion and is capable of marvelous performances under that power. All habits are formed by the subconscious mind, which is at work incessantly carrying out the orders of the objective mind.
3. “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” This truth is confirmed by a knowledge of the methods of mind operation, for all that we do and all that we are proceeds from mind, and happiness or unhappiness, peace or disorder; health or ill-health, are all results of mental states.
4. The necessity of coming to an apprehension of the truth on this subject and of putting our mental house in order are preliminaries towards beginning the work of recovery or achievement.
5. Constructive or destructive processes are determined by positive or negative thoughts and the conflict between them produces only confusion, disorder and disease, while the intelligent choice of thought produces the results we want.
6. This Lesson is a disclosure of the powers of the objective and subjective minds and a revelation of the fact that by right use of them we have the accomplishment of our dearest ambitions entirely in our own hands.
LESSON IV
1. Health and success are combined because one is the result of the other. With renewed health comes renewed mental activity.
2. You must be convinced of the fact that your healing lies within your own hands and make up your mind to do all that will be required of you to recover or achieve it.
3. Positive thoughts bring good results, negative thoughts bring evil results. To effect a change of thinking one must put one’s house in order and determine what results we wish to secure.
4. The mind is comparable to a garden and if it is overrun with weeds we must treat it as we would a garden plot similarly afflicted. The offensive weeds must be removed and the ground spaded over and replanted. We must then watch the new growths carefully and keep them free from mental pests and insects.
5. A list of positive and negative thoughts helps us to know what we have to cast out and that with which we must replace. The old thought can be made the basis of implanting the new. Here we have a chapter on practical work that we should often read and think over, as it is filled with suggestions based on experience in thousands of instances.
6. How to start well in the morning, how to make work a joy and gladness during the day and how to see what is best in your neighbor. How to spend the evening and how to acquire time for reflection and solitude, the planting and cultivating period. How to charge the subjective mind with constructive thought on retiring, the best time to instruct the subconscious mind.
7. The value of denials and affirmations and how to use both in the treatment of disease and failure, and for health and prosperity. Following this practice produces results, for it is a law.
LESSON V
1. This Lesson contains briefly the teachings of Divine Science as contrasted with the teachings of the Christian Churches of various denominations, and in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.
2. The God that we have been taught to believe in is an angry and wrathful Man-God, dwelling in the skies in a far-off heaven, with surroundings pictured by the Oriental mind of the Jewish people.
3. This is not the God that Jesus taught about, who dwells within us and who is at all times accessible to us through out consciousness.
4. The works that Jesus did we can do, for he passed the power on to us as power obtained through him with God, who “doeth the work.”
5. The age of miracles has not passed but is existing now as “miracles” of healing are wrought through the Christ consciousness in man.
6. It is necessary in order to contact with the source of Mind to use spiritual healing instead of mental healing. The mind is a part of the Universal mind and the Universal power can be attained to co-operate with, direct and guide it.
7. It is possible to all of us to add to our own powers those of Omnipotence through spiritual union and by understanding of the laws under which the Spirit operates.
LESSON VI
1. God, the source of life, is the source of health. He is the fountain of health.
2. God is apprehended more through feeling than through the mind. St. Paul’s address to the Greeks is quoted as revealing this truth and disclosing the Apostle’s knowledge of God as immanent, indwelling, Principle in all of us.
3. God is not Person but Principle. As Person He could not be omnipresent. As Principle He is the active power in and through all things.
4. The Universe is God’s thought expressed by the Word of Creation and externalized in form. It is the Idea in the Divine Mind pressed out into visibility.
5. Principle is best defined by illustrations from mathematics, music and goodness. Spiritual or metaphysical truths must be expressed in terms of human relations, and much confusion of thought results because of lack of proper words to express ideas relating to the spiritual plane. The conception of God as Father is the one generally adopted, although God is really Father-Mother.
6. An understanding of God as the source of creative energy and the Co-operator with us in expression is the proper way to view the subconscious mind.
7. No description of God is as convincing as God’s witnessing of Himself to the individual soul that seeks Him. It is in the depths of our own being that God makes Himself manifest. To attempt to define God is to lose Him.
LESSON VII
1. The Scriptural summary of Jesus’ life is: God annointed him with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.” (Acts 10:38, R.V.)
2. He began his ministry by healing and working wonders. His powers came from identity with Spirit. He spake as never man spake before because he was teaching the Divine Science to mankind.
3. Yes, as man is divine, or can become divine. Jesus developed within himself the divinity which is in all of us, and developed it to the highest point, to identity with God. In Jesus God is manifested as He is and as man ought to be.
4. To teach mankind the nature and obligations of Divine Sonship. To show us that what he did we could also do and that what he was we could be. To restore to man his spiritual inheritance.
5. It is of the highest importance that we realize Jesus as man, even as ourselves; otherwise we lose the point of his teaching. What he asked of us was perfection, and his life was an example of a perfection to which we may attain.
6. It is to permeate the world. It is certain of world adoption, not by old methods, but by world penetration. It will reconstruct civilization, revolutionize educational systems and clear the way to every man for his spiritual emancipation.
7. Jesus was not the victim of hallucinations or a visionary. His sanity is attested in all his words, his actions and his philosophy. To say otherwise is to attribute the highest thought of which man is capable to the possessor of a deranged mind, which, logically, is a fallacy.
LESSON VIII
1. See Scriptural quotation at end of first paragraph of this Lesson (VIII).
2. The healings of Jesus were not miracles in the sense that they were a suspension of Nature’s laws, but were the result of the application of the knowledge that Jesus had as the Christ in his union with the Father, God. “The words I speak are not of myself”; he said, “it is the Father who dwelleth in me. He doeth the works.” “It is the Father. He doeth the works.”
3. The churches threw away the key to this control through the Christ consciousness of the higher laws which Jesus gave us access to. A recognition of the fact that they were effected through spiritual means in union with the Father recaptures the Truth in the teachings of Jesus.
4. The spiritual means are faith, purity of life and a development of spiritual powers within us not exercised by us. Jesus gave us his word that “the works that I do ye shall do, and even greater than these shall ye do.”
5. Jesus healed people not only of their diseases but of their sins. To “save” means to heal. This is what is meant when it is said that Jesus came to save us from our sins. We have power through the Christ consciousness to heal ourselves and to heal others. It is not too much to say that we should regard Jesus as the Healer rather than as the Saviour.
6. The belief that sickness or disease is sent by God as a punishment for our sins, or as a discipline for our souls, is totally erroneous, since sickness and disease do not come from God but from ourselves. Jesus, in healing disease, would not set aside the operation of the will of God or of his discipline.
7. The promises of Jesus are of as much force and importance today as they ever were and can be relied on to the uttermost, since he declared that his word should never pass away.
LESSON IX
1. Final analysis of what we call “matter” reduces it to the atom and in more minute reductions we come to pure force or energy, the manifestation of Spirit.
2. The word that we should use for “matter” is form, shape or appearance. As for instance: “That appearance which we call matter.” All forms are visible to us through the optic nerves telegraphing to the mind’s eye, which is our real visual power.
3. Intuition, presentiments of things happening or about to happen, foreseeing and foreknowing, telepathy, visions of things happening at a distance, revelation through apparitions and the power of projecting itself beyond the physical plane and time and space as we know them.
4. The soul is the ego, or man; the individual. The body is its visible manifestation created so as to give it visibility. The soul has the creative power of Spirit and makes the body for itself here as it will make a form for itself hereafter.
5. The soul is the man; the body the physical appearance; the spirit the divinity within man. Soul and mind are interconvertible terms meaning the same thing. Spirit is God and our spirit is God manifesting Himself in us.
6. By the violent and lawless operation of the soul in turning away from the direction of Spirit and following the carnal impulses of the senses. By failure to realize Truth, the “Truth that sets us free.” To follow Truth is to live in the kingdom of heaven, and it is this we pray for when we say: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
LESSON X
1. Faith is implicit belief. It is the indestructible confidence in a power that is higher than ourselves, a Power that directs our affairs, comforts us and protects us. St. Paul’s definition of faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
2. Because it proceeds from the heart, and God, knowing the heart in all its movements, rewards it. Because it is faith in the unseen. By faith we call into existence our strongest forces and the greater our faith the more do we intensify them.
3. The essence of faith is to believe that the thing we desire and ask for is the thing we have already received. It is in existence, and our belief in its being, combined with fervent prayer, brings it into objective reality.
4. By holding in mind a picture of what we pray for, and by the prayer of a living faith, we are certain of an answer to our desires. Generally what we want is at our hand if we could open our eyes to see it, and prayer, inspired by faith, opens the eyes.
5. Faith is a most intense form of mental action, a union of the intellectual and the emotional. It is a means of unifying all our powers. It was what Jesus required, above all, from those whom he healed, and the quality that he set forth as a basis of power.
6. Conscious faith, because it is a union of heart, soul and intellect–all that we have–in a confession of unquestioning loyalty to the Father of all.
LESSON XI
1. The importance of this Lesson lies in the opening of the mind to the meaning and power of the spoken word.
2. All the messages of God to men have been expressed in words by a Voice speaking and the term “Word” has a mystic significance as the instrument of the Creator in uttering thought into form.
3. Christ is the “Word,” St. John declares, by which all things were made, who was with God in the beginning, and who was God, “and without him nothing was made.”
4. The capacity of man to share creative power with the Creator is manifest in his sole power, with God, to create by the expression of the word.
5. That we are to be held accountable for every idle word is a declaration to be taken with the utmost seriousness, for not only does our brain mechanism record words and our subsconscious mind retain them, but it would seem as if the very ether held them forever–that they are imperishable.
6. The word we most frequently use is the name of God as given to Moses: ‘I AM.” I-Am is especially a word of power in creating conditions of existence.
7. The value of the word of affirmation is that consciously spoken in appreciation of Divine co-operation we can bring about all the conditions that are necessary to our happiness and welfare.
8. Affirmative declarations for the morning, the day and the night consecrate the thoughts that we hold and the works that we do.
9. We cannot be too careful in the use of our words, for our accountability for them is a positive declaration of the Lord Christ.
LESSON XII
1. The old method of prayer, by recitation of set forms of prayer, conflicts with the true conception of prayer, because of its “vain repetitions” and “much speaking.”
2. Prayer is an opening of the mind upward to receive what God is willing to give. It is a natural instinct of the soul and it is a part of the Divine plan that we should find relief in it.
3. The true form of prayer is Contemplation, in which we meditate upon what we are, upon the Omnipresence and Omnipotence of God, on what we need to aspire to, and upon God’s promises to those who seek Him in this manner.
4. We can be certain of God’s co-operation because, after adopting the practice of meditation, we discover the entrance into our lives and affairs of many new things and we gain a new consciousness for ourselves.
5. The practice of silent prayer, or meditation, brings a new state of mind because it involves the elimination of carnal thoughts and conceptions and the adoption of Truth in the form in which it is most adaptable to our disposition and which will bring us the largest rewards.
6. To physical exercises or athletic training. Our long-used spiritual faculties respond to meditation on Truth in just the same manner that the muscles and sinews of the body respond to physical exercise.
7. That too much emphasis is laid on that power so far as Meditation is concerned. Concentration may be developed in the Silence, but we are not to refrain from taking up the practice of the Silence because of a belief that we cannot concentrate.
8. It is a test of the spiritually-minded and to adopt this method of prayer is to enter upon the Way.
LESSON XIII
1. The word “consciousness.”
2. Fear consciousness, poverty consciousness, disease consciousness, etc.
3. A war consciousness, a spirit consciousness, a political consciousness, etc., the state of mind that constitutes what we know as “public opinion” is a public consciousness of certain important facts.
4. This is a personal matter to be best answered by the student himself.
5. This is to briefly review the points enumerated in the Lesson.
6. No, we can reach the heights only through the union of our mind with the Divine Mind. The more perfect the will in that direction the more close the union is likely to be.
7. It is that all of life that I have lived so far culminates at this moment. The past is dead and the future is determined now. I am now in the Way to begin.
The Murray Course in Divine Science
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