Sacred Texts: New Thought

Creative Mind and Success: Part I: Mental Equivalents

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

*Creative Mind and Success* (1919) is a short New Thought self-help essay by Ernest Holmes, the founder of Religious Science. Its central argument is that external circumstances are determined entirely by internal mental states: a person can only attract or manifest what they have first formed as a clear mental concept, which Holmes calls a "mental equivalent." Using a loose theological frame — citing Jesus on prayer as an example — Holmes equates prayer with the act of mentally accepting a desired outcome before it materializes. The essay instructs readers to consciously cultivate specific inner images of success, activity, and abundance through daily affirmation and meditation, while actively rejecting habitual thoughts of fear, poverty, and limitation. A notably distinctive claim is that there is only one power at work in the universe (not two competing forces of good and evil), so no external condition needs to be "overcome" — change flows outward from mind to circumstance, never the reverse. The practical advice is concrete if formulaic: sit quietly, declare oneself a "center of Divine attraction," visualize plenty, and trust a universal "Law" to deliver results.

Creative Mind and Success: Part I: Mental Equivalents

Related pages View as graph →