Emotional Release · “Die to Be Reborn”
The Denials of Science
To clear the mind of fear- and limitation-thoughts by deliberately denying their reality and power, preparing a clean ground on which affirmations of truth can take hold.
Denials of Science in 4 lines: Before you affirm anything, clear the slate. Deny reality and power to error: “There is no evil; no power in fear; no sin, sickness, nor death — this has no power over me.” Once a week, sit and reason out why each denial holds for you. Aim at the fear-thought, never the self — then immediately affirm the truth.
What it is
In Emma Curtis Hopkins’s twelve-lesson system, the Denial comes before the affirmation. Lesson II teaches a set of vigorous mental denials — deliberate, spoken refusals to grant reality or power to fear, evil, lack, and sickness — used to clear and erase the contents of consciousness before truth is affirmed (Lesson III).
Her rule is blunt: “there is no use making the affirmations until we have made the denials.” The denial is the mental eraser; the affirmation is the writing. Hopkins compared the denials to wiping a slate clean so the truth can be set down without competing with old fear-thoughts.
The classic forms are stark — “There is no evil,” “There is no sin, sickness, nor death” — but their function is psychological: to withdraw belief, attention, and emotional charge from the thoughts that frighten and limit you.
The Method
From Lesson II of Scientific Christian Mental Practice (short quotes attributed; rest is faithful paraphrase):
- Deny first — always before affirming. Hopkins’s sequencing rule: do the denials, then the affirmations. The denial empties the mind of error so the affirmation isn’t fighting it.
- Use the five denials, which she set against the five senses / the chief forms of error:
- “There is no evil.” 2. “There is no matter.” 3. “There is no absence of life, substance, or intelligence.” 4. “There is nothing to hate.” 5. “There is no sin, sickness, or death.” (Her widely-quoted compressed form is “There is no sin, sickness, nor death.”)
- Reason them out, not just recite them. Hopkins did not want mechanical chanting. Her instruction: “It is well to devote one morning every week to reasoning out why we are, in Spirit and in Truth, free from these errors.” Once a week, sit and work through why — for the practitioner’s framework — each denial holds, so the denial is conviction, not slogan.
- Deny the specific fear in the moment. Beyond the weekly reasoning, the denials are used as needed: when a fear, grief, or limitation-thought arises, you meet it with a denial of its reality and power — “there is no power in fear; this has no power over me” — withdrawing belief from it then and there.
- Deny error, never the person. The denial is aimed at the error-thought (the fear, the sense of lack, the verdict of incurability), not at the sufferer. You are erasing the false belief, not condemning yourself or anyone.
- Follow immediately with affirmation. Hopkins’s structure is two-stroke: deny the error, then affirm the truth (Lesson III — e.g. “There is good for me and I ought to have it”). A denial alone leaves a vacuum; the affirmation fills it. (Sourcing note: the five denials, the “no use making affirmations until we have made the denials” rule, and the “one morning every week to reason them out” instruction are Hopkins’s documented Lesson-II teaching. Framing as faithful paraphrase.)
Source & Lineage
Hopkins (1849–1925) adapted the denial/affirmation pair from her Christian Science background and systematized it for the broader New Thought movement. The “denials and affirmations” couplet she taught became a defining feature of Unity (Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, her students) and of New Thought practice generally.
The denial is the lineage ancestor of later “cancel-cancel” and thought-rejection techniques, and structurally rhymes with cognitive restructuring and cognitive defusion in modern psychotherapy.
The Traditions' versions
Affirmations (the paired Lesson III) — the truth-statement the denial clears space for.
- Unity denials/affirmations (Fillmore) — the direct descendant.
- Cognitive defusion / restructuring (ACT, CBT) — naming a thought as “just a thought,” withdrawing its authority; the secular, evidence-based parallel.
- Neti neti (“not this, not this”) — the Vedantic via negativa of denying every limited identification.
- “Cancel that” / thought-stopping — popular self-help descendants of the denial.
Common refinements
Affirming before denying. Hopkins’s explicit error to avoid. Clear the ground first.
- Mechanical chanting. She wanted the denials reasoned out weekly, held as conviction, not muttered.
- Denying the self. Aim the denial at the error-thought, not at “I’m bad for feeling this.” It is erasure of a false belief, not self-attack.
- Stopping at the denial. A denial leaves a vacuum; always follow with the affirmation of truth.
- Literalizing into medical denial. The single most dangerous mistake — using “there is no sickness” to skip treatment. Keep it a thought-attitude practice; see a doctor.
- Suppression vs. defusion. Done well, this is withdrawing belief from a thought (defusion). Done as white-knuckle “don’t think it” suppression, it backfires. Acknowledge the thought, then deny its authority.