Affirmation · “The Subconscious Says Yes”
High Mysticism Treatment
Heal and transform mind and circumstance by silently denying the appearance of evil/sickness/limitation and affirming the all-presence and all-power of God — the ‘argument’ method of mental treatment.
Establish the one Presence/one Power. Deny the reality and power of the appearance (“All is Spirit, nothing is matter”). Affirm the opposing good. Argue it inwardly until it is felt as true, then rest. Repeat daily.
What it is
Emma Curtis Hopkins — the “teacher of teachers” who trained Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, Ernest Holmes, H.
Emilie Cady and others — taught mental healing as a paired discipline of denial and affirmation, organized into twelve lessons. A “treatment” is the deliberate mental act of denying the reality and power of an apparent evil (“All is Spirit, nothing is matter”) and then affirming the opposing spiritual truth (the goodness and all-presence of God). She called it “the method of Jesus Christ put in twelve settings.”
The Method
Hopkins’s twelve lessons in Scientific Christian Mental Practice move from the Statement of Being through Denials, Affirmations, and onward (Faith, the Word, fearlessness, and so on). The working core — repeated as a treatment — is:
- Begin with the Statement of Being. Establish the ground truth: God is the one omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient Good; there is one Presence and one Power.
- Make the denial. Silently deny the reality and power of the appearance you are treating: every time “you say that a thing is not so you are making a denial.” Hopkins’s representative denial is “All is Spirit, nothing is matter” — denying that sin, sickness, lack or death have real power or permanence.
- Make the affirmation. Turn at once to the positive truth, affirming the goodness and all-presence of God and the wholeness of the real self. Deny the appearance of evil; affirm good. Deny weakness; affirm strength.
- Argue the case inwardly. Hopkins’s is an “argument” method: hold the denial and affirmation steadily, reasoning the mind into conviction of the spiritual fact rather than merely repeating words.
- Realize and rest. Continue until the statement is felt as true — a quiet inner assent — then rest in that realization. Treatment is repeated daily and as needed. (Sourcing note: lesson titles and the “All is Spirit, nothing is matter” denial are documented from Hopkins’s text; step structure is attributed paraphrase of her twelve-lesson treatment method.)
Source & Lineage
Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849–1925) broke from Mary Baker Eddy, founded the Christian Science Theological Seminary of Chicago, and seeded most of organized New Thought.
Scientific Christian Mental Practice (1888) gives the twelve-lesson treatment; High Mysticism (1892) is its mystical companion with a practice book for the twelve chapters. The denial/affirmation pair became standard New Thought practice through her students.
Common refinements
Denial as suppression. Hopkins’s denial withdraws belief in the power of an appearance; it is not pretending a feeling or symptom isn’t present, nor forced positivity.
- Affirming without conviction. The “argument” matters — repeating words you don’t yet assent to does little; reason the mind to the point of quiet realization.
- Skipping the Statement of Being. The denial and affirmation rest on the prior ground (one Presence/one Power); without it they float.
- Using it instead of care. Hopkins’s milieu rejected medicine; modern practice should treat this as adjunctive, never a replacement.