History of Unity

As I have mentioned before in this blog, I have been exploring New Thought quite a bit over the last several months in particular. Lately I have been focusing on the Unity part of that movement that also includes Religious Science (Science of Mind) and Divine Science. I was fortunate several evenings ago to hear a presentation of the history of the Unity movement in particular.

The roots of Unity extend most recently back into the New Thought movements of the 19th century. Unity was eventually created out of the life and writings of Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. One strand of that line of thought comes from the background of Christian Science through Emma Curtis Hopkins and Mary Baker Eddy. Another strand comes from the American Transcendentalist philosophers including Emerson and Thoreau. A third strand comes out of a more Gnostic or "secret" strand of thought.

Unity itself is enclosed in the larger New Thought container. New Thought includes Unity as well as Religious Science and Divine Science. Religious Science (originally Science of Mind) was founded and inspired primarily by the writings of Ernest Holmes, who was a very active metaphysical writer and teacher in the early 20th century. The metaphysical underpinnings of New Thought go back to Hinduism through Plato, Neo-Platonism and many other steps up through the 19th century philosophies mentioned above.

All New Thought supports all paths to spirituality and accepts all religious orientations. I don't know much about Divine Science, but I can compare Religious Science to Unity to some degree. Where Religious Science appears to be more focused on the metaphysical, Unity includes that focus but also includes a relatively strong component of spiritual and physical healing, perhaps due to the influence of Christian Science. Unity also provides a clear articulation of Five Principles in order to give some abstract support to a common body of belief. These are not dogmatic commandments, but instead have much more breathing room for incorporation into a variety of lifestyles and situations.

Information, Spiritual Universe, Science of Mind and a dash of Jung

I only have a few minutes, but the connections between these 4 conceptual frameworks has been erupting in my mind over the last couple of days and I need to get some ideas down on paper before they disappear.

I have summarized the concepts in The Spiritual Universe in another blog. Information as it relates to the Universe is touched on in another blog as well. I believe the fundamental concept that underlies all these frameworks is the notion that everything is connected. There is one It, The Thing Itself (which is a term originally coined by Kant if I am not mistaken). God is the traditional name, but we get into trouble if we view God as something separate from the Universe or ourselves.

The Thing Itself is not physical in the sense that we traditionally think of physicality. Science of Mind follows from the long philosophical tradition from ancient Eastern religion, Plato, early Christian philosophers such as Plotinus, through Spinoza, some of Kant, Hegel etc. This strain of thought views the Universe as spiritual, not physical. Ultimate reality is not physical, but something else. We perceive the physical and use physical laws, but the underlying Reality of everything is "spiritual".

The Spiritual Universe views this ultimate reality as "physical" from the perspective of modern physics. That is, modern physics tells us that there is no "there" there. Everything is energy and relationships. Information and emergence talks about information being the ultimate "stuff" of Reality. Jung proposes the "Collective Unconscious" , another way that all is connected.

One division between these lines of thoughts is that the more secular strains (Spiritual Universe and Information) take a fairly agnostic and reactionary use of the stuff. Science of Mind proposes a constant interaction with Mind, the Universal Intelligence. Jung speaks of interaction to some degree, but mostly through archetypes that come to us through the Unconscious. Science of Mind definitely recognizes the importance of the subconcious in gaining proficiency in two-way interaction with the One.

That's all I have time for right now, but I just thought it interesting the way religion, philosophy, science and psychology are more connected and relevant to each other now more than ever. The more we learn about how little we really know about ultimate "physical" reality the more we understand that Ultimate Reality must run on higher laws and what we see is not what is really there.

Science of Mind is the one discipline that tries to tie all this eclectic thought together into a cohesive set of practices to maximize the usage of the power of getting out of the way of the Universal Intelligence and letting The Thing Itself express through the individual.

More later on this topic after my thoughts bake a little more.