Your Aladdin’s Lamp

Ernest Holmes

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As heard on “This Thing Called Life” Sunday January 15, 1950

Your Aladdin’s Lamp

In my talk today, I am comparing the Mind and the genius that dwells in it to the
genie in Aladdin's Lamp. If someone were to ask you, “Did you know that you are
a genius?" would you laugh at him or would you take him seriously?

You will remember the story of Aladdin and his lamp; that when he rubbed his
lamp and made a deep wish, then the genie would appear. Jesus said, "There is a
light that lighteth every man's path.” But he added, “If you put your light under a
bushel, then no one can see it.” It is this light which is the light of God and the
light of life that is your light.

The question is not whether there is a genius hidden at the center of your life, but
whether or not you are rubbing your lamp so the genie can appear. How could all
the deep wishes, hopes and aspirations of your life be there unless it were possible
for them to be fulfilled? God never makes mistakes and God put them there.

There is a power in the universe and this power is available to everyone. It is the
power that brought everything into being, therefore it is all power. It is not only all
power but it is all presence. It pervades everything and it is at the very center of
our own being.

If you wish to use this power you must believe that it actually is there and make
yourself an instrument for its action. Aladdin had to rub his lamp before the genie
appeared and Jesus tells us that we have to believe before it can be done unto us.
This implies that you can actually think yourself into a mental position which
makes it possible for the power to flow through you and out into the things you
are doing. For instance, if you wish to be successful, rub your lamp with the idea
of success in mind. See yourself as a success. Remove all fear and doubt and you
will have connected your desire with that power which is the cause of everything.

If you say to yourself, “There is one Mind; that Mind is God,” you should also say,
“That Mind is my mind now. It is now guiding and directing me, causing me to
know what to do and how to do it." This Mind is your Aladdin's lamp and the
thoughts and ideas that come to you when you rub this lamp, through faith and
conviction, are the genie which appear.

The great genius of Jesus lay in the fact that he was not afraid to trust God, and
because he trusted God, he believed in himself. We can well imagine that it must
have taken years of patient trying to come to the place where he dared to
command the wind and the wave to be still. And yet as you carefully study what
Jesus did, how he thought and what he said you will be amazed at his simplicity
and childlike acceptance.

For instance, he said, if you are praying for something, when you think about it
(because of course, you couldn’t pray for it without thinking about it), try to accept
in your own mind that it is already done unto you. It is this faith that is your
Aladdin’s lamp.
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If Jesus had made this claim merely for himself and had said, “I am he only one
who can do it,” then here would be no hope for the rest of us. But Jesus actually
said, “What I am doing, you can do also. You also have a light.” He plainly taught
that there is one Life, one Power and one Presence, available to everyone.

It takes a little imagination for us to appreciate the meaning of this. Perhaps

imagination really is Aladdin’s lamp. But Aladdin believed that when he rubbed his
lamp something would appear, the genie would spring into being for him and do
his bidding. Well, Aladdin was a mythical figure, a character in a fairy story, and
we read about him with keen delight because we feel we would like to be Aladdin
we wish we had a lamp that we could rub, we wish that there might be a genie
who would appear at our command.

Yes, Aladdin was a mythical figure, appealing to our imagination, pleasing our
fancy, delighting us with the thought of limitless possibilities. But Jesus, the
wayshower, was not a mythological figure. He was a real person, and we cannot
doubt that he was the greatest genius who ever lived. For so long a time we have
thought of his teaching being so far away from our personal experience, so
separated from the realities of life, as though he were talking about some future
good, something impossible to attain here and now.

Although I had read the Bible more or less continually since I was a child, several
years ago I got the idea that I would like to read the New Testament over again
with this one thing in mind: why not read the story of the life of Jesus just as
though you were reading some other story, from the thought that such a man
really lived, really said the things we read about, actually meant them, and did
really prove his position in what he did? I became so interested that I spent all the
time I could find for two years reading and thinking and trying to reinterpret
everything Jesus said and did from this simple viewpoint.

Here was a man who knew what he was talking about. He knew it because he was
able to do it. The thing that really amazed me was the simplicity of his teaching,
the complete directness of it - his intimate relationship with God, his inward
feeling of the Divine Presence as a living reality in and through everything, and his
complete conviction that there was a law of good that responded to his faith. It
was this utter simplicity that amazed me. I was so completely convinced all over
again that I actually wrote a book about it, which has recently been published. As
a matter of fact, it was because of these two years devoted to this study that I
happen to be talking to you today.

I am completely convinced that there is a power within you, which you didn’t put
there, that you can use - a power for good that is available to everyone and is
available right where you are today. Jesus did not say by and by. The one thing
that made the deepest impression on me was that Jesus believed in the actual,
active presence of God in every man’s life, and in no place did he ever infer that
this power would not be available to you. Rather, he said, "I am telling you about
a Presence that is real. I am telling you how to use a power that actually exists
and is really right where you are.”

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And so, I am going to ask you to get out your lamp and rub it, rub it with faith and
conviction, rub it with grateful acknowledgment and acceptance, rub it with feeling
and imagination. You need have no fear for the outcome. Your mind is but a
conductor for a power that actually is. Your light is borrowed from a universal
light. The wick of your individual lamp runs deep in the oil of a universal life. It
draws its power from a limitless source for God is all the power there is, all the
presence there is, and all the life there is.

Many of you will remember that when you were children you used to trim oil lamps
and polish the globes so that the light would shine brightly. Let's think of this
other light in the same way. The wick must be trimmed as Jesus said, keep your
light trimmed and burning. The globe must be clear and transparent so that the
rays of light can shine out into what you are doing. But the light itself, and the oil
which furnishes its glow, is something Life has already done for you. What you are
to do is consciously to hook up your mind with the man inside you, God’s good
man, God’s perfect man.

Jesus said, "It is not I, but the Father who dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”
Robert Louis Stevenson spoke of his “little mental brownies, who do half of my
work for me even when I am asleep, and in all human likelihood do the rest for me
as well when I am wide awake." When you go to sleep you can turn all your ideas
over to the genius within you. Rub your lamp of faith for a few moments and go to
sleep knowing that the little genie will appear and when you awake in the morning
ideas will be there. Seize them with enthusiasm and work or them with conviction.

Now some people have called this “awakening the subconscious," and probably
they are right. They say there is something inside you that, through imagination,
can be stimulated into action, can work out all your problems even while you are
asleep. I have known many an inventor who said his ideas came that way. I have
known lots of writers who do this. I have known mathematicians whose problems
are worked out while they are asleep. The experience is so common that many
books have been written on it. It has been called “The man inside you” and “the
workshop of the unconscious.” But you and I are not particularly interested in
what anything is called; rather, we are interested in what it is, how it works, and
what it does.

Your whole mind, whether you call it conscious or subconscious, is merely an

instrument of the Spirit within you. It is the place where this ever-present Spirit is
focalized through you as a person, expressing itself in you as an individual.
Technical terms will not help us any. I notice that in the life of Jesus he just called
it God within him. It was his terrific simplicity that has eluded us, and now
gradually we are working back to its meaning, to the discovery that every man’s
life is hid with Christ in God," that there is a power and a presence at the center of
your being that can be called forth into action for you.

Somewhere within you is the correct answer to every problem in your life.
Somewhere within you is the power to live. And somewhere within you is the faith
to believe. You are Aladdin. God has already given you the light. The genie will

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spring forth at your command. And you can enter into the good you desire if you
believe you can.

Do you think this is too much to expect of life? Does it seem too wonderful to be
true? Well, the first steam driven boat to cross the Atlantic carried in her cabin a
treatise explaining just why it was impossible for a boat to be powered by steam.
And Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it
more abundantly." No, it is not too much for you to believe that he knew what he
was talking about. And so, Aladdin, don't be afraid to rub your lamp. This lamp is
the gift of Life to you. Accept and use it!

DR. HOLMES' MEDITATION as heard on “This Thing Called Life”

Sunday, January 15, 1950

Let us take as the thought for our meditation today: “Let your light so shine before
men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in
heaven.” In this passage Jesus is referring to the light that is at the center of your
being, because he says, “Let your light shine . . .” Every man has this light. It
comes from your Father in heaven, which is within you. In our prayer and
meditation for today, let us see if we cannot become aware of this light and really
let it shine. Let us be very simple but direct about this, completely believing that
there is a light at the center of our being and that we are one with all the life there
is. Let us shut every other thought from the mind for a few moments as we
quietly, reverently but joyously, come into a complete acceptance of our union
with good.

And now let us rub our Aladdin’s lamp, taking the thought for today: “Let your
light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your
Father which is in heaven.”

Believing that there is a light that lighteth every man's path, and being deeply
convinced that this light is also at the center of my own being, I now affirm and
accept that there is a power of good at my disposal, that l am immediately one
with this power and all of its resources.

I now affirm that Divine Intelligence guides me and that I shall know what to do
under every circumstance, that everything in my life is adjusted to harmony, to
peace and to goodness. I know that every idea will come to me which is necessary
for complete success. I feel the presence of God as divine companionship, closer
to me than my very breath.

I know that the power of good is with me always, and with everyone else, and as I
think of others I am thinking of them also as being guided and directed, loved and
guarded into right action, into joy, into peace and happiness, and into success.