Ernest Holmes on Emma Curtis Hopkins: "What she did was almost like a wind, or a breeze."

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Holmes on Mysticism 7-9-1957

I knew Emma Curtis Hopkins. I did take her course. Anyone who would say he "studied with" Emma Curtis Hopkins would be misstating the fact. No one ever "studied with" her that I know of. You went and she talked for an hour and you left and you went again and this happened 12 times and that was it. I know I bought the course at that time and was more familiar with the then than now but it wasn't the ideas but the consciousness she imparted that you did get. It was a very definite Impartation in what she did from what she said. At times it you might be familiar with what is called a "psychic breeze", like something alive and animated.

Emma Curtis Hopkins when I studied with her about 1922 was nearly 80 years old I believe. She was a very stately old dame. She wore a long dress and I never saw her without a hat. They say she was never without one, why I don't know. I went to the door and was announced, a beautiful place, a hotel apartment in the old Iroquois Hotel in New York.

I entered and she made a stiff little bow, with her head and motioned me to a chair and she sat down and began to talk. It was about 10 minutes before I said to myself, "this is the first lesson", which it was and she talked for an hour, and when she got through, she got up and made a little bow and walked out. The first four times I went, I didn't know whether she knew who I was, of course I was much younger then and it bothered me a little. This was 35 years ago.

2-Now about the fourth or fifth time the old gal loosened up and I used to stay after that and have long conversations with her. She turned out to be very witty and cheerful and sweet and lovable. She was telling me one time about a fellow named Burrnell who was a student of hers. She had a convention in Chicago and he came in and he was an absolutist he came in screening, "I am God." She said," there, there, Edwin, it's all right for you to play you are God but don't be so noisy about it." She was a very sweet character.

Now it is what you felt and not what she said. She showed me the only instance of mysticism that I know about that enables us to tie the mystical concept with the way we use the principal.

I presume that may have been because she was in the early days associated with Mrs. Eddy and was the editor of her first publication but left because of the Star-Chamber performances, so she told me. She was a very profound student of the spiritual classics of the ancients, this is all real.