One of several New Thought religious communities developed upon an understanding of popular psychology in the early 20th century. The Religious Science Movement was founded by New Englander Ernest Holmes who was influenced by the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. He moved to California in 1912 and discovered the writings of the British metaphysical teacher Thomas Troward. In Troward’s works, Holmes believed he discovered a true understanding of the human mind.
Troward in turn based his ideas on the writings of popular lecturer and writer Thomas Jay hudson who proposed an alternative to spiritualism. Hudson’s theory was that humans have two minds: an objective mind, evident in daily waking life, and a subjective mind, most clearly seen when a person was in a hypnotic trance. The objective mind is a thinking, reasoning entity that can engage in both deductive and inductive reasoning. The subjective mind is more limited: It can only reason deductively. However, the subjective mind has some interesting powers: According to Hudson, it stores a complete record of all impressions formed throughout a person’s life.