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Atom-Smashing Power of Mind Chapter 15
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[Atom-Smashing Power of Mind]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Faith Precipitations
Chapter XV
WHEN ASKED what electricity is, a scientist replied that he
had often thought of it as an adjunct to faith, judging
from the way it acts.
This linking of faith and electricity seems at first glance
fantastic, but when we observe what takes place when
certain substances in solution and an electric current are
brought in conjunction, there seems to be a confirmation of
the Scripture passage: "Now faith is assurance of things
hoped for."
Just as the electric current precipitates certain metals in
solution in acid, so faith stirs into action the electrons
of man's brain; and acting concurrently with the spiritual
ethers, these electrons hasten nature and produce quickly
what ordinarily requires months of seedtime and harvest.
The widow, in the time of Elisha, was so distressed with
debt that she had even mortgaged to slavery her two
children. She appealed to the prophet, who said, "What hast
thou in the house?" She replied, "Thy handmaid hath not
anything in the house, save a pot of oil." He told her to
borrow all the empty vessels her neighbors had and then to
go into the house and shut the door, and to pour the oil in
the pot into all those vessels; which she did until they
were all full. She then paid her debts and had
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plenty left.
Jesus fed four thousand persons at one time and five
thousand at another by the same means. He also
"precipitated" the elements of wholeness many times and
healed the multitude. He required co-operation in faith on
the part of those He healed in order thus to complete the
healing circuit.
Speedy answers to prayer have always been experienced and
always will be when the right relations are established
between the mind of the one who prays and the spiritual
realm, which is like an electrical field. The power to
perform what seems to be miracles has been relegated to
some God-selected one; but now we are inquiring into the
law, since God is no respecter of persons, and we find that
the fulfillment of the law rests with man or a group of
men, when they quicken by faith the spiritual forces latent
within them.
The reason why some prayers are not answered is lack of
proper adjustment of the mind of the one who prays to the
omnipresent creative spiritual life.
Jesus was the most successful demonstrator of prayer of
whom we have any record, and He urged persistence in
prayer. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Like
Lincoln, Jesus loved to tell stories to illustrate His
point, and He emphasized the value of persistence in
prayer. He told of a woman who demanded justice of a
certain judge and importuned
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him until in sheer desperation he granted her request.
Every Christian healer has had experiences where persistent
prayer saved his patient. If he had merely said one prayer,
as if giving a prescription for the Lord to fill, he would
have fallen far short of demonstrating the law. Elijah
prayed persistently until the little cloud appeared or, as
we should say, he had a "realization"; then the
manifestation followed.
The Bible is treasured as the word of God because it
records so many of these apparent miracles; but the fact is
that all over this land enough demonstrations of the
supermind are taking place every day to fill many books of
the size of the Bible. Some of them are recorded, and
people read about them, but these are few compared with the
many that are taking place. All of which goes to prove that
there is a restorative law that, if taken advantage of,
will heal the world of all its ills.
Many of the old-school faith healers object to the
scientific explanation of the healing process. They have
believed in a personal God and that all superworld forces
are set in motion by His personal intervention. However it
is much more satisfying to logical minds to know that God
is the law and that the Spirit that we have thought of as a
projection of Him is in fact He Himself in His own
spiritual identity. This is the teaching of Jesus, and our
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men of science are proving it to be true. An understanding
of this all-accessible Truth is making seers, prophets, and
mighty men of God out of pygmies. On every hand men of
mediocre ability are becoming world leaders through
exploiting the supermind qualities that they have merely
glimpsed as existing within them.
These ephemeral Caesars have gained in inkling of the
disciplined mind's dominion and are using it to control the
negative mass thought, and through the hypnotic force of
words they evolve chaos and dark night the world over.
When men accept and understand Jesus' teaching about the
mastery of the spiritual man, all the evils that arise from
these upstart saviors will disappear. But now in the night
of mind's eclipse
"We petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves."
Then the question arises, If this supermind ability is in
every man, why is it not more widely understood and used?
There are several answers to this pertinent question, the
most plausible being the lack of human initiative. Men
prefer to let others do their thinking for them. This is
especially true in religious matters. The race thought has
been so saturated with the belief that spiritual revelation
must come through some authorized channel that the man
without an ecclesiastical
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degree is timid about expressing an opinion about God or
man's spiritual nature.
Jesus broke this hypnotic spell when without ecclesiastical
authority He claimed to be the Son of God.
We should remember that Jesus included as sons of God all
those who, as He said, are "my sheep," that is, follow Him.
He quoted Psalm 82, in which it is written,
"I said, Ye are gods,
And all of you sons of the Most High."
The church elders and the people cried, "Crucify him!"
Jesus taught great truths, which were grasped by but a few
open-minded followers, and they formed a new church. After
doing mighty works for hundreds of years they in turn,
built an ecclesiastical hierarchy from which the common
people were excluded. The Church Fathers gathered and
selected certain religious manuscripts and compiled the
Bible, which they proclaimed to be the very word of God, to
be read and interpreted by those only having the authority
of the church.
Here again we see positive thought submitting to negative
thought, thereby keeping the world in darkness for ages.
As Luther started the Protestant Reformation so we are now
at the beginning of another reformation, in which the
freedom and power of man spiritually will not only be
taught but demonstrated.
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The supermind demonstrations that mark this modern
religious reformation seem so at variance with nature that
they are still looked upon as miracles, notwithstanding the
fact that logic and science shout from the housetops the
universality of law.
Those who study the spiritual import of Jesus' teaching
have revealed to them a mental technique for which no
adequate language has yet been invented.
The Jews demanded of Jesus that He tell them plainly, and
His reply was that His works would testify that He was the
Son of God and that He and the Father were one. We who have
experienced Spirit baptism freely testify to the dynamic
thrill that ripples through the nerves for days and months
and is often repeated in silent meditation for years after
the first outpour. Thus revelation, observation, and actual
experience prove that man develops spirituality according
to the divine pattern called in Genesis the image and
likeness of God.
The natural man in the physical world is merely the
beginning formation of the man planned by creative Mind.
When the natural man finishes his unfoldment he enters the
next stage, that of the Christ man illustrated by Jesus.
Jesus was the first man or "fruit" of the earth's first
age, that of the natural man. He opened the way for all
those who aspire to the attainment of immortality.
To the present time the followers of Jesus have
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been told by spiritual leaders that He taught the
immortality of the soul only. But now it is revealed that
He immortalized His body and said, "Follow me." It was
man's sins that brought death to his body, and his
redemption must include the healing of the body. When the
mind is healed of its sins the body will respond. "Your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, which is in you, which
ye have from God."
So we find as we study and apply the doctrine of Jesus that
the body must be included. Faith in the omnipresent pure
substance precipitates the substance in the body and we are
transformed.
Proofs may be found in profusion that the divine law of
body restoration is in action in a large way right here in
our midst. The literature of Unity teems with testimonials
of persons who have been healed and are grateful to God for
renewed health, strength, prosperity, and happiness. Thus
it is not necessary to strengthen your faith by reading
about the work of God in ages past; you can personally
consult your neighbor, who can doubtless tell you of
marvels fully as great as any recorded in the Bible.
The majority of cases that come to us belong to the class
of the discouraged woman told of in Luke 8:43, "who spent
all her living upon physicians, and could not be healed."
Doctors have pronounced them incurable, and as a last
resort they turn to God. The hardest part of the work in
their healing
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is to get out of their minds the verdict of the doctor that
their cases are incurable. We have discovered that there
are no incurables. "With God all things are possible." Any
experienced metaphysical healer will tell you that he has
been the instrument through which all the popular diseases
have been healed.
Some of the stories told by patients are beyond human
credence; for example, the restoration of the eyes of a man
from which they had been removed, and the growth of the
nose of a woman who had lost it by disease. These are very
rare but well authenticated in metaphysical circles. I am
not prepared to give the names of these cases, but I can
testify to my own healing of tuberculosis of the hip. When
a boy of ten I was taken with what was at first diagnosed
as rheumatism but developed into a very serious case of hip
disease. I was in bed over a year, and from that time an
invalid in constant pain for twenty-five years, or until I
began the application of the divine law. Two very large
tubercular abscesses developed at the head of the hip bone,
which the doctors said would finally drain away my life.
But I managed to get about on crutches, with a four-inch
cork-and-steel extension on the right leg. The hip bone was
out of the socket and stiff. The leg shriveled and ceased
to grow. The whole right side became involved; my right ear
was deaf and my right eye weak. From hip to knee the flesh
was a glassy adhesion with but little sensation.
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When I began applying the spiritual treatment there was for
a long time slight response in the leg, but I felt better,
and I found that I began to hear with the right ear. Then
gradually I noticed that I had more feeling in the leg.
Then as the years went by the ossified joint began to get
limber, and the shrunken flesh filled out until the right
leg was almost equal to the other. Then I discarded the
cork-and-steel extension and wore an ordinary shoe with a
double heel about an inch in height. Now the leg is almost
as large as the other, the muscles are restored, and
although the hip bone is not yet in the socket, I am
certain that it soon will be and that I shall be made
perfectly whole.
I am giving minute details of my healing because it would
be considered a medical impossibility and a miracle from a
religious standpoint. However I have watched the
restoration year after year as I applied the power of
thought, and I know it is under divine law. So I am
satisfied that here is proof of a law that the mind builds
the body and can restore it.
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