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Atom-Smashing Power of Mind Chapter 2
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[Atom-Smashing Power of Mind]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
The Restorative Power of the Spirit
Chapter II
NOT ONLY our Bible but the scriptures of all the nations of
the world testify to the existence of an invisible force
moving men and nature in their various activities. Not all
agree as to the character of this omnipresent force,
universal Spirit, but it serves the purpose of being their
god under whatever name it may appear. Different nations
ostensibly believe in the same scriptures, but they have
various concepts of the universal Spirit; some conceive it
to be nature and others God. Robert Browning says, "What I
call God . . . fools call Nature."
Our Bible plainly teaches that God implanted in man His
perfect image and likeness, with executive ability to carry
out all the creative plans of the Great Architect. When man
arrives at a certain point in spiritual understanding it is
his office to co-operate with the God principle in
creation. Jesus had reached this point, and He said, "My
Father worketh even until now, and I work."
It is possible for man to form states of consciousness that
are out of harmony with the God principle, but these do not
endure, and through experience man learns to adjust his
thought to that of God. "I
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will be what I will to be" is basic in all creation and it
proves itself in the face of human reason and logic. God is
free to do as He wills, and He has implanted that same
freedom in man. When we understand this ego-forming
capacity of man and even of nature, we have the key that
unlocks the many mysteries and contradictions that appear
in every walk of life.
As the animating life of all things God is a unit, but as
the mind that drives this life He is diverse. Every man is
king in his own mental domain, and his subjects are his
thoughts. When the king of Babylon called Daniel to
interpret his dream of the image with the head of gold and
feet of clay, the prophet prefaced his interpretation with
these words, which contain in essence the kingly authority
of every man:
"Thou, O king, art king of kings, unto whom the God of
heaven hath given the kingdom, the power, and the strength,
and the glory; and wheresoever the children of men dwell,
the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens hath
he given into thy hand, and hath made thee to rule over
them all: thou art the head of gold."
"Thou art the head of gold" is true of every man, but in
his ignorance man thinks he is the feet of clay. This
thought of his own inefficiency darkens his mentality, and
when the Lord attempts to communicate with him in symbols
he has to call upon
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external sources to explain them.
People in this atomic age civilization ask why God does not
reveal Himself now as He did in Bible days. The fact is
that God is talking to people everywhere, but they do not
understand the message and brush it aside as an idle dream.
We need to divest ourselves of the thought that Daniel and
Joseph, in fact all the unusually wise men of the Bible,
were especially inspired by God, that they were divinely
appointed by the Lord to do His work. Everything points to
their spiritual insight as the result of work on their part
to that end. Daniel as a youth had been taught to worship
Jehovah, the one and only God. He restrained the gross
appetites of the flesh and thereby made himself receptive
to Spirit. "But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would
not defile himself with the king's dainties, nor with the
wine which he drank." He begged that he and his companion
be allowed to eat herbs and drink water, which was granted;
and the record says that at the end of even a ten-day test
they were in better condition physically than all the
youths that ate of the king's dainties, that God gave them
knowledge and skill, and that Daniel had "understanding in
all visions and dreams."
The body is the instrument of the mind, and the mind looks
to the Spirit for its inspiration. A very little
observation shows that the purer the mind the greater its
capacity to receive and interpret the ideas
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imparted to it by the Spirit. It does not require a
doctor's diagnosis to prove that alcohol confuses the mind
and injures the body. The daily toll of automobile
accidents proves that drivers with alcohol in their
stomachs are trifling with death. Although Paul advises
that we eat what is set before us, asking no questions,
experience proves that the advice of Daniel leads to better
health and clearer thinking. Paul is credited with a giant
intellect, but when he advised Timothy to take a little
wine for his stomach's sake, we know that he was not
inspired by the Spirit of wisdom.
Not only the Scriptures that we look to for authority in
our daily living but also the experience of ourselves and
our neighbors proves that those who cultivate communion
with the Father within become conscious of a guiding light,
call it what you will.
Those who scoff at this and say that it is all the work of
the imagination are deluding themselves and ignoring a
source of instruction and progress that they need above all
things. If this sense world were the only world we shall
ever know, the attainment of its ambitions might be
sufficient for a man of meager outlook and small capacity,
but the majority of us see ourselves and the world about us
in a process of transformation that will ultimate in
conditions here on the earth far superior to those we have
imagined for heaven.
"Great is the mystery of godliness," and still
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greater is the capacity for godliness. When Spirit responds
to the seeking mind and begins to reveal the magnitude of
that undiscovered country within us, we long for a new
language with words describing glories beyond all human
comparison. Even our so-called physical body reveals a
radiant body (which Jesus referred to as sitting on the
throne of His glory) that interlaces the trillions of cells
of the organism and burns as brightly as an electric light.
Jesus gave His apostles a glimpse of this radiant body when
He was transformed before them. "And as he was praying, the
fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment
became white and dazzling."
Jesus was very advanced, and His radiant body was developed
in larger degree than that of anyone in our race, but we
all have this body, and its development is in proportion to
our spiritual culture. In Jesus this body of light glowed
"as he was praying." Jesus' body did not go down to
corruption, but He, by the intensity of His spiritual
devotion, restored every cell to its innate state of atomic
light and power. When John was in the state of spiritual
devotion Jesus appeared to him, "and his eyes were as a
flame of fire; and his feet like unto burnished brass."
Jesus lives today in that body of glorified electricity in
a kingdom that interpenetrates the earth and its
environment. He called it the kingdom of the heavens.
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We do not have to look to the many experiences recorded in
the Bible of the spiritually illumined to prove the
existence of the spiritual supersubstance. People
everywhere are discovering it, as they always have in every
age and clime. Unless it is put under control of the Christ
Mind it takes on psychic and "spooky" expressions, which
distort the soul instead of unfolding it under divine law,
and drive its victims into our psychopathic sanatoria.
However, men will continue to pray, and prayer releases the
innate glory of God-Mind, so we must be taught how to
establish our identity with the Christ and through it to
gain the mastery of the stored-up riches of the man
invisible.
The metaphysical literature of our day is very rich with
the experiences of those who have found through various
channels the existence of the radiant body. One example is
Angela Morgan's book "Behold the Angel!" Miss Morgan's
writing in this book is a radical departure from her
well-known poetical vein. She is specific and to the point
in announcing her revelations. She says in the foreword:
This is a book about the radiant body, the living self of
every human being; the immortal structure which is the real
self even now in this moment of time. The author, through
intense conviction and the validity of recent experience,
writes in concrete terms of what to her is as real as
flesh, bones, blood, and muscle. There is, behind this
"veil of flesh," an actual flamelike structure invisible to
our everyday, limited perception. When I say it is
"radiant,"
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I mean it literally. . . . It is vividly alive, glorious as
the
sunrise.
She tells of numerous instances in which she saw hands and
feet and other parts of her body lighted or really
transformed by the flame invisible.
This convincing confession of Miss Morgan prompts me to
tell of my development of the radiant body, during half a
century's experience. It began when I was mentally
affirming statements of Truth. Just between my eyes, but
above, I felt a "thrill" that lasted a few moments, then
passed away. I found I could repeat this experience with
affirmations. As time went on I could set up this "thrill"
at other points in my body and finally it became a
continuous current throughout my nervous system. I called
it "the Spirit" and found that it was connected with a
universal life force whose source was the Christ. As taught
in the Bible, we have through wrong thinking and living
lost contact with the parent life. Jesus Christ incarnated
in the flesh and thereby introduced us by His Word into the
original Father life. He said, "If a man keep my word, he
shall never taste of death." I have believed that and
affirmed His words until they have become organized in my
body. Sometimes when I make this claim of Christ life in
the body I am asked if I expect to live always in this
flesh. My answer is that I realize that the flesh is being
broken down every day and its cells transformed into energy
and life, and a new body is being formed
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of a very superior quality. That new body in Christ will be
my future habitation.
I have found that the kingdom of God is within man and that
we are wasting our time and defeating the work of the
Spirit if we look for it anywhere else.
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[Atom-Smashing Power of Mind]
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