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Dynamics for Living
Disease
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[Dynamics for Living]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
IT IS NOW almost universally accepted by physicians that
the majority of diseases are caused by minute forms of life
commonly called germs. Each disease has its specific germ.
They may be seen with very strong microscopes, and the form
and the character of the different varieties are described
by experts.
The antidotes for these destructive little germs have been
widely advertised. The remedies consist in destroying them.
They do not attempt to explain their origin. They find the
little worker busy in the bodies of mankind,
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and they seek to put it out of action, not asking whence it
came nor whither it may go.
The reflective mind is not satisfied with this superficial
way of dealing with such destructive agents. It asks their
cause, but no answer is vouchsafed on the part of those who
study them. Only the students of mind can answer the
question of the origin of disease germs. Only in terms of
mind can there be given a rational explanation of these
minute life forms.
The Adam man, the intellect, is responsible for them. He
gives character to all the ideas that exist--he "names"
them. This process is intricate, and it may be explained
and understood in its details only by metaphysicians of the
deepest mental insight. It is summed up in what is commonly
called thinking.
Thoughts Produce
Thoughts of health produce germs whose office it is to
build up healthy organisms. Thoughts of disease produce
germs of disorder and destruction. Here we have the
connecting link between materia medica and metaphysics. The
physician observes the ravages of the disease germ. The
metaphysician stands in the factory of mind and sees
thoughts poured into visibility as germs. This opens up a
field of causes unlimited in extent. Every thought that
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flits through the mind of every man, woman, and child in
the universe produces a living organism, a germ of a
character like its producing thought. There is no escape
from this conclusion, no escape from the mighty
possibilities of good and ill that rest with the thinker.
Following Directions
Anger, jealousy, malice, avarice, lust, ambition,
selfishness, and in fact all of the detestable patterns
that mankind harbors, produce living organisms after their
kind. If we had microscopes strong enough, we should find
our body to be composed of living germs, doing to the best
of their ability the tasks which our thoughts have set
before them.
If you have said, "I hate you," there have been created in
your atmosphere hate germs that will do the work for which
you created them. If one's enemies alone were attacked by
these germs of thought, the law would not be so severe, but
they have no respect for anyone, and are likely to turn
upon the body of their creator and tear it down.
So the fear, the doubts, the poverty, the sin, the
sickness, the thousand erroneous states of consciousness
have their germs. These organisms whose office it is to
make men miserable do their work to the very best of their
ability. They are
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not responsible for their existence. They are the formed
vehicles of thought. They are the servants of those who
gave them life. It is not to the germs that the wise
regulator of affairs should look, but to those who are
creating them and thereby bringing into existence discord
and disease.
Counterfeit
Remedies beyond number are advertised for germs. They are
guaranteed to kill the germ only. What is needed is a
medicine that will prevent its appearance. To apply the
remedy to the poor little germ is like trying to stop the
manufacture of counterfeit money by destroying all that is
found in circulation.
All counterfeit thought comes from the intellect, which
alone originates the disease germ. We need to go no further
than the disobedient intellect to find the cause of all the
ills to which humanity has become slave. Wisdom is not an
attribute of the intellect. The assumption that its
observations are a source of wisdom is the one thing
against which the Lord God especially warned Adam. This
very clearly indicates the inability of the intellect, on
its own account, to set up a standard of knowledge of good
and evil. It also declares the end to which man will come
if he disregards the prohibition specified.
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"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you
shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall
die."
Good and Evil
That there is something wrong in the present standard of
good is evidenced by the variety of opinions in the world
as to what is good and what is evil. There should be no
question on such vitally important points. There would not
be if the intellect would relinquish its claim to a
knowledge of good and evil, and would relegate to Spirit
the offices of wisdom and understanding.
The intellect is the formative, character-giving mechanism
in the man. It draws its substance and intelligence from
the Spirit. Like the prism through which the ray of white
light is passed, it shows the potentialities of Spirit. If
it looks within and seeks the guidance of Spirit, it
reflects divine ideas upon the screen of visibility. This
is the plan that the Lord has for it, and it is building
according to that plan only when it admits that there is a
higher source of wisdom than itself, when it submits to
wisdom, for approval or disapproval, the ideas that it
conceives.
Manifestation
The manifestation of life is through the Adam consciousness,
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which is, in a way, attached to and responsible for the
forms thus made visible. Hence the reform--the
transformation--of existing conditions must be made from
the standpoint of Adam as an important factor. To ignore
Adam is to slight one of the established creations of
Jehovah God. If Adam were not a part of the divine plan,
why was he formed from the dust of the earth, the breath of
life breathed into him, and a living soul capacity given to
him?
We are not to erase Adam. We are to transform him. He is
not a safe guide in anything. His conclusions are derived
from observation of conditions as he sees them in the
external world. He judges according to appearance, which is
but one side of the whole. Appearances say that germs are
dangerous and destructive, but one who is familiar with
their origin is not alarmed. He knows that there is a power
and wisdom stronger and wiser than the ignorant intellect.
It is to this power that we are compelled to go before we
can right the wrongs that now dominate the mind of man.
There is but one fount of wisdom, and that is wisdom itself.
Wisdom
The belief that wisdom is attained through the study of
things is an error prevalent in this age. They
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who wait upon the Lord shall be wise. That the wisdom of
health can be evolved from the study of disease germs is a
concept of the intellect in its tendency to look without
instead of within. The without, the universe of things
formed, is not and never can be a source of wisdom. The
things formed are the result of efforts to combine wisdom
and love, and their character indicates the success or the
failure of the undertaking. When wisdom and love have been
invoked, and their harmony has been made manifest in the
thing formed, God is manifest.
We love to name or give character to the ideas of Jehovah
God, because it is our office in the grand plan of creation
to do so. The glory of the Father is thus made manifest
through the Son. In no other way can the ideas in Being be
made manifest, and man should rise to the dignity of his
office and formulate them according to the plans of Divine
Mind.
Disease germs would quickly disappear from the earth if men
would consult God before passing judgment upon His
creations. It is not man's province to give form to
anything but what will be a pleasure in God's eye. If he
makes germs it is because he thinks germ thoughts. When he
thinks God thoughts he will form only the beauties of
nature and mankind, and there will no longer be anything in
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all his world that will cause a fear or a moment of pain.
God is not the author of this condition of so-called
"progress from matter to mind." God is the one source from
which and of which man makes his existence.
Unfoldment
There is a law of unfoldment in Being, a law as exact as
the progressive steps in a mathematical problem in which no
error is made, a law as harmonious as that which governs a
musical production where discord has found no place.
Disease germs are not a part of the divine law. They are as
far removed from it as would be error in the steady,
careful steps in the progressive unfoldment of numbers, or
false notes in symphony or song.
It does not require labored arguments or hard thinking to
see how easily the problems of life would be made orderly
and divine if men would let the Lord into his mind. Jesus
said that the yoke was easy and the burden light. He was
victor over all the hard conditions to which men and women
yoked themselves. He made light of sin, disease, and
poverty, by annulling them and preaching boldly in the face
of an adverse theology that it was the prerogative of the
Son of man to blot these errors from the world of mankind.
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Royal Road
There is a royal road for every man--a road in which he
will be conscious of the dominion that is his by divine
right. That road, Jesus said, leads out from the I AM. As
Moses delivered the Children of Israel from the Egyptian
darkness of their ignorance by affirming in their ears the
power of the I AM, so Jesus gives us a series of
affirmations that will deliver us from the wilderness of
ignorance.
Your I AM is the polar star around which all your thoughts
revolve. Even the little, narrow concept of the personal "I
am" may be led out into the consciousness of the great and
only I AM by filling its thought sphere with ideas of
infinite wisdom, life, and love. Your I AM is that which
carries you up or down, to heaven or to hell, according to
the concept to which you have attached it. Hitch it to a
star. Let it carry you to the broad expanse of heaven.
There is room aplenty. You will not knock elbows with
anyone if you get out of the surging crowd and hitch your I
AM to the star of spiritual understanding.
Disease Antidote
Cease making disease germs. Turn your attention to higher
things. Make love alive by thinking love. Make wisdom the
light of the
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world by affirming God's omnipresent intelligence. See in
mind the pure substance of God, and it will surely appear.
This is the way to destroy disease. This is the antidote
for disease germs. The real, the enduring things of God are
to be brought into visibility in just this simple way. This
is the way in which the I AM makes itself manifest. The
method is so easy that the man of great intellect passes it
by. It is so plain that a simpleton may understand it. One
does not have to know about anything whatsoever except God.
How easy it is: how light the burden! No long, tedious
years of study, no delving into depths of intricate
theories and speculations are necessary. All that is
required is a simple, childlike attention directed to the
everywhere present Spirit, and a heart filled with love and
goodness for everything.
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[Dynamics for Living]
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