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Jesus Christ Heals
Chapter 2
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[Jesus Christ Heals]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Chapter II
God Presence
I AM NOW in the presence of pure Being and immersed in the
Holy Spirit of life, love, and wisdom.
I acknowledge Thy presence and power, O blessed Spirit. In
Thy divine wisdom now erase my mortal limitations, and from
Thy pure substance of love bring into manifestation my
world, according to Thy perfect law.
Man knows intuitively that he is God's supreme creation and
that dominion and power are his, though he does not
understand fully. The I AM of him ever recognizes the one
divine source from which he sprang, and he turns to it
endeavoring to fathom its wonderful secrets. Even children
grope after the truths of Being.
No man knows the beginning of the query, Who, what, and
where is God? It is dropped from the lips of the little
child when he first begins to lisp the name of father and
of mother, and it is repeated throughout the years.
Who made you? Who made me? Who made the earth, the moon,
and the sun? God.
Then who made God?
Thus back to the cause beyond the cause ever runs the
questioning mind of man. He would understand the
omnipresence that caused him to be.
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Does an answer ever come to these questionings? Does man
ever receive satisfactory returns from this mental delving
in the unfathomable? Each man and each woman must answer
individually; for only the mind of God can know God. If you
have found God in your own mind you have found the source
of health, of freedom, and of the wisdom that answers all
questions.
Language is the limitation of mind; therefore do not expect
the unlimited to leap forth into full expression through
the limited.
Words never express that which God is. To the inner ear of
the mind awakened to its depths words may carry the
impulses of divine energy and health that make it conscious
of what God is, but in their formulations such words can
never bind the unbindable.
So let us remember that by describing God with words in our
human way we are but stating in the lisping syllables of
the child that which in its maturity the mind still only
faintly grasps. Yet man may know God and become the vehicle
and expression of God, the unlimited fount of life, health,
light, and love.
God is the health of His people.
Man recognizes that health is fundamental in Being and that
health is his own divine birthright. It is the orderly
state of existence, but man must learn to use the knowledge
of this truth to sustain the consciousness of health.
Health is from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning
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"whole," "hale," "well." The one who uses the word really
implies that he has an understanding of the law of the
perfect harmony of Being. Health is the normal condition of
man and of all creation. We find that there is an
omnipresent principle of health pervading all living
things. Health, real health, is from within and does not
have to be manufactured in the without. Health is the very
essence of Being. It is as universal and enduring as God.
Being is the consciousness of the one Presence and the one
Power, of the one intelligence, and man stands in the
Godhead as I will. When man perceives his place in the
great scheme of creation and recognizes his I AM power, he
declares, "I discern that I will be that which I will to
be."
Man is the vessel of God and expresses God. But there is a
mighty difference between the inanimate marble, chiseled by
the sculptor into a prancing steed, and the living,
breathing horse consciously willing to be guided by the
master's rein.
So there is a wide gap between the intelligence that moves
to an appointed end under the impulse of divine energy and
that which knows the thoughts and desires of Divine Mind
and co-operates with it in bringing about the ends of a
perfect and healthy creation.
"No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth
not what his Lord doeth; but I have called you friends; for
all things that I have heard from my Father I have made
known unto you."
It must be true that there is in man a capacity
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for knowing God consciously and communing with Him. This
alone insures health and joy and satisfaction. It is
unthinkable that the Creator could cause anything to be
that is so inferior to Himself as to remove it beyond the
pale of fellowship with Him.
It is our exalted ideas of God and our little ideas of
ourselves that built the mental wall that separates us from
Him. We have been taught that God is a mighty monarch with
certain domineering characteristics, who wills us to be
sick or healthy; that He is of such majesty that man cannot
conceive of Him.
Even in metaphysical concepts of God the impression left us
is of a Creator great in power, wisdom, and love. In one
sense this is true, but the standard by which man compares
and judges these qualities in his mind determines his
concept of God.
If I say that God is the almighty power of the universe and
have in mind power as we see it expressed in physical
energy and force, I have not set up the right standard of
comparison. It is true that all power comes from God, but
it does not follow that the character of the thing we term
power is the same in the unexpressed as in the expressed.
God is power; man is powerful. God is that indescribable
reservoir of stored-up energy that manifests no potency
whatever until set in motion through the consciousness of
man yet possesses an inexhaustible capacity that is beyond
words to express. When that power is manifested by man it
becomes conditioned. It is described as powerful, more
powerful, most powerful, and it has its various degrees of
expansion,
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pressure, velocity, force, and the like.
This power is used by men to oppress one another, and there
has come to be a belief that God is power in the sense of
great oppressing capacity. It is an ancient belief that He
can and does exercise His power in punishing His creations,
pouring out upon them His vengeance.
But this is not the character of divine power. If by power
we mean force, energy, action, oppression, then we should
say that God has no power, that God is powerless; because
His power is not like the so-called power that is
represented by these human activities.
God is wisdom--intelligence--but if we mean by this that
God is "intelligent," that His knowledge consists of the
judgments and inferences that are made in a universe of
things, then we should say that God is nonintelligent.
God is substance; but if we mean by this that God is
matter, a thing of time, space, condition, we should say
that God is substanceless.
God is love; but if we mean by this that God is the love
that loves a particular child better than all children, or
that loves some particular father or mother better than all
fathers and mothers, or that loves one person better than
some other person, or that has a chosen people whom He
loves better than some other people who are not chosen,
then we should say that God is unloving.
God does not exercise power. God is that all-present and
all-quiet powerlessness from which man
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"generates" that which he calls power.
God does not manifest intelligence. God is that unobtrusive
knowing in everyone which, when acknowledged, flashes forth
into intelligence.
God is not matter nor confined in any way to the idea of
substance termed matter. God is that intangible essence
which man has "formed" and called matter. Thus matter is a
limitation of the divine substance whose vital and inherent
character is above all else limitless.
God is not loving. God is love, the great heart of the
universe and of man, from which is drawn forth all feeling,
sympathy, emotion, and all that goes to make up the joys of
existence.
Yet God does not love anybody or anything. God is the love
in everybody and everything. God is love; man becomes
loving by permitting that which God is to find expression
in word and act.
The point to be clearly established is that God exercises
none of His attributes except through the inner
consciousness of the universe and man.
God is the "still small voice" in every soul that heals and
blesses and uplifts, and it is only through the soul that
He is made manifest as perfect wholeness.
Drop from your mind the idea that God is a being of majesty
and power in the sense that you now interpret majesty and
power.
Drop from your mind the belief that God is in any way
separated from you or that He can be manifested
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to you in any way except through your own consciousness.
We look at the universe with its myriad forms and
stupendous evidences of wisdom and power and we say: All
this must be the work of one mighty in strength and
understanding; I should stand in awe of such a one and
realize my own insignificance in His presence. Yet when we
behold the towering oak with its wide-spreading branches,
we say it grew from a tiny acorn. A little stream of life
and intelligence flowed into that small seed and gradually
formed the giant tree. It was not created in the sense that
it was made full-orbed by a single fiat of will, but it
grew from the tiny slip into the towering tree through the
inherent potentialities of the little seed, the acorn.
So God is in us the little seed through which is brought
forth the strong, healthy Christ man.
That "still small voice" at the center of our being does
not command what we shall be or what we shall do or not do.
It is so gentle and still in its work that in the
hurly-burly of life we overlook it entirely. We look out,
and beholding the largeness of the world of things, we
begin to cast about for a god corresponding in character
with this world.
But we do not find such a god on the outside. We must drop
the complex and find the simplicity of "the most simple
One" before we can know God. We must become as a little
child.
Jesus said, "God is Spirit," not "a Spirit," as in the King
James Version. According to Webster, the
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word spirit means life or living substance considered
independently of corporeal existence; an intelligence
conceived of apart from any physical organization or
embodiment; vital essence, force, or energy as distinct
from matter; the intelligent, immaterial, and immortal part
of man; the spirit, in distinction from the body in which
it resides.
Paul says, "In him we live, and move, and have our being."
If we accept Scripture as our source of information there
can be no higher authority than that of Jesus and Paul.
They say that God is Spirit.
Spirit is not matter, and Spirit is not person. In order to
perceive the essence of Being we must drop from mind the
idea that God is circumscribed in any way or has any of the
limitations usually ascribed to persons, things, or
anything having form or shape. "Thou shalt not make unto
thee a graven image, nor any likeness of any thing that is
in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath."
God is life. Life is a principle that is made manifest in
the living. Life cannot be analyzed by the senses. It is
beyond their grasp, hence it must be cognized by Spirit.
God is substance; but this does not mean matter, because
matter is formed while God is the formless. This substance
which God is lies back of all matter and all forms. It is
that which is the basis of all form yet enters not into any
form as finality. It cannot be seen, tasted, or touched.
Yet it is the only "substantial" substance in the universe.
God is love: that from which all loving springs.
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God is Truth: the eternal verity of the universe and man.
God is mind. Here we touch the connecting link between God
and man. The essential being of God as principle cannot be
comprehended by any of the senses or faculties, but the
mind of man is limitless, and through it he may come in
touch with divine Principle.
It is the study of mind that reveals God. God may be
inferentially known by studying the creations that spring
from Him, but to speak to God face to face and mouth to
mouth, to know Him as a child knows his father, man must
come consciously into the place in mind that is common to
both man and God.
Men have sought to find God by studying nature, but they
have always fallen short. This seeking to know God by
analyzing things made is especially noticeable in this age.
Materialistic science has sought to know the cause of
things by dissecting them. By this mode they have come to
say: We must admit that there is a cause, but we have not
found it; so we assume that God is unknowable.
To know God as health one must take up the study of the
healthy mind and make it and not physical appearance the
basis of every calculation. To study mind and its ideas as
health is a departure so unusual that the world, both
religious and secular, looks upon it as somehow
impracticable. The man who lives in his senses cannot
comprehend how anything can be got out of the study of
something apparently so intangible.
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The man of affairs cannot see what mind or its study has to
do with matters pertaining to his department of life, and
the religionist who worships God in forms and ceremonies
makes no connection between the study of mind and finding
out the real nature of God.
Behold, I go forward, but he is not there;
And backward, but I cannot perceive him;
On the left hand, when he doth work, but I cannot behold
him;
He hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him.
Thus ever cries the man who looks for God in the external;
for health from an outside source.
In mathematics the unit enters into every problem; and in
existence mind is common to all, above and below, within
and without. The secret of existence will never be
disclosed before man takes up and masters the science of
his own mind.
Man's consciousness is formed of mind and its ideas, and
these determine whether he is healthy or sick. Thus to know
the mysteries of his own being he must study mind and its
laws.
Many people in every age have come into partial
consciousness of God in their souls and have communed with
Him in that inner sanctuary until their faces shone with
heavenly light; yet the mysteries of creative law were not
revealed to them, because they did not get an understanding
of its key, which is mind.
Mind is the common meeting ground of God and
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man, and only through its study and the observation of all
the conditions and factors that enter into its operation
can we come into the realization of God as abiding health
and sustenance.
God is mind; and we cannot describe God with human
language, so we cannot describe mind. To describe is to
limit, to circumscribe. To describe mind is to limit it to
the meanings of sense. In our talk about mind we are thus
forced to leave the plane of things formed and enter the
realm of pure knowing.
We can only say: I am mind; I know. God is mind; He knows.
Thus knowing is the language I use in my intercourse with
God.
If you ask me about the language I use in communicating
with God, I am not able to tell you; because you are
talking from the standpoint of using words to convey ideas,
while in the language of God ideas in their original purity
are the vehicles of communication.
But ideas are the original and natural agents of
communication; and everyone is in possession of this easy
way of speaking to God and man. Thus we may learn to use
this divine and only true way consciously if we will but
recognize it and use it on the plane of mind.
But we must recognize it. This is the one truth that we
have to reveal to you: How to recognize this divine
language in your own consciousness and how through
recognition to bring it forth into visibility. It is a
truth however that we cannot reveal to you
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by a series of eloquent essays on the majesty, power, and
wisdom of God and on the everlasting joy that follows when
you have found Him; but only by showing you in the simplest
way how to come into conscious relations with the source of
omnipresent wisdom, life, and love, by taking with you in
the silent inner realms the first steps in the language of
the soul.
Compared with audible language, communion in mind can be
said to be without sound. It is the "still small voice,"
the voice that is not a voice, the voice using words that
are not words. Yet its language is more definite and
certain than that of words and sounds, because it has none
of their limitations. Words and sounds are attempts to
convey a description of emotions and feelings, while by the
language of mind emotions and feelings are conveyed direct.
But again you must transcend what you understand as emotion
and feeling in order to interpret the language of God. This
is not hard. It is your natural language, and you need only
return to your pristine state of purity to achieve it
entirely.
You are mind. Your consciousness is formed of thoughts.
Thoughts form barriers about the thinker, and when
contended for as true they are impregnable to other
thoughts. So you are compassed about with thought barriers,
the result of your heredity, your education, and your own
thinking. Likewise your degree of health is determined by
your thoughts, past and present.
These thoughts may be true or false, depending
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on your understanding and use of divine law. You must open
the walls of your mental house by a willingness to receive
and weigh these thoughts in the balance of good judgment
and to drop out of your mind everything except the one idea:
I want to know Truth, I am willing to learn. I want to
express radiant health.
If there is not in your consciousness a demonstration that
mind has a language on its own silent plane and that it can
manifest itself in your mind, body, and affairs, then you
can go back to your old convictions.
The fundamental basis and starting point of practical
Christianity is that God is principle. By principle is
meant definite, exact, and unchangeable rules of action.
That the word principle is used by materialistic schools of
thought to describe what they term the "blind forces of
nature" is no reason why it should convey to our minds the
idea of an unloving and unfeeling God. It is used because
it best describes the unchangeableness that is an inherent
law of Being.
From the teaching that the Deity is a person we have come
to believe that God is changeable; that He gets angry with
His people and condemns them; that some are chosen or
favored above others; that in His sight good and evil are
verities, and that He defends the one and deplores the
other. We must relieve our minds of these ideas of a
personal God ruling over us in an arbitrary, manlike manner.
God is mind. Mind evolves ideas. These ideas
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are evolved in an orderly way. The laws of mind are just as
exact and undeviating as the laws of mathematics or music.
To recognize this is the starting point in finding God.
God loves spiritual man, and that love is expressed
according to exact law. It is not emotional or variable,
nor is there any taint of partiality in it. You are
primarily a spiritual being, the expression of God's
perfection, the receptacle of His love; and when you think
and act in the consciousness of perfection and love, you
cannot help being open to the influx of God's love and to
the fulfillment of His divine purpose. This is the exact
and undeviating law that inheres in the principle that God
is.
God is wisdom; and wisdom is made manifest in an orderly
manner through your consciousness.
God is substance--unchangeable incorruptible,
imperishable--to the spiritual mind and body of man.
This substance of mind--faith--does not happen to be here
today and there tomorrow, but it is moved upon by ideas
which are as unchanging as Spirit.
In Spirit you never had a beginning, and your I AM will
never have an ending. The world never had a beginning and
will never have an ending. All things that are always were
and always will be, yesterday, today, and forever the same.
But things formed have a beginning and may have an ending.
But God does not form things. God calls from the depths of
His own being the ideas that are
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already there, and they move forth and clothe themselves
with the habiliments of time and circumstance in man's
consciousness. We must have firmly fixed in our
understanding the verity that we shall have to square all
the acts of life.
God is never absent from His creations, and His creations
are never absent from their habiliments; hence wherever you
see the evidences of life, there you may know that God is.
If you are manifesting health, that health has a source
that is perpetually giving itself forth. A perpetual giving
forth implies a perpetual presence.
There is no absence or separation in God. His omnipresence
is your omnipresence, because there can be no absence in
Mind. If God were for one instant separated from His
creations, they would immediately fall into dissolution.
But absence in Mind is unthinkable. Mind is far removed
from the realm where time and distance prevail. Mind is
without metes or bounds; it is within all metes and bounds;
it does not exist but inheres in all that is. Hence in
spirit and in truth you can never for one instant be
separated from the life activity of God even though you may
not externally feel or know of His presence.
God lives in you, and you depend on Him for every breath
you draw. The understanding you have, be it ever so meager,
is from Him, and you could not think a thought or speak a
word or make a movement were He not in it. Your body is the
soil in which God's life is planted. Your mind is the light
for which He supplies the oil. "I am the light of the
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world," said Jesus. "Ye are the light of the world."
Intelligence is the light of the world. "Let your light
shine." How? By increasing the supply of oil, by increasing
your consciousness of life, and by learning how to draw
upon the omnipresent God for every need.
A good healing drill is to deny the mental cause first,
then the physical appearance. The mental condition should
first be healed. Then the secondary state, which it has
produced in the body, must be wiped out and the perfect
state affirmed.
Deny:
I deny that I inherit any belief that in any way limits me
in health, virtue, intelligence, or power to do good.
Those with whom I associate can no longer make me believe
that I am a poor worm of the dust. The race belief that
"nature dominates man" no longer holds me in bondage, and I
am now free from every belief that might in any way
interfere with my perfect expression of health, wealth,
peace, prosperity, and perfect satisfaction in every
department of life.
By my all-powerful word, in the sight and presence of
almighty God, I now unformulate and destroy every foolish
and ignorant assumption that might impede my march to
perfection. My word is the measure of my power. I have
spoken, and it shall be so.
Affirm:
I am unlimited in my power, and I have increasing health,
strength, life, love, wisdom, boldness,
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freedom, charity, and meekhess, now and forever.
I am now in harmony with the Father, and stronger than any
mortal law. I know my birthright in pure Being, and I
boldly assert my perfect freedom. In this knowledge I am
enduring, pure, peaceful, and happy.
I am dignified and definite, yet meek and lowly, in all
that I think and do.
I am one with and I now fully manifest vigorous life,
wisdom, and spiritual understanding.
I am one with and I now fully manifest love, charity,
justice, kindness, and generosity.
I am one with and I now fully manifest infinite goodness
and mercy.
Peace floweth like a river through my mind, and I thank
Thee, O God, that I am one with Thee!
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[Jesus Christ Heals]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
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