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Twelve Powers of Man
Chapter 12
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[Twelve Powers of Man]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Chapter XII
Renunciation
ALL CHRISTIANS who have had experiences variously described
as "change of heart," "salvation," "conversion," and
"sanctification" will admit that, before they experienced
the great change of consciousness represented by these
names, they had been "convicted of sin" or had determined
to give up the ways of the world and do the will of God.
The sinners most open to reform are those who sin in the
flesh. The hardest to reach are the self-satisfied
moralists or religionists. Jesus said to such, "Verily I
say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into
the kingdom of God before you." One who is living up to
man-made morals or religious standards is not repentant,
and he makes no room in his mind for new and higher ideals
of life and Truth. Unless our repentance is accompanied by
sacrifice we are still in our sins. "Apart from shedding of
blood there is no remission." The blood represents the
life, and when the life of the flesh is given up, the
beasts of the body are literally killed and their blood or
life carries away the dead cells. This was symbolically
illustrated by Jesus when He sent the demons or evils into
the swine (Matt. 8:32).
A change of mind effects a corresponding change
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in the body. If the thoughts are lifted up, the whole
organism is raised to higher rates of vibration. If the
system has been burdened with congestion of any kind, a
higher life energy will set it into universal freedom. But
there must be a renunciation or letting go of old thoughts
before the new can find place in the consciousness. This is
a psychological law, which has its outer expression in the
intricate eliminative functions of the body.
As the physiologist studies the body, so the metaphysician
studies the mind. It is true that some metaphysicians are
not careful students. They often jump to conclusions, just
as the ancient physiologists made wild guesses about the
character of the bodily organs; but the majority of those
who work with the inner forces get an understanding that
conforms in fundamentals to the discoveries of other
metaphysicians in the same field of work. The careful
modern metaphysician does not arrive at his conclusions
through speculation; he analyzes and experiments with the
operations of his own mind until he discovers laws that
govern mind action universally.
All those who go deep enough into the study of the mind
agree perfectly on fundamentals, one of which is that the
universe originated in mind, was projected into action by
thought, and is being sustained by mind power.
Self-analysis reveals the manner in which the individual
mind acts, and this action is the key to all action in the
small and the great, in the microcosm and the macrocosm, in
man and in God. Another point of agreement is that
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thoughts are things, that they are ideas projected into
form, partaking of the nature of the thinker.
Metaphysicians make a sharp distinction between the realm
of ideas, which is Spirit, and the realm of thought, which
is mind. Thoughts act in a realm just above, around, and
within the material. They have but one degree more of
freedom than matter. Thoughts have a four-dimensional
capacity, while things have but three. Yet thoughts are
limited to the realm in which they function, and man's
consciousness, being made up of thoughts, is of like
character. Thus it is possible to overload the mind, as one
overloads the stomach. Thoughts must be digested in a
manner similar to the way in which food is digested. An
eagerness to gain knowledge without proper digestion and
assimilation ends in mental congestion. The mind, like the
bowels, should be open and free. It is reported that Lyman
Beecher said to a friend, whom he was bidding good-by,
"Worship God, be even-tempered, and keep your bowels open."
It is found by metaphysicians that praise and thanksgiving
are laxatives of efficiency and that their cleansing work
not only frees the mind of egotism but also cleanses the
body of effete matter.
Thoughts are things; they occupy space in the mental field.
A healthy state of mind is attained and continued when the
thinker willingly lets go the old thoughts and takes on the
new. This is illustrated by the inlet and the outlet of a
pool of water. Stop the inlet, and the pool goes dry. Close
the natural outlet, and the pool stagnates, or, like the
Dead Sea, it crystallizes
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its salts until they preserve everything that they touch.
The action of the mind on the body is, in some of its
aspects, similar to that of water on the earth. Living old
thoughts over and over keeps the inlet of the new thoughts
closed. Then begins crystallization--which materia medica
has named arteriosclerosis. The cause is supposed to be
some other disease, such as syphilis, which is classed as
one of the most important of the primal causes of
arteriosclerosis. Metaphysicians recognize syphilis as
secondary in the realm of effects, and they ask, "What
causes syphilis?" The cause is the uncontrolled enjoyment
of sex sensation without asking or caring to know the
object of that function in human consciousness. It would
seem that in this respect the animals were under better
discipline than men and women.
The enjoyment of the pleasures of sensation without
wisdom's control may be compared to riding in a runaway
automobile for the pleasure of the swift pace, wholly
disregarding the crash that is sure to follow. But to take
away man's freedom would delay his attaining the "son of
God" degree, which is open to him when he learns to make a
lawful use of the attributes of Being; consequently he must
acquire more wisdom and self-control. Tuberculosis,
syphilis, cancers, tumors, and the many other ills of the
flesh are evidences that nature has been outraged and is
protesting and striving to free itself from its unhappy
condition.
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Every cell of the body is enveloped in soul or thought, and
its initial impulse is to conform to the divine-natural
law. When this law is not observed by the will of man and
cells are reduced to the slavery of lust, they combine with
other cells of like condition, and, rather than submit
longer to the debased condition, they destroy the organism.
But the destruction of the cell as matter does not destroy
it on the mental plane; the mental entity survives, and
again seeks to carry out the great law of soul evolution
that was implanted in it from the beginning. Thus the
repeated incarnations of the soul--not only of the soul
cell but of the great aggregation of cells known as
man--are found to be a fact that explains the continuity of
traits of mind and body handed down from generation to
generation. It is not in the flesh that we inherit, but in
the thoughts of the flesh. The flesh has returned to dust,
but its memories endure until a higher mind power cleanses
and lifts them to purer states of consciousness.
It is related in Genesis that when fleeing from the cities
of Sodom and Gomorrah, which God was destroying, Lot's wife
looked back, and "became a pillar of salt." Salt is a
preservative, corresponding to memory. When we remember the
pleasures of the senses and long for their return, we
preserve or "salt" the sense desire. This desire will
manifest somewhere, sometime, unless the memory is
dissolved through renunciation. The desire for sensation in
the flesh in one incarnation may be expressed
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in the next in a strong desire for personal love. Having
become subconscious, it works in the subcenters of the
organism in a fever of anxiety to attain its object, and it
may be named consumption, or some other cell-consuming
disease.
Modern medical science has traced nearly all the ills of
the body to micro-organisms. The popular remedy is to
introduce into the body germs much like the disease germs
but of weakened power. The body, thereupon, in self-defense
generates in the blood stream that which counteracts or
neutralizes the disease, and renders the body immune to
severe attack. If the patient is to continue to be immune,
it logically follows that he must continue to have the
disease germs in his system, because if they should desert
him he would again be open to attack. Typhoid fever is
quieted, or forestalled, by turning loose in the system
good-natured typhoid germs. But the cause is not removed,
and some who follow up such cases say that serums are
spreading various forms of disease, and in various ways
making the human family less virile. The writer knows of
one instance where a healthy boy was vaccinated. A few
months later he was attacked by tuberculosis of the hip,
which the doctors said was caused by impure blood. All of
this goes to show that the right kind of serum has not yet
been discovered by medical science and that diseases are
not cured by serums but are merely diverted, and eventually
break out in other forms.
We see that such bacteriologists as Koch and
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Pasteur have merely a clue to the real serum, which is the
new life stream opened to man by Jesus Christ. It is true
that the bodies of men are being destroyed by disease germs
and that the palliative methods of bacteriology may enable
us to live a little longer in the body, but until the
Christ remedy is applied no real healing has been done.
Destructive germs are the creations of destructive
thoughts, and until the specific thought is found,
physicists will continue to search for the healing serum.
Their search is evidence that such a serum exists.
Destructive thinking separates soul and body, and, when the
separation is complete, bacteria take up the work and
distribute the body wreckage over the earth. If the body
were left intact, this planet would soon become the abode
of mummies, and the dead would crowd out the living. Then,
so long as people continue to die, it is well that microbes
make their bodies of some use.
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
When the body becomes locally infested with bacterial
thoughts and separates from the higher self, a forced
removal of the adverse colony, by surgery, sometimes gives
at least temporary relief. Man is the dominant thinking and
character-giving force of the earth, and he has made it a
place of desolation when it should be a paradise. Because
of his lust, anger, arrogance, and ignorance, man has been
tormented by pests, storms, and earthquakes.
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Tradition says that in the dim past this planet's mental
atmosphere was charged with the thoughts of men and women
who exercised the power of mind in lust, arrogance, and
ambition until extreme measures had to be restored to by
the planetary God.
This story (which is merely a legend) relates that
perversion of nature and her innocent life energies began
cycles ago, when man in the first exuberance of psychic
power built up a priestly hierarchy in the ancient
continent of Atlantis. These masters of black magic
dominated the world and dispossessed the cosmic mind.
Extraordinary measures of safety for the whole race became
necessary, and the higher powers planned and carried out
the destruction of the continent Atlantis and all its
people. The very soil of the continent which these
occultists occupied had become saturated with lust and
selfishness, and it was condemned as unfit to remain a part
of the parent planet. The corrupted soil was scooped out of
what is now the Atlantic Ocean and thrown off into space,
where it became the lifeless mass known as the moon. The
earth reeled like a drunkard under this terrible surgical
operation, and still wabbles out of true perpendicular, the
result of the shock and of the removal of so large a part
of its body. Before this catastrophe occurred, a tropical
climate extended to the very poles. The remains of tropical
plants and animals are found in the frigid zones today,
mute evidences that a great and sudden change has at some
time taken place in the planet's relation to the sun. The
withdrawal of warmth from the poles resulted
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in an unnatural coldness that congealed rain into snow and
ice, which slowly piled up at the poles until they capped
the earth to a great depth. This brought about the great
glacial period, which lasted thousands of years, a reminder
of which we get in icy blasts from the north, with months
of cold and snow. However, the earth is slowly regaining
its equilibrium and will in due season be restored to its
pristine golden age, and all the desert places will bloom
as the rose. So runs the tradition.
But how about the states of consciousness that man has
built up and from which he would be free? No one can play
fast and loose with God. What one builds one must care for.
What man forms that is evil he must unform before he can
take the coveted step up the mountain of the ideal. Here
enters the factor that dissolves the structures that are no
longer useful; this factor in metaphysics is known as
denial. Denial is not, strictly speaking, an attribute of
Being as principle, but it is simply the absence of the
impulse that constructs and sustains. When the ego
consciously lets go and willingly gives up its cherished
ideals and loves, it has fulfilled the law of denial and is
again restored to the Father's house.
As all desire is fulfilled through the formative word, so
all denial must be accomplished in word or conscious
thought. This is the mental cleansing symbolized by water
baptism. In a certain stage of his problem man makes for
himself a state of consciousness in which selfishness
dominates. Personal selfishness is merely an excess of
self-identity. This
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inflation of the ego must cease, that a higher field of
action may appear. One who has caught sight of higher
things is desirous of making unity with them. That unity
must be orderly and according to the divine procession of
mind. One who is housed in the intellect through desire may
be ushered into the realm of Spirit by zeal. The first step
is a willingness to let go of every thought that holds the
ego on the plane of sense. This willingness to let go is
symbolical of John the Baptist's crying in the wilderness,
denying himself the luxuries of life, living on locusts and
wild honey, and wearing skins for clothing.
The personalities of Scripture represent mental attitudes
in the individual. John the Baptist and the Pharisees
symbolize different phases of the intellect. John is
willing to give up the old and is advocating a general
denial through water baptism--mental cleansing. The
Pharisees cling to tradition, custom, and Scripture, and
refuse to let go. John represents the intellect in its
transition from the natural to the spiritual plane. The
Pharisees have not entered this transition, but cling to
the old and defend it by arguments and Scripture
quotations. Jesus, who represents the spiritual
consciousness, does not take the Pharisees into account as
a link in His chain, but of John He says: "Among them that
are born of women there hath not arisen a greater than John
the Baptist: yet he that is but little in the kingdom of
heaven is greater than he." Jesus recognizes that the
mental attitude represented by John is a prophecy of
greater things, in fact the most desirable mental condition
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for the intellect on its way to attainment, yet not to be
compared with the mental state of those who have actually
come into the consciousness of Spirit.
Every man who cries out for God is John the Baptist crying
in the wilderness. You who are satiated with the ways of
the flesh man, and are willing to give up his possessions
and pleasures, are John. The willingness to sacrifice the
things of sense starts you on the road to the higher life,
but you do not begin to taste its sweets until you actually
give up consciously the sense things that your heart has
greatly desired.
There are many phases of this passing over from John to
Jesus, and some involve unnecessary hardships. The ascetic
takes the route of denial so energetically that he starves
his powers instead of transforming them. Some Oriental
suppliants for divine favor castigate their flesh in many
ways, starve their bodies, slash their flesh, and then salt
it; they maltreat the body until it becomes a piece of
inanimate clay that the soul can vacate until the birds
build their nests in the hair of its head. This is Oriental
denial, atrophy of the senses. Some Occidental
metaphysicians are trying to imitate these agonizing
methods of discipline, but in the mind rather than in the
body.
John the Baptist stands for the mental attitude that
believes that because the senses have fallen into ignorant
ways they are bad and should be killed out. There is a
cause for every mental tangent, and that which would kill
the sense man, root and
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branch, has the thought of condemnation as its point of
departure from the line of harmony. In John it seemed a
virtue, in that he condemned his own errors, but this led
to his condemnation of Herod, through which he lost his
head. We learn from this that condemnation is a dangerous
practice from any angle.
The intellect is the Adam man that eats of the tree of good
and evil. Its range of observation is limited, and it
arrives at its conclusions by comparison. It juggles with
two forces, two factors--positive and negative, good and
evil, God and Devil. Its conclusions are the result of
reasoning based on comparison, hence limited. The
intellect, judging by appearances, concludes that existence
is a thing to be avoided. The intellect, beholding the
disaster and the misery wrought by the misuse of men's
passions, decides that they should be crushed out by
starvation. This is the origin of asceticism, the killing
out, root and branch, of every appetite and passion,
because in the zeal of action they have gone to excess.
Yet John the Baptist has a very important office in the
development of man from intellectual to spiritual
consciousness. As Jesus said:
"This is he, of whom it is written,
Behold, I send my messenger before thy face,
Who shall prepare thy way before thee."
Thus John the Baptist is the forerunner of Spirit. He
stands for the perception of Truth which prepares the way
for Spirit through a letting go of narrow beliefs, and a
laying hold of divine ideas.
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The beliefs that you and your ancestors have held in mind
have become thought currents so strong that their course in
you can be changed only by your resolute decision to
entertain them no longer. They will not be turned out
unless the ego through whose domain they run decides
positively to adopt means of casting them out of his
consciousness, and at the same time erects gates that will
prevent their inflow from external sources. This is done by
denial and affirmation; the denial always comes first. The
John the Baptist attitude must begin the reformation. Man
must be willing to receive the cleansing of Spirit before
the Holy Ghost will descend upon him. Whoever is not meek
and lowly in the presence of Spirit is not yet ready to
receive its instruction.
This obedient, receptive state means much to him who wants
to be led into the ways of the supreme good. It means that
he must have but one source of life, one source of truth,
and one source of instruction; he must be ready to give up
every thought that he has imbibed in this life, and must be
willing to begin anew, as if he had just been born into the
world a little, ignorant, innocent babe. This means so much
more than people usually conceive that it dawns on the mind
very slowly.
All who sincerely desire the leading of Spirit acquiesce
readily in the theoretical statement of the necessity of
humility and childlikeness, but when it comes to the
detailed demonstration many are non-plused. This is just as
true among metaphysicians as among orthodox Christians.
Spirit will find a way
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to lead you when you have freely and fully dedicated
yourself to God, and you will be led in a path just a
little different from that of anyone else. Your teaching
has been in generalities, so when Spirit in its office as
an individual guide shows you Truth different from that
which you have been taught, you may object. If, for
instance, you have been taught to ignore the body with all
its passions and appetites, and Spirit in its instruction
shows you that you are to recognize these appetites and
passions as your misdirected powers, what are you going to
do about it?
There can be but one course for the obedient devotee. If
you have surrendered all to omnipresent wisdom, you must
take as final what it tells you. You will find that its
guidance is that right course for you and, in the end, that
it was the only course that you could possibly have taken.
All things are manifestations of the good. Man in his
spiritual identity is the very essence of good, and he can
do no wrong. He can in his experience misuse the powers
placed at his disposal by the Father, but he can do no
permanent evil. He always has recourse to Spirit, which
forgives all his transgressions and places him on the right
road, a new man, when he willingly gives up his own way and
as a little child asks to be led. Then comes the redemption
of the appetites and passions, which the ignorant intellect
has pronounced evil and has attempted to kill out by
starvation and repression. This does not mean that the
indulgence of appetites and passions
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is to be allowed in the old, demoralizing way, but it means
that they are to be trained anew under the direction of
Spirit.
John the Baptist represents the attitude of spiritual
receptivity that awaits the higher way as a little child
awaits the helping hand of a parent. It is not the
arbitrary disciplinarian, but the loving, tender
kindergarten teacher, that illustrates in visible life the
intricate problems that perplex the mind. When man is
receptive and obedient, giving himself unreservedly up to
Spirit and to receiving its guidance without antagonism, he
is delighted with the possibilities that are disclosed to
him in the cleansing of mind and body. He then begins to
realize what Jesus meant when He said: "If any man would
come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross,
and follow me."
The cross is not a burden, as commonly understood, but is a
symbol of the forces in man adjusted in their right
relation. The body of Jesus was lifted up and nailed to the
cross, which indicates that the physical man must be lifted
into the harmony of Spirit and adjusted to its
four-dimensional plane, represented by the four branches of
the crosstree.
Man thinks in the fourth dimension, but his body, in its
present fleshly consciousness, can express in three
dimensions only. Hence we must cleanse our thoughts by
denying materiality. Then the flesh will become radiant
ether with power to penetrate all so-called material
substance. But before this can be done the mind of the man
must become John the
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Baptist--it must be cleansed by the waters of denial, and
the old material ideas must be put away forever.
If you are clinging to any idea that in any way prevents
your eyes from seeing the millennium here and now, you are
a Pharisee; you are crying, "Beelzebub," whenever you say
"crank" of the one who has caught sight of the spiritual
mountaintops now glistening in the sun of the new age.
John the Baptist is now moving swiftly among the children
of men. His cry is heard in many hearts today, and they are
following him in the wilderness of sense. But the bright
light of the Christ still shines in Galilee, and they who
are earnest and faithful shall see it and be glad.
Those who attempt to heal the body by injecting into it a
new life stream from without are attempting to do in a
material way what Jesus attained spiritually. The vitality
of the race was at a low ebb at His advent; He saw the
necessity of a larger consciousness of life, and He knew
how to inoculate the mind of everyone who would accept His
method. In John 5:26 it is written, "For as the Father hath
life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have
life in himself." Life is spiritual, as everyone admits who
has tried to find it in a physical laboratory. No one has
even seen life in food or drink, but it is there in small
degree, and it is through eating and drinking that the body
absorbs the invisible life elements that physical science
has named vitamins. The vitamin is the essential life
within all forms and, being spiritual in character, must be
spiritually
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discerned. We feel life's thrill in our body; by raising
this consciousness of life to Christ enthusiasm, we may
come to such fullness of energy that the whole life stream
will be quickened and the congestions in arteries and
glands swept away. "I came that they may have life, and may
have it abundantly."
All spiritual metaphysicians know that the body and the
blood of Jesus were purified and that each cell was
energized with original spiritual substance and life, until
all materiality was purged away and only the pure essence
remained. This vitamin, or essence of life and substance,
was sown as seed in the whole race consciousness, and
whoever through faith in Christ draws to himself one of
these life germs becomes inoculated to that degree with
Jesus Christ quality, and not only the mind but also the
body is cleansed.
"He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; and the
field is the world." Like a seed planted in soil, the word
or thought germ will multiply and bring forth after its
kind. "He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same
beareth much fruit: for apart from me ye can do nothing."
The apostle Thaddaeus, called also Lebbaeus, carries
forward the work of elimination of error thoughts from the
mind and of waste food from the body.
The nerve center from which the eliminative function
directs the emptying of the intestines is located deep in
the lower bowels.
This center is very sensitive to thoughts about
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substance and all materiality. A gripping mental hold on
material things will cause constipation. A relaxation of
the mind and a loosening of the grip on material
possessions will bring about freedom in bowel action.
The prevailing ills of the abdominal region, constipation,
tumors, and the like, are caused by constriction of the
whole body energy.
The faculties centering in the head are responsible for
this slowing down of the life forces. The will, operating
through the front brain, controls the circulation of the
life force in the whole organism. A tense will, set to
accomplish some personal end, keys everything to that end
and puts a limitation on the activity of every other
function.
The set determination to succeed in some chosen field of
action, study, profession, business, or personal ambition
calls most of the body energy to the head and starves the
other centers.
In our schools the minds of our children are crammed with
worldly wisdom, and they are spurred on to make their
grades, thus constantly forcing the blood to the head and
depleting its flow to the abdomen.
This overflow to the will center causes enlarged adenoids,
inflamed tonsils, sinus trouble, and other ills of the
head, while the abdominal region suffers with constipation
and general lack of vital action.
Some persons relax in sleep and thus give the body an
opportunity to recoup its depleted energy. But if the eager
pace is kept up night and day, the
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end is nervous prostration. The remedy is relaxation of
will, the letting go of personal objectives.
The strife to get on in the world is responsible for most
of the ills of the flesh. Worry or anxiety about temporal
needs disturbs in the body the even flow of nature's
all-providing elements. Jesus warned against the tension of
anxiety when He said, "Be not anxious for your life, what
ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your
body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the
food, and the body than the raiment?"
A divine law has been provided for man that will meet every
need when it is observed. "Seek ye first his kingdom, and
his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto
you."
So we find that relaxation of the tense abdomen depends on
relaxation of the tense will.
Give up your willfulness and ask that the divine will be
done in you and in all your affairs. Jesus set aside His
will that God's will might be done in Him. "Not my will,
but thine, be done."
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