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Twelve Powers of Man
Chapter 13
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[Twelve Powers of Man]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Chapter XIII
Generative Life
THE LAW of generation is undoubtedly the mystery of
mysteries in human consciousness. Men have probed, with
more or less success, nearly every secret of nature, but of
the origin of life they know comparatively nothing. It is
true that they have with chemical combinations simulated
life, but the activity has been temporary only.
In the phenomenal world, life is the energy that propels
all forms to action. Life in the body is like electricity
in a motor. As the engineer directs and regulates the
electricity in a motor, so the life in the body has its
engineer. Life is not in itself intelligent--it requires
the directive power of an entity that knows where and how
to apply its force, in order to get the best results. The
engineer of the life force in the body of man is the life
ego; this is the consciousness of life in the organism.
The life ego is the most subtle and most variable of all
the powers of man. It is an animal force, and is designated
in the Bible allegory as one of the "beasts of the field."
It presides over the life and generative function of the
body, and because of its tendency to separate and segregate
itself from the other bodily functions, it is called the
"adversary." It is not essentially evil, but because of its
place as
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the central pole of all bodily activity, its tendency is to
centralize all action around its consciousness.
In its divine-natural relation, the life ego has its
positive pole in the top head, which is the "heaven" of
man's consciousness. When the personality gets active and
begins to exercise in the higher or spiritual forces, the
life ego becomes inflated with its own importance and falls
from heaven (top head) to earth, or front brain. When the
seventy whom Jesus had indued with spiritual power
returned, they proclaimed that even the demons were subject
to them. Then Jesus said, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall
from heaven." Jesus was evidently quoting Isaiah, who wrote
in the 14th chapter of his book (King James Version):
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the
morning; how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst
weaken the nations!
For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into
heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I
will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides
of the north:
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be
like the Most High.
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the
pit.
Jesus warned the seventy not to rejoice over their
spiritual power, and added, "but rejoice that your names
are written in heaven."
In order to give man a body having life in itself, God had
to endow him with a focal life center,
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located in the generative organs. This center of activity
in the organism is also the seat of sensation, which is the
most subtle and enticing of all factors that enter into
being. But these qualities (sensation and generation) were
necessary to man's character, and without them he would not
have been the complete representative, or image and
likeness, of God.
God does not tempt man to break His law, but a great
creative plan is being worked out in which the Deity is
incarnating itself in its creation. This incarnation is
called the Son of man; in man a wonderful being is in
process of creation. This being is spiritual man, who will
be equal with God, when he overcomes, or handles with
wisdom and power, the faculties of the body. The body is
the Garden of Eden.
What metaphysicians most need is a comprehension of the
factors that go to make up consciousness. This requires
discrimination, judgment, and self-analysis.
We talk glibly about God as life, love, intelligence, and
substance, and about man as His manifestation, but when we
come to describe that manifestation we "lump it off" as the
product of thought.
What we now need to know is how thought groups the
different attributes of Being, for on this combination
depends the bringing forth of the ideal man.
We must learn to watch our consciousness, its impulses and
desires, as the chemist watches his solutions. Man forms
his own consciousness from the
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elements of God, and he alone is responsible for the
results.
Consciousness is a deep subject, and to go into it
exhaustively would require the writing of many books.
Concisely stated, three great factors enter into every
consciousness--intelligence, life, substance. The
harmonious combination of these factors requires the most
careful attention of the ego, because it is here that all
the discords of existence arise.
In Scripture the divine life combined with divine substance
is termed "the Lamb of God." This phrase carries the
symbology of the Lamb's purity, innocence, and
guilelessness. Its nature is to vivify with perpetual life
all things that it touches. It knows only to give, give
unceasingly and eternally, without restraint. It does not
carry wisdom; that is another quality of Being, which man
comprehends from a different part of his consciousness.
The pure life of God flows into man's consciousness through
the spiritual body, and is sensed by the physical at a
point in the loins. This is the "river of water of life,
bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and
of the Lamb," referred to in the 22d chapter of Revelation.
Only those who have come into consciousness of the
spiritual body can feel this holy stream of life. When the
ego has found it, and laved in its cleansing currents, the
ecstasy of Elysian realms is experienced. It cannot be
described, because all the sensations of the mortal
consciousness are coarse, compared with its transcendent
sweetness and purity.
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Many feel its thrills in part in silent meditation or in
religious enthusiasm, and are temporarily stimulated by its
exquisite vibrations. Just here is where the danger lies
for those who have not brought out the other pole of
Being--intelligence.
The ego, through its recognition of this life stream, sets
it flowing to every faculty. Being by nature formless, the
life stream takes the mold and character of that into which
it is poured. It is the servant of the ego, the I, which
man is, and through his failure to recognize the divine
intelligence, which should show him how to use it in the
right way, he blunders ahead in his ignorance, and the Lamb
of God is slain from the foundation of the world.
The greatest danger of perversion lies in the direction of
the carnal thought of sex, because it is there that this
pure stream has been most foully polluted by ignorance. Sex
sensation has made a broken cistern of man's consciousness;
for generations the life stream has been turned into this
receptacle, and lust has robbed the bodies of the whole
race, making them mere shells, void of life. The failing
eye, the deaf ear, the festering of withering flesh, all
bear testimony to this perversion of God's life.
Yet men and women, otherwise applying good reason, continue
their lustful practices and at the same time wonder why God
does not give them more life.
They run here and there, seeking a restoring elixir for
their failing powers; they call on God for help, while they
continue to squander His energy in lust.
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Man is male and female, which are qualities of mind--love
and wisdom. Every attempt to lower these divine attributes
to the physical plane meets with disaster. It has been
tried again and again in every age, and its votaries have
always gone into demoralization if they persisted in trying
to carry out their theories.
Yet it is not unlawful to have bodily sensations in
regeneration. A change in ideas must necessarily produce a
change in the body, and there is a perfect response in
every center of consciousness when Spirit has been welcomed
as the rightful inhabitant of the body. The marriage
mystically spoken of in Scripture, and in other sacred
books, takes place in the consciousness; it is a soul
communion of the two-in-one, more sweet than that between
the most harmoniously mated man and woman. This eliminates
sex in its outer manifestation.
Persistently deny the carnal belief in sex, and realize
that the life stream, which has been turned outward and
named sex, is not of that character in its original purity,
but is pure spiritual life.
You must cleanse this pure stream in its outward flow by
destroying the carnal sense of sex. This can be done only
by the power of your word. Do not kill out the life
manifesting through your body by denying it away entirely;
deny away the sense of impurity with which the animal ego
has clothed it.
"To the pure all things are pure" does not mean that
lasciviousness is pure, nor that the deifying of
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sexuality is pure. The purity is in knowing that behind and
interior to these shadows is a pure substance that is of
God, that must be seen by the eye of the pure. So long as
your eye sees sex and the indulgence thereof, on any of its
planes, you are not pure. You must become so mentally
translucent that you see men and women as sexless
beings--which they are in the spiritual consciousness.
Sex lust is the father of death. James, in the 1st chapter
of his epistle, gives its history in these words: "Then the
lust, which it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin,
when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death."
Paul says, "to be carnally minded is death" (A.V.), and
Jesus, in the 12th chapter of Mark, sums up the whole
question in these words: "For when they shall rise from the
dead [come out of the carnal consciousness], they neither
marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as angels in
heaven."
To desire to be instructed by God is the first step in
exalting the inner life force. The sincere desire of the
heart is always fulfilled by the divine law. All the woes
of humanity have their root in disregard of law. Man has to
deal with many factors in his "garden." The most "subtle"
is the "serpent," or sense consciousness. It is not evil,
as we have been taught to believe. The allegory given in
the 3d chapter of Genesis plainly teaches that sensation
(serpent) is a blind force, which should not be regarded as
a source of wisdom. In its right relation the serpent
stands upright on its tail, and forms the
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connecting link between the swift vibratory forces of
Spirit and the slow vibrations of the flesh. "As Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the
Son of man be lifted up." In the body the spinal cord is
the main cable of sensation, "the tree . . . in the midst
of the garden," and its branches extend to all parts of the
system. The "fruit" of this "tree," which the desire for
sensation (serpent) urges man to eat, is the seminal fluid,
which flows throughout the nervous system and is the
connecting link between the mind and the body. When desire
for sensation leads man to dissipate (eat) this precious
"fruit" of the "tree" in his earthly garden, the whole
nervous system is drained of its vitality and the spinal
cord loses its capacity to conduct the higher life into the
consciousness. Man feels a lack; he is "naked." Sensation
is no longer a heavenly ecstasy but a fleshly sex
vibration. It crawls on its "belly" and eats "dust" all the
days of its life; that is, it functions in the driest, most
lifeless part of man's being.
Yet sensation is a divine creation; it is part of the Lord
God's formation and must find expression somewhere in the
consciousness. This brings us to the root cause of that
appetite which craves stimulants and goes to excess in
seeking satisfaction in eating and in drinking. The cause
is plainly to be seen when we understand the anatomy of
mind and body. Sensation is seeking satisfaction through
the appetites. By listening to this serpent of sense, man
becomes sexually insane, a glutton and a drunkard.
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The remedy is this: Turn away from the lusts of the flesh
and seek God. Take up the problem from its spiritual
standpoint. Sensation is a mental quality. It can be
satisfied only by cultivation of the spiritual side of the
nature. If you are a sexual drunkard, deny the power of
this ungodly lust over you. Pray for the help to overcome,
then affirm your own power and spiritual dominion over all
the "beasts of the field" in your "garden." When you have
obtained mastery over sexual intemperance, you will find
the conquest of appetite easy. Simply deny all desire for
material stimulants and affirm that you are satisfied with
the stimulant of Spirit. Whenever the desire for the
material stimulant manifests itself, say to it: You are
nothing. You have no power over me or over anybody else. I
am Spirit, and I am wholly satisfied by the great flood of
spiritual life that now fills my being.
The result of sin is death; the truth of these words has
been proven for ages. But when he was tempting her to
disobey the divine law, the "adversary" said to Eve, "Ye
shall not surely die." The tragedy of Eden is being enacted
every day in every individual of the race, and death reigns
in consequence. We may call it by any other name, but the
breaking up of consciousness and the separation of spirit,
soul, and body take place just the same. As Emerson said,
"Behold a god in ruins." In face of the facts that God
pronounced death to be the wages of sin and that the
experience of the race has proved His words true, many
people have listened to the
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"adversary" and have believed his lie. We hear them on
every side saying, "Ye shall not surely die."
As the result of sin the whole human race is already "dead
in trespasses and sins"; that is, the race is in a dying
condition, which ends in the loss of the body. Death is not
annihilation, because a resurrection has been promised.
To be "dead in trespasses and sins" is to lack realization
of God, to be ignorant of His law and disobedient to it.
When Jesus said, "I am the resurrection, and the life," He
was telling of the power of the Christ Mind to enter the
mind and the body of man as quickening Spirit to awaken the
whole consciousness to the knowledge of God. This
resurrecting process is now going on in many people. It is
a gradual change that brings about a complete
transformation of the body through renewal of the mind.
Spirit, soul, and body become unified with Christ Mind, and
body and soul become immortal and incorruptible. In this
way death is overcome.
Those who insist that men do not die as a result of sin are
building up a false hope of finding life after death. Those
who understand that eternal life has been lost to the race
through sin, and can be regained only through the
resurrecting power of the Christ Mind in the individual,
are building on the eternal foundation of Truth. Everyone
must at some time come to understand that this statement is
absolutely true: "He that hath the Son [consciousness of
Christ] hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath
not the life."
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The belief that all the entities that speak through mediums
are the spirits of dead people is not proved. The
communications are so fragmentary, and usually so inferior
to the natural ability of the supposed egos delivering
them, that those of wide investigation doubt the
authenticity of the authorship. No great literary
production, great scientific discovery, or great sermon has
ever come from spirits, yet the country in which it is
claimed that they exist should contain all the wise people
who have lived on the earth.
This theory of continuous progressive life after death
contradicts the teachings of the Bible. God did not create
man to die; death is the result of a transgression of law.
Christianity teaches that man was created to live in his
body, refining it as his thoughts unfold, and that the work
of the Christ--the supermind in man--is to restore this
state; that is, unite spirit, soul, and body here on earth.
This must be fulfilled in the whole race, and every thought
of death, or the possibility of leaving the body, must be
put out of the mind.
Practical Christians object to thoughts that tend to
separate soul and body, because by such thoughts is built
up a consciousness that finally brings about that
dissolution. It is a fact, well known to those who have
deeply studied the law of Being, that death does separate
spirit, soul, and body; that the communications received by
spiritualists are but echoes of the soul, without its
animating, inspiring, spiritual I AM; that this mentality
that communicates falls in its turn into a sleep, or coma,
even as the
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body does, until the law again brings about a union with
its I AM or higher self, and the building of another
physical organism takes place. This process of repeated
body building by the ego continues until the man, through
Christ, makes a complete union of spirit, soul, and body
here on earth. This union brings all of man's powers into
conjunction, and what is mystically known as the Jesus
Christ man, or redeemed man, appears.
We can easily see how illogical, unwise, and futile it is
to teach that man can lay off his body as a worn-out
garment and, by weakly giving up and dying, go on to higher
attainment. We know whereof we speak, and we must proclaim
this great truth that Jesus taught: "Whosoever liveth and
believeth on me [spiritual I AM] shall never die."
If God created man to die and go on to a spirit land to get
his education, then it would be better for him to die in
infancy and escape the hardships of life. Also, if death is
part of God's law, we are defeating the law every time we
attempt to escape death by trying to heal the body.
If man's birth as an infant a few years ago was the
beginning of his existence, then God has performed a
miracle and made an exception of man in the progressive law
of development that is evident in all His other works.
The fact is--and it is well known to initiates--that
spiritualists are in communication with the mentality of
humanity, that is, the personal consciousness. Not having
developed the superconscious mind,
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they do not understand the creative law. They function
mentally and physically in a thought psychism that is mixed
and uncertain. Their communications can all be explained in
the action of the subconscious minds of the living, and the
majority of mediums are uncertain as to whether they are
moved by their own or some other mentality.
When man has brought his higher self into action he will
see clearly the relation of spirit, soul, and body, in all
phases of their action.
If you want to know all the mysteries of life, study life
and put out of your mind every thought about death or the
condition of the dead. Then through the law of thought
formation you will build up in yourself such a strong
consciousness of life that its negative (or absence) will
ever be to you nonexistent. Jesus meant this when He said,
"If a man keep my word, he shall never see death."
The desire to live does not cease when the body dies. The
mind lives on, not in heaven or hell, but in the states of
consciousness that it has cultivated in life. Mind does not
change with a change of environment. Those who leave the
body of matter find themselves in a body of ether, which
does not respond to their desire for coarse sensations.
Jesus taught in Luke 16:23 that the rich man who died was
in "torment" in Hades. In the original language in which
the Bible was written Hades was a term used to represent
the unseen world. Those who have cultivated spiritual
thoughts find themselves at death in an environment and in
an ether body corresponding
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to their prevailing thoughts. But the very fact that they
died proves that they gave up to the "adversary," that they
did not attain the dominion, power, and authority of
spiritual man. Consequently after a period of recreation
and rest they will again take up active, overcoming life in
a flesh body through reincarnation. So this process of life
and death will continue until the ego overcomes sin,
sickness, and death, and raises the body of flesh to the
body of Spirit without the tragedy of death. "This
corruptible must put on incorruption; this mortal must put
on immortality."
Our theologians have not discerned man's life in its
entirety--they have attempted to crowd into one physical
incarnation the character that it has taken aeons to
develop. As taught by Jesus, and by all spiritual teachers,
the goal of man is the attainment of eternal life; the
overcoming of physical death. The human race on this planet
will continue to die and be reborn until it learns the law
of right living, which will ultimate in a body so healthy
that it will never die. Jesus demonstrated this, and He
promised those who should follow Him in the regeneration
that they would never see death if they should keep His
words. Many Christians are getting this understanding--that
they have not attained eternal life so long as they allow
the body to continue in the corruption that ends in death,
and they are earnestly beginning the appropriation, or
eating and drinking, of the life and substance of the
Lord's body, until He appears again in their regeneration
organism.
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