Series 2 - Lesson 6 - Annotation 5
What is the new birth? How does it take place?
5. A birth is coming into a state of existence. As Charles Fillmore explains it:
"The first birth is the human — the self-consciousness of man as an intellectual and physical being; the second birth, the being 'born anew,' is the transformation and translation of the human to a higher plane of consciousness as the son of God" (Charles Fillmore Christian Healing 26).
When he is born into the human realm, man's desires and interests have to do with the satisfaction of bodily appetites and the required routines of life. The second birth is when man awakens to the truth of his real nature.
Jesus said, "Ye must be born anew" (John 3:7). This being "born anew," or coming into a new birth is an experience that takes place in man's soul (his thinking and feeling). Charles Fillmore says further in Christian Healing 26, on the subject of the new birth:
"The second birth is that in which we 'put on Christ.' It is a process of mental adjustment and body transmutation that takes place right here on earth ...
"This being 'born anew,' or 'born from above,' is not a miraculous change that takes place in man; it is the establishment in his consciousness of that which has always existed as the perfect-man idea in Divine Mind."
The Holy Spirit, God in action, is ever moving in man, urging him to recognize and become conscious of himself as a spiritual being, a son of God, ever one with God. When man responds to thins inner urge, he experiences the "new birth." He experiences a spiritual conception, a divine seed-idea of himself, in his feeling nature. When he nurtures this seed-idea by his loving interest and attention, it germinates. Through continued attention, this new concept grows and grows until it fills the whole consciousness with a realization of man as the perfect son of God, created in the image and after the likeness of God. A seed germinates, grows, bears fruit as the sun and rain work upon it, and so the seed-idea of spiritual man grows and bears fruit in man's soul (mind), body, and affairs. This growth is called the "new birth" or being "born anew."
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Preceding Entry: Show how a perfect body and a perfect world may be "made" by each man.
Following Entry: What changes follow man's new birth?
