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LECTURE
"THE TRUE MEANING OF AFFIRMATIONS AND DENIALS"
-by
MR. CHARLES FILLMORE,
-at
UNITY AUDITORIUM
913 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri.
HEALING MEETING
WEDNESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 29, 1912
8:00 o'clock P.M.
In the 12th Chapter of Matthew, at the l8th verse, it is written:
“Now John came, neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘he hath the devil* The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘behold a man gluttonous, and a wine bibber; a friend of publicans and sinners’; but Wisdom is justified of her children”.
John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said he had the devil; but Jesus came both eating and drinking, and they said he is a wine bibber and a glutton, and a friend of publicans and sinners.
Everything in this Scripture must be rendered in terms of Mind, in order to get the Spirit. Paul says, “Head after the Spirit, not the letter”. Now, the Spirit of this passage I have just read is that there are two attitudes or states of mind in every man who comes in the name of God, or who looks to the Spirit for his salvation. The first attitude is denial.
He neither eats nor drinks. He makes himself a worm of the dust. He does not realize his son-ship. He has no conception of the image and likeness of God, which man is.
Now, we find this attitude of mind among religious people when they consider themselves worms of the dust; that God is a great big king on a throne, and that man is a puny, insignificant piece of clay; that He has created or given a certain degree of life that He may or according to His will. This is denial of man’s spiritual heritage; it is denial of his real character. Certain of the Oriental religions, like Buddhism, are of this tendency. They deny all the pleasures of life; they deny the beautiful natural world. They call it Maya, illusion. They teach that man should give no attention to the pleasures, the joys - to any of those things that, well, make sense-life, pleasures. They think that that all leads to evil. In the new thought, or revival of Christianity in this day, there are people who take the same attitude. They tell things us that the material life, the body, and all these material are “mortal mind”; and yet, those same people lay a great deal of store by the mortal mind possessions. But the general tendency of their thought is denial.
Now, when man awakens the spiritual, the real spiritual, he finds that he can not separate himself from the great Universal. If we live, move and have our being in God, why we must be just like God. We must, if God is Life and we are living, we must have that Divine body - it must be ours. If God is Intelligence, and we are intelligent, why, it must be the intelligence of Spirit. You can’t make any separation. If God is Love, and we are loving, it must be of God; and if God is the great I AM that I AM, man is also I AM.
Now, this is the attitude that the son takes. He recognizes his son-ship, and he doesn’t deny. Now, Jesus Christ said a little farther along in this same Chapter, that John the Baptist was greatest of those born of woman, but that one who came after him, or in the Kingdom of Heaven, he was less than the least. John acknowledged himself in the allegory that there was one to come after him whose latchet he was not worthy to loosen; showing that, in the real, this understanding on the part of man, that he is the direct offspring of God, entitled to all the privileges of the Universal Mind, is the supreme thing - and that is the son of man, eating and drinking. Eating and drinking - what does eating and drinking mean? Why, eating is always affirmation, and drinking is taking by faith. Now we, in our experience, find both of these attitudes of mind necessary. We incorporate them; we “believe in doing things through faith. That is drinking. And we also “believe in doing things through understanding - analyze them; knowing why we do them. That is eating. And when you read in the Scripture about eating and drinking, you may know that that means the “working of my mind”. When I eat ideas, I take them into my mind and think about them; I analyze them.
What I have just described to you, is the conclusion that man comes to when he realizes that there is a Universal Principle; that he is the offspring of that Principle. He reasons it all out. That is mental appropriation and analysis. We know why this Truth is true; and then we come into that broad spirit of faith, and we swallow everything that appeals to us, without thought sometimes. That is drinking.
Now, we are here this evening to eat and drink of the Spirit. We are here for the purpose of appropriating everything that is good. But supposing that there was a great table spread here and you were looking right by it or right through it, and you keep saying, “why, I don’t see it with these outer eyes, and I can’t believe that it is here; I don’t believe there is a table spread here by the Father, because I can’t feel it with these hands; I can’t smell it; I can’t smell the odor of this spiritual food. Now, if you took that attitude, you would not partake of this feast there that is spread. You remember, in the Scriptures, Jesus Christ gave us that illustration of the feast that the king prepared for his friends - called them in and they had one excuse after another. Finally he went out in the highways and by-ways and drove everybody in. Now, that is especially illustrative of those people who are looking for material things instead of spiritual - looking for something to appropriate in form, in shape, in matter, instead of appropriating or eating and affirming the spiritual food. Let us eat and drink of this great feast of Spirit, knowing, as we do, from a strict analysis of the situation, that all things exist in Mind; that the very substance of everything is here as an idea; and that, through the affirmative power of our mind, simply saying to ourselves,
“I believe in Life; I believe in Omnipresent Life; I believe in strength; I believe in the every-where present strength; I believe in the strength of my body; I believe in the illuminating Intelligence of the Spirit”.
Just affirming these like that feeds the Mind, feeds the Body,, and it feeds it much more effectually than the eating of bread and those other things that we can handle. You would be surprised how your mind will take hold of this everywhere present Substance of Life if you begin the process. People listen and listen and listen to lectures, and read books, and they don’t do the simple things which those books and those lectures teach; they don’t make their affixations; they don’t make their denials.
Now, John came denying. Well, that was rising into place. To deny, you get rid of your false ideas. You are willing to give up; you are penitent; you wear sack-cloth and ashes, metaphorically, and all that sort of thing; but don’t forget the next step, which is when you have cleansed your mind, to affirm the truth of your being. Affirm the truth of God’s Being and affirm the unity between man and God. That is the true eating; and you can drink without fear of producing indigestion or bloating your stomach. You can drink without limit of this invisible Spirit. And I would impress upon all of you the necessity of making your denials and making your affirmations and believing. Jesus Christ laid such strews upon that “do you believe”; that is, do you have faith that this thing can be done? Can you see enough of this Spirit, this Divine side of existence, to believe in it as a real power? If you do, all things are possible unto you.
To what extent are we believing? To what extent are we laying hold of these promises? Here the prophets of the ages have written out their experiences and their demonstrations and if we are really alert in our religion, we would fall right in and say, “If they did those things, I can do them”. There is but one man-kind, and we are all of that man-kind; and if any man in the universe did marvelous things, why all men can do marvelous things, if they arrive at the same place in understanding that those people were when they did those marvelous things.
Now, I am satisfied, from the experience that we have had, that we could go right on and do everything that is written in this Scripture. There must he a beginning, and you must take the stand in that beginning that we can do those things. Now, this is the real prayer of faith. That is the faith that really believes, believes it can do these things. It believes that God is the “health of His people”; that God iS the Source of all good, prosperity, everything; that all things can he drawn through prayer, through faith, through his right understanding of the Law, into man’s consciousness, and you can get the results at once. He doesn’t have to wait. It isn’t something that I am going to get tomorrow, but have it right now; have it right now. This is the day of salvation.
We are gathered here for the purpose of entering into that state of mind where we can eat and drink of the great Table of the Lord, spread before us in Spirit. This being the last Wednesday in the month, as is our custom, we devote part of the meeting to answering questions. How, before we enter into the silence, I will answer, or ask some of you to answer, any questions that you may propound. How, any questions that you have, or any questions that you have been asked, any questions that have come up in any way, we would like to consider them:
QUESTION: Mr. Eillmore, today a lady asked me what you thought about communion, as it is celebrated in the churches?
MR. FILLMORE: What is called “Holy communion”?
Q Well, in the Christian church?
MR. FILLMORE: Eating the body and drinking the “blood of Jesus Christ?”
Q, Yes.
MR. FILLMORE: Well, we have a lesson on that, which is, that in substance, that the eating is affirmation, and the blood is Life; and that Jesus Christ refined his Life and his body until it bacame a universal essence. It was spiritualized to the point of the ideal. He so lifted Himself up that every cell of his organism became mental substance. The blood in his veins was changed to electricity, that is, Life Force, and it became diffused throughout the race consciousness; and when we put our minds in that state of appropriation, it takes hold of that Jesus Christ Life. That Life existed, of course, in the beginning - it always had existed - but, as a race, we lost contact with it; our minds built a God based upon “it isn’t here”.
Now, if you think that the Universal Life is not present, and begin to build thoughts of that kind, pretty soon you enclose yourself in a thought atmosphere which pushes away or puts away the Universal Life. But Jesus Christ came and demonstrated the spirituality of man in all of his attributes; He refined His body and changed His whole Life until He accorded with Divine Life, and then He gave Himself right out to the race; He gave His body and Life and blood; He gave everything that the race might appropriate. And every time that you affirm your unity with the Christ Life, you begin to draw to you from those elements - I might say, from the little germs of Life that exist in the race atmosphere - and they begin to work in your mind; they carry out in reality just what the doctors are trying in a material way to get, and that is, some bacteria or some germ that they can introduce into the blood of man and it will drive out all the disease microbes.
Well now, Jesus Christ solved that problem. He introduced into the race consciousness from the spiritual and the mental also, because they are identical. He gave us those little germs in thought that we can take right into our systems and they will work out the whole problem for us and purify our blood. They will refine this body, the substance of it, until it will become absolutely pure, just like His body.
QUESTION: But this lady said that Jesus Christ said, “This do in remembrance of me”, and she wanted to know why we don’t do it here?
MR. FILLMORE: We do it. Every time we go into the Silence and affirm “the pure substance of God is now here”. I affirm that substance to be part of this body’s, of my body’s substance. In the name of Jesus Christ I affirm that. Why, there is not a day passes that I don’t take that communion. All you who are in the regeneration, go through this change of mind and body, must take that communion every day. If you don’t, you will lose out. You must eat of the Blood and body of Jesus Christ continually. You all understand that who have had experience. You can eat of that Life through affirmation ‘till you set up such thrills in your body that you will be in ecstacy almost.
MISS _______: It will become constant communion.
MR. FILLMORE: Oh yes, constant. That is true. People in the outer world don’t realize what our spiritual metaphysicians have gotten hold of. They haven’t any conception of it. It is difficult to explain in words this process of the regeneration - how the whole Life Force in the body is being changed, I can in myself realize that from day to day there are changes going on in my nerve centers. I can feel, as I concentrate and affirm, going all through my organism with these Divine Jesus Christ ideas, I can see that every time I throw my mind into seme center in the body, it produces a change there. Transformation takes place, and that that idea that I sow there produces an entire change of structure, and the structure is changing, continually refined, lifted up, until one of these days we will step out and find ourselves with immortal bodies, indestructible bodies; bodies just like Jesus Christ’s. Now, can you explain that to your friend?
ANSWER: I explained it as well as I could. I don’t know that I made it plain to her, but I told her if you lived in the continual communion or daily communion in that way; and that what was affirmed in the churches was only a symbol of what we did.
MR. FILLMORE: Well now, in that respect the churches represent John the Baptist. They are really starving the mind. They are not realizing that appropriation. If they would throw away that outer symbol - dump the grape juice and a little cracker, throw it right out in the street, and say, “Well now, I am going to get hold of the real which that stands for. What does that stand for, that bread stand for”? Why, that stands for the Universal Christ Substance. “Where is that? It is everywhere. How am I going to get hold of it? Will I open my mouth and get hold of it? No! It is a mental process. If I did open my mouth and let the air such in, I would get microbes in there first, because the air is full of microbes. I could suck the air in through my teeth and keep the microbes out, but I know a better way than that. I will keep myself in the Presence; and just the moment I affirm the Spirit, affirm the presence and power, and I know that these invisible things are real and true - I don’t like to call them invisible, because they are visible to the mind, and because people who are practicing the symbol will never get into the substance until they drop the symbol. So long as you take the medicines prescribed by the Doctor, your mind is fixed on that medicine. You will lose that inner life; that inner healing bond comes from the other side of medicines. All these outer things have an inward cause. When you train your mind, you can have that inward cause if you will, because everything comes to you.
Now, isn’t that a simple proposition? Here is a flower. Now where did that flower come from? Anybody tell me where it comes from?
ANSWER: The personal idea of Divine Mind.
MR. FILLMORE. Very well. It must have come from an idea, surely, because we see the beauty and see the design and see - Jesus Christ said - “as the lilly of the field; and it is clothed with a rainment that even Solomon in all his glory couldn’t have. And who did it? Well, it must have been a greater than Solomon; it must have been a greater than those that manufactured the silks and satins that Solomon wore. And where is that? Why it was right there when that flower was brought forth. It must be bringing forth man; it must be everywhere where we see manifestation, life, substance. If we are reasonable beings, we must conclude that Life and Intelligence was there. If I can, in myself, see beauty, if I can see intelligence and purity, it must be that there is a mind producing those things. Why not cultivate that more, think about it, wake my mind up to a fuller recognition of it; and if I do that, I find that what we call God, the Principle of Life, Love, Substance, all those things that we see manifested outwardly, are here in the inner. That is all there is to it; - except the application.
That is where some people don’t come right up to the standard. Now someone tell us a quick and sure way to realize this Omnipresent spiritual Principle and make it bloom you as it bloomed those flowers? How will you do it? That is a good question. I like to ask you questions here?
ANSWER: First recognize it, and then associate it by affirmation, practice of the Presence of God.
MR, FILLMORE: That is it. Now that: first you brought right out there the John the Baptist idea, that is, recognition; but most people - now, there is where they fall short. They recognize that it is true, but they fall down by thinking about themselves as they appear at the time of that recognition. I can remerther when I first took to that proposition: “Why, God is everywhere; God is the almighty Principle of the universe, hut what a poor, miserable thing I am”. Sow there, you see, was denial. That was John the Baptist.
Then the next thing I saw was that I must affirm myself, or recognise myself as one with that Almighty Presence. That was the Son, Jesus Christ. When I began that kind of eating and drinking, I began to come nicely. So be careful how you belittle yourself, unless you have got the big-head.
Now are there any other questions? (No response). Our time is up, and we are going to eat and drink like Jesus Christ ate and drunk. Now Jesus Christ in his demonstatlon added to the Universal Life and Substance; that is, he brought cloee touch, lie made the union between the mind of God and mind of man, and through thinking of Him and His presence here with ue - He is here with us - we invoke His unifying power and quickening power. You remember how those deciples hi His prayed in that upper room, and the tongues of fire be-ean to Play? What did that? Why, spiritual appropriation. Their minds and the Mind of the One Life began to bring into action this universal electricity of Mind. That brings it closer to your consciousness - call it mental electricity. You will feel it as electricity when it begins to work in your nerves. It will show you that than here is a universal Omnipresent power. Now, we will take for our first prayer the thought,
“I affirm the presence of God as as Life and Substance, Life and Substance in Christ Jesus.”
“I affirm the Life and Substance of God, through Christ Jesus”. Give yourself a baptism, throw the very life and Substance of God through Christ into your body, into your body and Mind. Now, we will all get still and take that as an affirmation. Let us eat the Life and Substance spread before us. Let us have the Holy Communion right now. “I affirm the Life and Substance of God through Christ Jesus”. That is the idea; if you want to make it stronger, you can add others , other words to it.
(SILENCE)
MR. FILLMORE: Put it in this form, realizing that eating is affixmation and drinking is faith, “I eat and drink the Substance and Life of Jesus Christ; I eat and drink the Substance and Life of Jesus Christ”. Now remeaber, Jesus Christ said, “I come that you might have Life, and have it more abundantly”.
We are invited again and again to partake of this Divine Life, which is so freely offered to us; and yet, we have not known just how to partake of it, how to drink it; we haven’t known how to eat of this body, because we haven’t understood the laws of Mind. Now, a broader understanding of what the mind what is and how it works, reveals to us Jesus Christ was giving in symbols. It was veiled in these symbols, because people in his time didn’t really know. They lived by faith, and the church up to this time has merely been drinking the body and blood of Jesus Christ. They consciously analyze it. They haven’t eaten of it. But now we are eating, and it becomes substance to us, because of that analysis, that understanding that it goes through. How, it is possible for us to realize this eating and drinking of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ for people everywhere. It is a healing balm; it is a renewing of the flesh. If you are weak in your consciousness of body, it will strengthen you. It will heal your flesh; it will give you a larger, stronger flow of blood, because it is real, it is that which the outer symbolizes.
How, let us all be wtill once more with that affirmation: “The Life and Substance of Jesus Christ is now manifest”. Let us bring it right into the outer consciousness, “ The Life and Substance of Jesus Christ is now manifest”. Now as I you - you and you and you” “The life and Substance of Jesus Christ is now manifest unto you” We will all say that with one accord.
(Repeated in unison)
Now, we will hold them silently; can be held silently. Continue the names. that same thought.
(Silence)
Now let us give all a blessing; that is, each ourselves a blessing through that affirmation: “The life and Substance of Jesus Christ is now manifest in my life and body.
(Repeated audibly) .
Now, hold it silently, all of you, until you feel the quickening.
(Silence).
That is the real communion. I am sure you have realized that that is stronger and better than merely eating and drinking. We have the pleasure of passing these plates for your free-will offerings.
We will call your attention to the meetings here every afternoon at half-past two, in which this doctrine will he brought out in some lesson by the various members of this Society. Next Sunday morning, at 10:00 o’clock, the Sunday School, and at 11:00 o’clock the regular meeting. Sunday evening Mr. L_______will address this Society. A week from this Sunday, Mrs Quigley will repeat the lecture which she gave last Sunday evening. Are there any special announcements? (no response). I would ask you to bring as many of your neighbors as you can. It is found that people catch this thought much easier than you think, and if you will get them to come and get into the thought atmosphere, they take some of it away with them. It will help them. So bring your friends and your neighbors. We will rise, please, and be dismissed:
PRAYER: We ask, Almighty Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, that the Life and Substance which we are drawing from Thee constantly will be made clearer to our minds; that we may realize it more fully; that we may eat and drink in Spirit and in Truth. AMEN.
Transcribed by Mark Hicks on July 15, 2019.
