The Slavery of Ignorance

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The following is a transcription sent in by Janis Hunter in February 2023. Thank you!

LECTURE

"THE SLAVERY OF IGNORANCE"
-by-
MR. CHARLES FILLMORE
- at - U N I T Y AUDITORIUM
913 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City. Missouri

SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 12, 1913

In the Lord's Prayer, we ask to be delivered from evil. Evil is a broad term for that which doesn't agree with us, out of which we do not get satisfaction nor happiness.

Sin is another broad term, representing the shortcomings of man. We all desire to be delivered from both evil and sin. We know that in their way we are not satisfied.

Now, there is a mode of deliverance, and an easy one. And those who understand the law or who have studied this way, find that they enter into a series of lessons in which that old mind that believes in sin and evil, and those so-called necessary conditions of man, is simply cleansed, through the word. And every one of these gatherings that we have are for the purpose of using some of these attitudes of the mind - either an affirmation, which s an adding to the spiritual man, or a denial, taking away. Now, this morning, we have for our subject - there is always a subject - the "Sin of Ignorance". Ignorance is a sin. If you don't know, you are a sinner. And our prayer this morning shall be that we may be forgiven certain sins, certain attitudes of faith in limited things. And the one great sin taught in this lesson is that of believing that we descended from mortal ancestry; that man has come down through the ages of materiality; that his source is material instead of spiritual.

Now, in order to get the mind clarified, we must center upon the Truth and deny the error. So, our prayer, and all prayers, should be silent. All true prayers have their origin in the deeps of the Spirit.

So, our prayer is "I no longer commit the sin of thinking that I am descended from mortality or human ancestry, and I am the Son of God, and I inherit from my father freedom from ignorance, sin, sickness and death. I am free, praise God I am free. " I will read that once more; and let us remember the prominent points at least. Take it into the Silence. Make the denial: “I no longer commit the sin of thinking that I am descended from mortality or human ancestry. I am the Son of God, and I inherit from my Father freedom from ignorance, sin, sickness and death. I am free, praise God, I am free! Let us all join in that prayer. (Silence)

The Jews of Jesus’ time took special pride in tracing their ancestry from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When Jesus came with his message, among other short-comings, he called their attention to this one - the worship of ancestry; the tracing of man’s descent through personality, instead of from God. And they couldn't understand what he meant. .He told them that that was a sin, and they said "Why, we are not sinners, because we believe in our Father Abraham as our ancestor." But they were looking at the personal man, Abraham. He told them that they were in bondage; that they had committed sin, and whoever commits sin is the bond-servant of sin. There also is a wonderful Metaphysical statement; that we become the servants of that shortcoming which we concede to. So, we find, in this day, that we fall short, and ignorantly so, in giving to our paternal ancestors the source of our being. That is virtually what we do when we count ourselves as the children of men.

People today do not understand that proposition, because, like those old Jews that Jesus talked to, they see only the personal. If they were descendants of a real Abraham, as Jesus said, "Why, you would do the works of Abraham." Abraham was not a man; that is, his character as given in the Bible here doesn’t represent the personal man. He was a type of the birth in man of a certain faith in God. Paul, you know, refers to that. He says Abraham is an allegory. When, in our soul-unfoldment or realization of truth we come to a place where we make up our minds that we are going to be obedient to the Spirit at all hazards, the Faith, the Substance of Faith comes into the mind, and we make any sacrifice to carry out the will of God, as it comes to us. Man who has Abraham as his real ancestor, knows at once that that Abraham exists eternally in the mind of Being, and that he, as a spiritual being, as the son of the Living God, is expressing it.

Now, this is the real Abraham, and not the personal; and it was this that Jesus was trying to impress upon those Jews. "Why", he said, "I tell you the Truth, and yet, believing in your material ancestry, you seek to kill me".

What special reference has that to the individual? Why, whatever you concede to the outer kills out the inner. There is your law. If you look to the outer as the authority in anything, but especially, as the source of your being, you kill out that innate principle of man, called Christ, the Spiritual man, I Am.

Now this, then, is a sin. It is a sin for any of us to look upon mortal man as the source of our Life, or to concede to our ancestors in any way the origin of those good qualities or bad qualities which we find in ourselves. By holding your ancestors responsible for the evils that show up in you, you are making yourself a bond-servant to those evils, because they exist only in the mind. We know that evil has no fundamental being; it has no reality; it doesn't endure, because we are constantly seeking to eliminate it. Well, the real, enduring, permanent Principle couldn't be eliminated, so we know that it (evil) is transitory.

Then, we are forced to conclude that there is one Real Source of Being, and that is Spirit; and that this counting our ancestry, even in the good, through mortality, is a falling short, or a missing of the mark - that is the meaning of sin - and just to the extent that we miss the mark; just to the extent that we fall short of our high belief, do we miss the fruits of our real ancestry. When man knows that he descends directly from this innate Spiritual man within, and drops all thought of a descent through matter, then he comes to an acknowledgment of the Christ in him, and that Christ begins to proclaim itself, and the word of Christ, that cleansing, purifying, uplifting, illuminating word, begins its work, and man at once takes another standard of Life. He sees himself as the free child of an Omnipotent Good. Now this, of course, gives him a certain mental freedom first, and after that mental freedom begins to express itself, he is free along all lines. He comes to a new standard of his being.

So, Jesus said to those Jews who had fallen into the habit of, in a way, worshipping holy men, calling them "father", Rabbi", and giving them special privileges as agents of God - he said, "Call no man on earth your father. But one is your Father, even God." If you, in this day, find yourself calling holy men "father", or holy women "mother", and giving to them certain special spiritual privileges, the same rule holds good with you that it did with the Jews. You are a sinner. You are missing the bringing forth in you of the quality which you give to another.

This has spread out through the whole race. We have spiritual ignorance - an atmosphere that "I don't understand Spiritual things" has become part of the race inheritance. It is handed down from these ancestors that we worship so devoutly, - our sainted mothers and fathers and grand-fathers and grand-mothers - we go away back, you know, and hunt up the coats-or-arms that some of our very ancient ones had before they came to this country; or, if we can’t find a coat-of-arms that is the real thing, we manufacture them sometimes. We are so in love with our ancestors.

Now, the fact is that nearly all of those ancestors that existed back in England or France or some of those foreign countries were not of the highest type. If they were ruling here today, they would certainly be in the penitentiary in short order. And yet, William The Conqueror, and this one and that one are held up as noble ancestors. They had "royal blood", and all that sort of thing.

Now, if you are wise, you will just eliminate all that. All that desire for attachment to your ancestors, that is, I say, it is a sin. Yes. It doesn't make any difference how good they were. Doesn't make any difference to the son of God how much "royal "blood" he has in his veins. He knows that is that mortality; that he didn't descend through these mortal senses, through personality at all. Why, a higher range of vision will reveal to you that this human relation which we call "father", "mother", ""brother" and "sister" is a very temporary condition, and you have had many fathers and many mothers in your various experiences as a man.

Now, we are also taught that man descended through evolutionary processes. He came down through matter, and that he is now working out of matter, and that the earth is his mother. That might be called "The Darwinian Theory of Evolution". Now, is that true? It is true just to the extent that man has believed in those Imitations. There is no doubt that the records show, materially interpreted, that man has begun his personal evolution from the protoplasm, and come right up through. But when he arrives at a certain point in understanding, when this son of God comes to the consciousness, he sees that that was his own limitation. In other words, just his ignorance, his failure to see the light.

Now, Jesus said this is the light that lighteth every man that comes into the world. What is the light? Why, Spiritual Understanding. In the Scripture we are told that the first emanation, or the first day's creation was Light. "And God said, 'Let there be light', and there was light".

Now, Light is Spiritual Understanding. And Jesus referred to that again, and he said, "This is the Light; I am the Light". The light, then, is in man's Spiritual consciousness. It is that Truth which, if you know, will make you free. Free from this servitude of mortality, this servitude in your mind that you "belong to the Human Race. You don't belong to the Human Race at all if you understand the Christ Mind. You belong to the race of God.

Now, this is the teaching of Jesus Christ, and this is the correct interpretation of this Chapter. And it is intended for all men, here and now. A man will never be freed from the bondage of sin, the bondage of ancestry, until he makes these specific denials, because you will find little grooves worn in your brain structure by these ideas of a noble ancestry on the material line, and that must still be put out. I say, you are just as much of a sinner if you believe in material ancestry, in mortal ancestry, as if you had committed some moral deflection. Just exactly - and I don't know but a greater sinner, because you are in slavery, but you don't know it. Men, like those old Jews, don't know that they were in bondage. They say, "We are free". "Yes", Jesus said, "you are free. I see your freedom; I see you sick; I see you die, I see you in poverty; I see you in unhappiness. Is that your freedom? Why, you are in bondage to all kinds of conditions, all kinds of limitations. That is servitude; that is the servitude of sin. You have fallen short; you have failed to realize your real son-ship. You haven't known that the Omnipotent God was your Resource; that your Health came forth from an Omnipresent Principle of Health; that your happiness and joy was right here in Spirit, constantly waiting for you to say, 'I am Joy; I am Happiness*; that your supply and support was right here always, waiting for you to express it through your word, the word of God". "Why", Jesus said, "If my word was in you, you would lack nothing. All Good would be yours, just to the extent that you acknowledge me", that is, Christ, Principle .

Now then, this acknowledgment of man as the son of God, it is necessary that we let the light shine; that this light to Spiritual Understanding shall have free access in the mind. Are you giving free access to that light? Just to the extent, I tell you, that you open your mind to it, that you eliminate from your consciousness all this servitude of the mortal man, all belief in him as the source of anything. It is the Spirit that quickens. The flesh profits nothing. There is nothing ever comes out of the flesh, do you know that? It seems to bring forth, but it doesn't. Back of it all is Spirit, and the bringing forth is in pain, sorrow, travail, because of mortal nan's limitation.

Now, there is a new birth, a new state of Spiritual appreciation, and that comes through the Christ and his word, the word of the Spirit, the word of man, the real Spiritual Man. We are using that word just to the extent of our understanding.

That is the claim - we are doing the best we know how. No, we are not, because we have the light. The light is shining in the minds of everyone. We have an understanding far beyond what we are demonstrating. We are the children of the Most High, and we should be bringing forth the fruit, and we do bring forth those fruits just to the extent that we put the word of the Spirit into our affairs.

Then, let us agree to speak the true word. Let us tell everybody, "I am the son of God”. "But”, you say, "I wouldn't be able to make myself known; I couldn't identify myself at the bank if I said, 'I am the son of God" Well, you could say it silently, couldn't you? And that is where the Spirit works. If we would every one of us remember to think about ourselves as the son of God every time that our mortal name is mentioned, it would add wonderfully to the growth of the Christ. But when we go out into the world, and we are asked our name, we give a mortal name always, and this kills the Christ.

Now then, there is an inner and an outer, and the more you can think about that inner, and praise it and express it, the larger you will become, the more you will realize and absolutely know that you are the son of God, and the larger acknowledgment will this God-principle give to you. God is waiting for these sons of God to come forth, and the whole creation is groaning, we are told, waiting for the birth of what? Why, the Christ in man.

There are great changes going on in the world today. Back of them all is this new Spiritual evolution. Here is being pressed out into humanity the spiritual man, and that spiritual man is to be the ruling man in the world.

Now, will you come into the spiritual man? Or do you stay on the outside by proclaiming yourself as mortal? Let us take the stand of the Spirit, because in this we will get satisfaction; in this we will get eternal Life, in this acknowledgment of Christ, my Source, Christ shining like the lightning from the heavens, or from the East even unto the West. That shining in me will be illuminated with this Christ light when I proclaim it.

Now, the East, Metaphysically, is always without. The East is the realm of the occult, the hidden, so called, and the West of the revealed. But the fact is, as Victor Hugo said, “There is no hidden, there is no occult. Everything is luminous with Truth". Everywhere you will find this wonderful truth of the Spirit. You will find it in your thought. Every thought nearly has back of it these truths, but we haven’t given them the same power, the same faith, the same Substance that we have to the things that appear.

Now, clothe your ideals with the Substance of the Christ Mind. Say to them, "You are real; you are real." Name them as real, and they become real to you. Then we eliminate from our minds all thought of human ancestry. We deny human ignorance, and we acknowledge God as our Father, in the name of Christ.

11:32 A. M. 11:58 A. M.

Transcribed by Janis Hunter on February 12, 2023.