Mark Yarnell’s Unpublished Fillmore

Talk 1

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INTRODUCTION

I want to begin by saying that some of these materials may have been published. I have not read every single thing that has come out of Unity village and I don’t think anybody else has. Some of these, this might have been the wrong way to publicize this, and I apologize if you’ve heard any of these things. I doubt very seriously if any of them have and published. I think you’ll see why when we get into them. I wanted to say right at the beginning, they could have been, some of them.

I want to tell you a little bit about my motivation for teaching this. I think it is time that the whole Unity movement be made aware of the magnificent vision of Charles Fillmore. Also, I want to have a little fun with this. I want to take some things that are obviously sensational, hopefully not out context and take a look at some of the things he believed and he taught. I’m going to give you the dates of every quote so that if you think that is just too wild, he could not have said that, I don’t buy it, you can go to the archives at Unity Village and look up the talk on that date and check it out for yourselves. I’m going to be giving you all the dates.

I’ve tried very carefully not to take things out of context. By that, I mean, I did run across a statement that Charles Fillmore really enjoyed flying around the tower in his astro body and found out later on in the same talk, that he was referring to an imaginary process and he never did actually leave his body. It would’ve been very sensational to come in and say the first part, but not the second.

I’ve been very careful to be as honest as possible in treating these statements and noting pulling things out of context. There has been a discussion among Unity people for a long time now, and I’m going to shed some light on the answer to this particular dilemma tonight for you. The argument has run something like this. Charles Fillmore was interested in Silent Unity and in creating a prayer ministry that would reach all over the world where you could call in, or you could write in and we’d mail out prayers, or we’d call the people back or we’d talk to them and we’d pray with them. Charles Fillmore contend some people was never interested in forming a church. That’s why many of them are called centers. In fact, these things just sprung up accidentally and Fillmore really wasn’t interested in that. That was not his intention. Then there are other people who, in the field, want us to believe and other people who share with us that in fact, the thrust of Fillmore’s ministry was the idea of a church.

Most recently, the two elements at Unity Village have been discussing this rather vehemently. That question was, are we supposed to be a healing, Silent Unity type thing, or is it supposed to be a worldwide church movement? Well, I don’t pretend to know all the answers, but I would like to read to you a letter written by Charles Fillmore on June 10th, 1924. “Beloved in Christ”, by the way, this went out to half a million people, “Beloved in Christ, enclosed are blanks for membership in the Unity Church Universal. Sign one with two witnesses and mail to us. Keep the other for reference. Consider well before you sign the covenant. It does not obligate you personally, mentally or financially to any manmade organization. Your covenant is with God through Christ and by its terms, you join the army of the Lord. As a Christian soldier, you who may be called by spirit to serve in some capacity in the spiritual ministry, which is now being organized on the earth to usher in the kingdom of the heaven. Your signature to the covenant consecrates you to God’s ministry. Are you willing to follow the calls that serve whenever it may come? In His service, Charles Fillmore, representative at large for Jesus Christ”.

This is the document which accompanied the letter. It’s called Unity Church Universal membership covenant. While I could take the time to read it in its entirety, I don’t think it’s important. I think all I need to do is pick out a few of the key elements and you’ll catch the drift. The unity of the whole world in one great spiritual brotherhood was the ideal of Jesus. The object of the Unity Church Universal is to bring the spiritual forces of Christ into direct action in earthly affairs, not in discussing questions of theology. The whole world is being quickened with the spirit of unity, to the end that all nations and all people shall be united in a worldwide brotherhood in which peace, plenty and liberty shall reign supreme.

The Unity Church Universal is the connecting link between the church of Christ invisible in the heavens and the church in earth. The office of this Church Universal is to unify all churches and all members of the Christ’s body into one dynamic spiritual army. This army will mentally gather the scattered thought of many churches and their members and through their willing unity, establish a mind combination through which the transcendent spiritual forces of the heavenly realm will be expressed with power on earth. Now, listen to this. I love it.

“When enough Christian metaphysicians who are trained in handling thought unite in affirming the presence and power of Christ in the world, He will appear and the chaos of evil and error will be bound forever. We recognize, but one head of this church, Jesus Christ. We consecrate and dedicate ourselves to his service and shall strive in all ways to raise ourselves to His, the Christ standard. We do not seek earthly possession or honor. We seek to know the law of God as it is in Jesus Christ and to cooperate with him in ushering the kingdom of heaven into the earth in uniting all human beings in unity, Charles Fillmore.”

Then there’s a place where you could sign it and witnesses could sign underneath it. Now, I want to share with you two newspaper articles and show you a couple of pictures. There are some people that say, Fillmore went around lecturing about churches when he turned 90 and he had gotten a little older and married Kora and moved out the west coast. That’s when [inaudible 00:06:58] churches. No, no, no. This was written in 1924 but I would like you to know what he was doing when he was 90 years old. This first article is from Detroit, it’s a newspaper. Charles Fillmore, confounder of the Unity school of Christianity assisted by his wife, Mrs. Cora Fillmore will lecture in Scottish Rite Temple, Phelps Hubbard at three o’clock this afternoon on the subject of spiritual healing and divine law prosperity. The Unity movement, founded in 1899 has rapidly become a worldwide institution. It is unique in that it is non sectarian, it’s aim being to teach men and women of every church to use and prove the eternal truth taught by the master.

Charles Fillmore is a true exponent of the Unity belief and for 55 years, has been actively engaged in the work at headquarters. A year ago, he undertook a new phase of service, that of lecturing unity to students and workers in the field. His new duties took him to West Coast where he and Mrs. Fillmore conducted lectures and held classes in the various Unity centers. A 7,200 people crowded the Shrine auditorium in Los Angeles to hear Mr. Fillmore last February, several back hundreds being turned away. Mr. Fillmore has just closed engagements in New York city and Washington DC.

I photographed the picture in California and I want to pass it around, 7,200 people went to hear Charles Fillmore and one of his talks and they had to turn away a thousand people. Now, I want to share something else that I think you’re going to really find exciting. This is from the Los Angeles Times, 1944. The heading is Unity founder, 90 against idea of growing old.

I want to read half of this investigative reporter’s comment. “Fillmore is in Los Angeles for two purposes, to sit in the sunshine and write a new book and to establish a Unity training school, which will open January 15th at 635 Manhattan Place with a prepaid enrollment of more than a thousand people.

Born among the Chippewa Indians of Northern Minnesota, Fillmore is an apostle of natural wholesome living as well as a constructive thinker. He has not tasted meat for 50 years, excuse me. He founded Unity 55 years ago, following an apparently miraculous healing through faith of a malady that afflicted him and Mrs. Fillmore. Please hear this closely, Unity, with headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri is one of the fastest growing movements of his kind with more than 2000 branch churches and centers in all parts of the world, half of them in the United States with a regular Sunday and midweek service being attended by more than two million persons. At headquarters, are issued six periodicals read, not only by Unity students, but by thousands of orthodox ministers. Fillmore is author of 20 books, his latest, most popular work, Teach Us To Pray, more than 100,000 copies of which have already been sold.

Today in the Unity movement, it is estimated that we have around 50,000 people per week in regular attendance in the Unity churches, two million during the depression, 2000 churches and centers. Now, I went to one person out at Unity village who is really in the know, and I said, “Golly, is this accurate?” He said, “Well, no, it’s really exaggerated. It wasn’t quite that many”.

Well, I’m not really interested in the issue of how many people were coming at that time. It really doesn’t matter to me. What I’m interested in are the principles that Fillmore taught because today, we’ve got 50,000 people and back then, they had over a million. I know what happened. That’s the two word question we’ve got to ask ourselves. What happened? There’s a two word answer. Fillmore died.

When he made his transition, the Unity movement became what has been described, unfortunately by philosophers, as the extended shadow of one man.

One of the ladies at Unity village, she’s been there a long time, told me a story and wouldn’t want to use her name because she didn’t want it to get back. She said, “What happened was we used to, in the Wednesday night healing meeting that Fillmore conducted, he used to assign three questions to various people at random. In one meeting, he assigned to me. There’s several hundred people though. He assigned to me the question of the Trinity. Describe the Trinity. I went home and I wrote the Trinity out as best I understood it and I went back and the next week he said, “read your explanation”. She stood up and she read her explanation to all these many people. Then when she was finished, Charles Fillmore asked, are there any comments? Nobody said anything.” Charles Fillmore turned to this lady and said, “I just want you to know that’s the finest explanation of the Trinity I’ve ever heard anywhere. You’re just terrific. And I love that”. Everybody applauded and she sat down very pleased.

Ten years later, she decided to take the correspondence course. She took the correspondence course and one of the questions was, describe the Trinity. Very excitedly, she went to her collection of writings and retyped on a new sheet of paper the same thing that Charles had loved so much and submitted it. When she got back the paper, they told her it was so out of context with the Fillmore movement, with the Unity and it was so inaccurate that she’d have to redo the whole thing over. It even made a comment, “You certainly don’t have a very good grasp of Truth”.

I spoke with a lady two weeks ago and she told me that story. Why don’t we hear all these facts? Why are they not presented to the public? For two reasons, number one, if you take some of these readings and writings that you’re going to hear tonight for the next three nights, you’ll realize that some of them would greatly alienate, not alienate, but would force the very conservative people who read Daily Word and who take these publications, to become frightened. The other faction of the extremely radical psychic thinkers would become rattled to know that Fillmore wasn’t really particularly turned on about those things. What you’ve got is a middle of the road approach that is totally devoid of the exciting enthusiasm that Fillmore was teaching when he was alive on earth.

He wanted to transform the world and he had significant teachings that will allow us to do that. We don’t hear that, but you’re going to tonight. We’re going to talk about some things that are interesting and some things, I hope all of them are interesting to you. I want to tell you at the outset, I’m not, like I said, taking things out of context, and I’m not ignoring things that are of interest. I hope none of you will be offended by some of the things that I read. If you are, take a look at why you’re offended. I’m quoting him about things that I do, that he was against, do I’m taking a pot shot at myself, also. Tonight, we’re going to talk about 17 things. We’re going to talk about communicating with the dead. It’s all Fillmore. We’re going to talk about redemption. We’re going to talk about Mahatma Gandhi. We’re going to talk about Fillmore’s goals about overeating, about side trips, and by that, I mean psychic side trips. We’re going to see his concept of prayer, suicide, his belief about his role in the world, his belief about cigarettes, evangelism, sin, New Thoughts, the cross, about human beings’ teeth, affirmations and finally, the death of apostle Paul. There’s much more to come.

TOPICS

Fillmore on redemption.

This is a statement he made on October 26th, 1931.

"I call your attention again and again to the fact that Jesus Christ instituted a great restorative, reformative school for the redemption of man from his sin, from his shortcoming and that all who have faith in that school and desire to be helpers and to give up everything else, they are called. They are the called out ones. They are the saviors of men as Jesus was savior. They save men from their shortcomings, from or ignorance, from their failures and although we may seem to be in the midst of licentiousness and lawlessness and everything that goes with it, just know that the seed of the word is being planted and that your work and my work is to stand fast and know within ourselves that there is a guiding light and the spirit of the Lord is with us today, as he was in the past and ever will be."

Now, you do not hear a lot of talk about redemption, of course, in Unity churches, and centers. The truth of the matter is, Charles Fillmore, by using particular words that were important, not only Unity people, but to fundamentalists, was able to draw together a wide cross section of people of all different beliefs, races, colors, creeds and personalities who worship the Christ’s teaching. One of the problems in the Unity churches today is we are afraid to use the word Lord. We are afraid to use the word savior. We shy away from the word redemption, and we’re doing it much to the exclusion of those people who really need to hear New Thought.

As long as we understand what redemption means and what sin means and all these things and explain it logically, then we can create on earth what Fillmore’s objective was. That is a movement that will usher in the kingdom of God. Those of us who are in Unity and all of us are ministers, have to awaken to this fact.

This fact that we can use words that Orthodoxy uses, because they’re very important words. That’s one of the Fillmore ideas. Are there any questions or commenting? Remember when I read a quote to you, I’ve read the entire talk, so I know the context out of which these ideas came. If any ideas come up in your mind or any questions, please ask me and I’ll try to answer them okay, at any time.

There’s a good possibility if you’ve got a question, that somebody else has that same question, but maybe doesn’t want to raise his or her hands. You’ll probably be asking it for more than one person. Are there any questions up until now? Okay.

Communicating with the dead.

I want to talk to you now about Fillmore’s concept of communicating with the dead. At this time, there was a great deal of spiritualism, as there is today. There were people that were always coming to Charles Fillmore because he was so open and receptive and loving to all people. They were always questioning him about psychic phenomenon, communicating with the dead spiritualism, et cetera.

On September 7th, 1930 in a healing meeting, he made the following comment. “We should not be afraid of these psychic propositions. We should investigate them, but don’t give up yourself to the worship of the psychic, because it is simply the continuation of this mortal living”, talking about the people after death.

“It is this earth duplicated. It is not the real spiritual heaven. It is not the celestial realm. We must pass through this psychic realm to come into the real world before we know the truth of eternal life. Let us remember that and follow Josiah in casting out, in our minds at least, of this worship of spirits, of this thought that we are going to get wisdom from those who have passed out of the body. They know no more about wisdom than they did when they were in their bodies”.

I think that is a very well taken point. Notice what he always does, or virtually always does, when he’s making a judgment. Charles Fillmore, he had guts and he said what he believed, as we’re going to see later on. He would say anything, as long as he believed it. Keep in mind, even though he was opinionated about things, he always prefaced these slicing remarks that any particular thing by, “Go ahead and investigate these things. You can investigate them, that’s okay, but don’t get caught up in that. That’s where the problems lie”.

I think after all the reading I’ve done, I’m pretty well convinced that Fillmore was adamantly opposed to the idea of spiritualism and communicating with other people that have passed on. In fact, he thought that they didn’t know any more than they did when they were alive, as he said right here. Are there any comments or questions about that before we move on?

[Question from audience]: [inaudible 00:20:00]

Right. Thank you. Later on, we’re going to talk about an insight. The, the question, this comment was, this is in going out an overtly seeking communion with, and I think you’re absolutely right. Now, if you are, in some way, I had a young girl come to me in counseling, who was very, very frightened because she had seen what she thought was an angel, a little farm girl, not a whole lot of education, a delightful human being, a lovely child. She had called a priest and he had said, “It had to be of the devil. Otherwise it wouldn’t have frightened you”. She’d called another pastor and he said, “I don’t even want to talk to you about it”.

Finally, somebody said, “Hey, call Unity. They’ll talk to anybody”. She called out to the counseling center and scheduled an appointment and I happened to get her. What I had to do, she was really frightened, was I had to open the Bible and show her where the Virgin Mary was scared when the angel of the Lord appeared, where the shepherds were frightened. I said, “Do you think that was demonic, that angel that God sent to the Virgin Mary?” She finally got the point.

I don’t think Fillmore is saying you cannot be communicated to. I think he’s saying don’t put your credence in dead people who communicate to mediums, because they don’t know anymore. Go ahead and you had a comment.

[Question from audience] [inaudible 00:21:19]

Several trips and that’s one thing. I’m glad you brought that up and I’m going to be sharing this a little bit later on, probably next week. There are some people that question reincarnation. I don’t care whether you believe in it. I don’t really care much about it myself, but a lot of people do.

The issue is, did Charles Fillmore teach reincarnation? The answer is absolutely yes. He taught it week after week after week. Charles Fillmore believed in and taught reincarnation, if anybody asks you. That’s it on the idea of communicating with the dead.

Mahatma Gandhi.

I love the way that Fillmore, from time to time, and this is the first one in a series of talking about different human beings. I love the way Charles Fillmore expresses himself about other people that are famous and living, his contemporaries. For example, when one of his talks, he did a lot of talking about Madam Montessori had just come to the United States and they’ve met and become good friends and all this. It’s very historical and very interesting, but Fillmore believed in the absolute, becoming great, not middle of the road. This is what he said about Mahatma Gandhi on November 1st, 1931.

“We have, in the Hindu today, Mahatma Gandhi, a man who is manifesting some of the Christ’s principles of nonresistance, but that man has not manifested enough of the Christ’s principle of health to resort to restore his teeth, even. He doesn’t wear very good clothes they say, but that doesn’t make any difference to the principle. He might, if he understood the full, all around principle, be a good man”.

Can you believe that? He might, if he really followed all these principles and had good teeth and nice clothes, he might be a good man all the way around. Fillmore was interested really in the absolute. There are a lot of comments you’re going to be hearing about people and about smoking and about different things where he was very hardcore. He didn’t hold back one bit.

Charles Fillmore's primary goal: To change the world.

I do want to share with you what I feel was his primary goal. I found it all through his writings, but in one simple sentence to a group of about probably four or 500 people, and I’m guessing it’s that, on April 30th, 1930, he said, “A great work is ahead of us. The great work of teaching the understanding of truth to all the nations of the world. That is the goal that runs throughout.” The theme goal throughout Fillmore’s writings. Hey folks, we’re not here to play. We’re here to change the world and we can do it by loving and by following the Christ standard.

Now today, I hear so frequently, well when people are ready for Unity, they’ll come. In other words where I’m at in consciousness, if people get that high as, where I’m at, then they’re going to come. We don’t have to seek them out. There are all these books written today. The Aquarium Conspiracy, books that are designed to teach us that we have moved into the new age of understanding and all of a sudden, for the first time in history, these mind blowing ideas are coming forth.

In the next 10 years, there’s going to be an evolution in consciousness and mankind is going to take a quantum leap and people are saying, “It’s now, it’s now”. People are rushing to get higher and higher and learn more and more. Fillmore had 7,200 people coming to him during the depression. They had to turn away over a thousand people in 1934 and were still saying, “Well, about time, it was time”.

Then it was time when Jesus Christ was walking around on this little spaceship earth and it’s time right now, but we’ve got to share this vision collectively and we’ve got to be able to share it with other people. That’s Fillmore’s goal and you’ll find it throughout all of his talks. We’re going to change the world. That’s our objective. Any comments? Yes, sir.

[Question from audience] [inaudible 00:25:29]

Sure. Yeah, I would agree with you 100%. The only problem, the only thing that excites me and the way I would respond to that is it can’t just been the depression because if you look back to your history, you’ll discover that the churches, like businesses, were dropping like flies.

The idea is, was there a sudden movement to metaphysics? In other words, what I hear you saying is during times of trouble, people turned toward spiritual things. Yet the thing that amazes me is they weren’t turning toward the traditional, you see, like people are today in this inflation. They were turning toward the metaphysical.

[Question from audience] [inaudible 00:26:28]

Yeah. Sure. Right. Sure. Yeah and I think your point is very valid and I wouldn’t argue it, with one exception and that is this. He had more people in the forties than he did in the thirties. At that time, when you say we were at here, he had more people than he did during the depression, but the minute that he died, boom. See, but you’re accurate. The times are very important and Phil White was talking to me about that today too and exactly the point you’re making. The times were right, so I agree with you. Okay. I really do. Yeah. Bill.

[Question from audience] [inaudible 00:27:58]

I can answer that question about geography by saying that he had to turn away 2000 in Washington DC. Another thing to keep in mind, if you want to compare, like we were talking earlier about the times and the geography, those are both very important factors and I can’t argue that point. They obviously are, but you got to ask yourself a question and that is, why is it that I had one person that said, “Well, this isn’t accurate. He didn’t really have all that many people” and turned right around in the next breath and said, “There were only a handful of churches at that time”. In the forties, in the Unity movement, there were probably only 70 or 80 churches. That’s not true.

In the archive room, in one of Fillmore’s fold outs, one of his scrap books, there is a directory to the 43 Unity churches in the Los Angeles area, 43 in the Los Angeles area. Give you another example. In the early 1950s, we were reading one of the old Unity publication magazines. When we went to Knoxville and became their ministers, we were the new study group and we were the first people in Unity that had ever been in Knoxville, the people thought.

Historically, there was a minister there in the forties and they had as many as three to 500 people in meetings, including a business men’s breakfast that attracted the two hundred most prominent men in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the thirties and forties. See, we didn’t know that. In fact, we had been in Knoxville three months before this fact finally this back finally came to us.

Now something was going on and something was going on not only in the twenties and the thirties and the forties, it was going on before then. It was growing and moving. It was a tidal wave like you wouldn’t believe. It happened during the lows, during the highs in California, as well as in Tennessee.

What I’m saying is it can happen again if enough people catch a glimpse. It can’t be one person. I could get this lofty idea. Well, my goal is to change the world like Fillmore, let God work through me and spread the truth. That won’t work. That’s what happened with Fillmore. You see, the minute that he died, it started going like this.

What we need is the new ministers, the people going out in the field to catch a glimpse and you in the churches to catch a glimpse of the magnificent ideas that the man had for transforming the world and then disseminating those ideas. That’s what Jesus did. I wrote an article. I was a little bit upset with I’m always staying in contact in different magazines, well, Unity was trying to get in all the people into the churches. That’s not the purpose of Unity. Was Jesus playing the ego satisfying numbers game when he spoke to the 5,000? He was putting out truth and people went to hear the truth. Okay.

All I’m saying is let’s take a look at what Fillmore’s major message was and get back to the basics and see if we can’t follow through with his objective. That’s my opinion. You may have a totally different one. I want to move to something a little bit funnier, and then we’re going to take about a five, 10 minute break. During this time, I’d appreciate it if you do something to help me, okay?

In order to help me in my research and it also benefit the class, would you write down on a sheet of paper any question that you’ve got that you’d like to see discussed or any subject and ask? Just put down any particular subject and we’ll take a look at what Fillmore thought about that subject, but I want to close.

We’re going to come back to side trips and suicide and prayer but I want to end the first part with a statement that he made about overeating that I think is funny because I do that occasionally.

Overeating.

He said,

“We find in the world today, our very best businessmen, overloading, their stomachs. We see very devout, earnest, Christians, eating pork, and plenty of it and putting on blubber as a result. They’re supposed to be devout. They’re following Christ, but are they following Christ in the relation in which the Christ mind bears to their appetites? No, they’ve not made that connection. They’re looking to God to save them, but they have not gone into the details of that salvation. This mind, which is Christ, requires that we shall analyze every situation that we shall know the truth”.

Fillmore talked a little bit about everything. In the second part of tonight, we’re going to cover the last nine things that we’re going to talk about tonight. Feel free to have some punch or coffee, whatever, visit, write down any subject that you’re interested in and we’ll talk about it. We’ll convene again at 20 after.

Sex.

I want to begin with a couple of questions that I received from the floor that I already know the answer to, so I’m not going to have to research and get those out of the way. What was Fillmore’s position on sex outside of the conscious objective procreation?

He, when he was younger, obviously, we’ve got Charles Fillmore today, so we know that he, at least in terms of procreation, believed in it. He also thought it was a pleasurable need thing when he was a younger man.

When he got a little bit older, he began advocating that you could transmute sex and that you really didn’t need it. Now, a lot of people are that the reason he did that is because he was in his seventies. But prior until that time, I have found very few comments about it. After he reached a certain age, he decided to advocate that you shouldn’t have sex other than for procreative reasons. Everybody said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. It’s because you’re 74, 75”. I don’t know the answer totally to that.

What was Fillmore’s position on astrology as a spiritual science? I’m going to get to that. I’ll answer that in one of the quotes that I’ve got here, because he speaks directly to that.

Christ consciousness.

What was Fillmore’s position on the ascension of all men in the Christ consciousness? His position was, up until tell the time that he died, that he was going to ascend, that he was going to totally regenerate. That’s why so many people were so afraid when he died that was going to cause a problem in the movement. It did, a little one, but the fact that he was gone and no longer preaching.

Ascension and regeneration.

Throughout all of Charles Gilmore’s talks or many of them, you get this idea of ascension, okay. You get the idea that he believed that we should revitalize our bodies, regenerate our bodies as Jesus did following the crucifixion. He believed that we all should have sinned. He thought that would be the ultimate thing. Now, he also believed, and this is a little bit in conflict. He also believed that if we could all bring race consciousness into an overwhelming love for Christ in one another, that what would happen would be we would not need to spiritualize our bodies, that we could live in this form as a kingdom of God on earth. That was his primary teaching. In fact, he even thought there was an outside possibility that Jesus, the man would come back and rule over the world if we could change our consciousness.

His ultimate goal was ascension, but his, but his ultimate, ultimate goal was the idea of regeneration. It’s very confusing to me. I’ve got to be honest. After reading, what’s his book? I’ve read it for or five times, Atom-Smashing Power of Mind. I still don’t understand what he was driving at completely. In some of his talks, when he starts talking about the atomic structure of men and how we go about this regeneration process, I really don’t understand what he’s saying, but there’s a 94 year old man in our congregation who was very close friends of Charles. He tells me that Mr. Fillmore used to teach that the atoms of Jesus Christ are totally all around the earth, four feet high. He actually said in several of his classes, that all the atoms that were Jesus Christ encircle the globe and that we can appropriate those atoms into our lives and become more Christlike.

To answer the question really intelligently, the honest answer is I really don’t know. I don’t really know what he’s driving at, but I know he was for regeneration. If regeneration is the same as ascension, then he was for that, as near as I can tell.

Judgment.

Question, Fillmore on judgment, what did he believe about judging? Well, he taught consistently the idea of non judgment, but like us, he was not perfect. Charles Fillmore tended to judge other people and I’ve gotten really tickled at some of his talks, the way he tends to judge others. In fact, in one talk that I remember fairly well, he began by talking about non-resistance and non-judgment, and then got off on how somebody in Orthodoxy had really done something stupid and he used the word stupid. He did a little judging. He was normal, but he was very much against judging other people, as was Jesus.

Astrology.

Those are the answers to those questions. I’ll get to the astrology one in a minute. In fact, I’ll touch on it first. He said this November 8th, 1931.

“There is, today, a great deal of running two and fro in the world, searching for spiritual things through secondary effects or as we say, occultism, psychism, numerology, psychology and astrology and mediumship, a thousand different avenues through which the mind is manifesting its ideas. Yet they are not primary. They are not real. It is up to every student of truth to know, to understand the difference between the real, the I AM central doctrine of Jesus”. Let me back up. “It is up to every student of truth to know, and to understand the difference between the real, that is the I AM central doctrine of Jesus Christ and its secondary effects that is in its various invisible and so-called spiritual qualities”.

He did not deny in his talks that I’ve read, I’ve never heard him say that any of these things were wrong or they didn’t work. The only thing I’ve heard him say, pretty consistently, is those are secondary things. The primary idea is the, I AM doctrine of Jesus Christ as opposed to astrology of numerology, et cetera. He was not real judgemental and a very good point was made to me earlier by a gentleman from the ministerial school and that’s the point that Fillmore had to be well schooled in many, many different areas and he was. He was highly influenced by Buddhism, as well as Christianity, by Hinduism and Taoism, Confucianism, all the great world religions.

In fact, before he put his deal together, he not only did a lot of meditating and by that, I mean four or five hours a day for five or six months to really tune into God, he also did a great deal of the other side of the scale and that’s intellectual pursuits. He was heavily influenced by Emmanuel Swedenborg’s writings, by a lot of the mystics throughout the ages, by Henry Drummond, by a lot of terrific people, a lot of brilliant theologians.

Yeah, he was very well read. He never took a pot shot of astrology, to my knowledge. In my reading, he just said, “That’s secondary. Don’t mess with it”. Explore it if you like it, that’s fine but go after the, I AM, go after the Christ, the end dwelling God.

Prayer.

He said something that is very practical and this isn’t really earth shattering, but when he was talking about prayer, he said, September 14th, 1930,

“It is not at all strange that some people have a better understanding of spiritual things than others. You inquire into the life of those people and you will find that they have been praying people from the beginning. Their mothers taught them how to pray at a very early age and they have followed that. Looking to God has made this communion and if we have not been praying, let us begin”.

Charles Fillmore was very big on prayer and his explanation for why some people were more spiritual than others was they prayed more.

Suicide.

In one of his talks, he started talking about suicide and I would have to read you about five pages to get the total gist of what he was saying, but I think you’ll understand in this one paragraph. He also made this statement in September 14th, 1930. “We all have to take up these problems that we’re working on over. Don’t think for a moment by dying, you are going to get away or be relieved from responsibilities of the work that you are doing. Your work will have to be continued”. The whole idea of suicide, and he said this a lot. It’s not a way out. You’re going to have to continue your work, so it’s pointless. Okay? It’s not a way out.

Fillmore’s role in the world: Preaching the Gospel.

I want to read with you a little bit longer passage. These are two passages, two papers of one talk that he gave, in which he outlined his view of his role in the world.

“Christianity needs a new understanding of its principles. We find that what Jesus Christ taught has only been partially understood. We are not fulfilling the law as he laid it down. We’re only giving partially expression to Christianity. What Christianity needs is what in modern business, they call an engineer, a business engineer, a spirit in business. These experts go to a business house and investigate all of its activities and see if they’re fulfilling what the industry might carry out”.

In other words, nearly every business has what they call lost motion and in some of their work, they can increase the business by 50%. The output of a house or a factory can be increased sometimes 50% without an increase of employees, simply through an adjustment and an awakening of the efficiency the industry of those workers.

Does not Christianity need just such a person, such a spirit, just such a business engineer to come in and show its ministers that they are not utilizing all of Christianity? What was the foundation of the Christian activity, as taught by Jesus Christ and as exemplified by his early followers? He said, “Go forth, preach the gospel, heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead”. How much of this four square gospel is being fulfilled or carried out by the church?

I think only one preach the gospel. They don’t teach the healing. They don’t teach raising the dead. They don’t teach, casting out demons. Jesus Christ and his followers did all those things. We, at Unity are striving to carry out the gospel of Jesus Christ to teach and preach Christianity in his most practical way. He looked at himself as an engineer, as a person who could take a look at all the problems and all the disarray in the churches of the world and could tie all those things together in one neat little package and usher in the kingdom of God. He was that engineer. He believed that and he taught that. What happened was an amazing revolution in consciousness among Unity people.

Cigarettes.

I smoke cigarettes. Here’s Fillmore on cigarettes. First, he begins by quoting Emmett Fox, and then he gives a little tough.

“It isn’t a sin to smoke cigarettes, but it is a nasty, disgusting habit. That is true. If there is anything disgusting, it is the smell of a cigarette on a man or a woman and especially a woman. I think I would go a little further than Emmett Fox. I would say yes, it’s a nasty, disgusting habit, but it is also a sin. It is a sin against the body to fill a it with nicotine because it is a poison. Nicotine is used to kill potato bugs by farmers”.

When I finished that, Edwene said, “Yeah, see it works. I don’t have any potato bugs”. I don’t think that’s what he has.

“If you fill your organism with nicotine, it must kill some of the cells as it goes through the bloodstream and through every cell of the. It goes through our clothes. It goes everywhere. What kind of a body does that give a man or woman? It isn’t a temple of God, surely. It isn’t something God would care to worship in. We have to watch every angle”.

Fillmore, we say in Unity today, it’s okay. We love you. We’re going to look beyond you. We’re not going to judge you. Fillmore would say, it’s a nasty, disgusting habit and it’s a sin.

Evangelism.

On evangelism, he told a group of people on May 25th, 1930.

"We are here this morning for the purpose of applying this principle in our childish way, it seems sometimes, but back of it is this tremendous Unity philosophy. This tremendous force that we are in a small way, bringing into action and which must, in the end, be applied and adapted by all people all over the world."

Fillmore was an evangelist, not in the sense of the Orthodox evangelism, but he wanted to preach the good word and his words were well received.

Sin.

There’s an awful lot of talk and this is going to be wild when you hear it, I know but this is Charles Fillmore’s concept and I want to share it with you. November 22nd, 1922,

“We haven’t really been thrown out of orthodoxy, but we’re satisfied that they don’t want us at their dance. Well, someday they will because do you know that the truth, as Jesus Christ taught it, must eventually be accepted by all people. This world can’t be healed unless we accept the truth that we are sinners, that we are sick. I had to accept this truth when it was first presented to me, why it didn’t make any difference to me one way or the other. I didn’t know anything about truth and didn’t think about myself as being a sinner.”

This is a Sunday morning talk, okay? Fillmore didn’t put people on guilt trips about sin. Fillmore didn’t say you were born and conceived in sin and equity. He didn’t believe any of that, but he did recognize that we have fallen short of perfection and he didn’t shy away from admitting the fact that we do commit sins and that is, we fall short of perfection and he talked about it.

Today, you hear so frequently, oh, you I don’t want to go. There’s no sin. There’s no such thing as evil and all that. Fillmore never said there was no such thing as evil. Fillmore said there was evil. It was Emily Caty that said there was no such thing as evil. Charles Fillmore did not say there’s no such thing as evil.

He said, “We’ve got to wipe out the evil”. It’s obviously there. Now, he said in the absolute realm of divine ideas and Christ awareness, there’s no evil there, but on earth there is and our objective is to blot it out. That’s what he said.

New Thought.

Charles Fillmore said, This is new thought and I quote,

“Jesus Christ is now here raising me to his consciousness of truth and the truth has made me free from sin, sickness, and disease and trust and relaxation in mind and body, every function does its perfect work and I am healed.”

That’s New Thought. I love that. That was his primary message and I think that has been in print. Okay, because that was one of his best affirmations.

Fillmore on crosses.

Now, a lot of people in Unity wear crosses and it might seem to you that I’m up here creating all this habit by reading things that Fillmore said about the specific things, but I think it’s exciting to really take a look at the things that the man believed. Hear this, I do not care or expect any of you to take what I’m saying and make it your life. That’s not the purpose of this. The purpose of this is, as a group of people, come together and hear some of the things the founder had to say.

Fillmore, himself said, “I reserve the right to change my mind. I’ll say anything, but I can change my mind tomorrow”. Okay. There are going to be some people, when you share this class with them, that are going to say that’s dumb. That can’t be true. Send them to the archive room and give them the date. They can read it for themselves. None of it’s out of context. Fillmore on crosses.

Lots of us practical Christians wear crosses and we put crosses up on our churches and we like to follow Jesus Christ on the cross. I don’t want to follow Jesus Christ on the cross. Neither do you. The cross represents agony, sorrow grief and above all, crucifixion. If you want to be crucified, if you want to really follow Jesus Christ and be nailed on a cross, adopt the cross as your motto and think about it and think about what he suffered and you will suffer the same thing. If you don’t want to suffer these things, put away these silly symbols. I think the cross has brought more suffering upon the human family than any other symbol. I wear one from time to time, but that’s what he thought.

Teeth.

Fillmore on teeth. April 7th, 1931. I love this.

Doctors tell us that our teeth are the source of a great many poisons, which are emptied into the of bloodstream. If that is so, I would get to that center of consciousness and know that substance cannot be inoculated with error of thoughts. I would feel it so full of divine substance, that it would flow to my teeth. I have known people who filled their own teeth in this way. If you have faith enough and persistence enough, it can be done. He even went so far to suggest and I believe it, that we can spiritualize our teeth if there’re a problem. I believe he was accurate.

Affirmations.

Now, the final idea, next to the final idea that I want to share is something he said about affirmations that I think is really, I believe this all long and I think you’ll find it interesting. He says,

“How about using words? We use a great many words. We repeat them over and over and some of our people are calling constantly for word formulas. Oh, just give me some words and I know that will help me or give me some right statements of prosperity and I know I will be prosperous. They’re just fooling themselves when they think that by repeating words, they’re going to get anywhere”.

I don’t want to take this out of context. In another talk I read, he’s beautifully illustrated what he means by this. He said that he heard it told that there was a little country Unity church house and that it was full of mice. The minister was really concerned about these mice and they tried everything. One little boy happened to overhear the minister, following the peace song, talking about the mice to a member of the congregation. The little boy, being brought up in Unity, had decided to take care of it himself. When he got home from Sunday school, he told his mom that the mice are taken care of, we’re okay. She said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, I did an affirmation”. She said, “What was the affirmation?” the little boy said, “Divine love through me, blesses and multiplies the mice”.

Fillmore’s punchline was the next day the minister went and the mice were all gone because the intention of the little boy with what matters, not the word. In counseling, I invariably say, “I will never tell a person, here’s the affirmation that will make you well, say this over and over again”. We’ve got to get the feeling and the intellect lined up and Fillmore knew that. If you ever hear people saying, “All I’ve got to do is affirm, all I’ve got to do is affirm”, that’s not accurate. You also got to feel and you got to imagine, and you got to really give thanks in advance for those things to come. It’s not enough just to say words. That’s what Fillmore taught.

Apostle Paul.

One of the things that had people have asked me from time to time by people, I mean my classmates, most of them knew that I was spending all my free time in the archive room and many of them couldn’t or many of them didn’t want to, but they always were filled with questions because what I like to do, particularly to Maryland Reager, bless her heart, was I used to love to go into class with an off the wall quote of Fillmore’s and use it and see the teacher’s mouth drop wide open and have her ask, where did you get that garbage from? I love to do that.

They were always asking me, well, what did he think about this? What did he think about this? One thing that a lot of people aren’t aware of, I have found, is that Fillmore had a lot of visions and a lot of ideas come to him through Jesus Christ, he said. One of the things that he taught that I had never read that I find most interesting, is how Paul died. The apostle, Paul. Listen to this. In conclusion, there is a legend to the effect that under Nero. Is it Nero or Naro? Nero.

“Under Nero when the Christians were persecuted, Paul was beheaded, but there is nothing authentic in that matter. We sometimes wonder why Paul didn’t overcome that thorn in the flesh. Also, what was that thorn in the flesh? These questions came to me one day and I would give you a little confidential reason as to the answer. I asked the Lord to show me what became of Paul and what was the thorn in the flesh? The spirit told me that the thorn in the flesh was really a racking cough. He was the of consumption. He went to Rome, he had tuberculosis. Now under the Roman law, if a prisoner was kept in prison for 18 months without trial, he was released. Paul was in Rome two years when he disappeared, but the spirit showed me that he was released and that he went to a little town in the hills near Rome. [inaudible 00:53:44] took him there in the last stages of consumption and there he died. He was not behead and I’m sure that this is good history.”

I love that. That’s terrific. There are several others that I want to share with you, vision that he had. When he asked the Lord, what is the answer to this and they hadn’t been written down anywhere, but he told his conversation. This is what has come to me. I think it’s really interesting.

SUMMARY

In summary. I want to make it an off the wall comment, but I hope you’ll take it right. I am not an expert on a Charles Fillmore. I’ve just done a lot of reading of his talk. I don’t want to further cause any chasm between Unity school and AUC or cause any kind of problems by coming out of the closet, if you will, by some of Charles Fillmore’s statements.

My only purpose is twofold. First of all, to share with you the vision that made this movement great and secondly, to have a little fun with some of the off the wall, as well as important comments. Please don’t go out of here thinking or explain to other people that, oh, he’s doing these wild things and talking about these wild things. These are the things that Charles Fillmore said, and I find them illuminating. I find them lovely and I find a man coming to life more beautifully through these talks than any of the books I’ve ever read. I hope you’ll enjoy them. Well, God bless you and these classes are taught on a love offering basis, so let’s return still.