Mark Yarnell’s Unpublished Fillmore
Talk 3
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The true basis for prosperous, abundant living
Beginning section three or session three of Unpublished Fillmore, I want to start with what I believe was probably one of the most important ideas that Fillmore taught and I want to really talk about it for a few moments.
On March 5th 1924 Fillmore gave us the basis, the basis for prosperous, abundant living, and you’ve got to read between the lines just a little bit. Let me give you the exact statement and then I want to talk about it.
“People say, Charles, you’re talking metaphysically, you’re not talking figures. That’s true. But when you begin to get hold of this inner source of things, you will find I am talking a truth. I don’t know just how it comes, but I have enough to eat and enough to wear. I used to worry and wonder how I was going to pay my bills. I don’t do that anytime anymore, I just know that God is going to provide the money and I get the money, usually before the bills come in. How do I do it? Just by trusting the infinite and keeping my mind charged with plenty, plenty, plenty. How does it work? By constantly blessing the plenty and seeing plenty everywhere and rejoicing in the plenty. It will work with anybody. Every one of you, if you would make a compact with God and say, ‘Here, God, I am, your son, want you to supply me with everything I need,’ would get it. I’m not going to worry about getting along in this world any longer. I want supply, and I want plenty of it. How would God give it to you? Would he pass out dollars? He don’t,” [And he used the word don’t here.] “He don’t coin the money, but he coins the thought back of the money. God will give you rich ideas if you will simply open your mind to them.”
Now, the reason this is so important to me is because there are opposing schools of thought in new thought and in the unity movement and among church goers everywhere. On the one hand, you’ve got people saying, all you have to do is sit in spot and affirm that everything’s going to be okay. And then you’ve got the opposing group, which says you’ve not only got to pray, but you’ve got to make things work. One of my favorite comments of Edwene is “God made the birds and the worms, but he didn’t go around dropping them in the nests.” And that’s true.
And Charles Fillmore is making a very important point here. What God will give you and what God will give me are ideas, but it stops there. That’s it, okay? And it’s what we do with those ideas that Fillmore said was very important. If we tune into God, we’ll figure out how to make a better mouse trap or we’ll figure out how to sell more real estate, or we’ll figure out how to get a raise. If we’re tuned into God, we’ll get the ideas, but we cannot sit idly and expect the things to transform our lives without any form of activity on our part, it just doesn’t work that way. And Fillmore never taught that it did. He said, you pray, you meditate, and God gives you the rich ideas, and then you take those ideas and act upon them.
Charles Fillmore’s Humor
He talked about, there was a lot of humor in Fillmore. In fact, I ran across one of the packets out at Unity Village called the jokes of Charles Fillmore more and have had a delightful time sorting through his many jokes. But he told one on March 5th, 1924, that I thought was kind of amusing.
If there is the least bit of hate in your heart, you better make peace with God. As I say, it won’t be something that will save you after you’re dead, but right now, and if you’re not following Jesus in your life, you better make peace with God.
I heard a story of a man once, I debated about sharing this, but I decided to. I heard a story about a man once, a very rich man who went to heaven, and he was going to walk right in. He thought he had been a member of the church a long time and he was going right in and Saint Peter stopped him and said, “Here, you have to have credentials to get in here. What good did you do on earth?” He couldn’t think of anything except that he had at one time, given a man 15 cents. Saint Peter said to one of the attendants, “Give him 15 cents and let him go to hell.”
He was kind of a humorous man. In fact, what I find in almost all of his talks was he said things that we look at and we think, oh, how could you say that from the pulpit, in fact I’m going to get to how Myrtle felt about that a little bit later, I’ve got that information here too, but he was a humorous man. He saw the value of laughter, and I asked John Hunt, bless his heart, John, for those of you who don’t know, he’s a 92 year old man who comes to church here, and he was real good friends with Charles and Myrtle. And I asked John, I said, “What is the one thing that applied to Charles Fillmore that made him so magnetic? That made him speak to thousands of people all over the world?” And Hunt said, “I would have to hang my hat on humor.” Because he said, “Whenever Fillmore got up to talk, you knew you were going to have at least one good laugh and you were going to enjoy yourself, and that’s what it was all about.” So I think he’s a funny man, and I’ve got some more to go on later.
Occult side trips
I want to talk to you about side trips. I’ve done this in the past briefly, but I want to get down to the real nitty gritty about what Fillmore believed about astrology and numerology and all these occult side trips:
Now what is God? God is spirit. And where is God? Well, God is omnipresent spirit, therefore God is everywhere. If we are the offspring of God, we must get into that God consciousness. And if we get into that God consciousness, we won’t be making graven images. Will we? And falling down and worshiping them. We won’t worship the stars. We won’t look up on astrology as something controlling our actions because the stars cannot and do not control our lives. Period. We will say that man is greater than the stars. The power of the spirit in every individual is greater than any outside power. We make the outside power. God is the spirit. God is the invisible, spiritual something that doesn’t occupy space. It doesn’t have any power except through the mind of man.
Now, again, there are two schools of thought and unity, and I will not stand up here and judge people who have fun with astrology, that’s fine. I don’t care about that. But I think you ought to know what Fillmore thought about it. I think you ought to know what Fillmore preached about it. He went a step further on May 3, 1924, and he said,
“You can’t get an inkling of what the future of your life is going to be by a shuffle of cards or by going to a gypsy and having your fortune told or a clairvoyant and get a message from your dead friends. I tell you are going in the wrong direction. You’re worshiping the gods of the heathens, the stars, you are worshiping things that have no power at all. They simply read your mind. Read your own mind, but read it in spiritual understanding.”
Again, I get back to this, there are two schools of thought in Unity. Right now, one of the problems that we experience as a movement in some parts of the country is there’s been a dramatic shift from the idea of Jesus Christ in the principles as taught in the New Testament, into all these interesting and yet outer power teachings. And it’s often done under the guise of the fact, well, you don’t know what you’re talking about. When Charles Fillmore was alive, these things were important to him. He taught these things.
Edwene and I were called upon to assume responsibilities of minister in Chattanooga, Tennessee when their minister left, and we were in Knoxville, which was a hundred miles away. And since there were two of us, we agreed to do that. And one of the interesting things about that particular church at that time was when you first walked in, the first thing you saw was incense, tarot cards, things that are interesting, but in no way, really relate to the teachings as taught by Jesus Christ.
And so I’m not faulting the minister there, I’m faulting the people. And what I’m saying is we need to realize that if we’re going to follow what Charles Fillmore taught, we better be researching what the man believes. He did not teach the psychic side trips. In fact, he was a lot more outspoken against them than I’m willing to be, because believe it or not after reading him, I’m not as judgemental as Fillmore was. When he believed in something, he got up and talked about it.
So that’s what Fillmore believed, and if anybody tells you otherwise they’re wrong. I’ve read too many of his talks, and these are just excerpts. These are just excerpts, these ideas run throughout his talks. And so the only thing I want to impart to you and the only suggestion I want to make is whatever your spiritual path, whichever direction you’re being led is fine. But if you want to know what Fillmore believed, that’s what Charles and Myrtle Fillmore taught.
About the ascension and the coming Kingdom of Heaven
Now, Jesus believed in something that Charles Fillmore continued to propagate, and that’s the idea of the kingdom of heaven coming soon. The idea of the kingdom of heaven is coming on earth. And one of the questions that was asked me two weeks ago was what did Jesus believe? What did Fillmore believe about the Ascension? Talk to us about the Ascension. And I have done the research now, because I really didn’t know. I’ve read Atom-Smashing Power of Mind several times and didn’t fully understand it.
What Fillmore believed about the Ascension was that it wasn’t an Ascension at all, it was a regeneration. Now, obviously Jesus ascended, but he’s not as concerned with the idea of the physical resurrection, the fact that he came up physically, as is recorded in two of the gospels, as he is and what is recorded in the other two gospels.
Now you’ll recall in two of them, he has the people who are doubting touch him. In fact, he even eats fish in front of them so they’ll see that it’s his physical body. In the other two gospels, it’s recorded that he was a light body and he said, “Do not touch me.” He wouldn’t let the people touch him. Well, Fillmore leaned more toward that. The idea of speeding up the vibratory rate onto a higher vibratory level of consciousness. Fillmore wasn’t concerned as is orthodoxy with a physical blood and bone and marrow rebirth at the time of the kingdom of God on earth. He believed that you should practice resurrection every day through this power of spiritualizing as Jesus Christ did. In talking about the idea of the kingdom coming, I want to share a statement that he made on November 25th, 1923:
“If we, every one of us, would begin right today in our meditations and our prayers and all our thoughts and try to recognize, try to obey the spirit of God, we would soon develop an entirely new consciousness. Things would be changed for us because this kingdom of the heavens is coming onto the earth and it is coming fast. It has regulated everything. All the details have been worked out in the kingdom of heavens.” [I love this next sentence.] “The saints in the skies have worked out a plan for the human family on this earth. Don’t think this is just a religion I’m teaching and I’m talking about, I’m telling you the absolute facts and I know they are facts and I know that sooner or later we will, every one of us, have to recognize these facts. You must come under the law of God.”
Now again, we talk about the two schools. In any human endeavor there’s an evolutionary process that takes place. And you can’t sit in judgment of the fact that it at this point is different than when it was here or different than when it was here or different than when it was here. You just can’t take a college student and have him go back and make fun of an elementary school child because that child isn’t intelligent. And for the same analogy, using that as analogy, we can’t look back at the beginning of Fillmore’s teachings or Charles Fillmore and say, well, isn’t it horrible where we are now when we could have been where he was then, and that’s not my intention.
But I think it does as good to realize that Charles Fillmore was deeply committed to the teaching of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God unfolding within all of humanity. And I think we are doing unity, a great disservice if we particularly as ministers in this movement, fail to use the word, Lord, fail to pray in the name of Jesus Christ, fail to accept Jesus Christ for what he was. I think that’s going in the wrong direction and I’m not pointing the finger at anybody, but I know this has been a problem in many churches and many centers in the country. So I’m for one, I’m getting back to what Fillmore was teaching.
Ernest Wilson on Cora Fillmore
I ran across something that I want to share with you, several things actually that come from a writing of Ernest Wilson that I found in the archive room. It seems Ernest wrote about two years ago, The Fillmore I Knew. Now many of you know that Ernest Wilson was very close personal friends with Charles Fillmore. And Ernest sat down one day and knocked out about a 30 page explanation of things that he saw that were really neat about Fillmore, and I want to share some of those with you.
After his marriage to Cora, Charles Fillmore took up residence in a cottage on property she owned a short distance from the village. Cora was greatly interested in health food and with the aid of a juicer for carrots and a blender for dietary cocktails, she kept Charles filled with all kinds of concoctions, most of which he downed with a good deal of humor. Except once when I was there, she sort of outdid herself and elicited the reproachful exclamation, “Cora, not even one of your sheep could down that combination.”
Ernest Wilson on Charles Fillmore business skill
Another thing that I think is good, Ernest said there were very few times that anybody could get the best of Charles Fillmore, but on one occasion it happened and he happened to be present, and it got Fillmore so tickled that he left the place laughing. What happened was Unity pioneered the use of radio in Kansas City. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, but there was one radio station when radio started and it was Charles Fillmore in Unity Village that shared it with WDAF, which at that time was owned by The Star, the Kansas City Star. And so what happened was this, Mr. Lonigan began pushing Fillmore or off of prime time because he was a lot bigger than Unity Village, and Rickert got a little bit upset and Rickert said, “You know, dad, I want you to go over there and I want you to get some prime time back.”
So this is what happened. He took Ernest along and he made an appointment with a Mr. Lonigan in his office, down at the Star building at 18th and Grand. Now I’m reading:
I doubt whether Mr. Lonigan had ever before heard such an approach to a conflict of interest as Mr. Fillmore offered. “It is not fair of you to demand so much of the time we share on radio. Spirit tells me that you should relinquish some of it to us.” Biased in Mr. Fillmore’s favor as I indeed was, I still must agree that Mr. Lanigan’s response was a classic, “Well, that’s just fine, Mr. Fillmore. And when spirit tells me that you can have it.” And he goes on to say that Fillmore walked out so tickled, he couldn’t see straight.
Ernest Wilson on traveling with the Fillmores
Another thing that happened was he was traveling through Arizona with Ernest on the way to California. I’ll just read it:
Traveling through Arizona on one such occasion, his attention was attracted to a typical ranch house, surrounded by trees and a flourishing garden. He asked the driver to stop so he could get out and compliment the man who was working in the garden, expounding on how well kept and thriving the place appeared. Pleased, the owner explained on the grander of the land, all this part of the country needs is water and the right kind of people. I can almost hear Fillmore’s hearty laugh as he responded, “water in the right people. That’s all hell needs.”
Charles Fillmore on the reincarnation of Paul
There’s a question that I have not been able to solve. I have not found it, and nobody else that I’ve been able to talk to has, and I’ve got some very competent people looking for this quotation, one of them sitting on our front row, and it’s the idea that Fillmore believed that he was the reincarnation of Paul. Now I have not found Fillmore any place where he said that, but I found something awful close, and I’m going to read it. He who once manifested as, this is Fillmore. This is a direct quote from Fillmore. “He who once manifested as Paul, the apostle, is now expressing himself through another personality right here in America. Not only Paul, but a number of the immediate followers of Jesus are today in bodily form in this country.” These statements are quoted from an article. Paul is Now Here, published in the May, 1924 issue of Unity Magazine. Paul, Mr. Fillmore asserts, is doing the same kind of work that he did in Palestine so long ago, preaching and healing in a humble way and is no more accepted by Orthodox religion now than he was then.
[TruthUnity note: Paul Is Now Here in Unity magazine, August 1924]
Now again, he doesn't say that he's the first. Okay. But I found another interesting thing in looking for this explanation, and I found it in a book that was written by a man who really had nothing to do with Unity. And it's out of print now, but it's at Unity Village and it's called Where Lions Sleep, and this guy is taking a Western look at this Eastern concept of reincarnation. And on page 115 of the book, he says, "I am convinced that Paul is alive and living as head of the Unity movement." And the guy has got nothing to do with Unity. It's the only place in the entire book where Unity is mentioned. Well, I read this in my findings, in the archive room, so I rushed to the library and I found the book and we've got it, and I read this, and he indeed mentioned that. He said, I'm convinced that Paul is alive and the leader of the unity movement. So, for what it's worth, I thought I'd pass that along to you.
[TruthUnity note: Referenced in Ernest Wilson, If You Want To Enough, CHAPTER XXI — The Greatest Overcomer I've Known
Ernest Wilson on Fillmore humor
He writes a little bit further, that is Ernest Wilson writes a little bit more about some of the humor of Fillmore and really a good sense of humor and always kidding. And he says:
“Often his way of being friendly, took the form of banter. Shortly after I joined the staff at headquarters, I was not yet accustomed to traits. He surprised me by looking me over appraisingly one day with the comment, where in the world did you get that dingy looking neck tie? Embarrassed and abashed I countered, Wyat Wolf brothers, and where did you get yours? With a mischievous grin he answered at Woolworths. And then, he had a tremendous fondness for cologne and after shave lotion and as he used them freely, people became aware of his addiction and his need for aftershave. As a result of that, he acquired quite an array of different perfumes from the followers. Do you have any favorite set? I asked him. No, I like all of them and just use whatever one is handiest. How do you remember which one you’ve used last? I don’t try, he responded, but when the supply of some of them runs low, I just mix them all together. Don’t accumulate so many bottles that way.” [A character.]
Myrtle Fillmore fusses at Charles
I was telling you earlier that Fillmore would say things and Myrtle would get a little bent out of shape. There’s a beautiful example here of what it seems like what Fillmore would do just to really get Myrtle worked up is he would tell her a joke with a really rank punchline. And then he’d go into a Wednesday night healing meeting and start the same joke, but he’d already created a new punchline that wasn’t in way malicious and so Myrtle was sitting on the front row was just berserk. But I love this quote from Ernest. He says,
“Mr. Fillmore’s sense of humor often came to the surface in the midweek evening service since when Mrs. Fillmore and he sat on a low platform, close to the congregation. Sometimes his discourse would be punctuated by one humorous incident after another, to the amused delight of the listeners, but to the perturbation of Mrs. Fillmore, who wasn’t always too sure what the tagline of the story was going to, whether it was going to be appropriate for a devotional meeting. From her chair close by, she would reach over and pull his coattail. Undismayed, Charles would turn lightly toward her smiling and say, now, dear, I know what I’m doing. And go on with the story. Mrs. Fillmore would reach for the folding fan, which she always carried and fan furiously for a few months.”
Who was Cora Fillmore?
And I can just see Myrtle just [say] “darn you”. Okay. We’ve been going now for, doesn’t seem like it, we’ve been going for 30 minutes. Why don’t we take a real quick five minute break and get some coffee or some ice water? Yeah, we got a question.
Fillmore got remarried quite a while after Mrs. Fillmore passed on, and that’s who, the question was, who was Cora, and that was his second one.
Christian Science
He was never formally involved except to the extent that he read a great deal about it. And he studied with a lot of the same people who later went on and, there was the Science of Mind, Divine Science, Christian Science, Unity, and they all split up and went a lot of different ways based on the different leaders at the time. But he was heavily influenced by Christian Science.
Was Charles Fillmore into spiritualism?
The second question is, was Charles Fillmore into spiritualism? And the answer to that is no. I want to qualify that. Charles Fillmore read a great deal about spiritualism, but Charles Fillmore was very much against a communing with the dead and things that the spirituals at that time were into.
By the way, I might give you a very interesting parenthetical side note here, that’s kind of historical and that you might find fascinating. And that is the whole era of Nazisism in Germany was probably fostered a great deal by Madam Blatvasky and some of the spiritualists at the turn of the century. As a matter of fact, it began with the idea of the Superman race and the idea of closed esoteric, very religiously oriented meetings behind closed doors with Hitler and some of the key people. And without a doubt, Hitler was heavily influenced by Blavatsky, by Maurice Nicole, by Gurjieff and Ouspensky, and so a lot of these people that we’re reading today that are that we think, well, this is neat and esoteric and heavy, actually in the wrong hands can show us what they can lead to. Nazism started out as a religious movement to bring about the superman that you read about Gurjieff and Blavatsky. And some of these spiritualists, that’s just a side note, but it’s kind of interesting.
Latter Day Saints and Reformed Latter Day Saints
The third question was how did Charles Fillmore relate to the LDS and the RLDS people here in town? The answer to that is I’ve never heard him say one statement about the Mormons. I never read one thing in any of his talks about these people, but to give you some idea what I believe he would’ve, how he would’ve responded was he said, the whole purpose of Unity is to make a Baptist, a better Baptist, a Methodist, a better Methodist, et cetera.
He wasn’t out to sway people from their doctrinal positions. As a matter of fact, that’s why he created in 1924, Unity Church Universal. Unity Church Universal was an idea that he came up with and mailed out letters to all people all over the United States, trying to get them to join this church, and I’ve said earlier, you’ve heard these arguments, well, did Fillmore want a church or did Fillmore want Silent Unity? What was it the guy really was after? He was after both. He was after a place where people could receive intercessory prayer and could pray, and he was also after spreading his ideas out into the field.
So if I had to guess what Fillmore’s opinion was of the RLDS people, and it’s only a guess, it would be non judgmentally. It would be let them do their own thing, that’s what they’re interested in. I think if he were cornered, he would probably take issue with any of the doctrines that were found in the supposedly golden scriptures or whatever, by Joseph Smith, if they in any way departed from Jesus Christ teachings, because he was heavily grounded in Jesus Christ, and he has taken pot shots at other beliefs which were advocating that Jesus wasn’t important. But other than that, I don’t think he said anything to about the Mormons.
Jesus Christ and Soul Incarnation
There was a letter written on June 2nd, 1936 that I think is, I want to share with you for the sensationalism. Every once in a while, I run across something that is so mind boggling and so interesting that the man wrote or said that it’s fun to share it with you. If it excited me, then I assume it might you. And it’s a letter, he corresponded a great deal with Georgiana Tree West, and at this time, Georgiana was the minister of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City and was doing a mighty fine work.
Interestingly enough, one of the men in our church, a delightful 85 year old man in Knoxville, Tennessee was her first person to go to any of her services. In fact, he later became her board president and was her head usher for many, many years. His name’s Bill Bellon, and he retired and moved to Knoxville with his wife, and they used to attend our church down there, and he told me stories. Bill Bellon also started out with Eric Butterworth and was his head usher for many years. So he was just a wealth of knowledge, and he was really fun to talk to. But I’m getting off track.
Georgiana Tree West wrote a letter to Charles Fillmore because she was very puzzled in 1936 about Jesus Christ. She’d read the Bible closely and she wanted to know where he came from and if this was his first life and et cetera, et cetera. Now, this is something that I don’t think will ever, ever be printed, but it’s something I want to share with you.
TruthUnity Note: see Correspondence with Georgiana Tree West
“Dear Mrs. West, your letter asking further light on certain points in the health and prosperity comments and may Unity has been referred to me by Miss Aires, because you see, I wrote the article. The relation which Jesus Christ bears to the human family on this planet is somewhat complex and involved. In even a metaphysical explanation, but when we admit that he was one step ahead of us in his race evolution, we have a key that clears up many seeming contradictions.”
[Now this is the wild part. I say wild, it’s interesting to me.] “The soul that incarnated in Jesus had attained the glory of the son of God consciousness, eons of ages previously in another universe evolution, in which he had attained creative power.” And then he quotes the Bible, “Glorify thou me with the glory, which I had with thee before this world was.” “When the present universe was created, Christ was giving the bring forth of the planetary people to which we belong as taught in the scripture. We are his offspring.”
So there’s some evidence to suggest that Fillmore pretty strongly believed some of the ideas that you’re going to find in books like the Uransia book or A Course in Miracles that in fact, Jesus Christ had incarnated and incarnated in other universes, in other dimensions before he ever hit earth. I think that’s a fascinating concept.
Circulation Day
Of one of the beauties of this church congregation in my opinion, is the glimpse that we have caught of the power of giving. I think this was dramatically illustrated by Fred’s circulation day, and I say Fred’s because he did all the work, with much of your help. The idea giving, giving, giving, giving, Fillmore was so adamant about giving to people in need. This was one of his primary teachings, and I want you to hear this:
This Bishop seemed to have the spirit. He heard of some shepherds way up in the mountains whom none of the bishops had visited for years because of the bandits who infested the mountains. But the Bishop said he was going up to visit the shepherds and administer the sacrament. His people remonstrated him and said it was unsafe to go. “You’ll have to take a guard, but even then it would be unsafe for you both, the bandits will rob you and beat you.” “I have nothing to be robbed of, the Bishop said, I shall go alone.” But the bandits will kill you said the people. Why should they want to kill me? Asked the Bishop.
And so he visited the shepherds and administered the sacrament. When he was on the way home, a man came to him with a bag, which he gave the Bishop with the compliments of the chief of the bandits. When the Bishop reached home, he opened the bag and found it filled with all kinds of jewels and money. What brought all this about? Why, fearlessness of course. He ignored the evil, the potential of evil. He saw the good, he insisted upon the good being the dominant ideas, just as that famous Bishop when Jan Veel stole his silverware, he came into the court with his candlesticks and said, here, you forgot these.
The same spirit recognizes the good in spite of all appearances of evil. But [now here we go] but you say that would not work in this day and age. Well, Jesus said, if a man asked for your coat, give him your cloak, and if he asked for you to go one mile, go two. But, you say again, that wouldn’t work here in our day. How do you know, have you ever tried it? If you try it in the right spirit, it will work, but it wouldn’t work if you were suspicious of the man you were dealing with. If this Bishop had been suspicious thought he would’ve been robbed, he would’ve been brought to bear that burden.
Now I want you to think back to circulation day, and I want you to consider the words of Charles Fillmore. In circulation day, we saw a marvelous thing transpire and what made it so marvelous was the people who showed up here outside were here to receive. They were here because they were needy. They were here because they had to get things that they didn’t own, clothes, coats, furniture, things for their children. But what happened? The people who came to receive, as you all know by now, went home and cleaned out, they found things they didn’t need and brought them back. That’s why we gave away five times as much as we originally brought in. Now, there is no better dramatic illustration of what giving and giving and giving can do then circulation day, and those of you who were unable to attend the last one, be here on the 27th and watch the beauty that is shared among people who catch this glimpse. Fillmore was a giver and Fillmore believed you should go the extra mile. And I do too.
Marriage
About marriage. Charles Fillmore believed very definitely that the biggest problem we face is that there’s not enough religion in marriage. He said:
we haven’t put enough religion into our marriages. We’re taught by our justices of the piece that marriage is a contract. It’s a contract between two people that want to live together as husband and wife. That’s all it is. And the marriage ceremony is, well, I read just the other day that some old justices of the peace down in the country said, Mandy, will you take George to be your husband? And she said, yes. And George, will you take Mandy to be your wife? Yes. Married $2. That’s all there is to it. Well, now that’s the way lawyers look at marriage. Only a contract, but it isn’t. It’s something more than that. Paul says it is. And Jesus said it was.
And he goes on and I could read more, but I don’t want to get off on just this subject, but his primary belief in marriage and I tend to agree, is if there’s enough religion in it, if there’s enough praying together, there probably aren’t going to be too many problems. In fact, in one of his talks, he said, that’s all you need for an effective relationship, an effective marriage, is to sit down once a day and pray together and really mean it. And if you’re unwilling to do that, take a real long, look at your relationship because religion is the basis of all true marriages. I think he was really on to something.
Illustrations
Fillmore was a man of tremendous, tremendous illustrations. Illustrations that’ll really touch your heart if you get into many of his talks, but I love this one in particular:
I was sitting in the gleaming dark evening and a man passed the window. He was the lamp lighter. He pushed his pole into the lamplight as he went from one to another and they were lighted. Now I could not see the lamp lighter. I couldn’t see him at all, but I knew he was there by the light. I didn’t see the man, but I saw the light and they broke out down the street, a beautiful avenue of light. So you are one of God’s lamplighters, and they’ll all know where you are by the light that you leave.
And I love, I just think that is fabulous. The whole analogy here, the whole concept that we are all lamplighters for God. And people may not see us in what we’re doing and in the good activities et cetera, but they’ll know us by the light we leave. And they’ll see that we’ve blazed the trail, and I think that is a terrific analogy.
Our abilities to accomplish great things
Now he talked about our abilities and I’m winding down here. I’ve got just a few more. He talked about our abilities as human beings to accomplish great things. And one of the ways he approached it was this, he said in 1941:
“So we can see that there is a great lesson here for every one of us and the burden I might say, don’t call it a burden, but the work of bringing this into expression is upon every one of us.” [Now listen to this,] “Because you do not know, but what if you would give expression to those ideals that you have got bottled up in yourself, you might be one of the old prophets. God is waiting for an opportunity in every one of us to express his innate splendors, the power that is within us.”
Oh, how true. And if we can ever catch a glimpse of this idea that we might be one of those very important people and the truth of it is everybody is. All a person has to do is decide, as Fillmore discovered, that he has the power of God within him and that he can light lamps. That’s all.
Immaculate Conception
Very few discussions I’ve heard, have ever centered around the idea of immaculate conception in Unity. This is one of those hazy areas that many people avoid because of the implications. Fillmore didn’t avoid immaculate conception, obviously. So I want to get into that.
Life has constantly been injected into the consciousness of the human family and the great ultimate, the climax, was reached in the man, Jesus Christ. You’ll find his genealogy given in the Bible, not only on the physical side, but his spiritual genealogy. He claimed himself that he was descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob on the one side, but also that he was descended from God. [Here we go.] Now we are all with him in this dissent, but he had a special body structure, and that is contained in the secret of the immaculate conception. [I’m not going to go into that in depth this morning, but there’s a great deal of truth in it.] No Christian can deny the immaculate conception, especially when he understands the seed growing power of the word.
In another talk, he talked about the idea that the word of God was spoken, the seed was planted and that was it. But Charles Fillmore believed in the immaculate conception. And that’s again, something you don’t hear a great deal, but that’s what the man believed.
The importance of your aura
He talked about the importance of your aura on November 25th, 1923. I love to see these grin.
Now the words and the thoughts that you’re thinking at this moment are being imprinted upon your own ether. Every one of us is surrounded with an aura and that aura is like the sensitive plate upon which the voice is imprinted in making photograph records, only it is much more sensitive and receives every thought and every word, and preserves them. Now think of that proposition. What did Jesus Christ do? Why, every word that he uttered, he said should be kept, and I quote, “Heaven on earth may pass away, but my words shall never pass away.” In other words, Jesus attained that understanding and power of his mind to shape his aura, or words that imprinted them upon the ether. And that ether became an open book to all people who would enter into the understanding of themselves in this universal mind. In other words, you must identify yourself with a spirit of truth just as Jesus identified himself.
So Fillmore, I don’t need to explain that. A couple of things that are attributed to him. Well, one in particular I want to share with you because we’re getting, we’re getting into overtime and that’s this. He believed that Jesus Christ, well, there is a talk that Raymond Barker gave. No, I’m going to save that for next week. Suffice to say, Fillmore believed in the concept of the aura. And he thought that you’re always imprinting yourself.
The Bible
Now I want to go to the Bible and read something controversial and then do a closing. Fillmore, the Bible was Charles Fillmore’s textbook. A hundred percent, no doubt about it. But he also saw some flaws. He also saw some problems in the Bible and he was not the least bit reluctant to talk about them. November 25th, 1923:
Those gospels were written all the way from 50 to 75 years after Jesus taught. How would they get every little detail correct? All of his words and incidents, you can see that there are contradictions and there must be because those things had to be brought up in the memory of John, Matthew, and Mark. It was probably a little hard to remember all the details. And yet we’re worshiping that report as absolute truth. It is not. Well then, is there any way in which we can get the absolute truth of exactly every word that Jesus taught? Yes. Where? Through the spirit of truth.
So again, he was outspoken and in this particular passage, he’s I think referring to the obviousness of the Bible and the way it was written, it’s very powerful, very important, we’ve got to tune into it. It’s our primary textbook.
A Powerful Closing
In closing. I want to close with what I think is a very powerful closing that Charles Fillmore used in 1935 at a Wednesday night healing meeting. I just think it’s real pretty, and I want to read it to you.
What is the great lesson for us? It is that we must unify in all of our thinking with the mind that is in Christ Jesus. Paul said, “Let that same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” And if that mind is in man and he lives up to it, he shall escape death. The last enemy has been overcome. And it is just a question of joining with the Lord in this redemptive process. We, every one of us, can walk right out of the tomb of matter and material conditions. We can have that perfect body that Jesus has and lives in today. We can talk and walk with him and be one with him, if we only keep his law, if we only keep the Lord’s work, do as he did, and that brothers and sisters is our work today. And that is why we are gathered here to listen to this beautiful music, these songs of praise, praise, and exaltation of the spiritual man. There is no other great objective in life that compares with this and let us this morning be glad. Let us rejoice, lift up our hearts in the consciousness that we are joint heirs with the Lord Jesus Christ in eternal life here and now in these beautiful bodies.”
Conclusion
I think he was a terrific man. I love to read his stuff and next week we’re going to cover a bunch more. I’ve got a bunch of stuff to cover. We’ll talk about next week. Before we shut down. Are there any questions that have come to mind?
The question was when the Fillmores started out, did they just want study groups rather than church organizations? The answer to that in my opinion is yes. I think it got the bigger than the both of them and people started gathering together. In fact, at one point I read where Fillmore really was kind of upset about the idea of ordained ministers. And finally he decided, well, I’m going to ordain Ernest and this other guy, because they’ve been good guys. So he called him into his office and he said, well now do you know who ordained me? And there was a real silence. And Ernest said, why yes, Charles, God ordained you. He said, no, I ordained myself. And now you’re ordained. Now go get her.
Thanks for the question. Can you think of any other questions? Well, these classes are taught. I’ll offer you as we’ll close now. Well, thank you all for coming and look forward to seeing you next week.
