Lecture on the book Christian Healing given October 1972 at the Fillmore Festival.
Opening
00:00 - Clip 01 Opening Prayer based on There is one Presence
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-7-17
Prayer is based on statement #1 on p.17: “There is one Presence, one Intelligence, one Substance, one Life: GOD, the good omnipotent.”
Vera says she has been teaching forty-two years, which means she would have started in 1940.
02:46 - Clip 02 Christian Healing is not lectures, but lessons
Vera agrees with an often-said criticism of Unity, “all you do in Unity is repeat the same thing over and over.” Christian Healing is not a book written by Charles Fillmore, but rather a compilation of the lessons of Charles Fillmore, what he had learned after twenty years. They are not just lectures, but rather lessons, lessons about Principles that we are to apply.
Lesson One - The True Character of God
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-7-17
07:22 - Clip 03 Lesson One - True Character of Being and Lessons In Truth
In writing the first chapter, True Character of Being, Charles had expected that the reader had already read Lessons In Truth. Fillmore and Cady may use different words, but he words don’t matter as long as we know the meaning of the words you use.
10:29 - Clip 04 The organization of this talk
11:08 - Clip 05 What is spiritual science
p.7. “The science that is here set forth is founded upon Spirit.” Note that the word Spirit is capitalized. This refers to God. Charles refers to God as Divine Mind. Science is the orderly arrangement of inner laws or Principles.
12:39 - Clip 06 The starting point in spiritual realization is DESIRE for understanding
p.8, paragraph 5. “The starting point in spiritual realization is a right understanding of that One designated as the Almighty.” Vera notes that few of us really have such a right understanding. Her comment is that it is the desire to know, not the knowledge itself. The desire may be varied, such as “loaves and fishes” (for prosperity) or for healing.
16:41 - Clip 07 The presence of God is right within each individual
p.11, paragraph 10. “The Father within you, so lovingly and familiarly revealed by Jesus, is not a distance, far away in a place called ‘heaven.’ His abode is in the spiritual realms that underlie all creative forces.” This is a central Unity teaching.
Vera mentions Mary Brown, Sunday School teacher at Unity Village Chapel.
18:16 - Clip 09 A nutshell of Christian Healing
p.16. “23. The truth is, then: That God is Principle, Law, Being, Mind, Spirit, All-Good, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, unchangeable, Creator, Father, Cause, and source of all that is; That God is individually formed in consciousness in each of us, and is known to us as "Father" when we recognize Him within us as our Creator, as our mind, as our life, as our very being; That mind has ideas and that ideas have expression; that all manifestation in our world is the result of the ideas that we are holding in mind and are expressing;”
Vera comments on these three statements and explains how they are a nutshell of Unity’s teachings. Note that she corrects Charles by replacing “all-good” with “absolute-good”.
21:06 - Clip 10 The most important paragraph in Christian Healing
p.13, paragraph 15. “Divine ideas are man's inheritance; they are pregnant with all possibility, because ideas are the foundation and cause of all that man desires. With this understanding as a foundation, we easily perceive how ‘all . . . mine are thine.’ All the ideas contained in the one Father-Mind are at the mental command of its offspring. Get behind a thing into the mental realm where it exists as an inexhaustible idea, and you can draw upon it perpetually and never deplete the source.”
Vera thinks that this paragraph has had the greatest effect on her life and the life of others than any other in the entire book. It begins with a desire, but it is the access to all ideas of Father-Mind that impacts our life. Vera tells a story from Frances Gable told to her in 1942 about a boy who made mice go away; it wasn’t his words, but the idea back of the words. Ideas at our mental command are inexhaustible; they are our inheritance.
Lesson Eight - Faith
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-85-95
30:19 - Clip 11 Vera comments on lessons 8 through 12
Vera says that Charles assumes that the reader had already learned the material in Lessons In Truth very well. It had been taught for many years when Christian Healing was published.
32:06 - Clip 12 Chapter Eight - Faith is the perceiving power of the inner eye
Faith is the ability in me to see beyond the apparent. The soul is the user is of ideas.
p.85, paragraph 1. “Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.”
Lesson Nine - Imagination
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-96-106
37:29 - Clip 13 Chapter Nine - Imagination
Until my imagination can perceive, I have nothing to conceive. So Imagination is the conceiving power. But without Faith, the Imagination may form pictures of bugaboo. Vera comments about imagination and advertising; she talks about Charles Fillmore’s belief that poor countries will remain poor until the advertisers there raise expectations. She also discusses our responsibility to pray for world economic development and peace.
41:32 - Clip 14 What Imagination is
The picture-forming idea or the conceiving idea in mind.
Lesson Eleven - Judgment and Justice
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-119-129
42:38 - Clip 15 Judgment makes a choice for Will
Vera starts talking about chapter 10 on Will and Understanding but then switches to chapter 11 on Judgment. There are different forms of Judgment: evaluation, discernment, discrimination and choice. The Will must go through one of these in order to follow through. The will can determine on whether it will carry though on Judgment. But Judgment may also be biased. In this case the Will can chose to ignore Will. This shows how the two can work marvelously together.
Lesson Ten - Will and Understanding
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-107-118
45:32 - Clip 16 Lesson Ten - Will and Understanding
Will is action based on a choice. But Will must be based on Understanding, which looks far beyond knowledge of the present moment. Understanding is the wisdom of God moving in us for a reason. Vera talks about her cousin Frank who jumped off a ship that later sank. Understanding gives us a knowingness that we can’t explain.
Lesson Twelve - Love
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-130-141
49:08 - Clip 17 Lesson Twelve - Love has need of other faculties which are equally important
Henry Drummond said that “Love is the greatest thing in the world.” But Unity says that absolute Good is made up of equal ideas, each with a definite job to do. While it is true that “all the world needs is love” but the world also equally has need of understanding, judgment and life. All these qualities are equal in God.
50:26 - Clip 18 How many sermons have we heard on Order
Vera sidetracks on Order. “Order is heaven’s first law.” Order gets things in right relationship.
53:42 - Clip 19 Love ties things together
Charles Fillmore said “Love is the attracting, harmonizing, equalizing, balancing and bonding idea or quality of Mind.”
56:09 - Clip 20 Love must be balanced by the other eleven powers
If Love is based on Understanding then it seems to always know what to do.
Lesson Two - Being’s Perfect Idea
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-18-29
58:08 - Clip 21 Lesson Two - Beings Perfect Idea
We are threefold beings: Spirit, soul and body. Soul thinks with conscious mind phase and it feels with the subconscious phase. The conscious and subconscious phase work together on Ideas.
61:08 - Clip 22 Beings perfect idea is Christ
I am the Word of God. Paul wrote “Christ in you, the hope of glory” and that is another way of saying beings perfect idea.
Lesson Three - Manifestation
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-30-39
63:41 - Clip 23 Lesson Three - Manifestation and the six days of creation
p.32, paragraph 7. “The six days of creation, as described in the 1st chapter of Genesis, represent six great ideal projections from Divine Mind, each more comprehensive than its predecessor.”
Everything in our life goes through these seven days of creation. Vera describes how attending a workshop has processed through the creative process.
68:20 - Clip 24 The seventh day is the Silence
70:22 - Clip 25 What we are demonstrating is more important that what we know
p.25, paragraph 18. “In this matter of sonship is one important point that we should not overlook; that point is the difference between those who perceive their sonship as a possibility, and those who have demonstrated it in their lives.”
Vera wants to change this to “those who are demonstrating it in their lives.”
Lesson Four - The Formative Power of Thought
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-40-49
71:31 - Clip 26 Lesson Four - The Formative Power of Thought is not creation
Vera comments that we form things with thought, but we do not create them. It is God that has created. We form.
Lesson Five - How To Control Thought
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-50-60
72:45 - Clip 27 Lesson Five - How To Control Thought
p.50. If we have formed something in thought that we don’t want, then we need to deny it. Denial may be silent or audible. Denials and affirmations need to be said “in good taste”, but they do need to be said. Vera references Atom Smashing Power of Mind pp.71-72.
Lesson Six - The Word
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-61-71
74:18 - Clip 28 Lesson Six - The Word is an idea that is infused with thought
p.61, paragraphs 1,2: “In pure metaphysics there is but one word, the Word of God. This is the original creative Word, or thought, of Being. It is the "God said" of Genesis. It is referred to in the 1st chapter of John as the Logos. It cannot be adequately translated into English. In the original it includes wisdom, judgment, power, and, in fact, all the inherent potentialities of Being. ... The perfect Word of God is spiritual man.”
The Word is the working power of God. “No idea works unless you work it.” So an idea needs to be infused with the power of the individual before it becomes a Word.
76:25 - Clip 29 Consent by Newton Dillaway
Vera references a book titled Consent, written by Newton Dillaway. No truth can come into our life unless we consent to it.
Personal note from Mark: This is one of my top four or five favorite books. Newton Dillaway wrote the Gospel of Emerson as well as Consent. He wrote an article for Unity Magazine that was published in July 1969 and his Consent, which was originally published in 1947, was republished by Unity in 1967. Dillaway is the only author I know who effectively bridges Unity metaphysical teachings, Transcendentalism and the contemplative mystical consciousness. My advice is buy Consent. If you don’t like it, I’ll buy it from you.
Lesson Seven - Spirituality or Prayer and Praise
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-72-84
78:55 - Clip 30 Lesson Seven - How God answers prayer
pp.77-78. “One of the offices of spirituality is to aggregate divine ideas. Through this action man draws absolutely true ideas from the universal Mind. Thus prayer is cumulative. It accumulates spiritual substance, life, intelligence; it accumulates everything necessary to man's highest expression. When we pray in spiritual understanding, this highest realm of man's mind contacts universal, impersonal Mind; the very mind of God is joined to the mind of man. God answers our prayers in ideas, thoughts, words; these are translated into the outer realms, in time and condition.”
Many people do not realize what the answers to prayer are. Note that the passage says how God answers prayer: ideas, thoughts and words. Prayer is not just communion with God, but rather conscious communion with God.
81:09 - Clip 31 Closing prayer - the source of our understanding
p.82, statement 9: “I acknowledge God at all times as the one source of my understanding.”
Downloads
Download MP3 fileLecture on the book Christian Healing given October 1972 at the Fillmore Festival.
Opening
00:00 - Clip 01 Opening Prayer based on There is one Presence
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-7-17
Prayer is based on statement #1 on p.17: “There is one Presence, one Intelligence, one Substance, one Life: GOD, the good omnipotent.”
Vera says she has been teaching forty-two years, which means she would have started in 1940.
02:46 - Clip 02 Christian Healing is not lectures, but lessons
Vera agrees with an often-said criticism of Unity, “all you do in Unity is repeat the same thing over and over.” Christian Healing is not a book written by Charles Fillmore, but rather a compilation of the lessons of Charles Fillmore, what he had learned after twenty years. They are not just lectures, but rather lessons, lessons about Principles that we are to apply.
Lesson One - The True Character of God
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-7-17
07:22 - Clip 03 Lesson One - True Character of Being and Lessons In Truth
In writing the first chapter, True Character of Being, Charles had expected that the reader had already read Lessons In Truth. Fillmore and Cady may use different words, but he words don’t matter as long as we know the meaning of the words you use.
10:29 - Clip 04 The organization of this talk
11:08 - Clip 05 What is spiritual science
p.7. “The science that is here set forth is founded upon Spirit.” Note that the word Spirit is capitalized. This refers to God. Charles refers to God as Divine Mind. Science is the orderly arrangement of inner laws or Principles.
12:39 - Clip 06 The starting point in spiritual realization is DESIRE for understanding
p.8, paragraph 5. “The starting point in spiritual realization is a right understanding of that One designated as the Almighty.” Vera notes that few of us really have such a right understanding. Her comment is that it is the desire to know, not the knowledge itself. The desire may be varied, such as “loaves and fishes” (for prosperity) or for healing.
16:41 - Clip 07 The presence of God is right within each individual
p.11, paragraph 10. “The Father within you, so lovingly and familiarly revealed by Jesus, is not a distance, far away in a place called ‘heaven.’ His abode is in the spiritual realms that underlie all creative forces.” This is a central Unity teaching.
Vera mentions Mary Brown, Sunday School teacher at Unity Village Chapel.
18:16 - Clip 09 A nutshell of Christian Healing
p.16. “23. The truth is, then: That God is Principle, Law, Being, Mind, Spirit, All-Good, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, unchangeable, Creator, Father, Cause, and source of all that is; That God is individually formed in consciousness in each of us, and is known to us as "Father" when we recognize Him within us as our Creator, as our mind, as our life, as our very being; That mind has ideas and that ideas have expression; that all manifestation in our world is the result of the ideas that we are holding in mind and are expressing;”
Vera comments on these three statements and explains how they are a nutshell of Unity’s teachings. Note that she corrects Charles by replacing “all-good” with “absolute-good”.
21:06 - Clip 10 The most important paragraph in Christian Healing
p.13, paragraph 15. “Divine ideas are man's inheritance; they are pregnant with all possibility, because ideas are the foundation and cause of all that man desires. With this understanding as a foundation, we easily perceive how ‘all . . . mine are thine.’ All the ideas contained in the one Father-Mind are at the mental command of its offspring. Get behind a thing into the mental realm where it exists as an inexhaustible idea, and you can draw upon it perpetually and never deplete the source.”
Vera thinks that this paragraph has had the greatest effect on her life and the life of others than any other in the entire book. It begins with a desire, but it is the access to all ideas of Father-Mind that impacts our life. Vera tells a story from Frances Gable told to her in 1942 about a boy who made mice go away; it wasn’t his words, but the idea back of the words. Ideas at our mental command are inexhaustible; they are our inheritance.
Lesson Eight - Faith
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-85-95
30:19 - Clip 11 Vera comments on lessons 8 through 12
Vera says that Charles assumes that the reader had already learned the material in Lessons In Truth very well. It had been taught for many years when Christian Healing was published.
32:06 - Clip 12 Chapter Eight - Faith is the perceiving power of the inner eye
Faith is the ability in me to see beyond the apparent. The soul is the user is of ideas.
p.85, paragraph 1. “Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.”
Lesson Nine - Imagination
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-96-106
37:29 - Clip 13 Chapter Nine - Imagination
Until my imagination can perceive, I have nothing to conceive. So Imagination is the conceiving power. But without Faith, the Imagination may form pictures of bugaboo. Vera comments about imagination and advertising; she talks about Charles Fillmore’s belief that poor countries will remain poor until the advertisers there raise expectations. She also discusses our responsibility to pray for world economic development and peace.
41:32 - Clip 14 What Imagination is
The picture-forming idea or the conceiving idea in mind.
Lesson Eleven - Judgment and Justice
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-119-129
42:38 - Clip 15 Judgment makes a choice for Will
Vera starts talking about chapter 10 on Will and Understanding but then switches to chapter 11 on Judgment. There are different forms of Judgment: evaluation, discernment, discrimination and choice. The Will must go through one of these in order to follow through. The will can determine on whether it will carry though on Judgment. But Judgment may also be biased. In this case the Will can chose to ignore Will. This shows how the two can work marvelously together.
Lesson Ten - Will and Understanding
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-107-118
45:32 - Clip 16 Lesson Ten - Will and Understanding
Will is action based on a choice. But Will must be based on Understanding, which looks far beyond knowledge of the present moment. Understanding is the wisdom of God moving in us for a reason. Vera talks about her cousin Frank who jumped off a ship that later sank. Understanding gives us a knowingness that we can’t explain.
Lesson Twelve - Love
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-130-141
49:08 - Clip 17 Lesson Twelve - Love has need of other faculties which are equally important
Henry Drummond said that “Love is the greatest thing in the world.” But Unity says that absolute Good is made up of equal ideas, each with a definite job to do. While it is true that “all the world needs is love” but the world also equally has need of understanding, judgment and life. All these qualities are equal in God.
50:26 - Clip 18 How many sermons have we heard on Order
Vera sidetracks on Order. “Order is heaven’s first law.” Order gets things in right relationship.
53:42 - Clip 19 Love ties things together
Charles Fillmore said “Love is the attracting, harmonizing, equalizing, balancing and bonding idea or quality of Mind.”
56:09 - Clip 20 Love must be balanced by the other eleven powers
If Love is based on Understanding then it seems to always know what to do.
Lesson Two - Being’s Perfect Idea
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-18-29
58:08 - Clip 21 Lesson Two - Beings Perfect Idea
We are threefold beings: Spirit, soul and body. Soul thinks with conscious mind phase and it feels with the subconscious phase. The conscious and subconscious phase work together on Ideas.
61:08 - Clip 22 Beings perfect idea is Christ
I am the Word of God. Paul wrote “Christ in you, the hope of glory” and that is another way of saying beings perfect idea.
Lesson Three - Manifestation
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-30-39
63:41 - Clip 23 Lesson Three - Manifestation and the six days of creation
p.32, paragraph 7. “The six days of creation, as described in the 1st chapter of Genesis, represent six great ideal projections from Divine Mind, each more comprehensive than its predecessor.”
Everything in our life goes through these seven days of creation. Vera describes how attending a workshop has processed through the creative process.
68:20 - Clip 24 The seventh day is the Silence
70:22 - Clip 25 What we are demonstrating is more important that what we know
p.25, paragraph 18. “In this matter of sonship is one important point that we should not overlook; that point is the difference between those who perceive their sonship as a possibility, and those who have demonstrated it in their lives.”
Vera wants to change this to “those who are demonstrating it in their lives.”
Lesson Four - The Formative Power of Thought
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-40-49
71:31 - Clip 26 Lesson Four - The Formative Power of Thought is not creation
Vera comments that we form things with thought, but we do not create them. It is God that has created. We form.
Lesson Five - How To Control Thought
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-50-60
72:45 - Clip 27 Lesson Five - How To Control Thought
p.50. If we have formed something in thought that we don’t want, then we need to deny it. Denial may be silent or audible. Denials and affirmations need to be said “in good taste”, but they do need to be said. Vera references Atom Smashing Power of Mind pp.71-72.
Lesson Six - The Word
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-61-71
74:18 - Clip 28 Lesson Six - The Word is an idea that is infused with thought
p.61, paragraphs 1,2: “In pure metaphysics there is but one word, the Word of God. This is the original creative Word, or thought, of Being. It is the "God said" of Genesis. It is referred to in the 1st chapter of John as the Logos. It cannot be adequately translated into English. In the original it includes wisdom, judgment, power, and, in fact, all the inherent potentialities of Being. ... The perfect Word of God is spiritual man.”
The Word is the working power of God. “No idea works unless you work it.” So an idea needs to be infused with the power of the individual before it becomes a Word.
76:25 - Clip 29 Consent by Newton Dillaway
Vera references a book titled Consent, written by Newton Dillaway. No truth can come into our life unless we consent to it.
Personal note from Mark: This is one of my top four or five favorite books. Newton Dillaway wrote the Gospel of Emerson as well as Consent. He wrote an article for Unity Magazine that was published in July 1969 and his Consent, which was originally published in 1947, was republished by Unity in 1967. Dillaway is the only author I know who effectively bridges Unity metaphysical teachings, Transcendentalism and the contemplative mystical consciousness. My advice is buy Consent. If you don’t like it, I’ll buy it from you.
Lesson Seven - Spirituality or Prayer and Praise
http://www.truthunity.net/texts/books/christian-healing-72-84
78:55 - Clip 30 Lesson Seven - How God answers prayer
pp.77-78. “One of the offices of spirituality is to aggregate divine ideas. Through this action man draws absolutely true ideas from the universal Mind. Thus prayer is cumulative. It accumulates spiritual substance, life, intelligence; it accumulates everything necessary to man's highest expression. When we pray in spiritual understanding, this highest realm of man's mind contacts universal, impersonal Mind; the very mind of God is joined to the mind of man. God answers our prayers in ideas, thoughts, words; these are translated into the outer realms, in time and condition.”
Many people do not realize what the answers to prayer are. Note that the passage says how God answers prayer: ideas, thoughts and words. Prayer is not just communion with God, but rather conscious communion with God.
81:09 - Clip 31 Closing prayer - the source of our understanding
p.82, statement 9: “I acknowledge God at all times as the one source of my understanding.”
Downloads
Download a MP3 audio file of Vera Dawson Tait - Christian Healing
