Chapter 6
The Twelve Powers Of Man
The development of man is under law. Creative Mind is not only law, but it is governed by the action of the law which it sets up. We have thought that man was brought forth under the fiat or edict of a great creative Mind, that could make or unmake at will, or change its mind and declare a new law at any time; but a clear understanding of ourselves and the unchangeableness of Divine Mind brings us to the place where we see that everything has as its foundation in a rule of action, a law, which law must be observed by both creator and created.
Man grows, expands, develops. His development is not primarily under the physical law, because that is secondary. There is a law of Spirit, and the earthly is but the minor showing forth of some of the phases of that law. We begin our existence as ideas in Divine Mind; those ideas are expressed and developed and brought to fruitage, and this expression is the important part of the soul’s growth.
Evolution says man evolves; but there is also involution, and that involution is based upon the development of ideas in mind. What we are is the result of our consciousness, and that consciousness is the result of seed ideas, sown in our minds. When Froebel, the great teacher of children, began his primary school, he thought a long time before he gave it a name. One day it came to him: “A Children’s Garden”; so he called it a “Kindergarten.”
That is exactly what humanity is—the Garden of God. Jesus says the “word” of God is the seed, and he gives illustrations of the various places in which the seed is sown, and the results. We know the seed, or Word of God, is sown in the minds of men, and these seed ideas go through many changes, and they bring forth a harvest according to the capacity of the receiving soil. If you have the will to do the will of God, the exercise of your will in that direction strengthens your will, and you begin to expand in will power. If you have faith in things invisible, there is growing in your mind the faith-seed, and your faith is increased. Every word or idea in Divine Mind is sown in the mind of man, and grows there—according to man’s receptivity.
So it is found that all the faculties that exist in the Divine Mind, the Twelve Pillars of the Temple of God, are in this way expresed through the mind, the soul, and the body of man. Some have claimed that this Bible is a work on physiology. So it is. But it is a work on both psychology and physiology, and treats of spirit, soul and body as a unit. And here the mere physical students of the body have not understood the Bible. They have looked for descriptions of flesh and bones, when in truth those things have no active existence withotit the accompanying life and intelligence.
Jesus Christ, the Great Teacher, who knew what was in man, began his evolution with Spirit; he is the “Only begotten Son of God,” and he is the type which we are striving to follow, not only in spiritual culture, in soul culture, but in physical culture. If you would bring forth the very best that is in you, study the methods of Jesus Christ, and, studying them in all their details, getting at the spirit of everything that is written about this wonderful man, you will find the key to the true development of your soul and body, and by carrying out his system, there will be revealed to you a new man, a man you never dreamed of, existing in the hidden realms of your own subconsciousness. This subconscious realm has twelve great centers of action, with twelve presiding soul identities. When Jesus Christ arrived at a certain place in his development, he called his twelve disciples. This means that when man gets to a point in his development where he should take the next step, and come out of mere personal consciousness into universal consciousness, he begins to select deeper and larger powers—he sends his thought down into these inner centers of his organism, and through his word quickens them to life. Where before they have worked in the personal, now they begin to expand and work in the universal. This is the first and second coming of Christ. The first coming is the receiving of Truth in the conscious mind, and the second coming is the awakening and regeneration of the subconscious through the Christ Mind.
Man expands and grows under the Divine Evolution in ways similar to the growth of an industrial plant. As the business expands, it is found that system is necessary. Instead of one man with a few helpers doing all the work, he requires many helpers. Instead of a few workers, he finds hundreds necessary, and in order to maintain system and efficiency he must have heads for the various departments. Scripture symbology gives these heads of departments in man’s consciousness as Twelve Disciples.
Each of these twelve department heads has control of a certain function in soul or body, and they work through an aggregation of cells called by physiology ganglionic centers. Jesus, the I Am, or central identity, has his throne in the top-head, where phrenology locates spirituality. This is the mountain where he so often went to pray. The following is a rough outline of the Twelve Disciples, the faculties which they represent, and the cell-centers at which they preside:
- Faith—Peter—center of brain.
- Discrimination—James—pit of stomach.
- Love—John—back of heart.
- Strength—Andrew—small of back.
- Power—Philip—root of tongue.
- Imagination—Bartholomew—between the eyes.
- Understanding—Thomas—front brain.
- Will—Matthew—center front brain.
- Order—James, son of Alphaeus—navel.
- Dissipation or Elimination—Thaddaeus— lower part of back.
- Zeal—Simon the Canaanite—back head.
- Appropriation or Life Conserver—Judas—generative function.
The names of these faculties are not arbitrary—they can be expanded or changed to suit a broader understanding of their full nature. For example, Philip, at root of tongue, governs taste; he also controls the action of the larynx, also all power vibrations. So the term power expresses but a small part of his official capacity.
The first disciple that Jesus called was Peter, and you all know that Peter represents faith. Faith in what? Faith in things spiritual. Faith in God. We begin our religious experience, we begin our unity with the Divine Mind, by having faith in that Mind. People who live wholly in the intellect deny that man can know anything about God, because they have not quickened faith. The way to bring forth the God Presence, to make yourself conscious of God, is to say, “I have faith in God; I have faith in Spirit; I have faith in things invisible.” And those affirmations of faith, that praise to the Invisible God, the Unknown God, will make that God visible to your mind, and your faith faculty will be strengthened. In this way the Faith disciple is called.
The next disciple that comes into expression is James. He is discrimination, good judgment. James is that in us which chooses and determines. It may be in the matter of food; it may be in the matter of judgment about the relation of forces external; it may be in the choosing of a wife or a husband—in a thousand different ways this faculty is developed in man. The judge is apt to get critical and condemn, and then he must call upon his brother John, love.
James and John are brothers, and Jesus called them Sons of Thunder. These brothers preside over the great body brain called the solar plexus, or sun-center. James has his throne at the pit of the stomach, and John just back of the heart. But they are closely related. You will find that whatever affects your stomach will sympathetically affect your heart. People with weak stomachs nearly always think they have heart trouble.
Jesus Christ called those two disciples the “Sons of Thunder” because of the tremendous vibration that goes forth from the solar plexus. When your sympathies are aroused you will find that you begin to breathe deep and strong; and if you are very sympathetic you can feel the vibrations as they go out to the person or thing to which you are directing your thought. All fervor, all that high energy that comes from soul passes through this center.
The next faculty that we bring into expression in divine order, is Bartholomew, the imagination. We are told that the imagination has its center of action directly between the eyes. This is the point of expression of a set of tissues that extend back into the brain and connect with an imaging, or picture-making function near the root of the optic nerves. Through this faculty you can project an image of things without, or ideas within, to any part of the body. You can project the image of, for instance, jealousy to any part of your body and make a yellow spot there, or you can image and project a beauty spot by thinking goodness and perfection for everybody. Bartholomew is connected directly with the soul and has great power in the pictures of the mind. Jesus saw him under a fig tree, a long way off, before he was visible to the natural eye. Do not imagine anything but good, because it will, sooner or later, under the law, come into expression, unless you head it off, eliminate it, dissolve it.
We have faculties of elimination, as well as appropriation, and if you know how to handle them you can expel error from your thought-body. The Denial Disciple is Thaddaeus, presiding at the lower part of your organism, controlling elimination, the action of the lower bowels and the rectum. And I would say that all of these faculties are necessary to the perfect expression of the man. None are despised or unclean. They have not been understood, and through ignorance man has called them mean until they act in that way and cause him pain and sorrow.
When a center loses its power it should be baptized by the Word of the Spirit, the Water of Life. We are told in the Scriptures that Philip went down to Gaza, and there baptized the eunuch, and that Gaza is “a desert place.” Now, Gaza—if you will examine your Bible Helps—means a “citadel of strength.” It refers to the nerve center in man where Andrew—strength, reigns. Gaza is the physical throne of Strength as Jerusalem is the throne of Love.
Philip, power, and Andrew, strength, are connected with a great nerve, and there is a constant vibration going on between the two. You will find that if your back is weak it will affect your voice, showing the sympathy between the two centers.
The back grows weak under the burden of material thought. If you are given to pains in your back, or to periods of easy exhaustion under strain, you may know at once that you need treatment for freedom from material burdens. Eliminate from your mind all thought of the burdens of the world, the burdens of your life, and all seeming labors. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
The fact is that we are pressed upon by these ideas of materiality; thoughts make things, and these material ideas that are pressing upon us are just as substantial in the realm of mind as are these material things in the realm of matter. Everything has origin in thought, and material thoughts will bring forth material things. So you should baptize and cleanse with your spiritual word every center, as Philip baptized the eunuch at Gaza. Baptism is cleansing. It always represents the erasing power of the mind. You remember that this eunuch was a representative of Candace, Queen of Ethiopia. That means darkness, the unenlightened.
When the baptizing power of the word is poured upon a center, it eliminates and cleanses all material thought, and your impotence is vitalized with new life, and your whole subconsciousness is awakened and quickened. The word of the Lord is there sown in your body, and once you sow the word of Truth in any of these centers, the cells of which are like little phonograph records, they take the thought you give them, and carry it through the whole organism. The strength baptism goes to the uttermost parts of the body. Every one of the twelve tribes will, under the Divine law, feel the new strength.
Thomas represents the understanding power of man. He is called the doubter because he wanted to know about everything. Thomas is in the front brain, and his twin, Matthew, the will, occupies the same brain area. We are told that these two faculties are jointly in occupation of this part of the “promised land.” Like Ephraim and Manasseh, their inheritance is undivided. James, the son of Alpheeus, is divine order. His center is at the navel. Thaddaeus is the expurgator. and has a very important office. He needs your relaxing baptism. Simon, the Canaanite, is zeal—at the medulla, the back head. When you burn with zeal, and you are anxious to accomplish great things, you will generate heat at the base of your brain. If this is not balanced with co-operation of the supplying faculties, you will burn up the tissues and stop the natural flow of blood to the brain.
These powers are all expressed and developed under Divine Mind—remember that. “Not by power, nor by might, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.” You must keep the equipoise; you must, in all the bringing forth of these twelve powers of man, realize that they come from God—they are directed by the word of God—man is their head.
Judas, who betrayed Jesus, has his throne in the generative center. Judas governs the life consciousness in the body, and without his wise co-operation the organism is drained of its essential substance and dies. Judas is selfish—this is his “devil.” Judas governs the most subtle of the “beasts of the field.” But he can be redeemed. We certainly could not exist without life; but that life must be guided in Divine ways. There must be a righteous expression of life. Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, must in the end be cleansed of his devil, selfishness-then he will allow the life force to flow to every part of the body. Instead of being a thief—drawing to the sex center the vital forces necessary to the sustenance of the whole man—Judas will become a supplier. He will give his life to every faculty. Now he drains the whole man, and the body dies as a result of his selfish thievery.
So, if you would build up your faculties under the Divine Law, redeem Judas. First have faith in the power of the Spirit, and then speak to Judas the word of purity; speak to Judas the word of unselfishness. Baptize him with the whole Spirit—Holy Spirit. If there is in you a selfish desire to exercise sensation, to have the pleasures of sense in any of its capacities, give it to the Lord, because, in no other way can you get eternal life.
Jesus Christ came to give us eternal life. But, suppose that we should have an increase of life, with our present selfish subconscious state of mind, what would be the result? Why, we would draw a larger volume of life, and for a time have a little more pleasure, but the end would be death of the body.
Judas also extends his selfishness out into the world. He is greedy for gold, for jewels, for houses, for lands, for the good things of the world. But in the end he has to let go of them.
If I could tell you how to make a million dollars every day for the next three hundred and sixty-five days, this building would not hold the audience, and yet, I assure you that these words of advice as to how to control your life, how to build up the whole man, is of more value to you than a million dollars a day would be. The powerlessness of things to help men when life is at stake was illustrated in the wreck of the Titanic. For example, one man said that he decided to go back to his cabin, where he had over three hundred thousand dollars worth of jewels and money, and take them with him. He opened the case where he kept his valuables, and then he thought, “What baubles; they can do me no good,” and he selected from all that rich store a little pin, closed the case and threw it on the floor. Instead of money and jewels he took three oranges and went back on deck. That man came to himself. But he needed the help of God. He needed spiritual understanding; he needed the realization of the Divine Power. So every one of us will find that the real issue is not to gain the things of the world. “For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” No! The real issue is the development of the powers of the soul. It is the bringing forth of the real man, through the Law of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Benediction: We thank Thee, Almighty Father, for the revelation of thy Law. We thank thee for this understanding. We are thy ministers, and—thy creators—we bring forth ourselves under thy law. Now, we ask thy blessing. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and give thee peace. Amen.
