The Great Prayer that healed Emilie Cady
The esoteric riches of the seventeenth chapter of John, are equalled nowhere else in the sacred writings of the world; and as it is the nature of the esoteric to become exoteric through application, nowhere else can be found a teaching of equal importance to the outer life of humanity.
Preceding the occasion that called forth this prayer, Jesus Christ had proved God to man in two essential ways. The first proof was that God responds to faith, as attested by the miracles. The second proof was that God lends himself to man’s needs, as shown by the transfiguration.
These two essential proofs had been shared with his disciples, who understood somewhat, and with others, who understood not at all. There was need of a yet greater proof, which could not be shared with any one. This proof was to show that there exists between man and God an intimacy which is of the nature of a transfusion. By this transfusion man passes into God. and God passes into man. After this has taken place, there are not two, man and God. There is one: Infinity.
– Imelda Octavia Shanklin –
Hi Friends -
In April 1931 Emilie Cady wrote to Lowell Fillmore: “I am writing you in strictest confidence, believing you will understand. I need help.”1
Emilie Cady’s healing came after she requested and received two things.
First was individual prayer by one or two advanced prayer workers who understood that “Jesus Christ is the end of the law, that God and men are One as in a perpetual transfusion, and God is that One, Beside Him, It, Divine Substance through and through there is none other.” She said, “You have such people there, you know who they are. Will you ask them to help me? For my body seems to be manifesting great pain and the exhaustion which follows months of this, unaided and unrelieved.” Lowell assigned himself, Myrtle and HB Jeffery to pray for Emilie Cady.
Second, two months later, and still struggling, Emilie Cady requested two or three copies of The Great Prayer by Imelda Shanklin. I don't know when it was printed as a pamphlet, but Imelda Shanklin's The Great Prayer was published in Unity magazine in September 1921.
The graphic you see above is a clipping of that article. Click on the graphic for a high resolution image of the most important section of her article. Take a moment to read this clipping. It is easy to miss the esoteric Truth of this article that only someone as advanced as Imelda Shanklin could have written and Emilie Cady could have perceived. Click here to go to the full web page for this post and to read the full text of the article.
This article is important for introducing (at least to me) the term transfusion in a metaphysical context and for the ranking of transfusion above the law of attraction and transfiguration (awakening) in spiritual unfoldment.
If you think that's an overstatement, let me tell you how I got to it. Emilie Cady said she recollected that the pamphlet she was requesting discussed things like “‘God’s intimacy with man is of the nature of a transfusion, so there is no longer two, but one and God is that One.’ . . . I want the help of some clear, concise statement of a soul who in tribulation proved God.”
One month after receiving the pamphlets, Emilie Cady’s health had improved dramatically. She wrote, “You good friends pulled [me] out of the quagmire up to a place where [I] was able to lay hold of the Truth for [myself] – and with all your good faithful help [I am] getting on well.” Going to Wisconsin tomorrow. ... My heart is full of love and gratitude to my blessed friends in Kansas City. With much love, H. Emilie Cady.”
Following the above timeline, it appears that The Great Prayer pamphlet delivered in one month a healing that two months of combined prayers of Lowell, HB Jeffery and Myrtle Fillmore were not able to accomplish.
That may be an overreach, but it does give testimony to Imelda Shanklin’s assertion that there is a higher consciousness than the “awakened” consciousness which we typically refer to as transfiguration. That higher consciousness is transfusion. Emilie Cady sensed the same when she declared her need for “perpetual transfusion” in her initial letter to Lowell Fillmore without referring to The Great Prayer.
There is no doubt in my mind that Imelda Shanklin has embedded an esoteric message in The Great Prayer. She explicitly says so in the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs: “Texts familiar since earliest childhood, hold for our research treasures which we have not dreamed that they contained. If we apply our minds to these, we will be rewarded by the new meanings which they will disclose. ... esoteric riches ... become exoteric through application.” I would be grateful for sharing any insights that may come to you.
Whatever transfusion may be, it is strongly reminiscent of the “infusion of Spirit” experienced by Rufus Moseley in 1910.2 If so, then transfusion is a “raising up”, or ascension, of human consciousness into what Charles Fillmore called the Fourth Dimension.
The experience of Emilie Cady indicates that transfusion has healing power beyond that of the law of mind action and a consciousness of one’s divinity. If that rings true for you, then click through on the Rufus Moseley link for more because the difference between transfiguration and transfusion just may be the same as the difference between divinity and deification and the difference between resurrection and ascension.
I am writing this on Ascension Day, May 26, 2022. That may be the cause of my overreach. But I’m pleased to share with you the full text of the 1921 article as a PDF you can download. I also took some liberty in creating the graphics on this page because I am actually foolish enough to edit Imelda Shanklin. I hope my summarized version works for you. And, as you might have noticed over the past year, there is a link to download an attractive, shareable and printable copy of this post.
I hope this is a blessing to you.
Sunday, June 6, 2022
- An informal guide to H. Emilie Cady's correspondence with the Fillmore family/Unity. Prepared by Taylor Hines in conjunction with work on his Master's Thesis "Selfless Desires: H. Emilie Cady and the Victorian New Thought Woman" (2006). Unity Archives. (Not shared because copyright is ambiguous at this time.)
- J.R. Moseley, Manfiest Victory: A Quest and a Testimony, 1941, Harper Brothers Publishers, New York. See The four empires revealed to Rufus Moseley and what they say about the 4th Dimension.
Download PDF for The Great Prayer in Unity magazine September 1921
THE GREAT PRAYER
by: Imelda Octavia Shanklin
(An interpretation of the seventeenth chapter of John.)
Extracted from Unity Magazine, September 1921
BY BOTH instinct and reason, we know that the words of Jesus Christ contain life for those who will receive them. So eager is our response to his utterances, that we avidly seize upon a newly revealed saying, whenever the buried or the guarded treasures of his speech give us a declaration hitherto unpublished.
But so vastly much of his teachings, as given in the Gospels, is buried under the noncomprehension of our minds, that we ever have enough at hand for study. We do not need to wait for new messages. Texts familiar since earliest childhood, hold for our research treasures which we have not dreamed that they contained. If we apply our minds to these, we will be rewarded by the new meanings which they will disclose.
The esoteric riches of the seventeenth chapter of John, are equalled nowhere else in the sacred writings of the world; and as it is the nature of the esoteric to become exoteric through application, nowhere else can be found a teaching of equal importance to the outer life of humanity.
Preceding the occasion that called forth this prayer, Jesus Christ had proved God to man in two essential ways. The first proof was that God responds to faith, as attested by the miracles. The second proof was that God lends himself to man’s needs, as shown by the transfiguration.
These two essential proofs had been shared with his disciples, who understood somewhat, and with others, who understood not at all. There was need of a yet greater proof, which could not be shared with any one. This proof was to show that there exists between man and God an intimacy which is of the nature of a transfusion. By this transfusion man passes into God. and God passes into man. After this has taken place, there are not two, man and God. There is one: Infinity.
What Jesus Christ has in the Father, we have in the Father through Jesus Christ. Such is his teaching in this chapter, and such is the proof to those who can join him in the spirit of the teaching. With our minds, he mingles the undimmed clearness of God’s mind. This makes us to know the Father as Jesus Christ knows the Father. With our bodies, he mingles his immortal body, and the eternal life of God. which is the life of Jesus Christ, becomes also the life in us, and we become alive forevermore.
If we study the methods of prayer used by Jesus Christ, we shall know why he is the Son of God. If we use his methods, we shall become sons of God. in deed, as well as in Spirit.
His method of prayer forms a receptacle for God. Into the receptacle so formed. God pours himself. That this is the method Jesus Christ used, is proved by the nature of his appeal to God. It is pointedly indicated in the instructions which he gives to us.
Ask, he tells us.
Ask; ask, he repeats.
Ask; ask; ask, he drills the one who searches the Bible and communes with him to learn his way.
Ask. Never yet a man so foolish as to ask for that of which he is consciously possessed. The hungry child asks for bread, and his mother hastens to supply his need. The night asks for light, and the stars blaze out.
If any man know more of life and of God than is known by him whom we call Jesus Christ, that man is independent of the Jesus Christ method. The man who knows that Jesus Christ is the apex of the divine human, can now and then have conscious fellowship with him by trying to do as he did. By trying, a man will grow toward the stature of Him who is true God and true man.
The life of Jesus Christ is a life of prayer. Whoever would live His life must pray as He prays.
His greatest recorded prayer is the one given in the seventeenth chapter of John. All preceding prayers were preparations for this. The record of subsequent prayers indicates a prayer of surpassing magnanimity, but less inclusive. This is the brief address, when on the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
But the soul of him was every drop poured out in that hour when he, through himself, welded us to God in the prayer beginning. “Father, the hour is come.” Not any of the earthly survived that flaming heartshriving. Those who sought to do him hurt, were forgiven before their desires against him were executed. His prayer of forgiveness then, was the amen to the inwrapping communion of the Great Prayer — the prayer that makes and keeps his disciples one with him and with God.
The need for human experience and human conditions was drawing to a close. He was to be put to the final proof; he was to put God to the final proof. “The hour is come.” But he would reassure those who had been given to him by the Father. They were to receive one final word of instruction, that eternal life might be set aglow within them. Eternal life comes by one way: Knowing. The knowing embraces two objects: The only true God, and him whom God has sent, even Jesus Christ.
By praying as Jesus Christ prays, we learn to know God. By praying as Jesus Christ prays, we learn to know Jesus Christ, for through his prayers our souls become like his soul.
He had glorified the Father in the flesh. That work had awakened in his remembrance the glory which he had before he took on the restrictions of earthly life and earthly obligations. The glory which exists eternally, he was again to enter. He besought the light to shine upon the short way which lay darkly between him and the abiding radiance of God-Consciousness, on the thither side of earthly restrictions.
His reintrance into the eternal glory did not remove him from companionship with us. It did not separate his heart from our hearts. It did not set a barrier between our needs and his willingness to help us. The change placed him in a wholly universal relationship to us. It made him omnipresent, able to respond instantly to our call. It did not destroy his body; it refined his body: it restored his body to the pristine radiance of Substance. He spoke of his restored body at the Last Supper, when he likened the bread to his broken flesh. The breaking of his flesh permitted the earthly to pass out, that the heavenly might be freed from companionship with corruptibility.
He is with us in his restored body, whether we do or do not feel his presence. He is visibly, palpably with those who pray through him to God.
He does not ask the Father to take us from the world. He gives us a work to do in the world. We are to live holily, as he lives; we, visible to all; he, visible to those of cleansed vision.
In the days of his visibility to all, Jesus Christ mingled with the people of his environment; he was interested in their interests. He still walks among the children of men; their interests are his interests. Now his presence is not confined to a restricted Holy Land. The world is his field, and all the earth is holy land, under the touch of his sacred feet.
He has never taught isolation as a safeguard to sanctity. A religion that is too fragile for exposure to contact with the workaday world, could not emanate from one who worked night and day, among all classes of people. A religion that is too attenuated for an armor against the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” finds no charter in the robust principles enunciated by one who dared to defy with unwelcome truths, those who could condemn him to death on the ever standard charge of blasphemy. He gave no sanction for retreat into easeful meditation. His reiterated urge is: Do the works. Pray, then translate the prayer into act. In doing these, we shall help to fulfill his prayer for us.
His disciples are to be sanctified in the truth of God’s word. The word of God creates. It performs the cosmic evolution. It contains our courage, our efficiency, and our persistency. It contains God himself, for, “the Word was God.” Since the Word and God are one, to be sanctified in the Word, is to be sanctified in God. In this we have another presentation of transfusion. Like Jesus Christ’s body, our bodies must be broken to let out whatever is unlike God, for God does not receive what is unlike himself, nor does he enter into what is unlike himself.
Jesus Christ did not refer to the literal crucifixion when he spoke of his broken body. He broke up the mortal consciousness of body, that it might pass out, and so leave the immortal body to its native freedom and purity. The mortal consciousness of the body was broken previous to the feast of the passover, when he reached that illumination wherein he knew that “his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father.” The hour which “was come,” had now passed into the hour which “is come.”
He prays for his disciples. His prayer is granted before he offers it, because he holds us within himself, in transfusion with the allness of God. But he asks, that we may know that we are held by his power and his love. No one who believes in Jesus Christ, can believe that the prayers of Jesus Christ will fail. Here is unshakable security: Jesus Christ prays for us.
He prays for those who believe through his disciples. All who believe are Christ’s, and all of Christ’s are God’s. Those of today who, for the first time, hear and believe, are as sure of their places in the Father as are those who heard and believed in Palestine. The prayer of Jesus Christ is back of every prayer of every one who believes in him. Nothing can prevail against his prayer. Since we pray through him, thus making his prayer our prayer, nothing can prevail against our prayer. The transfusion is perfect, no matter how belief comes. Through Jesus Christ, the Father passes into the disciple, and the disciple passes into the Father. The glory which Jesus Christ would have us see, is the radiancy of God as it emanates from the omnipresent, restored body of Jesus Christ.
Toward the close of the Great Prayer, he repeats his promise that he will not desert the world. He again directs the minds of the disciples to the truth that he and they and the Father are one, here, always. He makes three declarations in proof of this: “I come to thee ... I pray not that thou shouldest take them from the world ... Father, I desire that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory.” He does not pray that his disciples be taken from the world, but he does pray that they may be with him. The prayer is answered by the disciples’ being consciously with Jesus Christ, here.
The concluding theme is love. God does not have two kinds of love. The love with which he loves the Son is the love with which he loves all people. He loves each of us, as fully as he loves Jesus Christ. This is the logic of the divine transfusion. Where love is, God is. Knowledge of God’s name includes knowledge of his allness. “I made known unto them thy name, and will make it known; that the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them.”
The disciple who can pray the prayer of this chapter, will not fear what he may have to face. For him, each breaking of the mental consciousness means progress in the transfusion which Jesus Christ inevitably brings to a completion. Or, in the symbology of the Man of Galilee, each crucifixion is followed by resurrection, and resurrection is succeeded by ascension. By progressive steps of prayer, we are brought ever closer to the heart of God. Jesus Christ helps us to enter the heart of God, where is fulfilled the request. “Father, I desire that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me.”
