Jesus Christ
Unity has had to deal with the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ just as the traditional church has. And there is much in common. But, again, there are differences.
On the one hand, Jesus was the Man of Nazareth, the son of Mary. On the other hand, he was indeed divine. Recalling our earlier explanation of how God creates through Ideation, Unity states that "Jesus Christ is the perfect expression of the divine idea Man. Jesus Christ is a union of the two, the idea and the expression, or in other words, He is the perfect man demonstrated." (Meyer, p 86)
Perhaps a citation from Hindu scripture will help with this notion. In the Upanishads it is said, "Anyone who realizes Brahman (God) becomes Brahman (God)". (Upanishads, p 178)
Jesus was fully divine because he "realized" God fully.
To quote Charles Fillmore, once again,
"We cannot separate Jesus Christ from God or tell where man leaves off and God begins in Him. To say that we are men as Jesus Christ was a man is not exactly true, because He had dropped that personal consciousness by which we separate ourselves from our true God self. He became consciously one with the absolute principle of Being. He proved in His resurrection and ascension that He had no consciousness separate from that of Being, therefore He really was this Being to all intents and purposes." (Atom Smashing Power of Mind 40 - 41).
The "personal consciousness" that Mr. Fillmore refers to as having been dropped is the personal consciousness that resulted when humanity (Adam) accepted the false belief in separation. The goal of humanity is to return to the pristine conscious awareness of oneness symbolized by the Garden of Eden experience before the "Fall".
The soul that incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth had obtained the state of consciousness in which there is the full-blown realization of Oneness with God either in previous incarnations (Charles Fillmore accepted the possibility of reincarnation) or he had not fallen away with the rest of the crowd at the time symbolized by the Genesis story.
"As the result of lack of conscious connection between the thinking faculty and the fountainhead of existence, humanity had reached a very low state. Then came Jesus of Nazareth, whose mission was to connect the thinker with the true Source of thought. Thinking at random had brought man into a deplorable condition, and his salvation depended on his again joining his consciousness to the Christ Only through that connection could he be brought back into his Edenic state. He was the representative of a thoroughly organized plan to help men into a higher realization of God and their relation to Him." (Meyer, pp 283-284)
It is in this sense that Mr. Fillmore referred to Jesus as a "Way-Shower": "Jesus is the Way-Shower. He came that we might have life more abundantly. He came to awaken man to the possibilities of his own nature. He came to bear witness to Truth." (Ibid., p 285)
But Jesus was more than this. He was a Saviour. And it is in this context that we will discuss the Atonement according to Charles Fillmore.
