Faith Establishing the Christ Consciousness
1927-05-15
This lesson from Charles Fillmore was featured on Bob Brach's Unity Classic Radio broadcast on May 26, 2015. Bob writes, "Words From Our Past. Wow....these are some great "words from our past" too. Mr. Fillmore speaks about the power of like minded people coming together and cites the example of Pentecost and .... Unity Conferences! (see page 27) Our Unity Peoples Conference is coming in a week or so. Let us see the Spirit working in and through this gathering."
FAITH ESTABLISHING THE CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS.
May 15, 1927
Charles Fillmore
In a responsive service, the lesson is based upon the experiences of the followers of Jesus Christ in that upper room in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. I would say in the beginning that this is a lesson on evolution. The evolution of man from the natural to the spiritual consciousness. We think that in order to understand evolution we must study Huxley and Darwin for there they have a topical practical evidence of the changes that have gone on in the development of the body, the body of man.
Well how about the mind and the soul? Is the ultimate in the study of these evolutionary authorities as to the development of man's higher principles? No they leave that to religion. But religion as a rule doesn't recognize that there is really an evolution of man religiously, but if you study this Bible with the spiritual inspiration which belongs to Holy Spirit consciousness, why you'll see the various steps of the evolution. As I say, Darwin and Huxley carry you along and show you that there has been degrees of unfoldment of body. They tell you that the fish got out of the water and became a bird. And the bird developed branches, that those who walked on the ground and some flew in the air and step-by-step we have an unfoldment of body consciousness.
Now if you want to know what the next step of man's unfoldment is, study the Bible. Here is spiritual evolution. It doesn't go into the details of the material evolution, the physical bringing forth. That is just a stage of the power of another dimension. We are getting an inkling at least, of an entirely new dimension in which man is evolving. Now this is brought forth in this lesson this morning, the followers of Jesus Christ had the word, or the intelligence of the master teacher had entered into their consciousness and it had worked the evolving in mind. And that same evolution is going on in every one of us who receive first the word, or the thought in the mind and that brings forth the fruit.
Now this day of Pentecost was the first fruits or the celebration of the escape of the children of Israel or bringing to the remembrance that they had escaped from Egypt. What does that mean in the individual? Why you lived up to the present time in a three dimensional world, merely physical. We didn't know anything beyond the height and the breadth and the depth of the material world. You may have been taught that material things weren't always just what they seem to be but when it comes right down to functioning and working, you always work from a three-dimensional plane. You have seen the sunrise in the morning and set in the evening and always you were regulated by them. You would go out and noticed the progress of the sun. When we read of astronomy we are told that that wasn't really true. [missing text] out but didn't become a demonstration. You couldn't feel in your thought that that process really was true. It wasn't true to the three dimension man.
Well what is the next steps there out of this natural world? Why, another dimension, another function in man and that function first through the thought and then as the word. Now we are told in the lesson today at three thousand people were baptized and converted in that day. There was not water enough in Jerusalem, in the whole City to baptize three thousand people in one day. They haven't any water like we have here. They have little springs. It would take a long time to let water enough to baptize three thousand people.
Well now this was a baptism of the Spirit. That's taught plainly. Jesus Christ didn't baptize with water. He breathed upon them. He said, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." He was teaching us that we could function on another plane of consciousness, the plane of Spirit. That means that there is an interpenetrating energy, a life, that is everywhere and working in us and through us and through that we come to another world.
But it doesn't come all at once. It is a development. It is a step by step unfoldment. And the first evidence that you'll have of this after you have begun to think about it and working it will be this first fruits or you'll get an illumination. That's the baptism. You'll get the illumination and you'll begin to feel the power of the Spirit and you'll have an understanding of spiritual things that you can't explain.
Now Paul talked about that in one of, I think it was one of the letters to the Corinthians. He said that he knew a certain man and he couldn't tell whether that man was in the Spirit or out of the Spirit. He talked about himself but didn't want to boast, didn't want to tell about the interior experiences because he knew, as we know, that when you tell about those things the common race mind doesn't accept it and they ridicule. They say, "that's all moonshine. You're getting dizzy," and all that sort of thing.
But he, Paul, new this and you talk as if it was the revelation of this some other man that he knew. But all the time you could see that he was talking about himself. He said he was lifted up into the third heaven and he saw on unutterable things and things which he couldn't explain. And yet he said, well now, don't think that I'm boasting, don't think that I'm bragging about this because well, virtually, I don't understand it very well. And yet it seems to retain in his consciousness. He came into the realization that there was another world. Now that other world is as he recorded, the kingdom of the heavens.
In you all, through you all, and about you all. And David had an inkling of that and this lesson today calls our attention to the forces, principles entering into this consciousness of that higher realm, of that fourth dimension in which this interpenetrating element is active. And David said, "The Lord said unto my Lord, sit down on my right hand," that means the hand of power, "till I make thine enemies a foot stool of thy feet." "And the Lord said unto my Lord," now in the original the word Lord there has, the two Lords have different meanings. "Jehovah said onto my Messiah," now that's the correct translation.
Jehovah, the great universal said onto my Lord, or my Messiah, sit thou on my right hand. In other words, get the idea of the Christ spirit, then all of your enemies. What are your enemies? People? No. What? Why, this sense consciousness. That's where you'll find all your enemies. Jesus said, "A man's enemies are they of his own household." Now we thought that that might mean our wife, or husband for our children or stepmother or something like that. Now that isn't the real meaning. It means that your household is your own thought children, your own passion, your appetite, your animal proclivities. There you'll find your enemies.
When you begin to feel spiritual and higher, these have to be converted, they have to be lifted up. Jesus said he didn't come to save the righteous but sinners. So this baptism or this entry into your consciousness of higher principle, of the Holy Spirit power, of course this power means something to everyone of us. That is, well, it's accompanied with a change of consciousness.
Now the records that John the Baptist taught, and Peter in this lesson was, redemption. When these Jews which crucified in the beginning the Christ understand it, the Christ principle, they say, "Well what are we going to do now to be saved from our sins?" Peter said, "Repent, repent." Well what is that word repent? Well what is that word repent? Why doesn't it means simply a change of mind? In other words, the actual man has been functioning altogether on a three dimension plane. He's been working from without, in outer things, in the crust of things, in the body consciousness altogether.
Now that change of mind means that he must function from within instead of without. In other words, you go to center and consciousness. There's your change of mind. That change takes place in all people who began to really think spiritually, to think mental. We see the evidence of that power everywhere but we don't stop to reflect about it, we don't think about it. Yet, in certain realms of material evolution, in the scientific world they are testing this power invisible and they get wonderful results but they don't enter right into it.
Now scientists I think in Manhattan College not a great while ago have put bands of steel around a young pumpkin and they arranged it so that as the pumpkin grew it exerted a pressure on the dial which showed the power of that pressure. And the first growth that they recorded was sixty pounds. In growth the pumpkin had exerted the power of sixty pounds and the next was five hundred pounds. Just think that's how the pumpkin and it's growth was exerting a lifting power, a standing power of five hundred pounds. And what was the source? Why a little vine about the size of your finger. And the next was eleven hundred pounds in the next when it got its growth it had exerted the power of three thousand pounds.
Just a pumpkin. Where did all that power come from? Well, from the vine. What did Jesus say? "I am vine. I am the vine. Ye are the branches." We are the pumpkin. But don't always confine yourself to your pumpkin appearance because it's a good deal more than a pumpkin in the man that gets this idea that you must get the right idea. You must get the spiritual idea and connect yourself through this spiritual man in you with the great source. Now feel that little vine would draw upon power that would exert three thousand pounds pressure. And through the I AM in Man, that God center in every one of us, we can draw from this universal mind and receive power, power from on high, power from our surroundings, power from within ourselves, and all you can think of. But you must realize that that power is a spiritual power.
Then you must become acquainted with its laws. And that law is that you shall overcome first, you shall overcome the disintegrating, dissipating forces of the natural man. The natural man is a good man. He isn't evil only as we make him evil. But we must get the mastery of these enemies of this Jehovah mind in us and put under our feet. That means that we are to put the power of our spiritual control onto the things that are making enmity upon us. Now those old heathens used to put their feet upon necks of their enemies. And they did worse than that. Well that is symbolized in this picture that is presented here at this higher principle in man, the Jehovah giving us the power to put into subjection to gain control of all these seemingly disintegrating forces, these so-called evils. There is no evil to the man who has the mastery over himself. If you conquer your self you're greater than he that has taken a city.
Now this day of Pentecost is a day that comes to every one of us, and it comes as a result of study, endeavor and especially that effort is directed in the way of the development of the God in us. We should recognize that his Holy Spirit which exerts such tremendous power in the world about us and really within us, which works in such wonderful ways to restore our bodies after we in our ignorance have partially destroyed them, we call it the healing power of nature but it's wholly spirit, it's the Holy Spirit of God restoring man to the ideal kingdom or the ideal relation which man bears to the oversoul, the great God of the world.
Now are we cooperating with that God mind? Are we praying and meditating and thinking about it? A man who aspired to be a minister heard a great sermon once and he was anxious to know from the one who delivered it where he attained the ability and power. And he went to him and asked him, he said, where did you get such a wonderful sermon? And the man took him to his humble home, took him to an upper room apart where he worked and showed him over in one corner by the table a rug. And the rug had a whole worn in it. He said, that's where I got the inspiration for that sermon, by praying on my knees on that hole there. I made that hole there from being down on my knees, praying to God there for the spirit of understanding and power for guidance or protection for everything that men are seeking and praying to God for. I prayed often on my knees. My prayers have been daily prayers. That's where I got the inspiration for that sermon. So we all find it we have to work with the spiritual powers if inspiration comes through prayer just pray, pray without ceasing, said Paul.
So we find it we must pray. First we must pray with the understanding and that understanding comes through meditation. Meditation in the silence. And we must meditate without conflicting antagonizing thoughts coming in. Go to the inner closet. Now these 120 followers of Jesus had been taught by him. They had depended upon his personality and he told them that he must go away but the Holy Spirit would come. That spirit is within everyone of us. And if we're depending upon some personality for our truth we'll disappointed, it will have to be withdrawn before we can awaken in ourselves the same Spirit that is in the one who we have been watching.
So these followers of Jesus were told to go to that upper room. It means merely the high state of consciousness in the mind, if you locate it physically it's your top brain and there gather your people together, all your thought people, all the thoughts that you know about God, good and be of mind in one place and you'll draw to you shower of spiritual ideas.
You will be a good deal like one of these focusing glasses, they draw the rays of the sunshine, focus it upon a piece of paper and set it a fire. Well exactly the same process goes on in the mind when you get a lot of true ideas together. Hold them in your mind; affirm them as really yours in spirit. You will set afire the very cells of your organism. Your brain goes through a transformation and you'll find that there is an omnipresent Spirit working in every one of us.
But, to what extent are we letting it work? Know this is the gift of the Holy Spirit. There is only one Spirit. One universal holy mother principle and it is the Holy Mother. And if we are not functioning in that holy mother consciousness, we have left out one of the largest elements of a human being, especially a spiritually developed human being. We have probably intellectual consciousness but we have left out that great principle of the mother, the consciousness, well, the universal building and constructive power in man. That's the reason that so many men well go physically into disease because they don't realize there is a mother principle in God mind. God through the holy mother has provided a restoring, provided a rebuilding of the body.
You know your attention has been called again and again to the discoveries of physical science, physiology, that the functions, you take the stomach of man rebuilds itself as it is used. That it would never never wear out if it were rightfully used. Well what is it that reconstructs, restores every part of man's organism? It is the Holy Spirit. The whole spirit of God. Did you ever think of it in that connection? It is the whole spirit of God that works in man's consciousness when he will let it.
But you must repent, you must change your point of view from the outer world to the inner world. But when you pray, going to that inner closet, close the door, pray to the Father in secret because God is Spirit. Now we may all have this Holy Spirit baptism, we can have it every day and every moment of the day if we all go through the right attitude of the mind. If we take the steps from the ideas and try to get that idea in the mind or the soul of her mind, and letting it worked there and then watching for the first fruit, then we change our ideas.
Some people when they get this change they think that it's something along the lines of sense consciousness. The people looked on the outer on this day of Pentecost and thought that these followers of Jesus for intoxicated, had been drinking. That's the verdict of the worldly man, the man who lives on that outer plane. He attributes everything to some physical cause. Well now things don't all come from the physical. The fact is that everything has its spiritual side and as we recognize that spiritual side it begins to work but it doesn't work in our minds nor our bodies till we recognize it. We must recognize it and work with this restoring principle. We must recognize as divine intelligence.
And as we work with it it is raised from the physical and mental to a spiritual action. You begin to see things entirely different. It isn't work that we are doing all by ourselves. It is something that requires cooperation in these Jews and all of the nation that were interested in the Hebrew religion gathered every year at Jerusalem for this Pentecostal feast. They recognized almost intuitively or through the inspiration of the Spirit, where a whole lot of minds are gathered together with one idea that great power is exerted.
Now the Mohammedans gather together every year to Mecca that same idea and nearly all of our conventions have back of them this idea that we can all get together and agree upon certain propositions it will be fulfilled. Jesus Christ recognized that law when he said, "If two or three of you gather together in my name, there am I in the midst of you." Here is a great lesson in evolution of man from the physical to the spiritual. We must gather our thoughts together. And that begins with the individual. Get all of your true thoughts together and hold to what you know to be true and then exclude the negative. Put out of your mind everything that has to do with an object.
People say, "Well I don't want to be one-sided. I must be logical at least. I must use common sense." Be careful of that old boy common sense. He'll get you into more trouble than any other thing in the universe, what we call common sense. Common sense is a good thing I presume but I'd rather have spiritual ideas, I'd rather have one spiritual idea rather than all the common sense I ever had because common sense always got me into trouble and I never was gotten into trouble with a real spiritual idea.
So when you gather your spiritual ideas together just eliminate for the time at least common sense. He'll come in all right. You'll find it when you get back to Earth after one of these high idealistic experiences that you'll be hungry or you'll be cold or the sense man will appeal to you right away. Well don't be too alert and responding to this appeal of the natural man. Remember all the time that I am a spiritual man. I'm living in the spirit. I'm raising the natural to the spiritual plane. Keep your ideas of spiritual truths together.
In healing, now, we find that we must hold to these propositions in spite of the appearance and finally the whole consciousness comes to that step, begins to take on the power of the Holy Spirit. Now these disciples of Jesus Christ, after this experience went out and so did the Holy Spirit power broadcast everywhere. And Peter became a great healer. And Philip became a baptizer and John became a healer. They all exercised this power of the Holy Spirit.
How did they do it? By holding to that. By believing it. By working in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the way we are developing today. What was true in the time of Jesus is true today. We are going to lift not only ourselves but the whole world out of material bondage. Lift the material world out of bondage to getting together in the Holy Spirit consciousness.
And so we're here this morning. If we have a unity of spiritual consciousness, based upon the truth that we are changing our minds, we are beginning to think in idea instead of luck. And wherever you think you get results, remember that. If you concentrate your I AM in your muscles why you'll get muscular development. If you concentrate your mind in your brain cells why you'll get brain cell results, and if you concentrate your mind and spiritual ideas you'll get spiritual results.
Now what do you want? Ask for what you want and pay for it and you'll get it. And you have to pay by attention, give attention to the wonderful lesson which Jesus and his disciples have forcibly set out here in this gospel. Study it with the idea of Spirit, not only study it but apply it. Get yourself together. Believe in the power of the Spirit in you, and that belief will raise you to a new world, a world that is coming into expression on every side today. And it will cause a lot of disturbance in the old world.
We claim that the earthquakes and cyclones and the floods are all a result of the impact of the mind of the race upon the earth. Some people say, "How could the mind of the people affect these physical things in that way?" Well how did the mind of nature through the pumpkins produce the expression for a three thousand pound power? How was that accounted for? Through the mind, the impact of the mind on matter.
And the race thought I tell you is being poured out upon the body and material things but it can be poured out in a specific way, in a harmonious way, a constructive way instead of destructive. It depends upon the mental attitude of the people. How are we thinking about each other? How are we thinking about God? Are we thinking war and destruction? If so, war and destruction will be made manifest. If we have been thinking peace, love and harmony, peace love and harmony will be made manifest in our bodies and in our minds.
Let's think the Christ. Let's think according to the Christ thoughts. Let's radiate that love, that truth, that peace, that gentleness, that the kindness, and that health and harmony which belongs to us under divine law, and is manifest to us this day through the power of the Holy Spirit.
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