Look We For Another?
1912-09-01
Luke 7:20
This lesson from Charles Fillmore was featured on Bob Brach's Unity Classic Radio broadcast on June 23, 2015. Bob writes, "Mr. Fillmore begins by talking about prayer and how to pray, talks about the meaning of the word "anointed" and ends up talking about "salvation" and being saved (p.16). He also has a great quote - Everything in Divine Order grows from center to circumference." (p10)"
LECTURE
"LOOK WE FOR ANOTHER"
-by-
MR. CHARLES FILLMORE
-at-
UNITY AUDITORIUM
913 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri
SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 1,1912.
Men ought always to pray, be instant in prayer; be so saturated with the consciousness of the Spirit that your mind is attending the higher realms at all times. This is the attitude of one who has real unity with the Spirit.
We have thought - some of us - that prayer was something we should use under great stress, when there was an especial need; but when things were going smooth, it wasn't necessary to pray. We find that prayer is just as necessary to our well-being as food or clothes - even more so. So we cultivate prayer. But we also know that it makes a great difference, what kind of prayers we have; how we_pray, and to whom we pray; and the words that we use in our prayers.
God is Spirit, and if we would reach him, our prayers must be spiritual. Emerson said, the man that prayed for material benefit was a thief. You must realize that you are a spiritual Being, and that your greatest benefit is some spiritual good. That God is Spirit; that from Spirit all things come. Things that are visible are made from the things that are invisible.
If you get this right understanding of God as a Spiritual Being, and man as a spiritual being, why, the unity presents itself at once, and all you have to do is to just realize the great Truth that you are the son of a Spiritual Father, and that whatsoever you ask will be granted - whatsoever you ask will be granted.
Now, we find it necessary to impress upon ourselves this great Truth, that we are born spiritual beings, we take some central idea to express that spirituality; hold to it until it becomes manifest.
Now, we will this morning take as our central spiritualizing thought this:
"The Spirit in me is the anointed of God, and I do not look for another".
There is a meaning in every statement, and that statement has a special meaning for you, and you, and you: "The Spirit in me is the anointed of God. I do not look for another". Let every one of us quietly hold that silently, in the presence of the Great Universal God: "The Spirit in me is the anointed of God, and I do not look for another".
"Is this He which was to come, or look we for another?" This question, in various forms, is constantly being propounded by man to himself, and it is to this self of man that we should appeal for the answer. Symbolically, this is represented as the question that the disciples of John the Baptist, said to Jesus. Jesus answered by citing the works that were done; and that is exactly the answer that we must every one of us give, when the question comes home to us.
As Metaphysicians, sounding the very depths of our own being, we know both from spiritual authority and from scientific discovery that man has within him all the potentialities of Being; that the Universe is concentrated in the man; that we don't have to look outside of ourselves for any other, and, in answering this question, we must look to the man within.
This is a matter of right view point. If you absolutely know within yourself that the only knowledge that you get is through your own consciousness, is through your own development, and that you can't receive a single thing from another, you have started right. If you go right on from that point, you will reach the goal, and you will never reach it in any other way.
So, as students of Truth, let us settle right down to that one proposition: "I don't look for any other"; and this development of myself is a matter of demonstration.
Jesus Christ didn't give John the answer in a long dissertation on what the Christ man was, or what God was, but he said, "Here are the works - by their fruits he shall know them".
So, in answering the question for ourselves, we must demonstrate. If I have a single power that I can't demonstrate, it is just as if I didn't have it, it doesn't amount to anything. And, if you have within you spiritual qualities or mental qualities they are susceptible of use, and it devolves upon you to get about your Father's work. You have wrapped up in you all things. You are the anointed of God, and don't waste your time looking for another; don't look back eighteen hundred or nineteen hundred years to Jesus Christ for your Savior. It is "Christ in you, the hope of glory". If you haven't got the Spirit of God at work in your own inner spiritual being, you will never he saved. Then, don't look for another; don't look for any theoretical system of religion; don't look for health from other Sources, but develop the Spirit in the man.
Now, the anointed, the Christ, is the one who has had poured out upon him the oil of God's Spirit. Anointing simply means to pour out oil upon; but it has a spiritual, meaning, and that is, that when one anoints another, there is an essential giving-forth of the finer essences of spiritual character.
Now, we are taught that man was, in the original, in his beginning, anointed of God. That is, he was made the Christ of God. That is the birth-right and spiritual being - God gave Himself to his creation. Now, we don't have to depend upon Scripture authority for that, modern science is proving it to us. The smallest cell of your being has a spiritual quality; it has within it all possibility. If the Universe were destroyed, Lord Kelvin says, leave a single cell and we will produce it again. That shows that in the minutest cell, the most insignificant part of your organism, there is the seed, the spiritual seed that would produce it again.
Now, this is positive proof of these statements that God created man a spiritual being, and that He put into him all of His being; that is, all possibility is there. But the real issue is that man, coming to a certain stage of consciousness, begins to look without, he looks away from this all-possible spiritual seed in the single cell, which is I AM, and, directing this creative thought away from that, it goes into a state of atrophy; it ceases to grow; it isn't active with the Creative Spirit. He is looking for another. He is looking for outside help; and this diverts his thought from centre to circumference, and the result is a man of parts instead of the whole. He is trying to grow by accretion, instead of that innate organic rightful growth, which is a natural inheritance of every one.
Everything in Divine order grows from center to circumference. That is the law. Now, that is the law of your being, of mine; but we interfere with that law the moment we divert our attention from the Spirit within.
Here is where Christianity has fallen short, of doing the works. Where, in the Orthodox church to-day do you find one who heals the sick, opens the eyes of the blind, raises the dead, casts out the demon; in other words, does the works of the Christ? "Oh," they say, "that was done by Jesus Christ, a man who lived a long time ago, but we have the Bible now, and it isn't necessary to have these demonstrations of Divine Power". There you are looking for another. So, when Jesus Christ demonstrated the powers of man, he wasn't recognised, because the people were looking for a Messiah, a great king, who would come and set up a temporal kingdom, and they said, when that carpenter with his real spiritual power went up and down their land, "Oh, we look for another. We are not looking for these simple demonstrations among common people, but we want some mighty one. We want someone to come with an army and banners and drive out these Romans".
It may be now, that in our day the same thing is true. If Jesus Christ should come in our midst, in his lowly garb, in his simple way, and begin healing the sick, would we recognise him, or would we be looking for another? When the Christ Spirit in you begins to demonstrate itself, and you feel, when you know the Truth, you can do these things, but you are not ready; you are looking for another. You are looking ahead; you are anticipating when, in some future time, you will be able to speak the words of Truth and heal the sick and just to that extent you are locking away from the center. You are not turning the fires of the I AM into your own being, and you can't expect anything else but lack of action.
I tell you every faculty of the mind depends upon this Christ Spirit within for its light for for [it's life?]. When you say: "In the name of Christ, the anointed of God in me, I am wise", I know you are opening the eyes of the blind. Yes. Every one of us is blind, if we have been living in externals. Jesus said: "Ye have eyes but we don't see. Ye are looking right out into the dark material world". But you have the eye of the Spirit; but that eye must be opened by the Christ, and you open it by your declarations of Spiritual understanding. So that, if you would bring forth this Christ Mind, have your hours of prayer, meditation, thought, and declare the Truth, that "the Christ of God has alraady, come, to me".
"I don't look for another. I don't look for a great burst of Spiritual Light, but, in every little ray that I get there is the Christ; and the light of my understanding is being opened here and there. Every time that I speak same word of this potential Principle of understarding in me, I am opening, my eyes a little wider. The blind are receiving their sight."
Now, this is an absolute fact that you can prove for yourself. And can you make the lame walk? Oh yes, our healers say, "I am treating lame people every day". Heard a lady just yesterday say that she had sprained her ankle, and it was an old weak ankle, as she said, and formerly it had taken her a long time to get over it; but she treated that ankle, and told it it was spiritual and not material; that it was strong, and not subject to weakness, and "Why," she said, "in a single day I was able to walk upon my foot". She was healed, in other words.
Now, wasn't that healing of the lame? Yes, but there is still a deeper healing than that; and this healing is that of making the man in you walk with boldness and freedom, in the paths of righteousness. The majority of people are often lame and timid. You know if you got a lame foot, if you sprain your ankle, you can trace it right back to some timid state, of mind. Every ache of the body comes from the mind; and if you find yourself kind of felling your way along on the sidewalk, or afraid of a down-step, you can make up your mind there is a spirit of timidity getting possession, and the only way to demonstrate over that is to cultivate boldness and freedom. "I am not timid, nor afraid. I am bold, courageous and fearless". Before you know it, you will be stepping right off with a freedom - your legs will take on a boldness that you never had before. That is the real healing of the lame, and you can raise the dead. This Christ Spirit in you; this all-potential One, raises the dead sleeping Lazarus. You can go right on; you can preach the gospel to the poor. It isn't that you are poor in purse; it isn't that the Christ goes out and preaches to poor people, but this needy spirit in every one of us, this needy consciousness, this great lack which we all seem to have when we have lived in externals. We are like that prodigal son who went into the far country and starved. If you are not filled with the enthusiasm of the Spirit; if you are not being fed daily with the food of God, you are in a starved state. You are living on husks.
Now, in order to be filled, you must realize that the Father's House, the Father's Storehouse, is right here, and you, being His child, have all : "All mine are thine" (John 17:10). That is the message to the young man that stayed at home; and if you know the law of your being, you are always at home in God.
Then, let us cease looking for another; let us cease looking outside of the Spirit of God in us for any help in any way. But, you say, "Am I not dependent in a measure upon my surroundings, upon people - aren't men dependent upon men; isn't there a great union - don't you preach that?" Yes, but if you make the Union with God, in wisdom and understanding, and in Love, in Power, in Strength, in Courage - if you build yourself up after the Christ ideal; if you form Christ in you, all those things are taken care of. It will never be necessary to talk about man's relation to man; it won't be necessary to have laws of any kind; it won't be necessary to, in any way, appeal to the outer man, the outer man will come under the law of Spirit. He will fall just naturally into a great Spiritual Unity.
Then the important question with us is to know that we don't have to look to externals for anything; that it is the Christ form in us that brings us to salvation, that saves us from everything. Now, the forming of this Christ is a simple matter. Christ isn't formed in you until you begin to realize the consciousness of Christ, and that comes through identification. And, as I say, if you are identifying yourself with externals, if you are identifying yourself with your own intellect, you are failing in the fulfillment of this wonderful law. There must be identity with the highest, the Supreme Christ Mind. You must say to yourself, "I am the anointed of God, I do not look for another. I do not look for another man; I do not look for a better man; I do not look for a more spiritual man; I do not look for more power to be expressed in myself." No! Don't look outside for anything, but simply see yourself in Spirit, just what you want to be. You are. You are in Spirit all that you have ever idealized yourself to be; but unless you begin taking hold of that with your I AM power, declaring it to yourself, it is nonity, it is of no effect in your life. The moment this power in you beginning to generate the I AM force of your word, that moment things begin to change; that moment the righteous law is set into operation.
Then drop all looking without, and affirm the Spirit within. I can't tell you with what force, with what an uplift that affirmation of my I AM Power comes. Nothing but your own affirmation, your own concentration upon that will bring you into a realization of it. So, I would say, "Why, just try it". Speak some words to yourself; tell yourself what you are. I was told the other day of a lady who began this study seme five or six years ago, and she was very diffident. She said she couldn't express herself in public; but she caught the clue that by affirmation, by talking to herself in her room, she could develop this power. She took that up, and sometimes she spent half the night in proclaiming to herself what she was in Spirit; and she has made a fine speaker, leading the center in New York City to-day, and is considered one of our foremost workers in the Truth. Developed all within herself through the power of her words, word of appreciation of the Spirit.
Now, that is open to every one of us. It isn't something difficult, but spending a little time every day proclaiming the power in you; proclaiming the Truth that God anointed you his Child; that he gave you all of his Being; He gave you all of His intelligence; all of His Life; all of His Strength; all of his Power; all of His Good - everything that the Father has, He gave it to the Son.
What a wonderful proposition that is; how clear and true it is when we understand this law of the Omnipresence of All-Potentiality in Being; and that man, seeing this Truth, now comes on to the stage and makes it manifest.
Now, this is the great day of God, when the prophets of God are to go up and down the earth preaching the Gospel, preaching the Gospel of man as the son of the Living God. Jesus Christ gave the word when he said to those Pharisees, "Why, isn't it written in your Scriptures, 'Ye are Gods, and sons of the Most High'"? Gods -- Just think of this wonderful Truth, that in the center of your Being is the God potentiality; that God Himself exists there, and yet you are looking for another kind of a man, you are looking for a mortal man, you are looking for a dying man; you are looking for a weak man, when you have all strength, when you have all health, when you have eternal life right at hand. I know people that are making preparations to die, and yet they knew, within themselves, that eternal Life is the law of Being. They are looking for another man, a man to die. Just so long as you give that kind of a man your thought, just that long you will die.
But now are the sons of God proclaimed to you, that the last enemy is put away, and you are free. You are free as a Son of the Living God, and we do not look for another.
11:40 A. M.
12:07 P. M.
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