The Faculties Called into Activity
1928-03-04
This lesson from Charles Fillmore was featured on Bob Brach's Unity Classic Radio broadcast on July 12, 2016. Bob writes, "Today's lesson is Charles Fillmore's talk on one of his and my favorite topics—the Twelve Powers! This is a 1928 lesson, well before the printing of The Twelve Powers of Man book, but it shows he was working and developing them long before the book came out. The lesson is titled "The Faculties Called Into Action" from Sunday morning, March 4, 1928. My wife, Rev. Margie Brach, will be cohosting this show. Listen in and hear me read the words of Mr. Fillmore and our sharing on what it spoke to us."
CHARLES FILLMORE —- SUNDAY, MARCH 4, 1928.
The Faculties Called into Activity
Continuing our lesson, I will call your attention again to the subject: the calling of the twelve, or the identification of the twelve powers of man with their directive power, I Am. In our interpretation of the Scriptures, we have to take into consideration the historical part as well as the metaphysical, and sometimes people get a little mixed in our reference in one moment to the inner and then to the outer; but they all belong together in the development of man.
We are studying man. Let us remember that; and we are studying the mind of man. Now, Jesus told His disciples to go forth and preach that they should change their minds, or that they should repent. So you can see that running through all this historical history is the inner spiritual Truth.
Jesus, in all of his experiences, represented the development of the ideal man. That is universally accepted, I think, that Jesus was the type man for the whole human family. How are we to measure up to that standard? By developing our powers, just as Jesus developed His. And here is a lesson in the calling out of the innate capacities, we would call them, or the faculties or the disciples, or the twelve tribes or the twelve doors to the temple, or the twelve pillars of the temple.
Your body is the temple of God. All the lessens and all the references in the Bible to the temple mean to the one who follows Jesus Christ, his own body temple; and this body temple is not altogether physical, you know that. There is a spiritual body and there is a mental body. There is an elemental body. I don't know how many bodies we have got; seven, I think, altogether. You don't see all your bodies, you just see this outer picture of the body when you look in the mirror or at yourself.
Let us get at the real body of man and what it is made up of. Well, it is made up of so much iron, so much water and so much of this and that. But is that the real body? No, you say, the body is something deeper than that, because that is but the outer expression. And so in the study of the life of Jesus Christ, we try to get at the real of the man. What is that real man? It is a mind man: but there is something real, more than the mind — the intellectual man. What is that? It is the spiritual man.
Mind students, as a rule, don't dare to go into the spiritual side of man. They tell us that people don't understand spiritual things; that that is religion. And so we have psychology, with Christ left out, or mental science with the spiritual man left out. They say: "We don't want to talk over the people's heads; we want something that they can apply; something practical. I tell you, you can't apply your minds and you can't develop your souls unless you get at the real source of mind and soul, and that is Spirit, that is Truth. So, Jesus taught that it was this Truth that would set us free from the mental bondage that we have built around ourselves, in ourselves.
You know your mind is the formative power of the man, and whatever you hold in your mind you will express in your faculties and in your body. So it is imperative if we want to get on in the development of ourselves, that we understand these spiritual principles. Now, Jesus Christ is the spiritual I Am demonstrated. Christ is the spiritual man in His perfection. That ideal man is impressed on every man, and Jesus is the perfect demonstration. Those two belong together. "If that spirit is in you," said Paul, "that was in Christ Jesus, the spirit of Christ Jesus will raise your, mortal body to spiritual consciousness."
How does this come? By setting into action the spiritual faculties — and all faculties are spiritual, fundamentally, but they must be guided and directed. They must be called into action through the I Am, from the spiritual side. They come out of that side. Now, when Jesus announced His twelve disciples, every Jew who had an understanding of spiritual things knew that He was the Messiah, because he also announced that those that followed Him should sit on the throne of dominion judging the twelve tribes of Israel. They all looked for one who was to be the head of the twelve tribes of Israel, and you can see that these twelve disciples of Jesus Christ are types of those twelve tribes, or those twelve centers of consciousness in man.
Those twelve tribes were brought out, in their first inception, by Jacob. Jacob had twelve sons, and when they were born the mothers, you will remember, gave them certain blessings. Spiritually discerned, those blessings represent the characteristics of these faculties of the mind: the same faculties that Jesus called out on a little higher plane. So we will keep developing these powers of the mind on a little higher plane continually, going higher into consciousness; but the great object of man's existence is the development of his soul. Back of that soul is our spiritual idea. Don't let's forget that, because that is the avenue through which the man expresses himself.
People say: "Why, Jesus had all power. Why couldn't He, just in His own, innate spiritual capacity, have done the work?" Jesus had to come under the law of agents. You have agents to do what you conceive in your mind, what are those agents? The faculties: your faith and your love, your will, your understanding, your zeal, your power, imagination. Those are the twelve faculties and we all have those.
But now are you developing them? How are you bringing them forth? You may have a very great love, and it may be that it is being diverted or dissipated and thrown to the four corners of your earth through lack of discipline. It is the discipline of these faculties that counts in the man.
Peter, your faith, has to be disciplined. Are you disciplined? It may be that you have got faith in some material thing. Maybe you have faith in the power of money, The world today Is developing and exercising its faith largely through material things, and men with the money faith say: "well, it is all right to have faith in God; but money counts, don't you know?" "You had better lay up for a rainy day. You had better look out and have a good bank account. Save your money; save your money," and in this way they build up and put their faith right into material things. Peter was of that type, He was not educated in spiritual things. Peter had to be disciplined.
How did Jesus discipline him? Through instruction; through experience. Jesus showed the power of spiritual man to still the storm, to heal the sick, to multiply material things; but is that all the discipline that Peter had? No, Peter had to be disciplined through what metaphysicians call affirmation. Peter needed to bring forth more love through faith. All these faculties are related, and Jesus had him repeat over and over; three times. "Lovest thou me, Peter?" He said. "Oh, yes," Peter said, "I love you." But He kept repeating it and Peter got cross about it. We find, in many of our affirmations, that our minds have to be constantly impressed and saturated, we would say, with a certain statement of Truth, because it is through our minds that we develop our souls.
Now, in the matter of love, John had to be disciplined. John was intolerant, wasn't he? Narrow and bigoted. He wanted everybody killed that didn't follow Jesus. Both James and John wanted the fire of heaven to come down on those people who were doing the works of Jesus but really were not His followers. But Jesus, the great spiritual I Am, knowing the thoughts in the hearts of all men, said: "Those who are not against us are for us." The love in us means to have real charity, mercy and kindness. Love can become cruel. You sometimes love your blood kin more than you do other people, and you separate yourself from the world. Jesus taught that you must love all people; love your enemies. That is hard discipline for some people. That is calling, your disciples, calling your faculties, into action.
James — good judgment — represents the faculty of the mind that we all need. If you had good judgment that your James faculty had called out, you would never make any blunders; and so we see how practical in everyday life the calling of the twelve powers of the mind is, when you understand what it really means; and if you study these faculties you will get an inkling of just what the inner, spiritual meaning is.
We find that Jesus sent forth His faculties, or His disciples, to do the work two by two. There is a meaning again. Going two by two means that there are positive and negative forces. In modern metaphysics we hold that the great work of preaching and teaching of this Gospel is done by men and women; that there should be that even balance. I don't know where that idea started that women should not speak in religious meetings. I find in my study even in the Bible that the women are left out. Great women, great workers. Jesus had cast the devils out of the women just as quickly as he did out of the men. So we find that in all of our work we go forth two by two, and this is a fundamental law; a law that is universally recognized. So we find in politics, even, the women stand equal before the law; with men, and so this will occur until there is a perfect equality. There must be a perfect equality.
Jesus told His disciples not to take a staff, even. To depend on what? As you get into the action of the faculties of your mind, you will find that you must depend upon one Source, and that is God, and that that mediator between God and you is this Christ, or the Superman, this I Am Spirit; and we find that, in order to get a real concept of what is in us and the way to develop this inner quality, is to go up on to the high stage, the high place.
So we are told right in the beginning of our lesson today that Jesus went up on to the mountain and talked to His disciples. You find that all through the Bible. All the revelations that the children of Israel got, according to the Old Testament, came from the mountain. The twelve commandments were given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Jehovah came down on to the mountain; and Jesus went up on the mountain and gave the Sermon on the Mount. Does that mean that He really went up on to a high mountain and preached? How could the people hear Him down in the valley? Suppose He lived in Colorado, and He went up on Pike's Peak and preached. Could the people hear Him down in Colorado Springs? No, it doesn't mean that at all.
It means that He went up into this higher consciousness: and every time you, as a metaphysician, go into this inner consciousness to aspire, to look up, to pray, to meditate about spiritual things, you will find yourself on a mountain height looking up to God. There is not any more of God up here than down here, geographically considered, but it is that God comes to man through his top brain, and whenever you really pray you look up, and that is going up on the mountain: and so it is found that in the development of the faculties which are in the subconscious, we must have this Superconscious, directive power as an accompaniment.
If you try to bring out and develop, call out, these different powers of the body — for they have their location in the body — they have their cities, they have their houses, they have their tribes, and those tribes are made up of the thoughts. Metaphysicians find that there are brain centers: that right back of the heart is a cardiac center — a wonderful center. It has all these million cells, and when your love nature is moved it affects your heart. We hear people talk so much about love connected with the heart. That means that that nerve center is affected by the thoughts; in other words, that every thought has its center of action. It makes its home in these aggregations of cells.
So, we have at the solar plexus center the knowledge, the understanding, of how to handle the vitamins, let us say, or the little electrons that exist at the center of every bit of food that we eat; all the little cells. We have got a little judging center down there, and through its chemistry, like a wonderfully informed man dowrn there, it just handles all the different kinds of food and sends them on these rivers of the blood to all parts of the body; sends the iron to one place and the lime to another and the proteins. It is wonderful what your judgment or your wisdom or this little chemist down here knows about the physical needs of man.
How about the spiritual needs: There is a spiritual identity there that really, in its highest, is Spirit — Divine Judgment — so we find that as we develop these powers of the mind we must give them spiritual training because they belong in Spirit. Now, as I say, some people have thought that all that is necessary in order to get man into action is to develop these twelve powers, and they are clamoring for the locality: "Just where is the nerve center that controls love? Just where should I concentrate to get through my pineal gland more faith?"
Don't worry so much about that. It is this higher understanding that you need as a basis, and if you try to bring forth your disciples without sitting on the throne of authority — and that is this high place in consciousness — your faculties will get the external end of the thing; they will take possession of your body; and not being educated, they will go back on you sometimes, as Peter went back on Jesus. His faith was fickle; it was not established. So Jesus said: "You must abide in me and I must abide in you."
So He sent these faculties forth, just as our best demonstrators go out today, without money, without staff, without any material support of any kind. What is the object of that? That they may develop the one Resource, and that is God; that we may have faith in the supply and support of this inner consciousness. Nearly all the ministers of that day — the priests — had a wallet or a bag, in which they put the gifts, and everybody was expected to give something to these begging priests.
Jesus wanted to head that off. He wanted His people to cease their begging. A strict follower of Jesus does not beg. He doesn't ask people to give him anything, he asks God; and that gives the people an opportunity after they have asked God and there is a universal recognition of the one Source, then people give them; give wisely, but they give cheerfully and freely; and if they give in the right spirit, they would see there is a law.
So these disciples, these faculties of our mind, must be put upon the same basis. They must be taught the Absolute, regardless of fears. Don't limit yourself in your spiritual capacity, in the bringing forth of these powers to the worldly standpoint. People think that they can be healed: through the power of the Lord and these faculties working in the body. So they can. Jesus gave them power to heal the sick, cast out these demons, these errors; but that isn't the highest. It is not the great objective, to have a healthy body. Many people who live on the material plane have quite healthy bodies.
But what is the great object of man's existence? The bringing forth of these powers? That you may have a healthy mind? That you may have more than a healthy mind; that you may have a mind that will endure — an enduring mind. What kind of mind is that? A mind aligned with the Source; with the God mind. It doesn't make so much difference about the going and coming of these bodies, if you are established in Spirit you can't help but be healthy. If you stick to your eternal life, spiritual life, it will work out health if you adjust it in this manifest man — the consciousness that represents the body. So don't be appealing constantly for help. Just say: "Health will work out when I get my powers in Divine Order.
These powers were sent out with a spiritual message, and they were told, to preach this Gospel. When they returned they told Jesus that they had not lacked anything. He asked them: "Did you lack anything?" They said: "No." He said: "Now that you have gotten the law, you can take your purse and your sword and your scrip, or take anything you want to. Now you have gotten hold of the Principle."
So we find that within us is a power that, when once it is disciplined and taught and educated, it can have a pocketful of money or it can have no money at all. It can have two coats or it can have one coat or no coat at all. It will be content, whatever the condition. So be content with what you have, and if you are content with that and let it form, the nucleus of more, more will come.
You can see how important it is that we keep preaching this Gospel in our everyday life. A little story is told about St. Francis of Assisi, who was a great monk, you will remember, of the fifteenth century. He asked one of his brother monks one day to go out preaching with him, and they went out into the market place and spent nearly the whole day, and when they came home at night the brother said: "Why, I thought we were going out to preach." "But," St Francis said, "we have been out preaching." He said: "I don't know where. Where did we preach?" He said: "You know we went down into the market place and how they jostled us there, and we didn't resent it, did we?" He said; "No." "Then," he said, "some boys called us some bad names and we didn't get angry, did we?" He said: "No." "Then," he said, "we carried the bundles of that poor, old woman down on the street?" "Yes." "Well," he said, "that was preaching the Gospel, for to go preaching is to go teaching, and you must teach by your example. That is the real preaching."
So, all these lessons we get must be put into practice; in other words, we must discipline these faculties. We must put out of them all resentment, all anger, all jealousy, all destructive tendencies. We would like to destroy our enemies sometimes. We would like to destroy those enemies that some people think make us sick, or make us unhappy, or make us poor. Don't destroy them. Make friends with your adversary. They are energies, they are faculties of the mind that have gone wrong. Turn them around and they will work for you.
You know that the whole of man is made up, we are told, by elemental forces. How do these elemental forces work? It is according to the way you work them; that is it. Your mind and your body are like, I was going to say ten thousand workers, but we are told that we have a billion little workers; that every cell in the body is a worker for the mind, and whatever you set these little workers to do, they will do it. They will do just exactly what you tell them to. Sometimes you have to tell their, several times, over and over. So we repeat our affirmations of Truth, we declare again and again: "I Am that I Am, and there is none beside me."
Miss Fanny C. Bean
28 Poplar Ave.
Athens, Ohio
Athens, Ohio — Your issue of February 25 has been especially helpful to me. "Things to Be Remembered" by Lowell Fillmore has been and is of vital help to me. I want to express my gratitude and I do thank God for your activities and ask that I may be able to pass on to others the spiritual food I get from you. — F.C.B.
2-29-28
UNITY SCHOOL OF CHRISTIANITY
UNITY ARCHIVES
