Correspondence School - Series 2 - Lesson 6 - The Word

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“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God;
all things were made through him,
and without him was not anything made that was made.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:1-4).

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14).

“But the word is very near you;
it is in your mouth and in your heart,
so that you can do it” (Deut. 30:14).

“The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40:8).

“So faith comes from what is heard,
and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ” (Rom. 10:17).

“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse.’
He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True. ...
He is clad in a robe dipped in blood,
and the name by which he is called
is The Word of God” (Rev. 19:11, 13).

1. What is the Word of God, or the Logos?

All Unity students are familiar with the expression “The Word of God” and should understand that it means not the Bible, as we have been taught in the past, but the living Word which in the be-ginning was with God and was God. The Bible is the outer testimony of men who have discerned to a degree this eternal Word of God.

John’s Gospel explains that all things were made by the Logos— the Word of God-~and “without him was not anything made that was made, (John 1:3). Since the things of Spirit are eternal and omni-present, they belong always in present time; thus it is proper to say, “without him is not anything made that is made.” This brings directly to man’s understanding the formative power of the Word as a present active agent in the world.

The word Logos comes to us from the Greek language, and in that language means “the word or form which expresses a thought; also the thought.” The early Greek philosophers regarded the Logos as the rational principle of the universe. When this term was introduced into the principles of the Christian religion it had reference to the second person of the Holy Trinity, considered as the ex-pression or incarnation of divine reason. Divine reasoning, or reasoning from the premise “in the beginning God” (Gen. 1:1), puts man’s mind in an orderly way of working. Therefore, the Lord is the mediator between man and God, or between the human conscious-ness and the universal God consciousness (Divine Mind) which Jesus always spoke of as the Father, the Origin and Source of all ideas.

The divine Logos, which is God in His capacity of creative power, includes all the essential characteristics of Being, with the potential power to express them; it is the thought-word; the power to produce itself out of what is inhering within it. The Word, inhering in God, is the urge or desire for a full, free expression of All-Good”,, Perhaps one of the simplest and clearest definitions of the Word is to be found in Talks On TrutH, by Charles Fillmore, page 68:

To produce works, there must be a working power. This is exactly what the Word is—the working power of God.”

Thus we come to realize that as the second aspect of the Holy Trinity or the Godhead (God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit), the Word is also the creative Idea of God Mind or Divine Mind, the Son of God, spiritual man, termed also the Christ, the I AM. So each human being may say of his spiritual nature: “I am the Word of God spoken forth in perfection.”

“This Word is a generative center with all the possibilities of God ... It is the idea of God, the image and likeness ... So the ‘seed,’ that is, ‘the word of God,’ is man; not the external thinking personality that has a consciousness of separation, but the internal spiritual germ” (Atom-Smashing Power Of Mind. p. 135).

2. How was the universe created?

People are curious to know how the manifest universe was created. From ignorant man who merely wonders to the man of science who seeks to inquire into the mysteries of creation, there is a reaching out after knowledge concerning the creative process. There is both an “involutionary” and an “evolutionary” creation. The first chapter of Genesis relates the creation by involution. It shows how the divine qualities (ideas) are spoken forth by God’s Word “let there be.” Then on the sixth day of creation God’s Idea, in which is wrapped all the God nature, comes forth as spiritual man or God’s Word. This man, the image-likeness of God, the Son, the Christ, has “all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9), therefore has all the essence or nature of all that is God. The next step will be the “evolutionary” phase of creation when manifest man makes his advent upon the visible plane.

We might liken the “involutionary” and “evolutionary” aspects of creation to the process through which the oak tree passes. There is enwrapped (or folded into) the acorn—its expression or fruit—all the nature and characteristics of the oak tree. The acorn is right there all through the process and participating in it. In the acorn is embodied all that the oak tree is, even to the image of the parent tree.

The man we are referring to here is the Word of God, the epitome of Being, termed also spiritual man, the Christ. God “spoke” His word which came forth as spiritual man when He said, “Let us make man in our image [the active and passive phases of God’s nature], after our likeness.” The mission of this “man” is to evolve or unfold in the manifest world all of the nature or image of God before creation can be said to be complete. This fulfills the “evolutionary” side of creation.

In the first chapter of Genesis it is related that God created by His word. When the power of the Word is understood, there is no mystery concerning the work of creation.

“God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Gen. 1:3).

“God said, ‘Let there be a firmament’ . . . And it was so” (Gen. 1:6-7).

“God said, Let the earth bring forth’ . . . And it was so” (Gen. 1:24).

These commands were spoken into expression by the creative power of His Word (the Word of life, power, love, faith, et cetera), for when God “speaks” it is done in the realm of the ideal.

“By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear” (Heb. 11:3). “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth” (Psalms 33:6).

The creative process then, whether it is the breathing into the soul of man or the uttering or growing forth from spiritual man into manifest or outer form, is all accomplished through the Word, the creative power of God, the divine essence that is immanent in every living creation. We see then the twofold nature of the Word, first the creative power of God “speaking forth” as the divine fiat—”Let there be”—-and then all the qualities or nature of God finalizing in His Word as “spiritual man.”

“In pure metaphysics there is but one word, the Word of God... it is God as creative power. . . . The perfect Word of God is spiritual man” (Christian Healing, p.61).

3. How does man “make” his world? Show how a perfect body and a perfect world may be “made” by him.

Everything in God is in man. The whole universe is in man. He is the Word made flesh. It should be remembered that this refers to spiritual man, the real man. Every individual “makes” his own world, and he does this through his word, the activity of ideas in his consciousness. Only to the extent that he knows the qualities (ideas or attributes) of Being, such as life, love, wisdom, power, faith, order, and so forth, does he use them righteously to “make” his body and his world. Man, in his unfolding human consciousness only partly realizes the wisdom, substance, life, and power of God, and therefore does not actually create? he merely “forms,” and his work is not always enduring because it is not always based on Truth. (See pages 93-94 Atom-Smashing Power Of Mind.)

If a builder should lay bricks without mortar, his masonry would be faulty. The same is true of man’s use of words; if some of the elements that should enter into the perfect creative Word are lacking, man merely forms. “All words are formative but not all words are creative” (Twelve Powers Of Man, page 29). All the substance or essence of God is in the creative Word and no element can be lacking if man would have satisfaction. If man leaves out of his thought-word the consciousness of divine life, of divine love, of divine wisdom, of divine substance, he “makes” or forms a perishable body and world. But when he is quickened or made alive to the Christ consciousness, he “makes” an imperishable, incorruptible body and world of pure Spirit substance.

“Every idea is a seed, and will bring forth according to its character, modified somewhat by the kind of mind soil in which it is planted. There is a lax-/ of growth in mind parallel with that of earth. A thistle seed will al-ways produce thistles, regardless of the character of the soil” (Atom-Smashing Power Of Mind, page 139).

Men are begotten - quickened, and born into spiritual conscious-ness by the Word of Truth. “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures” (Jas. 1:18). “You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (I Pet. 1:23). Peter here goes on to say: “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides forever” (I Pet. 1J24-25). When man is begotten by and born of the Word of God, he is no longer flesh “like grass,” but is enduring and abiding, not subject to death and corruption. The body becomes a member of the body of Christ, redeemed, glorified by the Word. To “make” a perfect body, man must consciously understand and use the fullness of the Word of God, all that is included in the original Greek Logos, and come to know himself as the very Word spoken forth by God.

4. What is the “new birth” and how does it take place?

Jesus told Nicodemus that it was necessary for men to be born anew (experience the “new birth”). “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). The being “born of water and the Spirit” signifies the same sort of creation as shown in the first chapter of Genesis; namely, that there has first to be an instilling of the spiritual principles in the soul of mars, so that the soul would send them forth into the body in-stead of building a body that is perishable; for “that which is born of the flesh is flesh.” The “new birth” is a complete change in consciousness from the limited beliefs of the human consciousness to acceptance of the Truth. It is birth into the realization of oneself as the son and heir of God.

5. What changes follow man’s new birth?

“The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does like-wise” (John 5s19). Let us then see what the Father does that we may do likewise. As recorded in Genesis, the first fiat of creation is “Let there be light” (Gen, 1:12). “Light” means intelligence. “Dark-ness’8 is ignorance, Man’s first word in bringing forth his world should be “Let there be light.” Instead of saying, “I don’t know,” thus producing darkness, man needs to say, “I am illumined with divine intelligence,” or words to that effect. By your word your world will be lighted with divine understanding. Every true word that you speak lives, no matter what the appearance may be. “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63). “So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not re-turn to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose” (Isa. 55:11), Suppose we are not wholly illumined at once; suppose the darkness does not at once comprehend the light; we need to be sincere, patient, and persistent in declaring, “I am the light of the world,” and have faith that our word, being Truth, is spirit and life, and shall bring forth its fruit.

When Jesus said, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life’8 (John 6^63), He knew that His words of Truth contained the life, the power, the substance of God. Understanding the power of His words, we realize the force of His counsel: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you” (John 15:7). And again, “If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death” (John 8:51). Our part in “abiding” and “keeping” is to understand His words. The only way this can be done is to so write them in our heart (subconscious) that they become embodied in the flesh and in every area of our life. We do not “keep” His words by merely giving intellectual assent that they are true, or by just committing the words to memory. We must consciously live the ideas back of the words by adding feeling until they are established in consciousness. Then the words of Truth manifest in our daily life spontaneously. Clarity and efficiency in the conscious phase of mind (intellect) are produced. Love, compassion, and understanding in the heart (subconscious feelings) are experienced. Health and vitality in the body are realized. Harmony, abundance, and success in the affairs are made manifest. These changes that take place following the “new birth” are actually the restoration of man to his true estate as son and heir of God.

6. Explain fully how this promise is fulfilled: “He shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:23 A.V.).

“He shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:2 3 A.V.) is one of the most wonderful statements in the Bible, and has summed up in it the whole understanding of man’s power and privilege in using the powers of the creative Word through his word. Nothing is of more practical value to man than the understanding that he “makes” his own body and all the conditions in his life by the use of his word. By his word, good or not good, he makes his heaven and his earth. What he binds on earth (form) is bound in heaven (mind); what he looses on earth (form) is loosed in heaven (mind). By the power of his word he can bind his organs, or he can set them free; he can bind his muscles and his brain cells, or he can set them free.

When ignorant of the power of the Word each person makes many conditions in mind, body, and affairs that are not in harmony with Truth, and it is in such conditions that he often cries out against God as the cause of his troubles, or gives up negatively in what he calls meekness and submission to the will of God. Man was taught in the past that God was a supreme and arbitrary ruler who brought un-happy conditions on man to punish him for his sins. Neither the attitude of rebelling against God nor that of giving up submissively to conditions alters the situation. Harmony and rightful conditions are restored only by an awakening to Truth and by putting Truth into expression by the Word. When a person arrives at that state in consciousness where he knows that he is the Son of God, the heir to all that God is; when he becomes possessed of all these qualities in his own mind, he realizes that he is here to give expression to the Word (his own divine nature, as well as God’s creative power). If he would manifest perfection, he must express the Word in its fullness. The Word contains the very substance of God, or all that God is. Man must become familiar with the nature of each and all of the God qualities (divine ideas) that make up the Word in order to express God fully. Every word that has in it no consciousness of divine love makes discord, because love is the great attracting, harmonizing power, and the Word of God is not expressed in its fullness through man’s word so long as this unifying power of Being (God) is omitted. This understanding will do away with the use of all condemnatory, critical, faultfinding, and angry words.

7. What kind of words must be used in restoring the soul and body to health? Show how the Word is carried to all phases of man’s soul, body, and affairs.

All words that man uses carelessly in regard to life, words that do not. carry the realization of divine life, fail to bring forth the manifestation of perfect life and health, and this “falling short” makes many of the conditions called sickness and disease. Man can-rot bring into expression divine, unlimited qualities of Being until he first becomes conscious of the Christ Spirit within himself. He cannot manifest that which he does not consciously possess in some degree in his own mind.

Words that do not carry the consciousness of divine power, Christ power„ produce negative conditions. The result of their use is failure to manifest the Christ dominion and mastery.

Words lacking the substance of Spirit are “empty words” and pro-duce conditions of hunger, lack, and poverty. Much of what is called sickness and disease in the world comes from feeding on “empty words” — words that are devoid of Truth,, Such words leave a vacuum in the mind, and the sensation of emptiness is expressed in the body and the affairs. The soul needs to be fed with the very substance of Spirit {in the form of divine ideas) in order to satisfy its longings and desires, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4s4). We must realize that words of Truth have power to nourish the soul, the body, and the affairs because they are expressing divine ideas. “Thy words were found, and I ate them, and thy words became to me a joy and the de-light of my heart” (Jer. 15:16).

The use of words without wisdom makes and keeps ignorance in the world. We find it literally true that “on the day of judgment men will render account for every careless word they utter” (Matt. 12:36). Idle words are words that do not measure up to the standard of the Word of God. This warning of Jesus would be better heeded if man realized that every day is a day of judgment; that every day some of the “word seeds” come to fruition as pain and suffering in some form or other, for every word of ignorance makes its mark in the body. Ignorant words cast a shadow over man’s path, and he cannot see the way* They dull his 6ars until he cannot hear the counsel and guidance of Spirit. He knows not what causes him to stumble, but it is his own “empty words.”

8. What kind of words must one use to build a consciousness of abundance?

All of us realize to some degree the effect of words. Every word has a threefold power: first, the force of the primal idea; second what has been put into the word by the race use; and third, the intelligence and feeling given to it by the speaker. We must analyze our words, because every word produces a result. Jesus Christ had a consciousness of the power of words far beyond that of the average roan. He proved that His words had life by healing the blind, the paralyzed, the leper, the woman who had an issue of blood. How did He generate a healing energy so great that it filled His garments? It was not done apart from the law. There must have been a cause. The cause was His realization of the infinite substance and life of God. His understanding came through His mastery of the flesh and His conscious union with Divine Mind, Spirit. Creative, enduring words are spoken out of the Christ consciousness and not out of the limitations of personal consciousness. The unenlightened personal consciousness is barren of life-giving substance. The Word is the indwelling Christ, spiritual man, the immanent or personal God of each individual. The “lost word” is but one way of saying that man has so dulled his consciousness of his spiritual nature that he has lost the power to consciously hear the “still small voice” of the indwelling Christ.

When one wishes to speak the word of power one should become vary still and make conscious union with the Christ power within through realizing “I AM power.” Thus, the student consciously unites himself with the source of power; he has made himself consciously one with the divine idea of power. When through this communion with his source he is filled with the consciousness of power, he can speak the word that will have in it the very power of God.

When one wishes to speak life-giving words, one should first enter into the consciousness of omnipresent life; make his conscious union with it through realizing that “I am life—abundant, limitless, eternal life*” Whatever God is. His Son, spiritual man, the Christ must be. The aim of manifest man is to be consciously one with the Christ of God, not a separate personality. When man thinks and feels this union with the one life, he will be able to speak healing, life-giving words.

One of the ideas in Divine Mind is substance, and its Scriptural name is “the earth.” “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void” (Gen. 1:1-2). The substance idea must be formed in the mind of man and established through faith. This forming of substance is symbolized by the appearance of “dry land” as recorded in Genesis 1:9. Out of the substance idea the personal ego has conceived forms (matter) which are the structures that man has formed. The substance idea in Divine Mind is expressed in what science called at one time the “universal ether,” and now refers to as space-time or energy. Man has God’s creative power as his formative power of thought which he uses to make substance into form. Every thought and every word works in the universal substance and out of it man “makes” his body and his environment. The unenlightened man believes in ignorance, death, and impermanence; thus, he impresses his beliefs on all that he shapes. As a result, the forms that he molds by his thoughts carry out his concepts, change, and disappear. The substance or mind essence of which the forms were made is resolved back into its original substance and is again subject to the thought of man to shape it into something else. The form, or what man calls “matter,” is not lasting, but the substance back of matter endures forever.

One can overcome belief in poverty by entering into a realization of the omnipresent substance of Spirit and man as heir to it. From this realization we speak the word of abundance. First, we are to make conscious union in mind with the substance idea by claiming, “I am Substance,” and then become conscious of our identity as one and the same substance as God. We are each the substance of all that we can ask or think. What men call “matter” is formed substance—formed in the individual life according to each man’s thought-word, thus manifesting in various forms. All belief in matter and material conditions as being the source of man’s good will be eliminated from man’s mind when he understands the true nature of the substance that lies back of all form and appearance.

Men have discerned that there is a “fourth dimension” in which forms lose their separateness, and the primal elements become inter-penetrating. This is a concept of spiritual substance and under the divine law, man’s body and all things in the universe come into divine unity. Realization of oneness of Spirit substance eliminates all resistance, opposition, and friction. The bodies of all persons who enter into this consciousness will be translated into spiritual ideas; wherever the thought is, instantly there the body will be. Jesus illustrated this when He passed into a room while the doors were closed. This is the realm of pure Being. In Atom-Smashing Power Of Mind, by Charles Fillmore, on page 62, reference is made to this fourth dimension as the “kingdom of God.” Note also the following:

“The fourth dimension is that which embraces and encompasses the other three; it is realization ... It is the process in which forms lose their apartness and be-come one under divine law. The human mind, with its limited reasoning faculties, is bound by time, space, and conditions. By itself it can get no further into the spiritual realm than reason will take it; but when we invoke the aid of the Christ in us we go beyond reason into the realm of pure realization; then we have attained the consciousness of pure being, the fourth dimension of the being” (Keep A True Lent, page 170).

This “realization” is knowing and feeling the Presence of God active in us. As Mind is free and unlimited, all of Mind’s creations should be free and unlimited, but the human consciousness, reasoning from outer appearances, allows itself to be bound by time and space.

This does not mean that men are not to have bodies, nor that they come into spiritual consciousness by the separation of spirit, soul, body. Man, as a trinity is spirit, soul, body; in his present state of consciousness he functions in a three-dimensional world as idea, expression, and manifestation. In man’s trinity or threefold nature of spirit, soul, body, his spirit is the God-Idea of man; his soul is his expression or unfolding of the God-Idea through his consciousness; and his body is the manifestation of what his soul has thus conceived. (See Annotation 4, Lesson 3, Lessons In Truth.)

It is the divine intention that man shall manifest God. All that is in Mind must be expressed and manifested by Mind’s perfect Idea (man). In order to do this man must consciously unite his spirit, soul, body and keep them together. His physical body must be trans-muted by the power of the Word and moved by the action of the Holy Spirit. The soul is no longer to give the body a “bill of divorcement,” for the body must become the manifestation of the Divine (Holy) Trinity or Godhead. As perfect ideas of life and substance are realized in consciousness, they will be expressed, and the same spiritual conditions will exist in manifestation (body and affairs) that are found in mind. This is the redemption of the body, raising it beyond the three-dimensional realm where it functions under the physical laws into the “fourth dimension,” namely, realization, or realm of Divine Mind.

9. What does it mean to “keep my word” (John 14:23), as in-structed by Jesus?

“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53) seems to the human being a hard statement, but to the one whose spiritual understanding has been quickened it is no mystery. The “blood of Christ” is life, and His body is pure Spirit substance. Man appropriates (“eats” and “drinks”) this substance in the form of the Word. “So, he who eats me will live because of me” (John 6:57). (See Annotation 15, Lesson 4, Series I.)

It has been stated that man makes a new body at least once a year. This being true, it seems strange that there should be, year after year, an appearance of increasing age. The reason is found in man’s ignorance of himself as the Word of God, and his ignorant use of the Word. When he builds ne\^ cells, instead of building them in the under-standing of substance and life and all that he is in Christ, he builds them in the ignorant belief of the world, after the pattern established in the race mind in its ignorance of Truth concerning the body. When he awakens to spiritual understanding he builds anew and becomes a “new creature” (II Cor. 5:17). “We are members of his body” (Eph. 5:30)

In his preaching and missionary journeys, Paul represents the spiritualized will carrying the Word through the body, building in righteousness and order the various centers of the organism. We too must carry the Word into the uttermost parts of the earth (body).

10. What is the result when spiritual law is given unlimited expression in man’s thoughts, feelings, words, actions, and reactions?

We must consciously free the life center from all the ignorant thoughts that have been stored there. We are to tell it that it is not limited to threescore years and ten of imperfect manifestation, but is one with universal, omnipresent, unchanging, perfect, eternal life. We must tell it that it is not carnal and evil, but pure with the purity of Spirit. It must be told that it is not material, but that it is the pure substance of Spirit in form. The Word (of life, strength, vitality) will set it free, quicken it to activity, and promote an inflow of the pure, rich, spiritual substance of life.

We need to speak to the power center at the root of the tongue, to deny all inefficiency and declare, “All power is given unto me in mind and in body.”

We must go in consciousness to the love center near the heart and tell it the Truth. We must deny that it is filled with selfishness and affirm that it is filled with the substance of divine love, pure universal love.

Then we need to quicken the substance center, back of the pit of the stomach, with the word that there is one pure, spiritual substance, and that out of it the body is formed in perfection.

In the strength center, at the small of the back, we should speak words of strength—words of courage, steadfastness of mind that cause the body to stand upright.

We are to think of the intelligence manifest in every organ and in every function of the body. Whether we are awake or asleep, the blood is busy, carrying on a work that requires intelligence greater than man has yet consciously understood. If man’s ignorance did not interfere with these processes, they would build a perfect body and keep it in perfect order. This they will do when, by the power of the Word, the old error conditions, that are established in the subconscious are dissolved and perfect union is made between the conscious and the subconscious phases of mind with the Superconscious or Christ Mind (realm of divine ideas).