The Twelve Powers of Man, by Charles Fillmore, [1930], at sacred-texts.com
The Twelve Powers of Man, by Charles Fillmore, [1930], at sacred-texts.com
THE LAW of generation is undoubtedly the mystery of mysteries in human consciousness. Men have probed, with more or less success, nearly every secret of nature, but of the origin of life they know comparatively nothing. It is true that they have with chemical combinations simulated life, but the activity has been temporary only.
In the phenomenal world, life is the energy that propels all forms to action. Life in the body is like electricity in a motor. As the engineer directs and regulates the electricity in a motor, so the life in the body has its engineer. Life is not in itself intelligent--it requires the directive power of an entity that knows where and how to apply its force, in order to get the best results. The engineer of the life force in the body of man is the life ego; this is the consciousness of life in the organism.
The life ego is the most subtle and most variable of all the powers of man. It is an animal force, and is designated in the Bible allegory as one of the "beasts of the field." It presides over the life and generative function of the body, and because of its tendency to separate and segregate itself from the other bodily functions, it is called the "adversary." It is not essentially evil, but because of its place as
the central pole of all bodily activity, its tendency is to centralize all action around its consciousness.
In its divine-natural relation, the life ego has its positive pole in the top head, which is the "heaven" of man's consciousness. When the personality gets active and begins to exercise in the higher or spiritual forces, the life ego becomes inflated with its own importance and falls from heaven (top head) to earth, or front brain. When the seventy whom Jesus had indued with spiritual power returned, they proclaimed that even the demons were subject to them. Then Jesus said, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Jesus was evidently quoting Isaiah, who wrote in the 14th chapter of his book (King James Version):
Jesus warned the seventy not to rejoice over their spiritual power, and added, "but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
In order to give man a body having life in itself, God had to endow him with a focal life center,
located in the generative organs. This center of activity in the organism is also the seat of sensation, which is the most subtle and enticing of all factors that enter into being. But these qualities (sensation and generation) were necessary to man's character, and without them he would not have been the complete representative, or image and likeness, of God.
God does not tempt man to break His law, but a great creative plan is being worked out in which the Deity is incarnating itself in its creation. This incarnation is called the Son of man; in man a wonderful being is in process of creation. This being is spiritual man, who will be equal with God, when he overcomes, or handles with wisdom and power, the faculties of the body. The body is the Garden of Eden.
What metaphysicians most need is a comprehension of the factors that go to make up consciousness. This requires discrimination, judgment, and self-analysis.
We talk glibly about God as life, love, intelligence, and substance, and about man as His manifestation, but when we come to describe that manifestation we "lump it off" as the product of thought.
What we now need to know is how thought groups the different attributes of Being, for on this combination depends the bringing forth of the ideal man.
We must learn to watch our consciousness, its impulses and desires, as the chemist watches his solutions. Man forms his own consciousness from the
elements of God, and he alone is responsible for the results.
Consciousness is a deep subject, and to go into it exhaustively would require the writing of many books. Concisely stated, three great factors enter into every consciousness--intelligence, life, substance. The harmonious combination of these factors requires the most careful attention of the ego, because it is here that all the discords of existence arise.
In Scripture the divine life combined with divine substance is termed "the Lamb of God." This phrase carries the symbology of the Lamb's purity, innocence, and guilelessness. Its nature is to vivify with perpetual life all things that it touches. It knows only to give, give unceasingly and eternally, without restraint. It does not carry wisdom; that is another quality of Being, which man comprehends from a different part of his consciousness.
The pure life of God flows into man's consciousness through the spiritual body, and is sensed by the physical at a point in the loins. This is the "river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb," referred to in the 22d chapter of Revelation.
Only those who have come into consciousness of the spiritual body can feel this holy stream of life. When the ego has found it, and laved in its cleansing currents, the ecstasy of Elysian realms is experienced. It cannot be described, because all the sensations of the mortal consciousness are coarse, compared with its transcendent sweetness and purity.
Many feel its thrills in part in silent meditation or in religious enthusiasm, and are temporarily stimulated by its exquisite vibrations. Just here is where the danger lies for those who have not brought out the other pole of Being--intelligence.
The ego, through its recognition of this life stream, sets it flowing to every faculty. Being by nature formless, the life stream takes the mold and character of that into which it is poured. It is the servant of the ego, the I, which man is, and through his failure to recognize the divine intelligence, which should show him how to use it in the right way, he blunders ahead in his ignorance, and the Lamb of God is slain from the foundation of the world.
The greatest danger of perversion lies in the direction of the carnal thought of sex, because it is there that this pure stream has been most foully polluted by ignorance. Sex sensation has made a broken cistern of man's consciousness; for generations the life stream has been turned into this receptacle, and lust has robbed the bodies of the whole race, making them mere shells, void of life. The failing eye, the deaf ear, the festering of withering flesh, all bear testimony to this perversion of God's life.
Yet men and women, otherwise applying good reason, continue their lustful practices and at the same time wonder why God does not give them more life.
They run here and there, seeking a restoring elixir for their failing powers; they call on God for help, while they continue to squander His energy in lust.
Man is male and female, which are qualities of mind--love and wisdom. Every attempt to lower these divine attributes to the physical plane meets with disaster. It has been tried again and again in every age, and its votaries have always gone into demoralization if they persisted in trying to carry out their theories.
Yet it is not unlawful to have bodily sensations in regeneration. A change in ideas must necessarily produce a change in the body, and there is a perfect response in every center of consciousness when Spirit has been welcomed as the rightful inhabitant of the body. The marriage mystically spoken of in Scripture, and in other sacred books, takes place in the consciousness; it is a soul communion of the two-in-one, more sweet than that between the most harmoniously mated man and woman. This eliminates sex in its outer manifestation.
Persistently deny the carnal belief in sex, and realize that the life stream, which has been turned outward and named sex, is not of that character in its original purity, but is pure spiritual life.
You must cleanse this pure stream in its outward flow by destroying the carnal sense of sex. This can be done only by the power of your word. Do not kill out the life manifesting through your body by denying it away entirely; deny away the sense of impurity with which the animal ego has clothed it.
"To the pure all things are pure" does not mean that lasciviousness is pure, nor that the deifying of
sexuality is pure. The purity is in knowing that behind and interior to these shadows is a pure substance that is of God, that must be seen by the eye of the pure. So long as your eye sees sex and the indulgence thereof, on any of its planes, you are not pure. You must become so mentally translucent that you see men and women as sexless beings--which they are in the spiritual consciousness.
Sex lust is the father of death. James, in the 1st chapter of his epistle, gives its history in these words: "Then the lust, which it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death."
Paul says, "to be carnally minded is death" (A.V.), and Jesus, in the 12th chapter of Mark, sums up the whole question in these words: "For when they shall rise from the dead [come out of the carnal consciousness], they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as angels in heaven."
To desire to be instructed by God is the first step in exalting the inner life force. The sincere desire of the heart is always fulfilled by the divine law. All the woes of humanity have their root in disregard of law. Man has to deal with many factors in his "garden." The most "subtle" is the "serpent," or sense consciousness. It is not evil, as we have been taught to believe. The allegory given in the 3d chapter of Genesis plainly teaches that sensation (serpent) is a blind force, which should not be regarded as a source of wisdom. In its right relation the serpent stands upright on its tail, and forms the
connecting link between the swift vibratory forces of Spirit and the slow vibrations of the flesh. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up." In the body the spinal cord is the main cable of sensation, "the tree . . . in the midst of the garden," and its branches extend to all parts of the system. The "fruit" of this "tree," which the desire for sensation (serpent) urges man to eat, is the seminal fluid, which flows throughout the nervous system and is the connecting link between the mind and the body. When desire for sensation leads man to dissipate (eat) this precious "fruit" of the "tree" in his earthly garden, the whole nervous system is drained of its vitality and the spinal cord loses its capacity to conduct the higher life into the consciousness. Man feels a lack; he is "naked." Sensation is no longer a heavenly ecstasy but a fleshly sex vibration. It crawls on its "belly" and eats "dust" all the days of its life; that is, it functions in the driest, most lifeless part of man's being.
Yet sensation is a divine creation; it is part of the Lord God's formation and must find expression somewhere in the consciousness. This brings us to the root cause of that appetite which craves stimulants and goes to excess in seeking satisfaction in eating and in drinking. The cause is plainly to be seen when we understand the anatomy of mind and body. Sensation is seeking satisfaction through the appetites. By listening to this serpent of sense, man becomes sexually insane, a glutton and a drunkard.
The remedy is this: Turn away from the lusts of the flesh and seek God. Take up the problem from its spiritual standpoint. Sensation is a mental quality. It can be satisfied only by cultivation of the spiritual side of the nature. If you are a sexual drunkard, deny the power of this ungodly lust over you. Pray for the help to overcome, then affirm your own power and spiritual dominion over all the "beasts of the field" in your "garden." When you have obtained mastery over sexual intemperance, you will find the conquest of appetite easy. Simply deny all desire for material stimulants and affirm that you are satisfied with the stimulant of Spirit. Whenever the desire for the material stimulant manifests itself, say to it: You are nothing. You have no power over me or over anybody else. I am Spirit, and I am wholly satisfied by the great flood of spiritual life that now fills my being.
The result of sin is death; the truth of these words has been proven for ages. But when he was tempting her to disobey the divine law, the "adversary" said to Eve, "Ye shall not surely die." The tragedy of Eden is being enacted every day in every individual of the race, and death reigns in consequence. We may call it by any other name, but the breaking up of consciousness and the separation of spirit, soul, and body take place just the same. As Emerson said, "Behold a god in ruins." In face of the facts that God pronounced death to be the wages of sin and that the experience of the race has proved His words true, many people have listened to the
"adversary" and have believed his lie. We hear them on every side saying, "Ye shall not surely die."
As the result of sin the whole human race is already "dead in trespasses and sins"; that is, the race is in a dying condition, which ends in the loss of the body. Death is not annihilation, because a resurrection has been promised.
To be "dead in trespasses and sins" is to lack realization of God, to be ignorant of His law and disobedient to it. When Jesus said, "I am the resurrection, and the life," He was telling of the power of the Christ Mind to enter the mind and the body of man as quickening Spirit to awaken the whole consciousness to the knowledge of God. This resurrecting process is now going on in many people. It is a gradual change that brings about a complete transformation of the body through renewal of the mind. Spirit, soul, and body become unified with Christ Mind, and body and soul become immortal and incorruptible. In this way death is overcome.
Those who insist that men do not die as a result of sin are building up a false hope of finding life after death. Those who understand that eternal life has been lost to the race through sin, and can be regained only through the resurrecting power of the Christ Mind in the individual, are building on the eternal foundation of Truth. Everyone must at some time come to understand that this statement is absolutely true: "He that hath the Son [consciousness of Christ] hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life."
The belief that all the entities that speak through mediums are the spirits of dead people is not proved. The communications are so fragmentary, and usually so inferior to the natural ability of the supposed egos delivering them, that those of wide investigation doubt the authenticity of the authorship. No great literary production, great scientific discovery, or great sermon has ever come from spirits, yet the country in which it is claimed that they exist should contain all the wise people who have lived on the earth.
This theory of continuous progressive life after death contradicts the teachings of the Bible. God did not create man to die; death is the result of a transgression of law. Christianity teaches that man was created to live in his body, refining it as his thoughts unfold, and that the work of the Christ--the supermind in man--is to restore this state; that is, unite spirit, soul, and body here on earth. This must be fulfilled in the whole race, and every thought of death, or the possibility of leaving the body, must be put out of the mind.
Practical Christians object to thoughts that tend to separate soul and body, because by such thoughts is built up a consciousness that finally brings about that dissolution. It is a fact, well known to those who have deeply studied the law of Being, that death does separate spirit, soul, and body; that the communications received by spiritualists are but echoes of the soul, without its animating, inspiring, spiritual I AM; that this mentality that communicates falls in its turn into a sleep, or coma, even as the
body does, until the law again brings about a union with its I AM or higher self, and the building of another physical organism takes place. This process of repeated body building by the ego continues until the man, through Christ, makes a complete union of spirit, soul, and body here on earth. This union brings all of man's powers into conjunction, and what is mystically known as the Jesus Christ man, or redeemed man, appears.
We can easily see how illogical, unwise, and futile it is to teach that man can lay off his body as a worn-out garment and, by weakly giving up and dying, go on to higher attainment. We know whereof we speak, and we must proclaim this great truth that Jesus taught: "Whosoever liveth and believeth on me [spiritual I AM] shall never die."
If God created man to die and go on to a spirit land to get his education, then it would be better for him to die in infancy and escape the hardships of life. Also, if death is part of God's law, we are defeating the law every time we attempt to escape death by trying to heal the body.
If man's birth as an infant a few years ago was the beginning of his existence, then God has performed a miracle and made an exception of man in the progressive law of development that is evident in all His other works.
The fact is--and it is well known to initiates--that spiritualists are in communication with the mentality of humanity, that is, the personal consciousness. Not having developed the superconscious mind,
they do not understand the creative law. They function mentally and physically in a thought psychism that is mixed and uncertain. Their communications can all be explained in the action of the subconscious minds of the living, and the majority of mediums are uncertain as to whether they are moved by their own or some other mentality.
When man has brought his higher self into action he will see clearly the relation of spirit, soul, and body, in all phases of their action.
If you want to know all the mysteries of life, study life and put out of your mind every thought about death or the condition of the dead. Then through the law of thought formation you will build up in yourself such a strong consciousness of life that its negative (or absence) will ever be to you nonexistent. Jesus meant this when He said, "If a man keep my word, he shall never see death."
The desire to live does not cease when the body dies. The mind lives on, not in heaven or hell, but in the states of consciousness that it has cultivated in life. Mind does not change with a change of environment. Those who leave the body of matter find themselves in a body of ether, which does not respond to their desire for coarse sensations. Jesus taught in Luke 16:23 that the rich man who died was in "torment" in Hades. In the original language in which the Bible was written Hades was a term used to represent the unseen world. Those who have cultivated spiritual thoughts find themselves at death in an environment and in an ether body corresponding
to their prevailing thoughts. But the very fact that they died proves that they gave up to the "adversary," that they did not attain the dominion, power, and authority of spiritual man. Consequently after a period of recreation and rest they will again take up active, overcoming life in a flesh body through reincarnation. So this process of life and death will continue until the ego overcomes sin, sickness, and death, and raises the body of flesh to the body of Spirit without the tragedy of death. "This corruptible must put on incorruption; this mortal must put on immortality."
Our theologians have not discerned man's life in its entirety--they have attempted to crowd into one physical incarnation the character that it has taken aeons to develop. As taught by Jesus, and by all spiritual teachers, the goal of man is the attainment of eternal life; the overcoming of physical death. The human race on this planet will continue to die and be reborn until it learns the law of right living, which will ultimate in a body so healthy that it will never die. Jesus demonstrated this, and He promised those who should follow Him in the regeneration that they would never see death if they should keep His words. Many Christians are getting this understanding--that they have not attained eternal life so long as they allow the body to continue in the corruption that ends in death, and they are earnestly beginning the appropriation, or eating and drinking, of the life and substance of the Lord's body, until He appears again in their regeneration organism.