Chapter 12
HOLY SPIRIT FULFILLS THE LAW
Charles Fillmore
Jesus Christ Heals
THE SPIRIT of wholeness quickens and heals me. The Spirit of wholeness is
called the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. In classical mythology it is called
Hygeia. Modern medical men refer to it as the restorative power of nature. It
has been recognized by savage and civilized in every land and age. It has many
names, and they all identify it as a universal urge toward perfection in man and
the universe and toward keeping things going regardless of any interfering
force.
We may look on this restorative power as merely the tendency of the cells in
an organism to retain their homogeneity, and when we look at it in this light
our consciousness robs it of any of the divine qualities it may possess. This is
the way the scientific world regards what we call the Holy Spirit. To such a
view the Holy Spirit has no warm heart. To persons holding such a view the Holy
Spirit is not the Comforter referred to by Jesus but merely an abstract
principle that works just the same way whether it is praised or blamed.
But to the Christian metaphysician the Holy Spirit is just what the name
implies, the whole Spirit of God in action. In the Hebrew Jehovah is written
Yahweh, Yah being masculine and weh feminine.
In the New Testament Christ stands for Jehovah. Jesus talked a great deal
about the Holy Spirit: that it would bear witness of Him, come with Him, and
help Him to the end of the age.
Do not be misled by the personality of the Holy Spirit and the reference to
it as "he." This was the bias of the Oriental mind, making God and all forms of
the Deity masculine.
Holy Spirit is the love of Jehovah taking care of the human family, and love
is always feminine. Love is the great harmonizer and healer, and whoever calls
upon God as Holy Spirit for healing is calling upon the divine love.
Just here, in connection with the Holy Spirit is an important point for a
good Christian healer to consider. Do not regard the Holy Spirit altogether as a
restorative principle without feeling, sympathy, or love. This reduces your
healing method to intellectual logic and the slow process of mental science.
Under this method the patient must always be educated in Truth principles before
he can be healed. No instantaneous healing ever takes place under this method.
The Holy Spirit is sympathetic, comforting, loving, forgiving, and instantly
healing.
"Who forgiveth all thine iniquities;
Who healeth all thy
diseases."
Do not fear to call mightily upon the Holy Spirit, who has all compassion and
healing power at His command.
Thy perfect plan of bodily perfection is now made manifest in me.
That Mind, which designed the universe, must have planned for man, its
leading citizen, a body in harmony with the universe is good logic. This
conclusion does not require inspiration but merely common sense.
The religions of every race have taught this perfection of the body but have
usually assumed that it was to be given to God's elect in some heavenly place
after death. They have not thought it possible that the body of flesh with its
many apparent defects could be transformed into an ideal body. In consequence
man has put the stamp of inferiority upon his body, and through the creative
power of thought he has built into the race mind a consciousness of corruptible
flesh instead of the inherent incorruptible substance of God-Mind.
This race thought of man's body as impure and perishable in time became so
dense that no human thought could penetrate it. It was gradually consuming the
little life left in human bodies and would have ended with their total
destruction if it had not been for Jesus, who was incarnated as demonstrator of
the perfection and immortality of man's body.
That the body of flesh had within it life elements that could be released and
incorporated into a much finer body has always been beyond the comprehension of
the sense mind, and it required a physical demonstration to convince men that it
could be done.
Jesus made that demonstration, and some of His followers were convinced that
the body with which He appeared to them after the Crucifixion was the identical
body that suffered on the cross. Thomas, for example, was allowed critically to
examine that body for the marks and wounds of the cross, and he found them and
was convinced.
But the majority still doubted and do so to this day. Not understanding that
the body that Jesus occupied for the thirty-three years of His earthly
incarnation could be transformed into an imperishable body, they have assumed
that Jesus really died on the cross and went to heaven where God gave Him a
glorious body. There is no foundation for this in the facts given in the New
Testament.
"God is Spirit," said Jesus. "Know ye not that your body is a temple of the
Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God?" wrote Paul. Here are two
statements by accepted authorities on fundamental Christian principles. If God
is Spirit and He dwells in man's body, that body must have within it certain
spiritual principles. Here modern science comes to the rescue of primitive
Christianity, telling us that the atoms that compose the cells of our body have
within them electrical units that, released, can change the whole character of
the organism. Jesus had attained an understanding of the law that releases these
electrical units, and He knew before the Crucifixion that He could thus make His
body unkillable; which He did.
When Elohim God created man in His likeness, He imprinted upon man's
supermind two body pictures: first the picture of a natural body, and secondly
the picture of a spiritual body. In the primal cell He then inclosed the
elements necessary to the building of the natural and the spiritual body; that
is, electricity on the inside and flesh on the outside. Then to man was given
dominion and authority over these living atoms and cells out of which he must
build mind and body into visibility. As God created man, His image and likeness,
by the power of His word so man, God's image and likeness, projects his body by
the same power.
Our physical bodies are carried in our minds as thought and they obediently
reflect every mental attitude. When in the course of our evolution we discern
that an allwise Creator must have designed perfection for all His creation and
we begin to affirm that perfection, then the transformation from the natural to
the spiritual body begins, and it continues until our body is wholly regenerated
and appears objectively in its divine perfection.
Thou art the strength of my life, and I am made whole.
The mighty truth that everything in this universe is the product of thought
few persons let sink deeply into their minds. Mankind have wandered in thought
so far from the parent Mind that they do not reflect or observe that everything
they do originates in mind. A very little observation and reflection will
convince anyone that mind acts on matter in every part of life. The story of
creation begins in the first chapter of the Bible with God's command that the
dry land appear. Then in the second chapter Jehovah God formed man out of the
dust of the ground. Not only here in the beginning do we find mind molding
matter; all through the Bible runs the same story. Jesus said of His body that
He could raise it up.
When the truth dawns on man that mind rules matter in both the great and the
small, he has the explanation of myriad mysteries, strange episodes, reputed
miracles. This great truth that mind is the source and moving factor in all
creation would, if studied and practiced, prove of tremendous worth to religion,
science, and art. Jesus taught the supremacy of mind in many illustrations, but
His followers have not understood the metaphysical significance because they
have not analyzed the mind or directly applied its spiritual powers. When Jesus
said that the Father was within Him and that the words He spoke were not His but
the Father's, He must have referred to God as an interpenetrating mind.
Everything in this universe has both its mental and its physical side. Heaven
and earth are parallel everywhere. Even the so-called elemental forces of nature
are dual. Our men of science are puzzled because light sometimes appears as
waves in space and again as particles. To a metaphysician the waves express the
mind and the particles the matter. When Jesus walked on the water He blended His
mind with the mind of the water and it obeyed His concentrated will.
Nature's mind is always the servant of man's mind when man lifts his thoughts
to Spirit. Nature will even obey a determined will on an inferior plane of
consciousness. Concentration of will as practiced by metaphysicians of the
Orient, African witch doctors, and a horde of occult adepts bears testimony to
the power of the mind to manipulate matter visible and invisible.
"I sow no seeds of care and strife;
But those of love, and joy,
and life."
It is reported that a great philosopher, Herbert Spencer, once said
substantially that he would gladly turn his life over to any creative force that
would plan and carry it forward without his having to take any responsibility.
Because of the many blunders that the natural man makes in his life, such a
shifting of responsibility would be popular on the part of many who have ideals
that they are unable to fulfill because they are bound by material limitations.
Also in the secret recesses of all of us there lurks the conviction that there
is a power somewhere that may be invoked to show us a hidden way into the city
of success. We think we should willingly follow any path in life if we were sure
that we were being led by the hand of supreme wisdom.
In his famous soliloquy Hamlet heaps up the measure of the burdens of life
with the subtle argument that they could be shifted by death:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's
wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's
delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the
unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare
bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country
from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us
rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Spiritual insight reveals that Hamlet is right. We cannot escape life's
experiences, be they ever so rough, by fleeing to another environment. All the
conditions in this world have been constructed by the people who inhabit the
world, and each individual is a builder of it and personally responsible for his
immediate environment.
It is the mind that makes the man, and the mind and the thoughts of the mind
endure even though the body be dissolved. So let no man think that he can escape
the creations of his mind by breaking the physical chains that bind him to the
earth. Nor does death in any of its phases relieve him of the states of mind
that dominated him at the time of passing. The law of God is not mocked at any
time or under any circumstances. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap." What we have sown in the flesh we shall reap in the flesh unless we
repent, change our minds. When we do repent, we shall break mortal thoughts and
ascend into a spiritual thought realm, the kingdom of God. This ascension we do
not attain by dying physically but by dying to ill thoughts and living in true,
good thoughts while still in the flesh. "Yet in my flesh shall I see God."
"The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us," says John in the very first
chapter of his gospel.
Of all the great spiritual teachers of the ages Jesus has given us the most
vivid and vital evidence of God as Father and guide. We say as Philip did, "Show
us the Father, and it sufficeth us." The disciples were looking for a
flesh-and-blood God. Do not the majority of Christians today look forward to
seeing sometime, somewhere, a flesh-and-blood God sitting on a throne? Jesus
replied, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
He then explained that He was in the Father and the Father in Him. Yet His
listeners did not understand, because they had not been trained to think
metaphysically. God is Spirit, omnipresent Spirit-mind; and in Him "we live, and
move, and have our being."
"God lives in me; no more I pine;
For love, and health, and joy
are mine."
That God is the animating principle of all creation is not a new or startling
teaching. It has been the conclusion of thinking minds ever since the birth of
logic, and it will never be discarded so long as the faculty of logic continues
to be exercised. Where there is an effect there must be a cause, and no amount
of sophistry will erase the straight line from premise to conclusion. Timid men
will cry pantheism and scare both themselves and others with a bugaboo they do
not understand. Nevertheless the fact remains that intelligence and design and
all the other evidences of an omnipresent planning Mind are so palpable in us
and the world about us that we cannot boast of our sanity and at the same time
deny them.
When logic presents these mighty truths to us and we begin to turn our
attention to the omnipresent principle eternally active and flashing its
presence into us and the whole universe, we awaken within ourselves a
consciousness of it, and it begins to think and plan through us. This is the
first movement of Omnipresence, creating man as a self-conscious replica of
itself, that is, of God. This replica is the Son of God or Christ, the exact
reproduction in miniature of the mighty cosmic Mind. When this man of cosmic
Mind arrives at full manifestation of Himself in habitation and place, we have
Jesus Christ, the Son of God or God glorified in man. Jesus in ecstasy beholding
this climax exclaimed "Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which
I had with thee before the world was."
So if we have not begun our glorification by realizing this quickening life
within, let us commence right now to recognize it in thought and word. James
Russell Lowell wrote, "It may be that the longing to be so helps make the soul
immortal." A great truth, spoken by a great man. Desire from within shoots a ray
of energy from the imprisoned I AM to the all-infolding Spirit, and a thread of
golden light unites parent and child. Darwin taught that desire for light in the
protoplasmic cell shot a ray from its center to its surface and formed the
primary eye. If this be true, and it seems logical, it is possible for us to
animate the thirty-nine trillion cells estimated by Doctor Crile to be present
in the body and eventually make them all luminous, as did Jesus. Thus science is
revealing to us the movements of mind in forming the primary or physical body,
which by the quickening of the Spirit is raised to the glorified immortal body.
We should not lose sight of the fact that the completion of this glorified
body that God has planned for us devolves on us. We must become conscious of
God-Mind and co-operate with it in making His plan manifest in us. As Jesus
said, "My Father worketh even until now, and I work."
The childlike simplicity of this primary work seems so insignificant that
great men who have delved into philosophy and worked with weighty intellectual
problems deem it beneath them to become as a little child and concentrate their
thoughts on nursery rhymes. They do not realize that instead of molding and
animating the cells of their bodies they have projected their thoughts outwardly
in speculating about the universe and its laws. So the cells left to themselves
gradually starve for want of mind stimulation and finally die.
If you, dear reader, have attained eminence in some earthly field of action
and yet have not demonstrated health, it may be that you need to take sound
words in some simple form and go unto your Lord.
The Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus dwells in me, and I am made whole.
Paul wrote, "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead
dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life
also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you."
Few Christians realize the vital truth in this statement by Paul, although it
is but one of many of like character to be found in his writings. Paul taught
that what Spirit did for Jesus it would do for all who follow Him and adopt His
methods of spiritual self-development.
Jesus claimed like results for His followers. In Matthew 19:28 it is written,
"Verily I say unto you, that ye who have followed me, in the regeneration when
the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon
twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."
The promises of the power of Spirit to transform man from a mortal to an
immortal state are producing a great company of spiritual-minded persons in the
world today who work in the silence and speak but little about their heavenly
experiences. In this way Spirit is forming a mighty Christian army that, when
the need arises, will come out of its obscurity and save our civilization from
extinction.
Although these spiritually quickened souls, often widely separated, may be
working alone, they are bound together by the Holy Spirit, and the bond of
brotherhood that unifies them is far more enduring than any human relationship.
They are developing latent faculties of the soul that will make them
superpowered men and women.
In order to establish and perpetuate the new order of life that is being
poured into earth's mental atmosphere from on high it is absolutely essential
that a people be prepared who can make use of the finer forces of the mind. The
great initial outpouring of Spirit took place at the Pentecostal baptism more
than nineteen centuries ago. The few who received this primal baptism are the
seed from which has sprung a multitude. The trillions of cells forming the body
of Jesus swim in omnipresence awaiting our appropriation. They are the living,
quickening seeds of new life.
I am strengthened and healed by the power of the Spirit in the inner man.
We all need a better acquaintance with that phase of creative Mind that
reveals and forms a connecting link between the Most High and the mind of the
natural man. Most of us have not made conscious contact with the Spirit within
but are thinking and acting in the outer crust of our being. Consequently we
cannot hold communion with God in His omnipotence but must have a mediator or
equalizer of the light and power that proceeds from the originating source of
existence.
This is illustrated in high-powered electric systems: a transformer is
necessary to lower the voltage and adapt it to the capacity of small industrial
motors. If the full current from one of the big electric cables were turned
directly into our small motors it would burn them up.
If the full current of God life were turned directly into the ordinary man's
nervous system, it would destroy it. An equalizer has been provided--the Holy
Spirit or Spirit of truth--through Jesus Christ.
Our human family has lost contact with the Spirit of truth, and our only
salvation is through a soul strong enough to re-establish the connection. Jesus
Christ released the electric atoms in His body and formed a conduit in the ether
through which divine life is again flowing to the inhabitants of this planet.
Without this purified life substance we should be unable to receive life or any
message direct from God.
In John 14:16 Jesus said, "And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you
another Comforter, that he may be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth:
whom the world cannot receive." Again in John 16:14 He makes His identity with
the Spirit of truth stronger: "He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine,
and shall declare it unto you."
All who have faith enough to believe these things are comforted and guided by
the Spirit of truth. Read John 17:20: "Neither for these only do I pray, but for
them also that believe on me through their word."
It is the Spirit of truth that talks to us in dreams, visions, and inner
urges. The more we acknowledge the Spirit as our indwelling inspiration and life
the stronger its consciousness will be to us.
Through the Spirit of truth God moves the whole creation; hence any man may
constantly increase his understanding of the source and relation of all things
by claiming his unity with the Spirit of truth.
