Chapter 7
CONSCIENCE
Charles Fillmore
Keep a
True Lent
THERE IS A divine
goodness at the root of all existence.
It is not necessary to give in detail
the place of abode of each sentient
part of this central goodness, for it
is there, wherever you look, and
whenever you look. No man is so lowly
but that at the touch of its secret
spring this divine goodness may be
brought to light in him. Even the
animals exhibit its regulating and
directive power. This goodness sleeps
in the recesses of every mind and comes
forth when least expected. Many stifle
it for years, maybe for ages, but
eventually its day comes, and there is
a day of reckoning. This is the law of
universal balance--the equilibrium of
Being. It cannot be put aside with
transcendental philosophies or
metaphysical denials any more than it
can be smothered in the forces of the
blind passions.
Men and women are loath
to admit that there is within them a
monitor with which they have sooner or
later to cope, and they put off the day
of reckoning as long as possible. They
do not like to deal with this leveler
of Spirit. It is too exact; it wants
justice to the very limit.
Whoever has felt the
prick of conscience has been spoken to
by the Holy Spirit. Whoever has sat at
the feet of his own inner convictions
has been aware of God's
presence.
Man is never without a
guide, no matter how loudly he may be
crying out for leading. There is always
at hand a sure torchbearer if he will
but follow the light. It is too simple,
too easy! Man has formed in his mind a
far-off God who talks to him from some
high mountain in invisible space. By
thus looking afar for his God he
ignores the spark of divinity shining
in his own being.
Herein is man fooled
into believing that he can do the
things that are not in harmony with his
ideas of goodness and yet escape the
consequences. He presumes that God is
too far away to behold his shortcomings
and he loses sight of the fact that God
is right with him every
moment.
This is the meaning of
the old saying that a man and his
conscience are good friends as long as
the way is smooth, but when it grows
rugged they fall out. They fall out
because man has reached a point where
he begins to consider his ways and he
looks carefully over the life he is
leading. This brings him to a beholding
state of mind. He sees that what he
considered right in the clear light of
divine good is not up to standard. Here
the divergence takes place between man
and his conscience. They were friends
in appearance only before or during the
period of license. The conscience may
seem to assent to the derelictions of
man, but it is ever the inner
protestant that keeps knocking at the
consciousness until the steps are
arrested.
Worldly fortune is not
always a blessing to man. In fact,
under present customs it is apt to be
just the reverse. As long as
questionable methods are successful in
bringing results, conscience has but a
small chance for a hearing. It is only
when failure follows the efforts of the
misguided that conscience gets his ear.
Then the field is surveyed with the eye
of a general defeated in an unjust
cause. The heat of battle blinded him,
and he gave no thought to the lives he
was uselessly sacrificing.
Here remorse gnaws the
vitals of the unwise, and here the true
wisdom is revealed. It is said that
experience is a dear school, and only
the wise learn therein. This carries
with it its own nullification, like
many of the intellect's wise
observations. Experience is the school
of fools. The truly wise do not take
lessons within her doors.
There are two ways to
get understanding. One is to follow the
guidance of the Spirit that dwells
within, and the other is to go blindly
ahead and learn by hard experience.
These two ways are open to everyone. It
is recognized by the man who has had
experience that he can advise the one
who has not and thus save him the
laborious steps of that rocky road. In
the light of omnipresent intelligence,
is there not One who knows all things,
all roads, all combinations, and what
will be the outcome of every
one?
Do not men and women by
their constant efforts to peer into the
future prophesy a wisdom that knows all
future? They certainly do, and when man
looks in the right direction he always
finds such an oracle.
It is the prerogative of
Spirit to know the future, and when man
consults Spirit with pure heart and
unselfish motives he has pointed out to
him the very lines his life shall be
cast in if he is obedient to his most
high God.
It is no great
achievement for one who follows the
leading of Spirit within to forecast
the future. To Spirit the future is a
succession of events based on the ideas
revolving in the mind at present.
Whoever rides into his own ideal realm
can read his future for himself. He
finds there a chain of causes at work
that he can easily see will produce
certain results. It is not necessary
for him to read the definite line along
which each separate idea will travel to
its ultimate. This is the method of
reasoning from cause to effect. In
Spirit, cause and effect are one. They
appear as one, and the ultimate is just
as clear as the inception. In mind, all
things reach fruition the very instant
they are conceived. Time not being a
factor, how can there be a beginning
and an ending? The architect plans a
house and sees it finished in his mind
before a single stone is laid or a
pound of earth excavated. He can change
his plan many times before the
construction commences. He can destroy
it entirely if he so desires. So man
builds the house of his own conscience.
If he has been planning to build a home
for himself alone, in which there is
but one room, he created in mind just
such a plan, and it is complete and
awaits its coming into visibility. If
he has made a plan of a larger
structure, in which are many rooms,
this plan will also come into
visibility.
Some persons build their
houses far ahead in mind and say
nothing to anyone. Such persons make
very substantial plans, which are
infused with the most enduring
substance of the invisible. Such were
the plans of Napoleon when he silently
determined to be emperor and of the
shepherd who resolved to be Pope.
Vanderbilt's rule of life, to which he
attributed all his success, was to
reveal his plans to no one.
Jesus said, "Let your
speech be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay." Talking
is a waste of energy--a dissipater of
power. If you want the greatest
success, do not talk too much about
your plans. Keep a reserve force of new
ideas always on hand as a generative
center. Let your work speak for
itself.
The electrician
recognizes a certain universal law of
action in the revolutions he builds
into his dynamo. The energy produced is
based on the size and texture of the
dynamo and rapidity of its motion. Mind
has a law of dynamics equally as
scientific. The character of an idea is
the estimate of its size, and one's
active faith in it determines the
rapidity of its motion. Ideas generate
energy with a swiftness unparalleled in
physical dynamics. Rather than moving
inanimate things, they move men and
women. Rather than temporarily lighting
our streets for a few hours, they light
the lamps of intelligence that burn
eternally.
The secret of doing this
successfully lies in knowing how to
handle our ideas. The electrician
constantly improves the efficiency of
electricity by studying the machinery
that generates the power. The same rule
holds good in mental dynamics. We must
study our ideas if we want to improve
the service of our body, of our
intelligence, and of our surroundings,
for from these ideas flow forth the
currents that move the machinery of all
of them. If our ideas are based in
Truth and we are satisfied that they
will stand the test of the most rigid
justice, we do not want to let the
currents they produce in our mind leak
away on some grounded wire.
The world is full of
people who are filled with high and
mighty resolves to do good, and they
are sincere, but they are connected
with grounded wires. We must keep our
wires properly insulated, or our plant
will not prove successful. For
instance, we are holding an idea of
health, which is generating currents in
our mind that might flow out on the
wires of faith and heal the world, but
we have broken the current by believing
that it should pass through a pill, a
magnetic hand, or the mind of someone
who we think is stronger than we. We
must stop all this and send our idea of
health straight to the mark on the
wires of our own true word. We have an
intuitively correct idea of the truth
on every question that comes to our
mind, but we do not trust the idea. We
impede its free currents by believing
that some book, some person, or some
church organization has sifted the
truth and somehow established it before
we came into existence. This fallacy
makes a menial of the genius and puts
out the light of the world in the minds
of generation after generation of sons
of God. Spiritual ideas must have
spiritual wires, or their power
dissipates. So we need to watch both
the ideas we hold and the words with
which we set them free. If we have an
ideal world in which we see things as
we want them, yet think it an
impossibility that that world may be
realized here and now, we are
dissipating the power that our ideas
are generating. So throughout the
category of thought generation, every
idea must have a wire that corresponds
to its circuit or current. Our words,
our acts, and our whole life must be in
accord with our ideas.
The realm of ideas is at
the call of each of us; it is, in fact,
the source from which we draw our real
sustenance. It exists in Being as
universal intelligence. Since it is the
cause and source of all intelligence,
sooner or later it must assert its
unobstructed sway in the lives of all
mankind. When this realm of ideas
becomes so active in the consciousness
that it attracts our special attention,
we call it a quickening conscience. It
is the universal intelligence of Being
asserting its inherent moral
equilibrium. Man cannot always distort
the fair face of the God-Image, whose
likeness he is. He may for a season
wear the grotesque mask of the
mountebank or the fool, but in God's
own good time he will be unmasked by
that silent inner self that must be
heard when its hour has come. God is
not mocked, nor is the secret place of
the Most High in every heart forever
made a cave for thieves.
When conscience cries
out in your heart, "Make straight the
way of the Lord," you will save time by
heeding it. Let its cleansing waters of
denial flow over you. Change your
ideas. Be meek and lowly. Let your
thoughts go up to the Christ Spirit.
Acknowledge Him as one whom you, in
your mortal consciousness, are not able
to comprehend in the majesty of His
spiritual understanding.
If you are of haughty
domineering, self-sufficient will, you
stand as Herod, the ruler of Judea. You
are married to the passions of the
human soul. These passions lead you
into sense gratifications so deep, so
degrading that you cut off the head of
the conscience that would have turned
you into the highway of good. But the
reign of the sense man is short-lived.
Your kingdom is taken from you, and you
are banished from your native land.
This was the fate of Herod after he
beheaded John the Baptist. This is the
fate of everyone who refuses to listen
to the voice of his higher
self.
The key to the
development of Jesus of Nazareth's
great powers was in His meek and lowly
submission to the Father. He disclosed
this when He said, "Blessed are the
meek: for they shall inherit the
earth." Whoever makes himself nothing
in the presence of God may be possessor
of all things below God.
Man is open to God when
he wills to be open. This opening is
made by our attitude of absolute mental
humility in the contemplation of
spiritual realities. Thus, the likeness
takes on the express image of the
Father, and in no other way can it be
done.
"I am meek and lowly in
heart," said the mighty Nazarene. "Not
as I will, but as thou wilt," was the
mental attitude He always took when
communing with the Father. It was
always in the same spirit of love and
willing obedience to the guidance of a
wisdom that He knew transcended His
own.
Jesus did not take the
universe on His shoulders by affirming
His self-sufficiency. He unloaded every
burden and rested in the
all-sufficiency of the Father. "I can
of myself do nothing"; "the Father
abiding in me doeth his works." This is
the total denial of self--the giving up
of all personal desires, claims, and
aims. Before man can do this
successfully he must change his
ideas--there must be a mental house
cleaning.
The command, "If any man
would come after me, let him deny
himself . . . and follow me," is not
broadly interpreted by the world. Some
men think that self is denied
sufficiently when they acknowledge God
as mind, life, love, substance and all
else as error; others think that they
have only to give up the recognized
sins of the world and believe in a
personal Saviour, Jesus. But the denial
of self goes deeper than all this. To
be effective, it must reach the very
depths of the consciousness and
dissolve all the organic forms that the
ideas held by the personal self have
there precipitated. Every human body
has its stratified layers of
consciousness. These strata have, like
the earth, been built up layer after
layer through ages and ages of sidereal
time. The body we live in is the result
of a labor that we began millions of
years ago. It is the stored-up memories
of our experience in thought
generation. We may have dissolved that
body ten millions of times, but no part
of its reality has ever been lost to
us. Because we have failed to energize
it to the perpetuation of its form
indefinitely is no argument against its
being the very body we have had for
aeons upon aeons. The form of it
changes, but the mental pictures we
have formed in all those ages are
intact somewhere in our own private
gallery.
But now the clouds are
clearing away from our world, the "sun
of righteousness" is rising with
"healing in its wings." We are
awakening to our powers and
possibilities as sons of the Most
High.
The day of selflessness
has come. This day delivers us from all
our burdens. We find that we do not
have to bear any of the cares of
existence on our shoulders. We say with
Jesus, "All things have been delivered
unto me of my Father." We do not
breathe for ourselves, but rather God
breathes in and through us. We do not
have lives of our own, but we feel the
life of God surging through all our
organs. We say to our feet, our hands,
and every part of our body, "You are
now one with God; you are perfect in
His sight." We do not think and speak
by ourselves alone; we think and speak
God's thoughts after Him, which rush
through our mind like a mighty wind.
Then tongues of fire come upon us,
because we are inspired by the Holy
Spirit. Neither do we have possessions
of our own nor cares nor troubles about
our life or our families; we leave all
these things to God--we are absolutely
without responsibility when we have
fully denied ourselves and followed the
Christ. All responsibility drops from
us when we let go of the idea that we
are personal beings and possessed of
parts, passions, and faculties that
belong to us individually. Nothing like
a personal man exists in the idea of
God. The idea of God is Jesus
Christ--one universal man. Men are but
the mind organs of that one man--they
do not possess of themselves anything
whatever, but all that the Christ
possesses flows through their
consciousness when they have ceased to
believe in personality. This is the
at-one-ment--"I am in the Father, and
the Father in me"--and the apprehension
of that at-one-ment dissolves forever
that inner monitor called accusing
conscience.
