TEMPLE TALKS BY CHARLES FILLMORE BODY RESURRECTION True re Before man can become truly religious he must understand not only himself, but the Universe in which he lives. We cannot worship God without knowing something about him. If God is Spirit, we must know what Spirit is. If God is Substance, we must know somewhat of that Substance. ligion is not based on anything but understanding. True religion is not man-made. It is not handed down from the fathers. We are independent searchers for Truth. We hold that there is no religion higher than Truth, and we are earnestly seeking to know that Truth. Man's body is substance, and we should know its constitution and its relation to the thinking mind. The mind of man is a very large proposition, but the body is just as great. No one can draw a dividing line and say, this is mind and this is body. Everything is a manifestation of the One Great Mind. There is a great Universal Substance. Spiritual scientists, those who believe that God is Spirit, say that back of intelligence is Spirit. You cannot lift your body out of materiality until you resolve it into its metaphysical elements. If the bones have become hard and brittle, it is through thinking about hard material things. You can make your bones as flexible as those of a little child by being as free as the child from material thought. Children and grown people live in the same atmosphere and surroundings, drink the same water, eat the same food; why are not the bones of a grown person as flexible as those of the child? The thoughts of the mind have made the dif ference. An old man, old in years, can be supple if he holds the right thoughts. People are not old on account of years, but on account of their habits of thought. The body will manifest youth if you think young thoughts, and cultivate youthful ways. How shall we apply the law in detail and get a definite result in bone, muscle, blood? Everything about the body is Spirit and must be set free in this realization. The little child is free, but it is educated at home and in school to believe in a material world, and gradually as it becomes mature its mind becomes loaded with material ideas. Then begin to re-educate yourself. Go down into your body and tell it it is Spirit, the very Substance of Life. It is a wonderful thing to hold a thought and see it manifest in the body. There are two classes of metaphysicians. One will tell you that you can hold a thought anywhere in your mind and get the perfect results. They say that the body should be ignored and denied away. I tell you the body came from God and is not material but spiritual. Go right into it with your conscious thought and build it up in Truth with your Word. Enter into the bones and tell them the Truth. They are intelligent and will respond to your recognition of intelligence. Think of the intelligence manifested every day in your stomach. A wonderful understanding and knowledge is displayed in the digestion of every meal. Make a conscious union with this intelligence, praise it, and bless it, and you will have no stomach trouble. Cultivate the power of the mind to go consciously into every part of the body. If you take a little time every day for this work, at the end of a year you will have made great progress. Every part of the organism represents some Idea of your bones as being spiritually stable, filled with the powerful energy and the intelligence of the One Mind. Then there is the blood. Its corpuscles are intelligent, they are spiritual, they are the very Substance of Spirit. Enter into conscious unity with this Substance, Life and Intelligence in the blood. The When Jesus said we should drink of his blood, what did he mean? The blood is spiritual life. blood of Jesus Christ was representative of this great Universal Life of Being. Say to your blood, "You' are Spirit; you are pure." Do not think of your blood as impure; all such ideas load it up with the appearance of impurity. You will never get any life or cleansing from that kind of an idea of blood. The race will eventually lose all of its red blood, because the red blood is representative of the material idea of life. Men's veins will be filled with electricity. We do not have to wait for some far-off resurrection day for this change. Begin now to hold that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, from all ideas of materiality. This is better than any blood purifier you can buy at the drug stores. So with every part of this seeming material organism. It must be resurrected, lifted up to its true estate. We must be about our Father's business. He is Spirit. We must get out of all consciousness of materiality and know and express God. There is but one Substance in the Universe, and that Substance is Spirit. Our bodies are in essence of this Substance and shall be perfect in manifestation when we hold them in the fulness of that perfection. we meet. -0 ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA If we study the Bible history literally we have to invent many subterfuges to get out of the difficulties In the end our logic is lost and we must depend on "Thus saith the Lord" to get around seeming contradictions. Every question should be given to the reason, and sifted. We must have understanding. It is not what is here written, not what saints have taught that you should believe. Everything must appeal to your understanding; not to the intellect, but to your spiritual understanding. In this history let us apply it to our conscious ness, our "church." We know that in the regeneration, man must come to the place where he lets go of his sins. Lying and deception are part of the unregenerate consciousness; they are the subtlety of the serpent that mind which is the foundation of sense consciousness. Man has a certain animal nature. This is not evil when it is under the Divine Law; it is the thought of it as something apart from God that makes it evil. When Truth enters there is an elimination of ignorant thought, and man is freed from error within and without. Ananias stands for the consciousness which deceives in the outer; Sapphira stands for that which deceives in the inner. Before we can add to our church, or spiritual consciousness, we must eliminate deception from both the without and within. Peter, representing faith in God, is judge. In doing away with our sins, there seems to be a distinction, but good is not destroyed. Some people when the redemptive process begins, are so wrapped up in material possessions that they do not give up wholly to the Spirit; they retain a part of the price. Man must be thoroughly cleansed before he can come into the full light. When once you discern the Spirit, material thoughts give way. Then when the false is destroyed, the good is more and more manifest. This is true of every man's spiritual development. If you give yourself wholly to God, he will destroy all the devils which have become part of you. Nothing can be hid. You cannot keep back part of the price. You must give Spirit, soul and body to God. But, where is God? Everywhere. Can you hide anything from this Universal Eye (I)? When you have eliminated lying and deception from your consciousness, something good comes in their place. You are healthier, and you have new energy and force. The idea that you can deceive and lie drops a curtain in front of your eye, and a cataract forms. The bones ossify, and things of that kind set in all over the body, the result of deception and lying. When you come into the regeneration, all untrue ways must be given up. When the mighty stream of regenerative life is turned into the consciousness it cleanses completely. Many who are entering in have the idea that they can have possessions of their own, but they cannot. The nerve that runs from the brain to the pocket-book must be Christianized, as well as the nerve that runs from the brain to the tongue. This does not mean that you shall make out a deed for all that you have to the Unity Society of Practical Christianity. Everything is the Lord's. In all your transactions make a covenant with the Lord. Say, “All is the Lord's." That kind of giving in consciousness will lead to co-partnership with the Lord, and prosperity will set in. Abundance belongs to all. Here we need to make a distinction between the power of the Spirit manifest toward his obedient children and the world's unregenerate ways. We should give, not to those who will waste their substance and spend it upon self, but to people in the Spirit who are striving to do good, and who will use substa ace righteously. By holding to the One Spirit, we form a commonwealth in which all things are held. Let us make a covenant that all we have belongs to the church universal. Ask that the Lord make you a steward of his goods. All who enter fully into this covenant will have plenty. There will be no "This is mine," and "That is yours." God |