The Power of Oneself. Charles Fillmore
makes visible the invisible atmosphere; but to do this he must, like the chemist, have the necessary machinery.
3. Physiology says that, in order to think, man must have brains. However, thinking is not limited to material brain cells but, like everything else in the universe, has a wide range of expression. There are brains within brains, and cells within cells. All through the body are brain centers, whose offices have not yet been determined. Psychology shows that these nerve centers are acted upon by invisible forces; it teaches that man has what is called a subconscious mind, which transcends the conscious mind in knowledge and in ability. Jesus gives us this still higher teaching concerning our mental powers:
Man has a mind called the Lord, transcending both the conscious and the subconscious minds. Yet the harmonious working together of these three seemingly separate minds is necessary to the bringing forth of the latent possibilities of the man.
4. In truth there is but one Mind; in it all things exist. Accurately speaking, man does not have three minds, nor does he have even one mind; but he expresses the one Mind in a multitude of ways. To believe in the possession of an individual mind, and that it is necessary to store up knowledge in it, makes living burdensome. This is why very intellectual people are often impractical and unsuccessful; they have accumulated more knowledge than they have wisdom and power to apply. Like the miser who starves surrounded by his gold, they perish for lack of real understanding. Through thinking of their stored-up knowledge as a personal possession, they have insulated it from the original fount of wisdom and life, and it has consequently become stale and forceless.
5. There is in man that which, when opened, will place him in direct contact with universal knowledge and enable him instantly and continuously to draw forth anything that he may wish to know. God is our fount of wisdom, even as He is our source of supply. The understanding of the Christ Mind reveals that man of himself knows nothing. Jesus, who developed this higher consciousness, claimed that all His knowledge and power came direct from the Father: "I can of myself do nothing." "The Father abiding in me doeth his works."
6. All that man really needs is the quickening and rounding out of the thinking centers in his consciousness; that having been done, Divine Mind will think through him. This supreme Mind holds man at its center, a perfect instrument through which to express its possibilities. The writer of the first chapter of Genesis says that man is formed in the image and after the likeness of God. He is the I-am-age, or the identical I AM of God-Mind in expression. God looks into the mirror of the universe and sees Himself as man; He gives Himself to man, and man in his highest is God manifest. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Thus God gives to His image the power to express all that He is. This not only includes man's ability to think, but also the power to shape and form thought. This formative power of thought requires a distinctive faculty, which is called the "imagination." The mind makes its forms in a way similar to that in which cooks make biscuits. First is the gathering of the materials, then the mixing, then the biscuit cutting, which gives shape to the substance. In thinking, man accumulates a mass of ideas about substance and life, and with his imagination he makes them into forms.
7. Whatever we mirror in our minds becomes a living, active thing, and through it we are connected with the world about us. Through the work of the imaging faculty, every thought makes a form, and multitudes of thoughts make multitudes of forms. These crowd in upon one another around the central I-am-age, and appear in what is called the body. Physiology says that all the organs of the body are made up of cells, and that every cell contains the essential elements of its particular organ. The liver is made of a multitude of liver elements, the heart of heart elements, and so forth. The starting point is an idea, and through the mechanism of the mind (often erroneously called the mechanism of the body) man forms his organism. With this key anyone can unlock the door of his temple and in mind visit all its various rooms and set the furniture in order.
8. The imagination has its center of action in the front brain; it uses what phrenology calls the perceptive faculties. It is really the author of these faculties; size, weight, form, color, and the like are its children. When it flashes its light into the cells that make up the organs, they at once respond to the thought, and out of substance visible and invisible make forms that correspond to the idea held in imagination. If the idea originates in Spirit, the creation is harmonious and according to law. The nerve centers are so sensitive and receptive to thought that they take impressions from without and make in the ether the forms that correspond to the impressions received. This is an inversion of the creative law, which is that all creations shall have their patterns in the mind. When man allows his imagination to run on in a lawless way, he brings about such discord in mind and body that the flood of error thought submerges his understanding and he is drowned in it. "And Jehovah saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." "And I, behold, I do bring the flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh."
9. All things, including the mind, work from center to circumference. A knowledge of this fact puts man on his guard and causes him to direct that his imagination shall not create things in his mind that have been impressed upon him from without. This does not imply that the outer world is all error, or that all appearance is the creation of finite mind; it means that the outer is not a safe pattern from which to make the members of the body. When Moses was instructed by the Lord to furnish the tabernacle, the command was, "See . . . that thou make all things according to the pattern that was showed thee in the mount." "The mount" is the place of high understanding in mind, which Jesus called the kingdom of God within us. The wise metaphysician resolves into ideas each mental picture, each form and shape seen in visions, dreams, and the like. The idea is the foundation, the real; when understood and molded by the power of the word, it creates or recreates the form at the direction of the individual I AM. By working with this simple law, man may become an adept or master. By handling the cause of things he attains mastery over things, and instead of giving up to his emotions and feelings, he controls them. Instead of letting his imagination run riot, conjuring up all sorts of situations, he holds it steadily to a certain set of ideas that he wants brought forth. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose imagination is stayed on thee." (Is. 26:3, margin.)
10. As man develops in understanding, his imagination is the first of his latent faculties to quicken. Esau represents the natural man. Jacob represents the intellectual man supplanting Esau; hence Jacob is called the "supplanter." Historically, he seems a trickster, taking advantage of those of less wisdom, but this incident merely shows how the higher principle appropriates the good everywhere. Imagination was the leading faculty in Jacob's mind. He dreamed of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. This is prophecy of union between the ideal and its manifestations, between Spirit and body; the union is made by pure thoughts of the absolute--the angels of Jacob's dream. Farther along in his development Jacob awakened all his faculties, represented by his twelve sons. Joseph was a dreamer and an interpreter of dreams. He was the favorite son of Jacob, the I AM, who gave him a coat of many colors. This is all representative of the imaging faculty, which Joseph typifies.
11. The history of Joseph is the history of man's imagination developed under the divine law. His dreams were messages from God, and God interpreted them for him; his life is one of the most interesting and fascinating romances in the Bible. For a time the way of Joseph was thorny, but through his obedience to Spirit he reached the highest place in the king's domain. This shows that man begins the development of the imagination in the darkness of materiality and in the depths of ignorance, represented by Joseph's being cast into the pit and sold into Egypt. Through spiritual understanding, the "dreamer" becomes the most practical son of the family; by following his dream interpretations, multitudes are saved from starvation. The individual application of this is: Having our attention fixed on Spirit, we discern the ebb and flow of the forces in the organism, and we know how to conserve and husband our resources.
12. Instead of treating the visions of the night as idle dreams, we should inquire into them, seeking to know the cause and the meaning of every mental picture. Every dream has origin in thought, and every thought makes a mind picture. The study of dreams and visions is an important one, because it is through these mental pictures that the Lord communicates with man in a certain stage