CHARLES FILLMORE SUNDAY, JUNE 28, THE SAVING CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS REVIEW CHARTFS FILLMORE SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 1931.

Transcription

1 CHARLES FILLMORE SUNDAY, JUNE 28, THE SAVING CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS REVIEW CHARTFS FILLMORE SUNDAY, JUNE 28, THE SAVING CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS F.S,VIEW The lesson this morning is a review of the lessons for April, May, and June, based upon the lessons as given in the book of Luke. We are told that Jesus is the world's Savior, personalizing' Jesus. We beg to protest against this attributing to the personality, or personal man, the saving grace. Jesus Christ UNITY SCHOOL OF CHRISTIANITY UNITY ARCHIVES

2 was the name of the man whom we all look to as the great Teacher and Savior. Jesus is the name of the personality; Christ, the name of the Principle. Jesus said, "Of mine own self I can do nothing. It is the Father within me, he doeth the works." He was referring here to that higher Principle, that superman, the invisible man, the potential man, the image-and-likeness man, which is the source of this manifest man. Now Jesus, in Jesus Christ, is Adam. Adam evolved to a 3 higher state of mind; but He is still the natural man; still has His limitations. And it is out of these limitations that man has evolved through the understanding of the lessons that Jesus Christ gave to us, and our salvation comes, not through depending entirely upon Him, but upon doing as He did. He is the Great Example for all of us--and in studying His life we should always think about what He went through, what He experienced, and how He demonstrated over the errors, the devils, tine temptations. By following Him, getting

3 a cue from His overcoming, we shall overcome. In the lessons for the past three months, I would call your attention to a progressive unfoldment of man, seemingly, and the history of personalities, places, things, conditions all appertain directly to man. Man is-something more than an individual; he is made up of a whole nation. As Walt Whitman said, "I contain multitudes; I am great." And so we are all great--we contain multitudes. We are told that every cell of our bodies is 5 an entity, and that these cells--some authorities say we have millions of them; others, billions. And they all are little people, just like the people on this earth, and they live with us, and they look to us for instruction, for salvation. Can we save them? Yes. how? By knowing the law through which all things are brought to higher states of consciousness. We are not such terrible sinners as we have been pictured. We simply have gotten off the main traveled road to right spiritual unfoldment,

4 and we have fallen away. We have lost out, but not hopelessly. There is always a way back, and if we look into the history of Jesus, as given in these symbols, we shall find the way back. The first lesson was on the subject of the Prodigal Son. Nov instead of looking upon this as a man. with two sons, who gave to one his inheritance, and he took it and went into a far country, let us resolve it into its prime factors; that is, that this man called the father represents every man, every woman, and we have 7 these two sons, or ideas of man. The first son is always, that God idea which remains at home; but the other son is the Adam, or the sense consciousness, that has perfect fr.iedom of will, takes its inheritance of life and love and substance and intelligence and goes to a far country, dissipates that inheritance in riotous living,in sensuality; and at a certain period a famine sets in in that country, mid he is glad to get home to the father again. Here is a condensed history of man: just h)w we are function-

5 ing today. Those who are satisfied with sense consciousness have tried to get satisfaction out of hog feed--the swine husks --and they have not succeeded. Turning around, looking to the Father again, they are like this Prodigal Son that was lost. And the Father is waiting for every one of us who are turning toward Him, and all that is allegorically given in this first lesson is taking place right today in your experience. Instead of looking at it as history, look at it as a symbolical representation 9 of what you are passing through. Now we know that there wasn't any Prodigal Son, and that there wasn't any father, historically; that this was all an allegory. Jesus made that up, and it was a wonderful lesson of just what man is passing through in his evolution. The next lesson was the rich man and Lazarus. Here is a very interesting subject because so many people today are asking what takes place after we leave the body. Here Jesus gave you the

6 conditions of the ordinary man of sense, who is depicted as the rich man, the man who lives on the material plane, who accumulates material things and tries to get happiness out of them, and starves his soul. Now the rich man and the poor man, Lazarus, died, and they went to the next plane of consciousness, and there. things were reversed. The rich man was in torment, and Lazarus was found to be in Abraham's bosom. This means that this man who is represented as sense 11 consciousness, and soul consciousness--soul consciousness, on the earth, had been starved. He was a beggar. All he got was crumbs from the rich man's table, and even the dogs came and licked his sores. This represents the aenemic condition of the soul of those who live for sense satisfaction. They starve their souls, and the sores, of course, represent those outbreakings in the soul of a great desire, but no satisfaction is received from the rich man. He ignores all that; but, as I say, when this change cones

7 and they leave the body, then that sense consciousnessis without an avenue of expression. It is in a hell of desire. It still has the same old desire. Let us remember that in going out of our bodies we don't change our minds; we change the environment. Conditions change about us, but the same mind, the same desires are dominant, and if those desires have no means of fulfillment you can see that there is a great reaction and a burning desire, we will say, for things, 13 and no way of attaining them. This is the condition of those who make the fulfillment of the sense man their great objective in the world. But the soul--it doesn't say that Lazarus was in heaven, but he was in Abraham's bosom. Abraham didn't go to heaven. We are told in Hebrews that Abraham was one of those who lived by faith, and he died in faith, but "not having attained the country" for which he longed. So we know that Abraham went to the next plane of existence, which we call the psychic world, and his faith buoyed

8 14 him up and kept him in a state of comparative happiness, but he didn't go to the celestial realm. So when we read of this Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham we understand that he went to a place where peace was his for a time, at least, until that soul and that sense consciousness got together again and came to life in another incarnation. This gives us a concrete understanding of just what takes place when people leave the body. They don't change anything 15 but their environment, and the same psychology, the same mental attitude, and the same desires begin to manifest themselves at once. You became interested in certain things here in that earth life, and that interest attaches you to whatever condition you are in until you learn and are ready for that consciousness of spiritual things. Then you come out of all that and follow Jesus Christ in the regeneration. You go to that place in the heavens, in the celestial realms, prepared fop you from the beginning; and finally UNITY SCHOOL OF CHRISTIANITY UNITY ARCHIVES

9 we are to overcome all sickness and all weakness and a:1 death. Then we are given instruction as to prayer. We have had that already this morning, in our lesson. We know what it is; that through prayer we make contact with this spiritual mind in every one of us; and we are told that we should be instant in prayer; that "men ought always to pray." Without prayer, you lost contact with your spiritual Source, those higher principles in the.man gradually die out. They go to sleep because you have not quickened 17 thrm through looking to God, through communing with God, which is prayer. Then the parable of the pounds: there again you have the illustration of the necessity of man's cultivating his talents. This land owner went away and left his estate in the hands of his servants. He gave them ten pounds, and when he came again he asked an accounting; and one who had the one pound made ten out of it. Another made five, and another buried his talent; and he came

10 under condemnation. "0 ye of little faith," why didn't you use your talents? Then he took the one talent away from the one that had not used it, and gave it to the one that had ten talents. "To him that bath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he bath." This seems a hard rule, and so it is to those who have failed top6.se their talents. We know that law: we must increase these powers that are given to us by the Divine Mind.It doesn't make any 19 difference what your talent is: see that you get increase out of it. Now we have the Last Supper, and we know that this is the partaking of this divine life and this divine substance which is here,in Spirit, waiting for every one of us. Then the resurrec - tion and the ascension. This is the final and supreme aim and object of every one of us. We have thought that pertained only to Jesus Christ, but remember, it pertains to you and me and all of

11 20 us. We shall never be perfectly attuned to the one divine law until we see and claim this privilege of being the son of the living God. We find people in this day and age who are striving for the attainment, who are looking to the spiritual, and, as in the time of Jesus, they are questioning, "By what authority doth this man do this?" How did He attain this superiority to the balance of the family? You know that Jesus found that his own brothers and sisters called Him to account; and we are often 21 asked, "Why did Jesus claim that people had little honor in their own country?" Jesus had found that He was not considered anything more than the son of a carpenter in Nazareth. He recognized that great truth that a man is not honored in his own country. We see the weak side of man too plainly when we come into familiar relations with him. I think it was Napoleon who said, "No man is a hero to his tailor." We have to demonstrate this ability of the Spirit in us to express itself, before we believe in anything

12 superior in man to the common herd. As I say, Jesus Christ had this to overcome, and we are reminded as we read of the criticisms that He was subjected to, of Cassius in his sarcastic intrigue with Brutus, speaking of Caesar: "Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, That he is grown so great?" We are always throwing that out. No man really who has 23 great ability is recognized as anything superior to his fellows when they come in close contact with him. It is said about Homer: "Seven cities fought for Homer, dead, Through which Homer, living, begged his bread." You have got to be dead a long time before you are appreciated, really. That is why we have put Jesus Christ on a pedestal. Jesus Christ, let us remember, was a man, but a man who caught that high vision of what man is in his spiritual character, and He lived up

13 24 to that; and it is only now that we are beginning to appreciate Jesus Christ. We have thought that He was a God, and that it was easy for Him to overcome and be a God manifest; but when we think, Jesus Christ went through exactly what we are going through. In His beginnings He was a weak man; he was a common man, the son of a carpenter. He lived at Nazareth, a despised city. He didn't have any of the surroundings that we have, the advantages that we have; and yet today He is considered the greatest of all men. I say this 25 always seems very encouraging to me because I can see within myself certain talents, abilities that, if they were used, would make me a great man; but I don't expect to have any honor in my own country. I have got to go to some foreign land somewhere in order to have my talents appreciated. But, again, my talents won't be appreciated until I demonstrate them here in this country. Here you see a paradox, but it is true; and we must develop right where we are; and then that which is within us, it may not

14 be recognized by our immediate associates, but somewhere, sometime, you have your audience; you have people waiting for you. This, as I say, is a great incentive to every one of us, as we study the life of Jesus Christ. He was without honor in His own country, but we are honoring Him in a foreign country, a country to which He was a stranger. Now let us be thankful for these simple lessons. How practical they are? We can every one of us use them and take them right into 27 our lives. Live, as Jesus lived, in Spirit and in Truth. Make that close contact with the infinite mind, and you will find that that infinite mind will respond to your every thought, and you will realize more and more that you are the image and likeness of God. UNITY SCHOOL OF CHRIS I IAN ---- UNITY ARCHIVES I Y