L E C T U R E
"THE HISTORICAL JESUS -and-TKE LIVIFG CHRIST1'.
-■by-
MR. CHARLES FILLMORE
-at-
U I I T Y £UD£TORI
915 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, SUKDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 21
U M
Missouri , 1913.
-o-
In a review which. I saw the other day, oi the system of teaching children, ?/hich has of the last few years been introduced into this country by the Italian teacher, Madame Montessori, she informs us that the children grow in understanding from the psychical side, and she has her periods of meditation. Part oi the school curriculum is meditation, which we call "going into the Silence". And she has had marvelous results with her system of teaching; and she attributes it largely co tnis medi^a^ion.
Bow, we have found that we grow in spiritual understanding very much more rapidly if we have every day a period of meditation. Bow, this meditation is a form of prayer. Put it's more than the prayer which is ordinarily understood, that prayer ohat Jesus talked about, as being heard of men. It's a prayer in which
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man enters into a recognition of Omnipresent Intelligence. In o^-ier words, that God is Spirit, and that there is a Cause-side to existence. We see the evidences of it on every hand.
I read in a school "book the other day about the marvelous pictures painted by "Jack Frost"; and the author said: "And just think, this is all done by blind nature".' Just think oi it.' If you saw a very fine picture, would you look it over and say, "Well, isn't it strange that that could all be done by blind nature"?
If I would call your attention to these flowers (indicating), and I would tell you 'how that was all done by blind nature"; but you say, "there is an Intelligence manifest. That picture must have been painted by somebody that had some idea of art, and couldn't have been done by a blind man surely".
Well now, that flower
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couldn’t have been made by a blind force of Nature. How is it made? Why, the Universal Mind, and that mind is making everything. It is making you and just as fast as we will let it make us. We have free will, and we can ignore it and live in this outer realm, and never think of it, or we can turn our attention to this Universal Mind, and it will make us just as it makes these beautiful flowers.
UOw, that is real prayer; that is prayer of meditation, how, in meditating, you, through the power of your mind, just drop out of thought all externality, and think about the Omnipresent Mind. Through the power of your recognition, you will, your mind will come in touch with this Everywhere-present Mind. Now, Jesus had cultivated that meditation,-going into the closet, he called
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it, and communing with the Father - until the Father became to him a real entity, a real force. He knew it. It wasn't a question of becoming acquainted with it. He was acquainted with it.
H°w, we can become acquainted with it if we will give it our attention. How, in throwing your attention to what we call the within, or the Everywhere present spirit, you can close your eyes and stop your ears, if you wish, but these are but aids to the power of the mind to concentrate. How, sometimes we close our eyes, and sometimes we don't. It doesn't make any difference about that. You can meditate by, not staring exactly, but just not seeing anything on the outside. Just see with your mind.
°w, let us all see with our minds, and identify ourselves with this One Intelligent, powerful Spirit, by holding, just as
a key-thought, "I now identify myself with thee, thou Omnipresent
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Intelligence, thou All-good God, my Father". "I now identify myself with thy Omnipresent Intelligence, thou All-good God, my Father. "
(Silence).
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At this season of the year our attention is called, to the object of our many celebrations and customs. It may he that most of us do not study the cause of the occasion, but if we were asked for that cause, we would doubtless say it was based upon the birth of a man named Jesus, in Palestine, some two thousand years ago. We would differ with you in this explanation; and all those who understand the truth would tell you that it was not the birth of Jesus alone that constitutes what is called the celebration ox Christmas,-there is something more than the birth of a man back ox this universal movement. And our lesson this evening has for its object a fuller explanation ox what that real birth is. We will have to go beyond the physical bringing forth ox a child, because that was merely the beginning of something that took place
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farther on in the history of that child, and it was a representative child; it had to do with all children, hut especially the child of nan. It had to do with the whole human family, "because it is allegorical in its character.
how, in order to get a fuller expression of the meaning of the "birth of Jesus, and his life, it is necessary that we go back to the very beginning of the creative processes, because this has to do with man, and our lesson, in our lesson, we speak of "The Historical Jesus and the Living Christ".
How, these, apparently, are two men, and yet they are one. ¥e are told that God created man just like Himself, and that this man afterwards took form, he was made Substance, and he fell away from the original standard.
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ITOw, in order to get an understanding of these propositions, it is quite necessary that we go into the realm of the mind, that we deal with some psychological facts - yes, more than psychological facts, with spiritual facts. Now, is it possible for one to understand spiritual things, and bring them into active, practical working power? We say certainly. And when we do take hold of these ideas which everybody lias caught glimpses of, and make them practical, make them potential, bring them right down to the working power of the mind, they begin to open up to us, and we see the relation of the creation of man, and every movement of our own minds.
Now, when we, in our creative power, decide upon accomplishing something, why we put our thought into it, and the result
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is according to the character of that thought. Well now, if God made man just like himself, why, it must be that he creates in a similar manner; that he forms; that he makes man after his idea.
But everythin that is made is based upon an idea, and we are constantly striing to fulfil our ideas, to make them just like the picture we have in the mind. Well now, that is exactly the way that God brings forth his man, and if we would realize that, and realize that this man is coming forth all the time, and that that original creation was the creation of the idea, which, every creator has constantly before him, then the picture, or the process will begin to unfold.
I read once of an artist who painted a beautiful woman, and he became so enamored of his picture, he fell in love with it.
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He would not sell it; he got so he wouldn’t let anyone look at it.
He hid it away in a secret room in his studio,and every day he would touch up that picture. He began to talk with it, and prayed to it; he couldn’t part with it. And finally the picture spoke to him one day, and he was so delighted he held daily consultations with that picture, and he finally prayed for the picture to step down from the canvas, and it did, and I don't know just how the story turned out, but he put his soul into the picture until it became alive.
How, let us take that as an illustration of the manner in which God creates man. That artist had an ideal in his mind.
All the qualities that he put into that picture really came out of himself. It is a fact that we can idealize people; we can
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idealize things, until they will take on active form, they become living, what we call living things. They will stand right out.
ITOw, God idealized man. This Great Universal Intelligence, the Principle of Being, in its Mind saw itself as a man, and that picture was xhe first creation. That is the image and likeness of God, and God loves his picture; that is, he loves his idea, and he loves the manifestation of it, just like that artist. He so loves man, we are told, that "He gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life". vliy, can’t you see how this Divine Mind loves you and me, and loves all men, and wants them to coiae up to that standard, that picture, that ideal that it has?
How, if you would substitute for that spiritual man the ima^e and likeness of God, the Christ oi God, which, in the second
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chapter of Genesis is described as the Lord God, or Jehovah, the I Am, why you would see what the difference is between Christ and Jesus. Jesus represents the picture, but Christ is the idea of the artist back of the picture, and he is constantly carrying in his mind that idea and touching up the picture here and there; and after the picture, the man manifest, begins to express its potentialities, why, you can see it can oppose the adding to its beauty, or it can increase that beauty through its own creative power.
Now, that is where we find man. !>£an is part of a great progressive law. Paul says "Pirst that which is natural, then that which is spiritual". The natural man is the man who is formed out of the dust of the ground. He becomes substance, and God puts into him his Intelligence and his Life. Now, if man would follow the
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Divine Plan, co-operate with, it in all ways, we would eliminate sin, we would put away all foolishness and ignorance and this fallen race, or the departure of the ideal man from the progressive unfoldment would Be no part of consciousness. But it seems that we haven’t done that. So, it is necessary that a great redemptive process goes hand in hand with the development of man.
So, you can see here is a dual process going on. We are growing as the Adam man into the full stature of the ideal held constantly in mind, ’which is Christ. At the same time, we are Being redeemed from our sins, the fall of Adam, or the fall of this race into error, into foolishness, into ignorance, through following its own will,	is	Being cleansed, it is Being washed away; and
this is symbolized in the life of the historical Jesus.
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How, Jesus was 'born of the Virgin Mary, we are told. Well now, that Virgin Mary is typical of the soul. Every idea is ■brought forth in the soul. Every idea that you receive in your mind must first find expression in the soul-consciousness. In other words, in 3^0ur own inner consciousness, in your mind; and then it goes through a process of development, and expresses. So, Jesus is the matrix in which ideas are constantly coming into expression. If you read the history of Jesus, as given in the Scripture, you will find that he went through many stages of development, and if you watch your own development, your own soul processes, you will find that you go through exactly those stages. And if you know the law, that there is a final climax in which you, as a personality, will do away with ;/our limitations and merge into that
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great Universal, Unlimited Man, the Christ, why then everything will come clear to you. You will see why we are going forward, and at the sseae time, apparently going backward, in a way. You will see why the Christ is progressing, developing in you, and the moi bal is decreasing. John the Baptist represents one phase of consciousness
in man, and he said, "I must decrease, but one cometh after me who
shall increase”.
Uow, the crucifixion of Jesus is simply the wiping ouo
of what? The man? The man that God created, the Adam man that God formed of the dust of the ground? Uo, but this carnal consciousness, this consciousness which man has set up in his own personality. It has no real foundation, because it is not grounded in the Principle. How, whatever you set up in your mind c^s per—
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taining to yourself, or any of your affairs, must have its foundation in the Principle. You must know the truth, in order to have the creations of your mind 'become permanent; and if you don't know that truth, why, you will have the falling away. There will be failure in everything that you do, and the final great lailure is what is called death, the dissolution of the body. You have made a false structure, through false thinking. You haven't carried out the design; you haven't discerned the mind of the artist and allowed yourself to be obedient to the constantly involving thoughts
that he is pouring out upon you.
How, Jesus Christ represents one who is strictly obedient
to Divine Mind. He cultivated that Mind; he was constantly in touch with it. He prayed often. He prayed to"fne Paoher in seciet
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and the father in secret rewarded him openly".
Now, this is hut -..n example for every one of us, in order that we may follow the same line and arrive at the same conclusion. You say Jesus was crucified. Ho, he wasn’t crucified. You couldn't crucify the son of God. That crucifixion was the eras era ent of the carnal mind. We are told that when Jesus gave up the ghost the temple was rent from top to bottom, and there was a great earthquake in the land, and the saints that had lain in the tomb came out and walked and talked with the people. Well now, did that refer to external conditions? Hot at all. That rending of the veil was the breaking away of the veil,that which hid the man from his real self.
HOw, that veil is something that we have created in con-
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sciousness, a mental realm, through our limited thought; and it may he going through the rending process with you. In other words, you may he going through this crucifixion. When you give up an idea that isn't strictly true, there may he a rending of the veil of sense in your consciousness, and sometimes an earthquake. You will think it is an earthquake if you have the shaking and the quaking which sometimes comes to one who lets go of a hig error thought.
Now, this is really part of the crucifixion, at the same time, the hirth of a new consciousness, because when the Christ Mind is held hy one in his consciousness, and you have the realization that it is your spiritual mind, the spiritual man, the real I AM of God, there is always a resurrection. You never go down
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into death, out you come up into a higher life. The identity of man is a wonderful thing. It is always spiritual; and spiritual things are different. They are never the same. $To two of us are alike. We have special qualities. We are every one of us an original genius. Why, do you know that the imprint on a little wax of your thumb is different from the imprint of any other individual in the world? If you are a, burglar or if your picture is down there in the rogues* gallery, why they will also have your thumb imprint. It is safer to go by the thumb, they say, than it is ty the picture, because you might disguise your face, but you couldn't disguise this picture of the subconscious in the thumb.
Well now, this is just an indicator to us of the infinite
amount of mind, the infinite amount of original God-power that
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the Almighty has put into every one of us. Well then, how important you are.' When Jesus said the very hairs of your head are numbered, didn’t he speak the truth? Surely he did. But how will you really know yourself? Only by entering into this spiritual world, realizing and affirming and meditating and thinking about the original man, the created of God, the son of God.
Why, so many of us think about ourselves as the son of man, but Jesus Christ did away with that son of man. He came into the consciousness of the son of God; and the son of man is eliminated.
Well now, this is something that we should every one of us take into account in considering the birth of Jesus, and the second birth,which is the consciousness entering into Jesus, of
Chr is t
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liow this is pictured in his haptism. First was the baptism of the ordinary denial, end then the baptism of the affirmation, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. HOw this baptism, we are told, descended upon Jesus as a dove. Well, what does the dove typify; what does it represent? Why, innocence. It represents that non-combative state of the mind, in which man ceases to struggle for his own. You know the whole human family are struggling to-day, struggling to live; struggling for health; struggling for money; struggling for their place - struggling for their rights, they tell us. And it ends in defeat nine times out of ten - yes, nine tjr-nine times out of a hundred. Why? Because one individual canfs^ruggle and attain a victory over all the opposing forces of all the minds. It is one against a billion. And the only way out
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of it is to cease struggling. The only way out of it is to take
the non-combative attitude, hut you say, "If I give up and cease to struggle for my own, why, I will become a mere negation. I will go down. I will be nothing.1" Ho jz-ou v/ont, if you know the
law of Christ.
How, when this dove entered upon the Jesus consciousness, he rose to a new consciousness; he ctime to a new place, and there was a turmoil in his soul. The old ambitions, the old conditions of mind came up, it is true, and began to assert themselves. That is typified by his being driven into the wilderness and being tempted of the devil, hut he had a higher wisdom, and that is just where this dove of the Spirit gives man a new consciousness, and gives him a new power. He ceases to struggle, remember that.
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Ihen the Christ of God enters your heart; when you realize your real place as the son of the Living God; when God baptizes you with his Spirit, you will cease to contend for your rights before men. You cease to struggle for anything, put everything in the Divine Law, and you win out every time, just to the extent that you do that.
It is a wonderful thing to know this. It is a wonderful thing to know that there is a spirit of Justice and Righteousness that will go into the courts and work for you.
You will find in Mrs. Cady's book, "Lessons in Truth", an illustration there of a man vdio for fourteen years had been in a prison in Spain, and every effort had been made by the courts of this country to get him free, and nothing could be done. A
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spiritually minded worker weis appealed to, and she sa,id "We will put the case in God’s hands", and they prayed over it and in two weeks the man was set free, in almost mysterious ways, a mysterious way. Well now, we find this law can 'be applied again and again in every little detail of your life. It is a higher law. It is a law of the Absolute.
H°w, men are not in the habit of appealing to this law, because it is diametrically opposed to all the laws of the personal man. As I say, the personal man is striving, he is fighting; he is like David who was a man of war, and he couldn't build the temple.
He could accumulate the materials, but he couldn't build the temple, because his ideas were destructive. You can't build this temple of the Living God, which is the spiritual body, until you enter
into tlie baptism of the Spirit, be at peace. "Be wise as serpents", said Jesus, "and harmless as doves". You can have all the wisdom, but you must cease your fighting; you must cease all contending; you must cease your quarreling. It wont do. You can't build the spiritual body; you can't overcome death; you can't enter with Jesus into the resurrection until you cease to fight, let us remember that. And one of the great lessons which we as a people should learn, is to stop all thoughts of contention, all thoughts of getting our own through some outer way. Everything comes to the spiritually minded man through the power of Spirit. Lay all of your aiiairs in the rands of God. Declare the Infinite Unlimited Unimpeded Law of Almighty God as operating in everything you do, and it will come to pass. It surely will. Just lay down your arms,
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1'a.y down your personal efforts, and yet keep your mind active, lou can't go to sleep upon this. You must hold steady to the one Absolute Law; that the law of God is manifest in everything you do, and that that lav/ is working for you powerfully. "Why, it will rejuvenate your finances; it will give you new Life; it will give
you freedom irom worry and anxiety and all these things; and you can demonstrate it every time, if you will only put it into execution in a lawful way.
How, we can't have several standards. You must have jus ^ one standard, and "be true to that standard. Cut away every-
else. We are told that man has a physical body. Is that all fcne body he has? Why, then another school comes along and tells us that man has a psychical body, a soul-body. Well, is that all? v-ell, Paul says that "There are bodies many - bodies terrestial and
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"bodies celestial. Wow, I tell you that man has a third body, which is the spiritual body. In other words, he lias a body created through his spiritual mind, and that spiritual body is the real body. The psychical body is an electrical body. You feel the force of that; you feel the electricity, you feel the vibrations. But that isn't the real. It has a part to pay in the spiritual development of man; but in the great resurrection we come to a place in consciousness where our bodies take on peace and harmony, not effort. Why, a vibration means resistence, doesn't it? Ho, you must get into the consciousness that your real body is spiritual; that it is everywhere present; that it belongs to God, and that it has no disease; that it has no sickness; that it is not subject to any law. Why, the soul-peopile, the ones who live in
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vibration, they are in fear. They are afraid of adverse thoughts. But the one who is in Spirit is not afraid of any adverse thought of any kind. Why, youhave risen above all thought processes; you are in the spirit; you are in the absolute; you put yourself there. Hold yourself steady in the Spirit, and you will know what it is to be born into the Christ Mind. That is part of the Christ Birth. And when the Christ comes into your world - and he is here now, just to the extent that we appreciate his presence - everybody will have these spiritual bodies.
I read the other day of the Theosophist view of the coming of Christ. That some very pure-minded man would develop all of the qualities of the Spirit, and at a certain point give them all up and there would be a great Christos, the Christ, to take his
place; in other words, a certain ego would give up his body and another higher principle, or higher ego would take possession of it.
TT°w, it seemed to me that that was rather a cumbersome process, and it didn't give universal privileges to all people to come into the Christ consciousness. How much easier and better and more reasonable and logical is that plan laid down in the Scripture, that we are to give up, every one of us, the personality, and then this Universal Principle, this Christ of God, is to enter into the consciousness of every one. It doesn't make a special privilege to any individual, as the great teacher, but every one of us becomes the student, the direct - as the Hindu says - the G-urooh of the Christ of God.
This is the real birth, and this is the meaning of the
he died on the cross,
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there was the effacement of the physical body. Then he resurrected his psychical "body. IJOw, you know the history of that psychical "body - how he could go through the closed doors; how he appeared to his disciples walking to Bmmaus, and talked to them; how he could eat, and he showed them that it was the same body that he was crucified with. But it hud gone through a change evidently. It wasn't in physical consciousness, ana yet , it hadn't gone in that higher body. As I say, it was the psychical body, that body of electricity which we all have more or less of a consciousness of. But we must still go a little higher. We must have our ascension, and when the ascension comes, then the psychical body disappears.
How, these are steps that we every one are passing
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through. You are, every time that you put away the sense of feeling, and declare the supremacy of the non-feeling mind of the Spirit, you are having j/our ascension. You are rising to a higher point of bodily consciousness. You must speak to your bodies. Speak to the physical body; speak to the psychical body, and affirm, the all-pervading joy and satisfaction and identity of the spiritual body.
How, this is the historical Jesus, and he goes the way of all historical things. He is postulated in time, space,condition and all those things, you know must be wiped out. But, in his place we have the living Christ.
ITow, the living Christ should be an ideal of us every one. That Christ never was born; that Christ never died. Could
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the perfect idea of a perfect principle ever perish? Why, you can quickly arrive at an answer to that question. You say no. It must endure. We know that the perfect ideas of those who have lived in the past are alive to-day. The mathematical solutions of Euclid ■ where are they? Alive to-day. They are being used by our mathematicians. So with every idea that has real life in it.
Well now, the idea of man existing in the mind of God -lias that perished? It is alive to-day, I tell you, just as much
alive as it ever was. Where is it? In your mind, just to the ex-
of
tent that you let it express itself. Then cease to think youself as having sinned in Adam; cease to think of yourself as a perishable thing; cease to think of yourself as belonging to the human family at all, if you want to come into the living Christ. The
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living Christ is a living eternal man, and he is alive to-day.
.And this is the real meaning of Christinas. When that Christ is horn in your soul; when you eliminate and crucify and put away all lesser things, and think of yourself as the living son of the living God, you are really horn, and you are never horn until you do that. You may talk about being born; you may talk about your rnanj?- incarnations, but they are all chaff; they are simply the passing wind. Nothing to them. The only real birth is this birth of
man's consciousness in God, and that birth takes place just the moment that 3^ou give up the lesser and enter into the greater; just the moment you affirm yourself as the living son of the living God, and stand by that proposition in all that you do.
This is the fulfillment of the law.
This is the birth
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of the (fhrist in every man. Let us rejoice that we know that wonderful truth; and let us more than rejoice - let us enter into its fulfillment in ourselves; and let us thank God that we are his sons and that all of the fullness of his Life and his Truth and his Intelligence has entered into us, and that we have no opposing thought, no destructive thoughts of any kind; that we are one with the Infinite Law of Life.
We give thanks unto the Almighty Omnipresent [Father for this knowledge, this Truth. We give thanks that we here and now accept this great Good, which is came to us through the birth :in our souls of the Liv ing Chr ist.
Arne n.
8:36 P. M.
9:16 P. M.