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Poverty"#" Riches.- Sunday Sept. 10thf 1916.	('
Chas. Fillmore.
I	(iw.
Let us pray. We are commanded to pray for whatever we de- { sire. If it is a temporal thing that we seek, we should pray for	*
it. If it is spiritual, we should also pray for the spiritual, and with all our prayers we should have understanding of the Law of prayer, and understanding of our relation to that to which we address our prayers. We should also understand ourselves because thru this understanding we shall get results if we use the Law. Now,we have in most of our religeous education made a
separation between the temporal things and the spiritual, We
have not attributed our poverty to a lack of spiritual riches. Fuller understanding of the Law of Mind reveals that if our minds were rich with spiritual possessions, we would have abund-aace in the material. Then, we must get ridh with the Law. We must have fuller understanding and application of this great Truth which Jesus laid down-. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these thingssshall be added unto you." He also promised his followers that if they frsook
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ness of the Spirit, then realizing that in this consciousness we have all things; that everything has Deen provided; nothing lacking; and the consciousness which we there have is manifest. See the thing in the outer as you have it in the inner. He will take as our central idea in this attitude a word something like this:- we want wisdom, so we will affirm: "I am wise in the use of thy Law, and my riches are spiritual."	(Silence.)
The text of our lesson this morning is one of vital interest, especially to metaphysicians. It touches upon a phase
father, mother, brother, sister, houses and lands they should
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here in this time have other brothers and sisters, houses and
lands. Now we know that these promises were not idle; theywere
made by one who had the understanding, and when the same law is
fulfilled that he had an understanding of we will reap the same
benefits. So our prayers must be based upon this understanding
if
the understanding that we have a spirituai/consciousness of the riches of the Spirit We shall have the temporal fulfillment.
Then let us pray by placing ourselves first in the conscious-
authority for your Truth. It makes no difference how many great
minds have dealtji withthis proposition, it makes no difference what their conclusions may he, you :ust know for yourself, based upon your understanding before you will have the real Truth, so you can speakwwith authority. 7e do. not accept what the fathers have said religiously about heaven and hell or the condition of the dead; we want to know for ourselves. And how shall we know? .Veil, by experience. And have we had experience in
this condition? Veil, ?/e say we have; but are we conscious of it
of consciousness - because that is what it is - that we are in
a measurea little sensitive about in our discussions because of a certain ignorance of the character of the state which is here represented - the condition of man after death. Now we find that we can scientifically and truly only describe to any Truth student those conditions in which we have experience or have a consciousness of. Truth does not theorize; Truth does not guess at conditions, and it must spiritually at least know, or logically know. You will find that you cannot take any outside
No; we are alive. Then we do not really know what death is.
7e can in a measure give an allegorical description of what the conditions may be; we can cite the authorities of the different religions and sum them up and we find that they agree in essentials; but we do not know absolutely until we have had experience. So in our consideration of the matter this morning wo will have to get at it in a symbolical way just as Jesus did. He did not give a definite place to the heaven - Abraham*s bosom - he gave that oriental freedom in the play of his metaphysical under-
standing. He did not claim that Lazarus went to heaven, or that
he was in paradise, but he was in a state of consciousness which corresponded to the bliss or the peace of the soul. He was in Abrahamfs bosom. The Ruch Man was in the opposite state of consciousness. He was in the place called in the King James version hell. ;Ve have always been taught that nell was a re*y undesirable place; that it was a place where there was a good ddal of fire and brimstone and satanic imps and all that sort of thing,
but there is no such meaning attached to the Hades here mentioned
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and ,ve cannot find in the Bihle that any smch place was ever thot of by the writers. That hell was invented by Dante and Milton and other poets. They drew upon their imagination and made that kind of a place, and when the New Testament was translated they just stuck in hell. The true translation is Hades, and means a sequestered in the unknown. In some places it is translated a3 a place of purification; a place where the soul goes thru a dedication,ia a certain kind of elimination of its error and •faults - so it is not the old style hell at all. It would answer better as a place athbxe in which man
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a part of his consciousness and fails to findthe necessary satisfaction of the desires that arise in him. How, we would consider that Lazarus and the Rich Man are the two poles of thought in every individual; one represents the sense consciousness and the other the soul consciousness. Lazarus is the soul in every man, and the Rich Man is the one who lays hold of the things of the world. He becomes rich in the possession of materiality. Now, if you are allowing your selfish iesires for sense sensations -if you are allowing your desires for the riches of the world
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in any^of its aspects * if you are living on what we call the material plane, you are the Rich Man and your soul is being starved. It is a beggar. You are not giving it what belongs to it.
It has 3ores. That means that it is in a state of	•
^	I	it	is	starved	for'live; you have starved
the life current in it; there is a lack of soul-con3ciousness. that i3, you have not fed your soul with spiritual thoughts, and what is the result? .lThy, you are btilding up the flesh man; you are giving him the preponderance of thought; you are giving
“L-T
him all your attention; you are making a man in a world that is
not real, a worldthat cannot he satisfactory in its own realm, its own sphere. The sense man is never satisfied; it is always craving something more if you feed it -with temporal things. A man that has a thirst is never satisfied with the temporal or material satisfying of that thirst; he constantly want3 more and more because he is not getting the satisfaction from the right source.. So with the man that desires to gain riches.
He is never satisfied with his gains because he is searching
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in the wrong direction. He is trying to bring satisfaction out of these conditions, andthqy have no source in themselves. Now, what is the true satisfaction? tfhy, to understand the law, and the law is that all things temporal come from the Spirit; that the things, as Paul says, were not made from the things themselves, but from Spiritual things. That is, we must co.iply with the law which is that from thoughts come things. Supposing then, that in our life in the body we ignore this law and continue to ignore it. There is sooner or later a break between the Spiritual thinking and the
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•material thinking. The result is a sundering of these states of thought; the material thinking man goes to himself, and the Spiritual thinking man goes to himself; that is, the accumulated thoughts -and they leave the body and the body goes to the grave. Now, in what is condition does the man find himself? He is broken into parts; he is not a whole man; the man^ is not complete. It is only in the conscious union of Spirit,soul and body that the whole man is in manifestation.. With this understanding we can unravel
the various theories about the condition of the soul after death.
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These theories are "based upon certain conditions that we can arrive at thru an understanding of the action of mind, how mind makes thoughtsand how thoughts come together, each after its like fellow: thoughts join one another, and we can logically arrive at the conclusion that certain line of thinking will bring a certain result, and the material thoughts, the sense consciousness, must build that kind of a mind. The thoughts about Spirit, the thoughts about the condition of the Spiritual Man must build a state of consciousness after that idea. Now, these two states of consciousness are really
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at war^ with each other unless there is a higher understanding, and. that is the mind of the Spirit illuminated by this divine source.
We call that the Spiritual I-am; the Christ of God. So you see how necessary it is that we enter into the regeneration; the blending of these two states of consciousness- the inner and the outer; the xftgte rich man and Lazarus. Now, it i3 not necessary that the . s(oul be a begger in us. It is not in its right relation to Lazarus; it is only whenwe have lived in the material to the exclusion of the soul that it becomes a beggar, and Jesus so illustrated the condi-
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tion of that soul when it oame to dissolution, or the
called death. I would say to you that death is no part of the Divine
plan. We would never pass thru that change called death.and which
is the greatest___________of man's existence if we had observed the
Divine Law, and had cultivated th I-am, the Christ Mind in us.
We would escape this breaking up between the Spirit and the Soul, the mind of flesh. This temporal mind andthe Spiritual mind would be joined in one perfect mind, andthat perfect mind would continue
to keep the body without a break. This then is the overcoming of
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thut last enemy, and we are all looking forward to that. None of as are striving to die. 7e are in every way escaping the death of the man. The death of the/i man is entering into a new phase of consciousness. As I say, there is a break between the temperal - the mind of the flesh -fit not drawing its sustenance from the one spirit ual souree loses its activity) xni it separates itself and creates a gulf of consciousness between the Spiritual and the material; it says: "Oh, that is all right to tali: about Spiritual things, but I am satisfied in my own mind that the temporal things give the
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swift returns. I do not see that spiritually minded people have saymHM any more happiness than we do. and I guess I will just be sure of a bird in the hand and cling to my money and houses and lands and I will cultivate the things that give the pleasures of the world.n Sothe rich man builds up his world; but there is an end to that. It makes no difference what money and lands he has that give the pleasures of the world; sooner or later that comes to an end. What does that man have? He has only the things o£ his world to take with him. If he hag given himself to the pleasures of the table, - the eating
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and drinking - he has that phase of consciousness to deal with. If he has given himself to selfish grasping of money and the things that give pleasure in that direction, he has that state of consciousness to deal with. We find ourselves where we leave off in the realm behind the scenes - that bourne from which no traveler returns -vve find ourselves there just where we leave off here. And I would say that there is no such thing as there and here ia mind - it is all Here. All of the people that hive disappeared from this temperal realm are here; but in what condition are they here, why, they ar e
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here in the condition of the rich man and the poor man if the mind has been cultivating the idea of the temperal side being all. Now, we have in our experience as men and women had many changes and we have passed thru many phases of consciousness. ,7e all love life, and we have in some of these experiences lived on the spiritual side. Consequently we have developed a spiritual line of thinking. He have accumulated in our consciousness spiritualthoughts, and these Spiritual thlughts have made up a Spiritual nind. On the other hand, we have accumulated material thoughts; so we have within us this
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Lazarus altho we may not be conscious of it. ^very man, then, has his soul which relates him to the spiritual side of his being, and when dissolution arrives the two lines of thought begin to separate. Like the combination in the chemists laboratory, the material goes to itself and the gaseous goes to itself, and the solids to themselves. Here we have a picture of the man who has left his body.
He has left the envelope in which he had accumulated and held these different elements. They fall apart and what is the condition then of that man? Well, the spiritual soul goes into the spiritual
state of.consciousness - that is lazaru3. That is the soul that in the temporal life, the flesh life, has beai starved. But now it comes to its own. Abraham in the Mosaic dispensation represents the man who has faith in God, and *hxjhcb if we get back into the original idea of the name we would find that it was borrowed from the Hindu religion and means Brahm. When the Spiritual soul, or £ the consciousness of the reality of Spirit and Spiritual things leaves the body it naturally goes kH to the place in which Brahm, o* the great soul of God, our Father, is, and rests in his bosom,
while the temporal side goes to another place; its thoughts are
permanent in the; mind, of temporal things, and temporal things seek a temporal avenue. That man was not regenerated; he did not work over his thoughts and place them in right relation, hut found himself as he left his body in the same condition in the same condition that he was when he was in that body, and if there was a craving for anything it was still there. It is like the man who drinks over night and wakes up in the morning with a thirst. The one thing that will satisfy that thirst is something of a material
character. Supposingthat that aoraething ia not there, what ia the reault? A burning fever. That ia exactly the condition in which the temporal aide of the aoul finda itaelf wheh it ahufflea off this mortal coil. There ia no place in which it can receive its material aatisfaction. It haa left that realm and the mind ia craving for that satiafaction, and that is the illustration which Jeaus gives of the soul - the sense soul - trying to satisfy itself without a vehicle thru which to reach that satisfaction.
There is no material thing after the aoul haa left its material
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surroundings, but it still has tb mind without the soiree of satisfaction. So it is pictured here as in x£ a flame of fire, and it calls upon its Spiritual side, or thoughts of the opposite side of this character, to give it just a drip of satisfaction, a drop of water. But the Spiritual aayd:	"You	had your satis-
faction in temporal experiences in the earth consciousness when we were together in the body, and now I amgoing to get my good things, ad there is a great gulf here between us." You cannot
m.$rge without a central idea, like the Spiritual mind of the
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I-am. You cannot blend and merge your tv/o states of consciousness without that center, without a belnding medium, and that is what the Christ regeneration is. If these two states of consciousness had been brought together in the body during the life of that man, there would have been no separation. But now there is a separation, and it might be we&l forfcus to understand just what the condition is in which Ve will find ourselves. Thi3 state of mind in which the rich man found himself is typified in the various religions. In the Catholic religion, we have purgatory in which the
soul is in a state of trial; it is fit for neither Heaven nor Hell.
In the Hindu we have the same place designated as D The soul is in a state where it is constantly striving and seeking for something, but there is no satisfaction to be gained in that realm. It is a flame of desire in the consciousness without any means of satisfying it, and what is the result? ',7hy, a pruning out of these thoughts; a destruction of th thought world in which that soul exists. And this is the purification that Jesus referred to; this is the hell-fire that continues from day to day until
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the man is purified and then another life is lived. The soul, after it has gaiiied a certain education - (not really an education, but has gone thru under the Law a certain preparation for the next incarnation) - comes again into the body and thru it has another trial. Nov/, these trials continue until the man either awakens to his true estate and becomes one with the Christ, or he throws thru his adverse thinking in his soul and body so far apart hat they never get together. Now, there is a third element that
we find dealt with here	in	this	allegory,	and	that	is
3o
senses
kEBthars
his five a»3ts which the rich man wanted Lazarus to inform about his
the five brothers, condition. These are the five senses. This^ five-sense man is not
an evil; #e is simply the vehicle thru which the soul functions. That five-sense man goes with the body, and yet it has a consciousness of its own - seeing, tasting, smelling, feeling, hearing -they each have a certain consciousness; what becomes of thatcon-sciousness when he leaves the body? It still endures, but it is a vague, ignorant, astral consciousness; it is the ghost that
people see; it has no identity of its own; it must be educated.
It floats about in the atmosphere as a kind of thot picture. Now, this consciousness is dealt with here and Jesus calls attention to it as that in the man which must be awakened to the Truth of Spiritual qualities. The soul on its temporal side wanted to perpetuate the five-sense man because it was thru that five-sense man that he had been getting his satisfaction,and he aaid to the higher principle the spiritual soul: "Go to my five brothers - go to the five-sense man and tell him about this condition." But the soul said: "No."
for your s enses only receive the law and the profits; they will not
listen to one risen from the dead. Wow, the Law and the Prophets
in scripture pra represent - the law represents the intellectual understanding of Truth, and the prophets represent the Spiritual understanding of Truth. The intellectual understanding of Truth was given in a written law; it was:	"Thou shalt not"; and the
Spiritual understanding was given by the prophets, telling what would cometo pass thru the action of sinful people. Wow, these two states of information are d>pen to the five-sense man; he must be educated
thru these avenues. That is the statement ofthe law as given by
Jesus. And he can receive his education only in-this way. We
think that the senses are the avenues thru phenominal experience, hut they are not. You never got any Truth into your five-sense consciousness thru temporal experience; you may think you do,hut it all comes thru a state of mind; a state of mind that you set up when you think about the condition which that state of mind represents. It is thought, then; and thought solves the whole problem. So when you think about your body you must think fcbout it in the light of the Law and the Prophets. It is a fact that we must lay
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down law3 for our bodies, and we must see that that law is carried out. Here is the Law and the prophets, and we know that we get results from every statement that we make for our temporal man.
If you hold that your sight is Spiritual, you will get a clearer understanding of Spiritual/ things; in other words, your sight will become illuminated with the Spiritual sight, and you will see better too. If you hold that your hearing is Spiritual, the sense side of your consciousness will fall away and let in the Spiritual, and you will find that you can hear as you never heard before;
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you can hear unutterable things; you can hear with your mind. And so with everyone of these five brothers, these saases; when they are educated under the law th y come into their own; buttfif you give them over to the keeping of that man who thinks heis rich in worldly things, rich in the temporal, he will fall short of the real understanding. He is not educated by the law and the prophets. Now/ii summing up the whole situation we findthat it is necessary that we here and now take up a Spiritual education for our man -
that the rich man and the poor man in us 3hall be balanced; that
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this soul which is willing and at the door - that is, the door of
consciousness - calling and begging for the crumbs that fall from
the table shallbe fed. Feeding the soul with crumbs represents
love
that withholding of the full life of substance and life which we are constantly carrying out in our lives. We are not kxk supplying our souls frith the food which they require unless we daily worship God; unless we give as much attention at least to the spiritual side of our being as we do to the temporal. People think that if they give hald an hour- or some even an hour to silent meditation
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and prayer that they are giving ^a great deal of their time and attention; hut how much time do you give to the temporal things?
Do you give say 15 or 16 hours to temporal thingsand half an hour to Spiritual? What is the result? You build up the man of sense; he becomes rich with the thoughts that pertain to the material world, and the soul becomes a beggar; it is starved. And the result is a man who is one-sided; a man of large sense consciousness; a man who knows a great deal about the world and worldly things, and verylittle about Spirit and Spiritual things. There is only
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one end for that man; there is a ____________awaiting	him.	And	do
we want to continue in this_____________condition?	Certainly not.
We want to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. He showed us the only way out, and that was, start the overcoming of the war between the Spirit and the body; the unifying of the rich man and the ppor man in us; the giving of the soul an opportunity to express itself; the recognition that we have a soul. The majority of people have no consciousness of a soul; they do not know what the^ emotions of the soul arep they do not feel the movement of the soul; just to
that extent are you starving your soult and there will be a result to that starvation. But you can escape. You can blend the soul and the body, making one perfect man, thru a union in Christ
of the Kich Man and Lazarus.