Charles Fillmore
American mystic (1854–1948)
Charles Sherlock Fillmore (August 22 1854 – July 5 1948) founded Unity, a church within the New Thought movement, with his wife, Myrtle Fillmore, in 1889. He became known as an American mystic.
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Quotes
edit- Before they are slain these poor brutes are maltreated in ways almost beyond enumeration. Visit shipping pens, stocktrains, stockyards and packinghouses, if you want evidence of the sufferings of the poor beasts of the field. And these very sufferings are through the law of sympathetic mental vibrations transferred to the flesh of those who eat the bodies of these animals. The undefined fears, the terrors of the nightmare, and the many disturbances in stomach and bowels that man endures may be in a measure traced to these unsuspected sources.
- As to Meat Eating, Unity Magazine, October 1903. Quoted in Will Tuttle, The World Peace Diet (2005), ch. 8.
- Therefore, in the light of the Truth that God is love, and that Jesus came to make his love manifest in the world, we cannot believe it is his will for men to eat meat, or to do anything else that would cause suffering to the innocent and helpless.
- Vegetarianism, Unity Magazine, June 1915. Quoted in Will Tuttle, The World Peace Diet (2005), ch. 3.
- We need never look for universal peace on this earth until men stop killing animals for food.
- The Vegetarian, Unity Magazine, May 1920. Quoted in Will Tuttle, The World Peace Diet (2005), ch. 3.
Teach Us to Pray with Cora Fillmore (1941)
edit- When Jesus' disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray He warned them against making a display of their praying in order to be seen of men. They should retire to their "inner chamber" and pray to the Father who sees in secret and rewards openly. Then He said, "After this manner therefore pray."
- The Lord's Prayer was given as a sample: not to be followed literally... according to Fenton's translation it is a series of affirmations, as follows:
Our Father in the Heavens; Your Name must be being hallowed;
Your kingdom must be being restored;
Your will must be being done, both in Heaven and upon the Earth.
Give us to-day our tomorrow's bread;
And forgive us our faults, as we forgive those offending us, for You would not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from its evil.
- As in all matters where we seek divine help we are free to use any words we choose or no words at all...Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, Uttered or unexpressed... Prayer in man is a conscious expression of the upward trend of nature found everywhere. So every impulse or desire of the soul for life, love, light, is a prayer.
- All growth and unfoldment from atom to sun is based upon this law of soul urge. What you earnestly desire and persistently affirm will be yours, if you "faint not."
- When we frame our desires in sound words and place them before our indwelling Lord, we are using intelligently the supreme law of God in bringing into manifestation that which He has implanted in us. A prayer without desire in it, a prayer without sincerity in it, a prayer without soul in it, a prayer without Spirit in it is a fruitless prayer.
- Above all practice the presence of God in prayer. Divine Mind has given us all potentialities, in prayer we recognize it as the source of these, and with a right understanding of our relation to it our soul grows great with infinite capacity, all potentiality. "With God all things are possible." "All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine."
- We have been so persistently taught that prayer consists in asking God for some human need that we have lost sight of our spiritual identity and have become a race of praying beggars.
- God is Spirit in whom we "live, and move, and have our being." We are the offspring of this Spirit and can make conscious contact with it by turning our attention away from material things and thinking about Spirit. As we practice this kind of prayer our innate Spirit showers its life energies into our conscious mind and a great soul expansion follows.
- Understanding shows us that prayer is more than asking God for help in this physical world; it is in its highest sense the opening up in our soul of an innate spiritual umbilical cord that connects us with the Holy Mother, from whom we can receive a perpetual flow of life. This is the beginning of eternal life for both soul and body, the essential teaching of Jesus, which He demonstrated in overcoming death. We have earnestly sought to know and tell others how to pray, and this book is our very best exposition of the subject.
- Language has not yet been invented to tell all the wonders that we have found since we began opening our minds to the Spirit in prayer. We have discovered enough to convince us that the body can be so charged with spiritual life through prayer that it will overcome death, as promised by Jesus Christ.
Mysteries Of John (1946)
edit- The laws instituted in the aeons and ages of the past still prevail in the present. Interpreting Being from a personal standpoint, we have ignored the principles and laws at the very foundation of all creation and substituted a personal God, and many contradictions have followed. Now through the unfoldment of the spiritual man implanted in us in the beginning we are discerning the unchangeable laws of the good and the absolute necessity of conforming to them.
- So we see that Jesus taught plainly that God functions in and through man and nature instead of being a person somewhere in the skies; also that we demonstrate God by making His Spirit manifest in our life. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
- Socrates was asked, "What is a good man?" He replied, "A man who does good." Again he was asked, "What is good?" "What the good man does," he replied.
- No extended definition of good is necessary to those who follow Jesus; even converted savages understand good and do it.
- The universal desire among awakened Christians to love God and man is part of the law constantly operating through man when he finds his right relation to God.
- The status of evil is that of a parasite. It has no permanent life of itself; its whole existence depends on the life it borrows from its parent, and when its connection with the parent is severed nothing remains. Apparent evil is the result of ignorance, and when the truth is presented the error disappears. Jesus called it a liar and the father of lies.
- Men personalize good and evil in a multiplicity of gods and devils, but Truth students follow Jesus in recognizing the supreme Spirit in man as the "one God and Father of all."
- Jesus revealed the mind of the Father. This mind is the life and intelligence of man as well as the substance that provides for all his needs. This providing power of the Father Jesus brought out prominently, and He showed in various ways how easy it is to obtain supply by trusting God. This teaching is not an encouragement to man to be idle, but rather to be active and trustful, constantly looking to Spirit instead of matter as the source of his good. p. 182
- However the study of the constituent parts of man, his spirit, soul, and body, reveals man's innate capacity to overcome the disintegrating effects of error thinking and living, and his ability, by conforming to the standards laid down by Jesus, to destroy the seeds of death and implant health and eternal life in his body.
- To the oft-repeated question "If Jesus resurrected His physical body why is He not visible here among us?" we would say that Jesus overcame the sins that caused our original fall from the perfect body of the Adamic man to the diseased and dying body in which the race is now existing.
- When we have purified our mind and body and cast out every evil thought, our body will become transparent to human sight, as is Jesus' body. The idea that a transparent body is thin air, a ghost, is wholly wrong. Science says that the invisible electrical units composing the atom are millions of times more powerful than any visible thing. When the atomic energy in the atomic bomb was released great cities were destroyed.
- Jesus told His followers that when they were gathered in that upper room in Jerusalem the Holy Spirit would descend upon them with power; and they were transformed from ignorant men into linguists of unbelievable ability.
- Paul says, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds". When we accomplish this transformation we shall see Jesus as He is and as we must all be in the resurrection from the dead and dying body in which we are now functioning. This is not to be accomplished by a great miracle at some appointed time in the future, but day by day we shall be resurrected out of the darkness of sense into the glorious light of Spirit.
