Foreword

A great many passages in this book testify to Charles Fillmore's persistent interest in what is popularly called atomic energy and the promise held out by its development of a better world for mankind. As he rejoiced in the scientific achievement of its discovery so he tirelessly devoted his thought to its guidance into the channels of peaceful use. On every occasion he urged those having to do with its development to make sure that this unique form of energy, this great gift of the Father, would not be used to worsen life and destroy mankind.

From another standpoint Charles Fillmore's mind was simply fascinated by the idea of the atom, this infinitesimal particle of substance, and the enormous energy locked up in it. At times he thought of it as the most perfect representation in the manifest world of that divine mental or spiritual energy which pervades all things and which, when properly expressed through the minds of His children, serves so greatly to glorify God. At other times he thought of it as the very essence of this mental or spiritual energy, Spirit-mind itself! The reader will find each one of these standpoints set forth over and over--perhaps vaguely and mystically at times--but ever testifying to the alertness and vitality of Charles Fillmore's mind and his unflagging interest in everything in his world.

As will be readily recognized by Unity readers, the articles appearing as chapters in this book, were originally published in Unity magazine over a period of half a century, one of them going back as far as the year 1898.

In the last paragraph of Chapter VIII the author gives his readers a clear formula for dealing with the problem of the atom:

"The great and most important issue before the people today is the development of man's spiritual mind and through it unity with God. . . . The taproot of all our confusion is our failure to use our mind intelligently. We can only think as God would have us think by adjusting our thoughts to divine ideas. Religion and all that it implies in prayer and recognition of God in idea and manifestation is the one and only way out of the chaos in which we find ourselves. We must therefore begin at once to develop this unity with the Father-Mind by incorporating divine ideas into all that we think and speak."

Chapter I
The Atomic Age

THE MAJORITY of people have crude or distorted ideas about the character and the location of Spirit. They think that Spirit plays no part in mundane affairs and can be known by a person only after his death.

"But Jesus said, 'God is Spirit'; He also said, 'The kingdom of God is within you.' Science tells us that there is a universal life that animates and sustains all the forms and shapes of the universe. Science has broken into the atom and revealed it to be charged with tremendous energy that may be released and be made to give the inhabitants of the earth powers beyond expression, when its law of expression is discovered.

"Jesus evidently knew about this hidden energy in matter and used His knowledge to perform so-called miracles.

"Our modern scientists say that a single drop of water contains enough latent energy to blow up a ten-story building. This energy, existence of which has been discovered by modern scientists, is the same kind of spiritual energy that was known to Elijah, Elisha, and Jesus, and used by them to perform miracles.

"By the power of his thought Elijah penetrated the atoms and precipitated an abundance of rain. By the same law he increased the widow's oil and meal. This was not a miracle--that is, it was not a divine intervention supplanting natural law--but the exploitation of a law not ordinarily understood. Jesus used the same dynamic power of thought to break the bonds of the atoms composing the few loaves and fishes of a little lad's lunch--and five thousand people were fed.

"Science is discovering the miracle-working dynamics of religion, but science has not yet comprehended the dynamic directive power of man's thought. All so-called miracle workers claim that they do not of themselves produce the marvelous results; that they are only the instruments of a superior entity. It is written in I Kings, 'The jar of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of Jehovah, which he spake by Elijah.' Jesus called Jehovah Father. He said, 'The works that I do in my Father's name, these bear witness of me.'

"Jesus did not claim to have the exclusive supernatural power that is usually credited to Him. He had explored the ether energy, which He called the 'kingdom of the heavens'; His understanding was beyond that of the average man, but He knew that other men could do what He did if they would only try. He encouraged His followers to take Him as a center of faith and use the power of thought and word. 'He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do.'

"The great modern revival of divine healing is due to the application of the same law that Jesus used. He demanded faith on the part of those whom He healed, and with that faith as the point of mental and spiritual contact He released the latent energy in the atomic structure of His patients and they were restored to life and health.

"Have faith in the power of your mind to penetrate and release the energy that is pent up in the atoms of your body, and you will be astounded at the response. Paralyzed functions anywhere in the body can be restored to action by one's speaking to the spiritual intelligence and life within them. Jesus raised His dead bodies in this way, and Paul says that we can raise our body in the same manner if we have the same spiritual contact.

"What have thought concentration and discovery of the dynamic character of the atom to do with prayer? They have everything to do with prayer, because prayer is the opening of communication between the mind of man and the mind of God. Prayer is the exercise of faith in the presence and power of the unseen God. Supplication, faith, meditation, silence, concentration, are mental attitudes that enter into and form part of prayer. When one understands the spiritual character of God and adjusts himself mentally to the omnipresent God-Mind, he has begun to pray aright.

"Audible prayers are often answered but the most potent are silently uttered in the secret recesses of the soul. Jesus warned against wordy prayers--prayer uttered to be heard of men. He told His disciples not to be like those who pray on the housetop. 'When thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee.'

"The times are ripe for great changes in our estimate of the abiding place and the character of God. The six-day creation of the universe (including man) is described in Genesis is a symbolic story of the work of the higher realms of mind under divine law. It is the privilege of everyone to use his mind abilities in the superrealms, and thereby carry out the prayer formula of Jesus: 'Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.'"

The foregoing extract is from the "Health and Prosperity" column in Unity for May, 1927. These comments are peculiarly applicable to the present and also to a subject that has been agitating the public mind for some time, the atomic bomb.

Of all the comments on or discussions of the indescribable power of the invisible force released by the atomic bomb none that we have seen mentions its spiritual or mental character. All commentators have written about it as a force external to man to be controlled by mechanical means, with no hint that it is the primal life that animates and interrelates man's mind and body.

The next great achievement of science will be the understanding of the mental and spiritual abilities latent in man through which to develop and release these tremendous electrons, protons, and neutrons secreted in the trillions of cells in the physical organism. Here is involved the secret, as Paul says, "hid for ages and generations . . . which is Christ [superman] in you, the hope of glory." It is through release of these hidden life forces in his organism that man is to achieve immortal life, and in no other way. When we finally understand the facts of life and rid our minds of the delusion that we shall find immortal life after we die, then we shall seek more diligently to awaken the spiritual man within us and strengthen and build up the spiritual domain of our being until, like Jesus, we shall be able to control the atomic energy in our bodies and perform so-called miracles.

The fact is that all life is based upon the interaction between the various electrical units of the universe. Science tells us about these activities in terms of matter and no one understands them, because they are spiritual entities and their realities can only be understood and used wisely by the spiritually developed man. Electricians do not know what electricity is, although they use it constantly. The Christian uses faith and gets marvelous results, the electrician uses electricity and also gets marvelous results, and neither of them knows the real nature of the agent he uses so freely.

The man who called electricity faith doubtless thought that he was making a striking comparison when in fact he was telling a truth, that faith is of the mind and it is the match that starts the fire in the electrons and protons of innate Spirit forces. Faith has its degrees of voltage; the faith of the child and the faith of the most powerful spiritual adept are far apart in their intensity and results. When the trillions of cells in one's body are roused to expectancy by spiritual faith, a positive spiritual contact results and marvelous transformations take place. When Jesus asked His patients, "Believe ye that I am able to do this?" He was making such a contact. Also when He told those to whom He ministered, "Thy faith hath made thee whole," He used the same law. When He turned water into wine and fed five thousand by multiplying a few loaves and fishes, He performed in a masterly and beneficial way what our scientists made possible in a destructive way by releasing through the atomic bomb the pent-up forces of Spirit.

Scientists have invented a machine that records the forces of thought. Every thought expressed by the mind radiates an energy as it passes through the brain cells, and this machine measures the force of these radiations. Sir James Jeans, the eminent British scientist, gives a prophecy of this in one of his books. He says in substance that it may be that the gods determining our fate are our own minds working on our brain cells and through them on the world about us. This will eventually be found to be true, and the discovery of the law of release of the electronic vitality wrapped up in matter will be the greatest revelation of all time.

When we awake to the fact that every breath we draw is releasing this all-potent electronic energy and it is shaping our lives for good or ill, according to our faith, then we shall begin to search for the law that will guide us aright in the use of power.

People the world over were amazed and terrified when they read of the destruction wrought on the cities and people of Japan by two atomic bombs. But do we realize that millions of people are killed every year by atomic force? Doctors tell us that it is the toxin generated in our own bodies that kills us. What produces this destructive force? It must be our own minds, and the remedy must also be in a change in mind. Paul expressed this when he said, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind."

All persons who have dismissed the idea of miracle in the marvelous works of Jesus and His followers, have looked forward to a time when the law they used would be explained, but nearly all expected it to come through spiritual means. But now science has opened up a kingdom having all the possibilities of the kingdom of heaven taught by Jesus. However Jesus said this kingdom is within us and would be exercised constructively through our minds under divine law. The latest discovery of science shows that through the development of the atom a power will be cast right into our midst that will in its physical aspect make the earth equal to our wildest dreams of heaven. Broadcasting stations sending out on the ether light, heat, power, will be established the world over, and every householder will have receiving sets which he can turn on or off at will. The cost will be negligible. Lighter-than-air forms of building material will be discovered and our dwellings will float in the air and be transported from place to place like airplanes. Even the climate of the whole planet may be transformed, destructive forces no longer possible, and peace reign forever. Labor as we now have it will disappear, production will become so easy that a man will in a week raise enough food to last him a year. Everybody will produce abundantly. Everybody will have everything he wants, and no one will slave for wages. Art, science, religion, music, and the finer things of life will be for all the people and those who do not expand their minds to enjoy the finer things of life will be out of step with the times.

Our men of science have found the key that unlocks the door to the physical realm in the kingdom of the heavens, but the spiritual domains are yet to be found and their doors unlocked by the multitude.

There must be a change of mind by the people of the earth before the tremendous uplift to be wrought by atomic energy can become beneficial and permanent. Greed and selfishness will find a way to exploit it to boost their ambition unless they are taught the truth. We should therefore redouble our efforts to show man that the power that rules the world is within him. "Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world."

Chapter II
The Restorative Power of the Spirit

NOT ONLY our Bible but the scriptures of all the nations of the world testify to the existence of an invisible force moving men and nature in their various activities. Not all agree as to the character of this omnipresent force, universal Spirit, but it serves the purpose of being their god under whatever name it may appear. Different nations ostensibly believe in the same scriptures, but they have various concepts of the universal Spirit; some conceive it to be nature and others God. Robert Browning says, "What I call God . . . fools call Nature."

Our Bible plainly teaches that God implanted in man His perfect image and likeness, with executive ability to carry out all the creative plans of the Great Architect. When man arrives at a certain point in spiritual understanding it is his office to co-operate with the God principle in creation. Jesus had reached this point, and He said, "My Father worketh even until now, and I work."

It is possible for man to form states of consciousness that are out of harmony with the God principle, but these do not endure, and through experience man learns to adjust his thought to that of God. "I will be what I will to be" is basic in all creation and it proves itself in the face of human reason and logic. God is free to do as He wills, and He has implanted that same freedom in man. When we understand this ego-forming capacity of man and even of nature, we have the key that unlocks the many mysteries and contradictions that appear in every walk of life.

As the animating life of all things God is a unit, but as the mind that drives this life He is diverse. Every man is king in his own mental domain, and his subjects are his thoughts. When the king of Babylon called Daniel to interpret his dream of the image with the head of gold and feet of clay, the prophet prefaced his interpretation with these words, which contain in essence the kingly authority of every man:

"Thou, O king, art king of kings, unto whom the God of heaven hath given the kingdom, the power, and the strength, and the glory; and wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens hath he given into thy hand, and hath made thee to rule over them all: thou art the head of gold."

"Thou art the head of gold" is true of every man, but in his ignorance man thinks he is the feet of clay. This thought of his own inefficiency darkens his mentality, and when the Lord attempts to communicate with him in symbols he has to call upon external sources to explain them.

People in this atomic age civilization ask why God does not reveal Himself now as He did in Bible days. The fact is that God is talking to people everywhere, but they do not understand the message and brush it aside as an idle dream. We need to divest ourselves of the thought that Daniel and Joseph, in fact all the unusually wise men of the Bible, were especially inspired by God, that they were divinely appointed by the Lord to do His work. Everything points to their spiritual insight as the result of work on their part to that end. Daniel as a youth had been taught to worship Jehovah, the one and only God. He restrained the gross appetites of the flesh and thereby made himself receptive to Spirit. "But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the king's dainties, nor with the wine which he drank." He begged that he and his companion be allowed to eat herbs and drink water, which was granted; and the record says that at the end of even a ten-day test they were in better condition physically than all the youths that ate of the king's dainties, that God gave them knowledge and skill, and that Daniel had "understanding in all visions and dreams."

The body is the instrument of the mind, and the mind looks to the Spirit for its inspiration. A very little observation shows that the purer the mind the greater its capacity to receive and interpret the ideas imparted to it by the Spirit. It does not require a doctor's diagnosis to prove that alcohol confuses the mind and injures the body. The daily toll of automobile accidents proves that drivers with alcohol in their stomachs are trifling with death. Although Paul advises that we eat what is set before us, asking no questions, experience proves that the advice of Daniel leads to better health and clearer thinking. Paul is credited with a giant intellect, but when he advised Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach's sake, we know that he was not inspired by the Spirit of wisdom.

Not only the Scriptures that we look to for authority in our daily living but also the experience of ourselves and our neighbors proves that those who cultivate communion with the Father within become conscious of a guiding light, call it what you will.

Those who scoff at this and say that it is all the work of the imagination are deluding themselves and ignoring a source of instruction and progress that they need above all things. If this sense world were the only world we shall ever know, the attainment of its ambitions might be sufficient for a man of meager outlook and small capacity, but the majority of us see ourselves and the world about us in a process of transformation that will ultimate in conditions here on the earth far superior to those we have imagined for heaven.

"Great is the mystery of godliness," and still greater is the capacity for godliness. When Spirit responds to the seeking mind and begins to reveal the magnitude of that undiscovered country within us, we long for a new language with words describing glories beyond all human comparison. Even our so-called physical body reveals a radiant body (which Jesus referred to as sitting on the throne of His glory) that interlaces the trillions of cells of the organism and burns as brightly as an electric light. Jesus gave His apostles a glimpse of this radiant body when He was transformed before them. "And as he was praying, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became white and dazzling." Jesus was very advanced, and His radiant body was developed in larger degree than that of anyone in our race, but we all have this body, and its development is in proportion to our spiritual culture. In Jesus this body of light glowed "as he was praying." Jesus' body did not go down to corruption, but He, by the intensity of His spiritual devotion, restored every cell to its innate state of atomic light and power. When John was in the state of spiritual devotion Jesus appeared to him, "and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto burnished brass." Jesus lives today in that body of glorified electricity in a kingdom that interpenetrates the earth and its environment. He called it the kingdom of the heavens.

We do not have to look to the many experiences recorded in the Bible of the spiritually illumined to prove the existence of the spiritual supersubstance. People everywhere are discovering it, as they always have in every age and clime. Unless it is put under control of the Christ Mind it takes on psychic and "spooky" expressions, which distort the soul instead of unfolding it under divine law, and drive its victims into our psychopathic sanatoria. However, men will continue to pray, and prayer releases the innate glory of God-Mind, so we must be taught how to establish our identity with the Christ and through it to gain the mastery of the stored-up riches of the man invisible.

The metaphysical literature of our day is very rich with the experiences of those who have found through various channels the existence of the radiant body. One example is Angela Morgan's book "Behold the Angel!" Miss Morgan's writing in this book is a radical departure from her well-known poetical vein. She is specific and to the point in announcing her revelations. She says in the foreword:

This is a book about the radiant body, the living self of every human being; the immortal structure which is the real self even now in this moment of time. The author, through intense conviction and the validity of recent experience, writes in concrete terms of what to her is as real as flesh, bones, blood, and muscle. There is, behind this "veil of flesh," an actual flamelike structure invisible to our everyday, limited perception. When I say it is "radiant," I mean it literally. . . . It is vividly alive, glorious as the sunrise.

She tells of numerous instances in which she saw hands and feet and other parts of her body lighted or really transformed by the flame invisible.

This convincing confession of Miss Morgan prompts me to tell of my development of the radiant body, during half a century's experience. It began when I was mentally affirming statements of Truth. Just between my eyes, but above, I felt a "thrill" that lasted a few moments, then passed away. I found I could repeat this experience with affirmations. As time went on I could set up this "thrill" at other points in my body and finally it became a continuous current throughout my nervous system. I called it "the Spirit" and found that it was connected with a universal life force whose source was the Christ. As taught in the Bible, we have through wrong thinking and living lost contact with the parent life. Jesus Christ incarnated in the flesh and thereby introduced us by His Word into the original Father life. He said, "If a man keep my word, he shall never taste of death." I have believed that and affirmed His words until they have become organized in my body. Sometimes when I make this claim of Christ life in the body I am asked if I expect to live always in this flesh. My answer is that I realize that the flesh is being broken down every day and its cells transformed into energy and life, and a new body is being formed of a very superior quality. That new body in Christ will be my future habitation.

I have found that the kingdom of God is within man and that we are wasting our time and defeating the work of the Spirit if we look for it anywhere else.