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LECTURE by MR. CHARLES FILLMORE
at UNITY AUDITORIUM
913 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri
HEALING MEETING, WEDNESDAY, DEC. 18, 1912.
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The statement, “All that God is I AM”, seems a little far-fetched in the light of man’s present achievement, and I imagine I can hear some of you saying, “Why not talk about matters that we can use in every-day life? Why get off into the ethereal heights, and make us make our heads swim with those propositions that we can’t yet comprehend?”
Now, the fact is that these seemingly high statements are applicable to the simplest affair that comes into your life. It is said that the same law rounds a drop of water or a planet. The same mathematical proposition enters into the simple, every-day use of numbers as enters into the measurement of the distance between the stars. It is simply an enlargement, an expansion of the law, and the one who can realise to what extent the law can be used, has a better appreciation of the law.
The Astronomer is awed at the greatness of mathematics. He appreciates what the science of Numbers is. Now, we find that, if we can realize what God is, and what man is in his highest, it gives us a breadth of thought, and really enlarges our capacity to handle the simple, every-day affairs of Life.
Then, it is not far-fetched; it isn’t a stretch of Truth, to say that “All that God is, I am.” We don’t know what is involved in that simple proposition, “I Am”. To him who has not analyzed the meaning of “I Am”, and realized some of its interior depths, loses and fails when he says, “I Am” upon personality. His viewpoint is very limited; but, if you can think about I Am, study the meaning of the word, -its occult side is Jehovah. Jehovah means “I AM”; and Jehovah is another name for Jahveh, and Jahveh means “Masculine-Feminine” - Adam and Eve. It is the name of the creative Lord God. Another of its meanings is, ”I will be what I will be”.
Then, every time you use I Am, you have back of you that wonderful potentiality, and if you would sit by yourself every day and think about I Am—what does it mean, I Am? Why it means Identity. That is all. I Am means to one who hasn’t deeply expressed his own interior I AM thought. But what is involved in Identity? Everything that is potential in Principle.
The figure “1” has within it everything that is in the great Science of Mathematics. When you think about the multitude of numbers, the expression of one atom, its infinite relations, and then think about its being simply an aggregation of one, one, one, and all those 1’s are just like the Principle.
Now, as you think about this, you can easily understand what is meant when we say that I Am is all that is involved in God; and when you really think about that, and think about it, there is an enlargement of consciousness.
Those Hindu Adepts tell us that they have practiced this introversion, or identifying the I Am with the Universal, until they lose all sense of the outer world, when they sit in the silence and repeat, “Om, Om, Om”. Now, they understand—Om to them means the omnipresent One, the Om-Nicient One, the Om-Nipotent One; but they intone it, and vibrate those words until the very air palpitates to a new rate of thought.
Now, every thought that you have, and every word that you speak sends out a vibration; but, ordinarily, we don’t have any consciousness of that; we don’t know that that is true. We know that certain mechanical instruments, electrical instruments, will produce vibrations. We know that when we speak words, there is a vibratory force. We can feel it in our thoughts when we sing. We know there are people who can take up a glass tumbler and sing into it. They strike the key-note until the atoms composing the glass lose the coherency, and it will be shattered.
All those things are of common occurrence; but we don’t realize that every thought back of the vibrations of the voice also has its vibration, and those vibrations are constantly going forth; but if you knew now, that you had the power, through a unity of your I Am with the Great Force that runs the Universe, by which you could throw that Universal force into your thought, why, don’t you see, that there would begin a new creation for you? Instead of being subject to the chance thought, you would begin to form your thought; you would begin to make conditions, and these would enlarge until finally you would see that you had control of every thought that went out from your mind. You would find that you could, through your thinking, change the character of your voice, if necessary; you could change your environment; you could add to or take from the natural force of your body, through thinking and speaking these words, at a certain, on a certain tone.
All the forces of your nature gather about I Am Identity. The trouble is that we don’t realize these interior or so-called occult forces. They just run their own way. We have an idea that we are thrown into the world by chance, and the best thing we can do is just float along. But it is given to us, through the I Am, to be Masters of the situation; to stand forth in the glory of God, and be victor, or to take the opposite, and float with the tide and be subject to all the storms, and all the waves of that element represented by water.
Now, the question with the thinking, understanding man or woman is, “What am I going to do? Is it profitable for me to be under the race thought, or should I be under the God thought? And How shall I change my thought?” Why, it is a very simple proposition to change your thought. All that is necessary is that you begin to think about yourself as one with, or having enwrapped in your being all that the Principle has. When you know that this Principle of Life is expressing itself in Life through you, and that Life is an unlimited spiritual essence, it is very easy to see that all that is necessary for that expression is to enlarge its capacity. The more you enlarge your capacity, the greater the expression. Then, if I want more Life, I simply identify myself with the thought of unlimited Life. I think Life, and I speak Life; and I think Life until I get in a consciousness. It is sometimes, to the one who practices concentration upon Life, as if the whole air was vibrating, and you feel the thrill of the very planet itself. Then you express Life, or Life begins its expression in you, the result of identifying the I Am with its Origin, its Natural Element.
So, you can take every one of the attributes of being, and realizing that “I am the fullness of that Principle”, you can express it in its fullness. We think that men accidentally become great geniuses; that in some way they are born to genius, or that circumstances, environment, make them what they are. These things sometimes meet the one who has expressed largely along a certain line - meets an event and a conjunction sets them into action; but that potentiality was there all the time, which might have blazed forth without that conjunction, without the circumstance. It is within you to make circumstances. That is what Napoleon says. People have claimed that Napoleon was the result of circumstances; that he happened to be the one to carry out a great need. But he said of circumstances, “Circumstances - why, I make circumstances”.
That is “I Am”. I Am makes circumstances. I Am makes conditions; I Am decrees a thing and it comes to pass. “Thou shalt decree a thing, and it shall be established unto you”.
Now, if you decree in your own personal consciousness, you don’t get very much, and your decree doesn’t reach very far; but as you think about I Am, and concentrate upon I Am; as you realize that your I Am is all that God is, and tap the great reservoir of Being, within you, and all around you, all at once there is an outflow. As Emerson says, you become the inlet and the outlet of God, and then, when you make a decree; when you see that your word shall produce certain results, it comes to pass, because it isn’t you that do the work, it is the Universal.
Now, that is the difference between a metaphysician who has understanding, and one who is using the law ignorantly. There are people who catch on to this law, and begin making their declarations, without this understanding, and the results are not what they would always like. They decree in ignorance; they use the law amiss, through a selfish idea.
Now, the law must be used in its fullness, in its unlimited capacity, giving everybody perfect freedom. Our corporations have discovered that it isn’t good policy to close out a competitor. They thought a few years ago that it was a fine thing to be strong enough and big enough to choke off all competition; and they did. If you have read the papers, you know what the result is. The law is calling them to account, and the chief officers who were so successful in doing away with competition and building up great corporations, now there are a great many of them going to the penitentiary, because they transgressed the law. There is a universal law that governs all these things, and that law is operative not only in the affairs of men, hut in the affairs of the individual.
Now, as you get the consciousness of the great universal freedom, that the world is large enough for us all, and that there is no necessity of pulling down your neighbor in order that you may succeed, then you are on the right track; then you see that the success of your neighbor is parallel with your success. You want him to succeed; and with his success, if you all understand the law, there will be an increase of supply. Why, supposing that we all understood this law of the increasing power of the I Am, in the Life consciousness - would there be anyone talking about weakness? Certainly not! Why, we would get together and we would hold thoughts of Life, in the name of the Great Christ Mind, until the very earth itself would begin to bloom with a new Life Consciousness. We don’t realize that our thought, the dominant thought of the race, affects the earth, and the Life Forces working in the earth, but it does, because we are in possession of the land - our thought permeates the whole country.
Every farmer that owns a little piece of ground, works that ground not only with his hands, but with his thought. He puts his thought in it. If you will read up on modern agriculture, you know that is true. They are making new kinds of plants; they are increasing the different plants that they already have, until they are growing larger and stronger and better in every way. They are cutting the seeds out of fruits; they are doing a thousand things—through what? Why, a finer culture; out back of it is thought. Men are putting their thought into every atom, every cell of this earth, and in that way they possess the land.
We read in the Scripture that the Lord told Abraham to go forth and possess the land, and increase and multiply; that his progeny should be like the sands of the sea; that is, cover the whole earth. And that is exactly what man is doing; and it is man’s thought that takes possession of the earth, that holds it just what it is. Desert places are because men have taken away the thought, the fertilising thought, the thought of moisture, and starved out certain portions of the earth, because we have lived around the planet, all of us. There has been one race after another, apparently, but they have all been the one. It is the one race, let us remember that.
As we appreciate these things, and think about them, there comes to us a fuller realization of the I Am, the capacity of man. Now, the closest substance to you is your body, and, still a little closer than that is the idea of body. You know that everything is backed up by an idea. You can’t see your ideal body, only with your mind; but your mind feels of it, and whatever you think about your body is first formed in this ideal body, or mind-body, and then that, in due process, makes what we call the visible. So, in reaping this visible first form of substance, you go through your mind, you go through your ideal body, and whatever form you sow, or whatever thought you sow in that ideal body, comes into expression in the visible body; but, to the mind, the ideal body is visible, and you will find in your dreams, that that ideal body is constantly changing, and it changes very rapidly when you come into the consciousness that “all that God is, I am”.
I was reading a letter to-day from a lady, and she said she had just a few nights ago a terrible dream, and she said, “I have been scared stiff”. She said this was the dream: She dreamed first she saw a funeral, and than a lady rushed in and exclaimed, “Your little boy, your little seven year old boy has fallen down the stairs and knocked all his brains out”. She went on to say all the dream, and wanted us to interpret it for her.
I saw at once it was a good dream. It wasn’t a bad dream at all. She had been going through a change of consciousness, studying our literature - student of the Correspondence School - and then the dream had come when the old conditions were dying, don’t you see?
Now, seven represents, is the number of the planet; twelve is the number of the planet combined with the spiritual; and the seven year old boy that fell downstairs and knocked out his brains represented that seven consciousness, the planetary or the material consciousness putting down and destroying itself - knocked out its brains. Brains are the highest type of materiality; and people who want things shown to them in the material, live in their brains. They don’t have any consciousness in mind, and, of course, the funeral that she saw represented the burying of that high state of consciousness. So I wrote her that that was a glorious dream.
When I have a dream of somebody dying, I look within and find what condition is dying and passing away out of me. Whenever you dream about anybody dying, you look within and find it is a good dream. It is only a symbol of people, representing some idea. When I dream that a man is dying - he is awfully afraid he is going to lose his property, I see at once that financial-fear-man is afraid. So, you can sum up those dreams you have, and you will find all are in some way a lesson to you, a result of your expansion of your I Am, - you are beginning to see things as God sees them.
Now, isn’t that a good statement, that “All God is, I am”, if it illuminates your mind, and you look into the so-called invisible world? Why, we ought to be so familiar with the thought world, that we could read thoughts, and immediately know every thought; know them, not only as symbols - that is only a limited view - but we would know the symbol before it was pictured. There are the three planes - the outer, or the physical, and next there are the symbols, the mental; but back of that are the ideas. Those are Spirit; they are absolute. When you get into that realm, you will be more than the Psychic. A Psychic is one who has to see the symbol, as the Lord has to give him dreams, so that is a limitation. We should get bevond that limitation, and we should know other means. You don’t have to study books; you don’t have to prepare yourself in any way, when you can get into the Absolute Spirit. And you can get into the Absolute Spirit by affirming, “All that God is, I am”. I don’t know of any way that you can prepare yourself so rapidly, get in swift touch with the I Am, as to say to yourself, “All that God is, I am”.
Let us make that our affirmation for a little time, see if we can’t wheel into line this Great Spirit. I read just the other day that where Jesus Christ said, “When two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”, that it meant, when two or three vibrate together in my name, that I am in the midst of them. It gave me a new understanding of that new law we are using, where we set up a new vibration, set up a new consciousness.
Now, let us take that thought and hold to it until we enter into the new consciousncss, the new consciousness of the Spirit; get out of the lower world, get out of the physical, and get into the Spirit.
Now, you don’t have to get away to do that, but say right here, “All that God is, I am”.
Now, let us hold that until we make a unity with the Great Universal. Some people get a little tired and nervous, because, when they hold to a thought a little while, they don’t get at once into the harmony state, and if they are fearful, all at once, when they strike that inner next place, called the mental plane, they get a little more nervous than on the outer; but hold on to it until you get into that, and get into the next plane, and that is Spirit. Keep holding to the proposition, hold to the thought, “All that the Lord is, I am”, and speak it quietly, and realize it, and speak it quietly and realize it, and get hold again, and pretty soon you will find, probably, these interior nerve centers waking up; you will find yourself expanding and growing mentally and spiritually, and even physically.
Now everybody take that affirmation, “All that God is, I am” - emphasize “I Am”.
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