Mark Yarnell’s Unpublished Fillmore

Talk 4

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The fourth and final probe into Charles Fillmore and some of the things that are probably unpublished about him and by him. The format tonight is going to be a little bit different. What I’ve found in this undertaking, in this research that I decided to do... Yes, thank you.

One of the things I have discovered is that people everywhere I go are very interested in what Fillmore believed and I get an awful lot of questions. I had a couple of Unity ministers that I talked to this morning, who were in from out of town. And they had heard by the grapevine that we were doing this class, Unpublished Fillmore. This one in particular, I’d spent a great deal of time in the archive room.

So we sat down and talked for almost an hour and all he just fired question after question after question. When I don’t know an answer to a question, I will not make one up. I just hope you’ll trust the fact that I’ll be as honest as possible. I try not to take things out of context. I try to stay with the general thought of the overall passage in the particular Fillmore talks that I’m talking about.

What I think we’ll do tonight, there are just a handful of things that I want to clear up for you regarding Fillmore. Some quotes that I’ve brought in, but rather than just reading quote after quote after quote tonight, what I’d like to do is I’d like to take the most significant questions that I receive from you, from other people who know that I’ve done a lot of reading of Fillmore and I’d like to answer those questions, because these are the questions that are brought up constantly about the Unity movement and about Charles Fillmore and several of you have given me some tonight.

Let’s begin with clearing up a few final ideas about Fillmore and what his belief system was. And then we’ll get right into the questions.

Did Charles Fillmore have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?

There’s no doubt in my mind that Charles Fillmore had “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” Now don’t hear me wrong, I’m not saying he had a personal relationship with our own and dwelling Christ that we know is within all people. He did, but he also had a personal relationship with the transfigured person, Jesus Christ, and went around teaching people this.

Now, a lot of people in Unity, aren’t aware of that, but it’s true. And he believed that it’s very important not only that you awaken to your own divinity and accept your own divinity, but that you see the divinity of the man.

Now in Unity, we’ve gotten away from that idea and we’ve moved more into the spiritual ramifications of the fact that God is everywhere and that Christ is everywhere. But for Fillmore, it was both. And I want to share a statement that he made in 1942.

We consider it a great honor for a man to have lived a hundred years. But one who has lived like this man from Asia, who is visiting this country 150 years is paged on our daily press. But supposing that I say to you that I know a man who has lived 1,932 years, what would you say? Still living, still growing strong. I know such a man, who is he? Jesus Christ. How do I know him? I have seen him, I have talked with him and I know that he is alive and I’m not the only one. All down the ages from time of Paul and the early disciples that saw him, they touched him, talked with him and I read not long ago where a prominent congregational minister said that he saw Jesus Christ walk down the aisle one Sunday morning and take a seat in his congregation. He was sure of it. And I don’t doubt that.

I think it does us whether we want to do well on that or not, I think it does feel more justice to recognize that he did believe in this personal relationship with the man, Jesus Christ. That might not be popular in circles in all the Unity churches around the country. But that’s what Fillmore taught. And that the purpose of this whole class is to talk about Fillmore believed.

Was Charles Fillmore a utopian?

Now, Fillmore had an exciting view of society and what it was going to become. Fillmore took a look at society and he didn’t like the idea. I’m just going to say this and I’m Frank about it. He did not like the idea of private enterprise and capitalism. He loved democracy. But what Fillmore saw was a society in which all people shared equally. In fact, he said in 1937, “This may sound utopian to the present race, consciousness and economic exchange systems, but technocracy which makes scientific estimates of the producing and consumption activities of the country tells us that we’re just beginning to bring forth in little trickling streams what will eventually be great rivers of supply of every conceivable nature.

When the government takes charge of public utilities and especially our transportation systems, the most remote parts of the country will be flooded with products, which the producers will beg you to take freely because in their love for humanity, they will be happy in seeing you happy.

They will be so insistent in their giving that they will agree to take some of your products, if you will take theirs. You see, this will totally reverse the present system of exchange of values. But it is logical under the regime of the spiritually minded man and has been tested under certain spiritual experiments.”

Fillmore believed in a coming utopia. Fillmore believed that there would be a point in time as did Pierre de Chardan, when we would move from where we are right now into a consciousness of love and giving. And that would rule the universe. Fillmore believe believed in the kingdom of God on earth. That was his primary teaching. And he believed that in some very magnificent way, he played a vital role in that. He did have a personal relationship, as I said earlier with Jesus, but one of the things that he used all the time, one of the words he used and you’ve heard me say this before, but I want to reiterate it, was the word, Lord.

He thought the word Lord was very powerful. He even said, “Every knee is to bow down to these principles, laid down by the Lord, Jesus Christ.” We’ve gotten away from that some and that might shock some people who are hard line New Thoughters, but that’s just what Fillmore believed.

Did Charles Fillmore believe that the Holy Spirit was female?

Now, I have run across a couple of things that I have found to be very, very relevant and very, very important for all of us to understand. And this is something I have not seen in any of his writings. If it’s there, I apologize because I just overlooked it and I certainly haven’t read everything the man wrote. But I sure didn’t know he believed this.

Charles Fillmore believed that the Holy Spirit was 100% female. Isn’t that interesting? He believed that this Holy Spirit, which was feminine, was going to be the responsible agent for transforming the world as we know it. But he said it has to be feminine. It’s got to be. That’s the only way it can be done. I found this statement that he made back in the ‘30s, about the Holy Spirit that I really enjoyed:

This quickening of the soul by the Holy Spirit has continued ever since and in every age, thousands have testified to her ministry. But giving God and Christ all the credit without thought of her, the Holy Spirit.

Have any of you seen that written anywhere, you who have been in Unity long? I had never seen that anywhere. He also did some research that I have looked into to make sure he was accurate and he is. He did some research into the idea of almighty God to see if there wasn’t some concept of femininity and he found it. Now, I had never seen it written anywhere, but here’s the research and Scofield was accurate. He quotes Scofield. He says:

“Although there are many splendid feminine characters in the Bible. They are so submerged by the quantity and boastful quality of the masculine that their creative importance is seldom mentioned. Even where the feminine companion of Jehovah.” Now, listen to this. “The feminine companion of Jehovah,” El Shaddai is mentioned. “Her identity is covered up by a totally inaccurate translation, Almighty.”

Scofield and accepted authority in Hebrew and Greek literature says that wherever in the Bible, the word Almighty occurs, it should read El Shaddai, which means the “breasted one” or wife or divine feminine. She, it was, who promised preeminence of various kinds to Abraham following his faith. So Jesus Christ pointed her out as the only teacher of the doctrine he gave to the human family.

She is the transformer of the physical to the spiritual in the natural world. This was typified by the presence and instructions of Jesus’ mother to the servants at the changing of the water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana.

In other words, Scofield and Fillmore, both did some research, primarily Scofield and then Fillmore followed up on it and discovered that the word Almighty, wherever you see that in the Bible where it’s attached to God does not mean Almighty in English 20th century terminology as we understand it. It means El Shaddai, which was the divine feminine, girlfriend if you will, of Jehovah. You see. Now, that’s fascinating.

This led Fillmore further to conclude that in fact, it was the... He just put two and two together. You’ve got in the Trinity, as May Roland talks about the Trinity and Charles Fillmore, you’ve got Father, you’ve got Son and you’ve got Holy Spirit. Now in Unity, we also recognize that there’s mind, idea and expression there’s spirit, soul, and body, there are a lot of different words for the Trinity.

But in the most traditional sense, the Trinity is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Fillmore believed that the Father was God, the principle. Even though he didn’t believe in a personage, but the Father was God as principle, that the Son was Jesus Christ who came to teach these principles. But that the Holy Spirit was the feminine aspect of creation and that only the Holy Spirit could bring about the world changes that are needed. So I think you’ll have to agree. Fillmore was way ahead of his time in terms of recognizing the significance of the feminine characteristics in human beings.

He was advocating not only should women occupy important positions in every part of government and in every phase of life and social activity, but that in fact, it was going to be the feminine quality that ushered in the kingdom of God. That is more progressive than any other religious group in the Western thought I’ve ever run into. Frankly, I didn’t know that until this week, I just found it. I just found it in the Archivek. I have never seen it in any place else, but I thought it was really a magnificent concept.

Did Charles Fillmore drink alcohol?

Occasionally, people ask about alcohol. Fillmore weathered the temperance era and Fillmore was around when it was the 18th Amendment was in effect. I’ve heard rumors or I had heard rumors when I got out to Unity village that Fillmore used to take a nip now and then and I heard that he used to drink wine, whatever. And I always wondered about that. Well, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. I believe he might have, but the conversion, he changed.

Now, I’m not standing up here and saying it’s a sin to drink or anything like that because I do. What I’m saying is Fillmore, believe this about alcohol. Let me go back a minute. That was an absurd statement, I made. That it wouldn’t be a sin if I do it also because I’m a minister. Boy, that’s just obnoxious. Erase that. But I’m going to leave it on the tape to show people how fallible I am.

Alcohol, alcohol sets of us a fire. The American Indians call it Firewater. That is a very good name. We call it booze. All those names are very expressive. When you drink into you get boozy and you get befuddled. You can’t control yourself. Is that elevating? Do spiritually-minded people want to give up that kind of stimulant?

Now, he went a step further and linked alcohol and meat eating. He was very opinionated. He said that meat-eating causes alcohol problems. And here’s the way he justified it.

“We go a step further than the university that stresses the evils of drinking. We stress the evils of eating and drinking, both. We say that meat eaters form a kind of fever in their stomachs, and they want something to cool it off. So they take strong drink.”

Well, I don’t believe that, but that’s what he thought and that’s what he put out there. Fillmore was very definitely against alcohol or anything else that goes into our system that has been proven harmful.

What did Charles Fillmore think about the resurrection of the body?

I found a cute comment that he made about the resurrection and I’m winding down on quotes. I want to read something from magazine I found, “But on resurrection,” so many people believe in the drum beat and the trumpet and people are going to come up out of their graves. Well, Fillmore said,

“Others teach that we don’t get our resurrected bodies until the day of judgment, that we sleep in our graves and on that last day, when Gabriel sounds the drum,” [and I think that’s inaccurate. It wasn’t Gabriel blowing the trumpet? Yeah. Well, Fillmore said this.] “When Gabriel sounds the drum, we are all to grab our bodies and come into them right here in the earth.

I saw once some estimates of how much room, just the bones of those who have died since history would occupy on this earth and this mathematician said that if the bones of all the people that had died in the last 1,000 years were piled up on earth, it would make a crust 18 feet thick.” You’d have a problem picking out your own bones now, wouldn’t you?

Fillmore wasn’t real big on the earthly resurrection idea. In fact, I want to talk to you a little bit later about death.

Has Unity changed the world?

I want to share something that some of you may not have seen this. This is from his own personal stationary that he sent out in Christmas of 1935. You might want to take a look at that. Could you grab that? It’s kind of an interesting picture.

Harold Whaley gave me that. There were a bunch of pictures in the library. Now, there was an article written in the American magazine and this article was about Fillmore and was about the Unity movement. And they were taking an honest objective look at the Unity movement. There was something that I read that I thought was particularly fascinating that I want to read to you tonight. This is out of the American Magazine. I think it was written in early ‘40s.

“The largest single church today is Christ Church Unity in Los Angeles, which is adored with a seven foot statue of a smiling Christ and others are everywhere in the world. Secret Unity services were held in many places in occupied Europe during the war.” [And I love this.] “A GI in Africa wrote home that he heard Tom Toms beating in the jungle one night. Upon investigating, found a native tribe, which had assembled not to hold voodoo rites, but to chant prosperity affirmations fresh from Kansas City Service.”

Isn’t that terrific? GI over in Africa and comes up on a camp meeting and they’re beating drums and shouting affirmations. By then, Unity had certainly made it into the world.

What are Charles Fillmore’s views on the devil or Satan?

Well, I have now and we’re going to do this a little bit different because it’s a little bit shorter a class tonight than we’ve had in the past. I hope to cover as much or more material than we have, but in a shorter time, rather than taking a break real quick, we’ll go ahead and go through this if that’s okay with you all.

First, I want to get to some of the questions and have all of you given me your questions that you wanted...? Okay. Hang on just a second. Let me get those. Okay. These first of all are question that you have asked and I want to respond to and then I want to get to the general questions that I find to be the most interesting and most people curious about.

Question number one, what are Charles Fillmore’s views on the devil or Satan? What is Unity’s belief about the devil? Do they believe he exists as the Bible teaches? Okay, it’s important. Let me answer the first one first. No, Charles Fillmore did not believe in the devil or Satan. He believed in it figuratively to the extent that he believed we create our own problems and we label those problems with the word adversary or whatever.

But I want to give you some facts and I want to give you facts right out of interpreters Bible dictionary, which is comprised of Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterians, Jews, Catholics from all over the world who are considered to be the greatest scholars in Bible history. Here’s what they came up with from all different races. They discovered approximately 300 years before Jesus was born, they were having problems in Judaism and one of the problems was they were in a real melting pot. They had Babylonian mythology and Mesopotamian religions and all these different world religions and they were threatening the Jews because the Jews had a covenant at this time.

If you hear anything, that doesn’t sound right, you’re an authority on Judaism so stop me. I’m serious. What happened was the rabbis and the leaders, the Jewish faith got together and decided, “We’ve got to do something because we’ve had this covenant all along, but we’re still slaves, we’re still oppressed. What are we going to do?”

And so they borrowed from Babylonian mythology. The idea of an adversary. Judaism did not have a devil or a Satan until about 350 years before Jesus. They borrowed it out of Babylonian mythology and implanted it in their works. Now to prove this for yourself, read Chronicles and read Samuel. One was written before the other and they are the same accounts of different things that took place.

Now, in one of the books, you’ll discover a passage where it said, “And the anger of the Lord was kindled against David. And he therefore sent David to number all the tribes of Israel.” That’s a census. And the Jews at that time did not like census. It was a rotten thing.

In look of 2 Chronicles, what you find is that the same story, but it says, “The anger of the devil was kindled against David. And he sent the tribes to be numbered,” et cetera. Now, it’s the same account and the same historical time when this took place. The question is, how come in the first one, it says, “The anger of the Lord was kindled”? And in the second one, it says, “The anger of Satan was kindled”?

The reason is they fouled up. It was the Lord and there was no such thing as an adversary. And later on, when the book was written, after they came up and borrowed this idea from babylonian mythology, they forgot to go back and erase the original story, which was found in Samuel. All scholars pretty much with the exception of your hardcore fundamentalists who will not budge from the letter of the word of the Bible, all scholars agree it is a myth.

Not just New Thought people, not just Unity. I heard the other day on the Phil Donahue Show, Billy Graham was being interviewed. Now, I can remember a time when Billy Graham stood up and talked about hell, fire and damnation and burning for eternity if you committed certain unpardonable sins.

A lady in the audience asked Billy Graham, “What do you really believe about hell fire?” Billy Graham said, “I’ve prayed about this idea and I’ve thought about this idea for years and years.” And he said, “God has finally revealed to me that hell fire is not literal. What that means is separation from God. There is no physical place of torture.” Now, that’s Billy Graham. That’s Billy Graham. This is something that Emilie Cady said in the early part of this century and everybody screamed, “Blasphemy!”

Well, now the religious leaders are all awakening to this. It’s a good question. The answer is, in my opinion as in the opinion of Fillmore and other religious leaders in the Unity movement, there is no such thing as two powers. There’s one power. Now, Jesus demonstrated that we can take that power and any way we want to. And a good illustration to that is when he withed the fig tree. He took the power of God and withed the figs and said, “You’re never going to produce again.”

So he took the power and used it in a destructive way at one point in his ministry. There’s a real severe tendency on the part of many people that want to put the blame on the devil. It’s the easiest way out. But it doesn’t work. It’s a joke really.

If this shocks any of you, I’m giving you facts. I’m not giving you opinions. I’m giving you the facts of the scholars who’ve researched it.

Did he have any profound insight of his own?

The second question, Charles Fillmore used many philosophies, Emerson, for example. He indeed put these together well. Did he have any profound insight of his own? That’s a really good question. The answer is, yeah, he had a lot of profound insights. But a lot of times we think he got them from other sources and he did.

Now, I want to say this right up front. It is my honest opinion that most to the stuff that Fillmore taught came from other people. If you do your research, you’ll find that. But much of the stuff he taught came from his own prayer time and meditation. But I want to talk to you about some of the people that influenced him so you can read him if you’d like to. Emmanuel Swedenborg was a great influence. In fact, Swedenborg’s theory of correspondence has greatly influenced Charles Fillmore’s adoption of the 12 powers of man.

There is a man that I want to turn you onto. This man’s name is Roger W. Babson. Now, it is very curious to me that I can wander all over Unity village and not find one person in a high up position who knows anything about Roger Babson. I did my own personal inventory and I couldn’t find people.

I talked to people who’ve been in Unity village for the last 40 years that knew Fillmore well that have no idea who this guy is. And yet, in my opinion, Roger Babson influenced Charles Fillmore more than any other author he read. Now, what leads me to conclude this is in all virtually all of his series of talks, he always says something like, “Well, and Babson tells us that such and such.” Or, “Babson tells...”

You can’t go through his talks in any great number without running into Babson many times. Who’s Babson? By the way, I checked out three of his books in the library this week and discovered that they had none been checked out even one time by anybody in Unity all the time that they’ve been. Babson was a brilliant businessman who has started four colleges in the United States, who wrote over 40 books, who took business as a real exciting endeavor, but put God first and made God his source and taught the fundamental principles of prosperity before Catherine Ponder was an idea in her Father’s mind.

Babson is a brilliant writer. Now this book is called Jesus as a Scientist. It’s just a little book and it’s an address that he gave to Harvard Business School. And there were so many requests for it that he had it printed and it’s available in the Unity library.

I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that nobody had heard of him and that nobody read him, but I started reading this guy and it’s remarkable. You can see so much Fillmore coming out of this man, more than any other author.

But he [Fillmore] was well read, he had a lot of original ideas. The 12 powers originated with him and the way that he explained them. The Atom Smashing Power of the Human Being, the use of the atom in a religious sense, originated with Fillmore as near, as I can tell.

Now, several others had alluded to it, but he really went into it. He has a lot of original ideas, too numerous to talk about. But none of them emerged as a doctrine, as a creed, as a dogma because he wouldn’t stand for that. But he was influenced a great deal by Emerson, Thoreau, Swedenborg, Mary Baker Eddy, Emma Curtis Hopkins, all those thinkers at that time.

Did Charles Fillmore's leg grow?

Question here. I have heard that Charles Fillmore’s leg actually grew about six inches. Have you anything on this? Yes, it did. Scientific fact. Okay. It grew about, I didn’t ever hear of six, but I heard between four and five and the same doctors had the reports to prove it. So it actually did grow.

What was Fillmore’s interpretation of the star at the birth of Christ?

Next question? “What was Fillmore’s interpretation of the star at the birth of Christ? Since this is a classic example of the ancient astrological belief that a star appeared at the birth of an avatar.” The only thing that I found that Fillmore said in his talks about the star was the fact that it is symbolizing the rise and consciousness of man and that the wise men, which represent mankind come bearing the gifts because they recognize this risen star. He only dealt with it metaphysically. He never said anything about the astrological implications in any thing I’ve read, but I stand corrected if he did.

There were so many things in the Bible that Fillmore talked about, but only metaphysically. He didn’t say, “Well, this is true.” Or, “That’s true.” There is one thing that I want to clear up. He did believe in the Virgin birth or not the Virgin birth, the immaculate conception. He did believe that there was no intercourse there between the... As far as the star, all he said was that represents symbolically a rising consciousness. And that’s all I’ve seen.

Give us a clear in depth definition of psychic side trips

“Give us a clear in depth definition of psychic side trips and how we can relate alpha, et cetera, to psychic side trips according to Mr. Fillmore.” Fillmore gave three criteria in one of his talks for judging if something is good for you spiritually, or if it’s not, and here is three criteria:

Number one, is it something that Jesus taught in any way? Number two, does it get you closer to God by doing it? Number three, is it an inner activity or an outer activity? Because if it’s an outer activity, you’re separating the powers. For example, alpha thinking, you’re dealing with going within, as Jesus said, shutting the door and listening to that still small voice. That is actually an activity of prayer in a scientific way. On the other hand, astrology is saying that the power is out there in the stars to make you something that you are or make you something that you want to become or determines how you live, et cetera.

So Fillmore would say, “Alpha thinking is great, astrology isn’t.” Those are the three tests he used. I’m not judging the test and I’m not saying you use them, but there’s a good possibility if you’re entering... If you can ask the question now, does this get me closer to God? And the answer is no, it’s just a mental mind game, what’s the point? Or did Jesus teach this? He didn’t. Well, then wasn’t he the master Wayshower? Is it an outer activity or inner activity? If you can answer those three questions positively, then it’s probably not a psychic, if you will, side trip and that’s the criteria he used. Does that answer? Pretty much?

Was Mr. Fillmore cremated?

The final question is, was Mr. Fillmore cremated? And I don’t know the answer to that.

Have you got any other personal things about him that are kind of humorous and funny?

[Question from the audience: ][inaudible 00:28:35].

Yeah, the question is "Have you got any other personal things about him that are kind of humorous and funny?" A bunch of them. I don’t have him written down. It seems like you really can’t read any of his talks without getting tickled, because he’s always got something that he’s fooling around with.

What I’d recommend you all consider doing is, and really think this over. You’ve all got some free time. The archive room is open to the public. You can go in there anytime you want and go through his personal belongings, his letters, Myrtle’s healing letters to her friends and if you really want to have an interest evening or afternoon someday, other than Wednesday, they’re closed Wednesday at noon, just go out to the library and have Irene show you through the archive room and you can do anything you want out there.

She’ll show you where his talks are and they’re all handwritten. And then below them, they’re all typed. Get out the type ones, because it took me six months to learn how to read his handwriting. It’s really wild. It takes a long time to get where you can read it, but go out there and go through the archive room. Satisfy your own curiosity.

He was always doing something cute. He was always doing something funny. I’ve talked with John Hunt [holds] about Charles, a great deal. John knew him well. He’s taught me a lot about him and he came up with a lot of humorous things.

If there is no heaven, where did Jesus go?

One of the things that he believed was he never... Okay. He couldn’t get straight in his own mind what exactly happened to Jesus in terms of his atoms changing or what happened. Now, he put out a lot of different ideas. But he never gives a specific, “This is what I believe.”

Yes he does. But it’s 10 different things. You read him one year and he says this and the next year, he says that. But I am convinced to this, he believed that there was no such thing as heaven or hell in terms of going to another dimension. He believed that everything had to be worked out right here. In fact, he said that people who don’t get it worked out here that die and transcend this physical universe go into a prolonged sleep. And when they awaken, they discover that they’re in the thought realm without a body or vehicle and they have to start building a new vehicle and it’s very upsetting to people.

His theory was we keep coming back here and I’m not saying, I believe this. I’m telling you what he believed. We keep coming back here until we so spiritualize ourselves that we have done as the Bible tells us, we have overcome the last enemy, which is death.

Now Jesus taught this. You’ve got to overcome the last enemy. Fillmore took that very literally, and that’s why he said he’d never die.

Did he really believe that he would live forever?

[Question from the Jane in audience: ] [inaudible 00:31:47].

Quickly, if possible. First of all, people ask me a lot, “Did he really believe that he would live forever because he made that comment?” And my honest opinion is that he did. I really believe he believed that right up the very end. But there’s another possibility. And he was so smart, I wouldn’t put this past him. He knew and he taught that whenever a miracle took place or something happened, don’t ever tell anybody else because he had learned that from Jesus.

Jesus, like we said, couldn’t get any healings done at home. A prophet is without a honor to his own people. Couldn’t get anything done. Well, Fillmore understood that. One of the things Fillmore taught was keep your dreams, keep your plans, keep your prosperity thinking. But don’t go tell people because you’ll be subjected to race consciousness and that will cause you to drop down in your dreams.

It’s interesting to me, that Fillmore would go about saying something that he knew was going to get trampled on by race consciousness. He may have thought by admitting it to everybody or suggesting that he was never going to die, that in fact he would die. But that in so doing, he would also elevate just a little bit more race consciousness by living a long life. That’s a possibility, but I don’t think so.

I think the man believed he could spiritualize his body and live forever. He taught that we should.

How old was Fillmore when he began his religious pursuits?

Another question I get frequently is, “How old was Fillmore when he began his religious pursuits?” He got started in his late 20s and early 30s, but primarily his early 30s after, after Myrtle had her healing.

How important are the 12 powers?

How important are the 12 powers? I get this an awful lot. And do you really believe that they’re accurate? I believe that the 12 powers are good to the extent that they benefit you. And I think Fillmore would say the same thing. It’s all the law of Mind Action. If you read the 12 powers and believe in these centers in your body and see how that they can benefit you in life, then they’re very good and very accurate. The 12th powers are like any other set of principles. They were created by a man through a hit and miss process.

I read Fillmore’s little handbook that he carried around in 1889, where he made notes to himself for future sermons and future healing meetings. In his own handwriting on about the fifth page, he began to toy around with the idea of the 12 powers. And he wrote 10 of the powers down, made up 10 powers. Three of them aren’t even the same as what are today accepted.

And he wrote, “10 is completion. After 10, we don’t need anymore.” Then you flip over about four or five pages. And again, and only this time, a few days later, obviously, or maybe later that day after thinking about it, he writes, “No, no. 12 is a complete number.” So he sets about to create a couple of more powers.

Now, that doesn’t mean that they’re not accurate. That doesn’t mean that they’re not revelations from God. But when people ask me how important they are, I say, “If they work for you and if you have faith in them and they help you in spiritual growth, use them. They’re effective.”

Did Charles Fillmore believe in fairies?

Another question I get quite frequently is, “Did Charles Fillmore believe in fairies? And did he believe in angels?”

He believed in fairies literally and angels figuratively. He believed that angels were thoughts, divine ideas, but he believed that fairies were very real entities. In fact, at one point in one of his talks, he’s said, “I can’t believe any person with common sense would not realize that little fairies take care of the prettier things in life.” He said, “If you can look at a rose and tell me that there aren’t cute little fairies tending to it, I think you’re irrational.”

Now that hadn’t been published and that sounds like Findhorn back in the ‘20s, but that’s what he said and that’s evidently what he believed. Another interesting thing about Fillmore is he was very, very sincere in his belief systems. Even people who criticized him, people who said, “My goodness, he was sitting there talking to me and said, ‘Can’t you see Jesus standing over there?’” And the people say, “Well, I couldn’t see Jesus.” But they all say, “I believe he could, because he was that kind of man.”

Did Fillmore believe in evil?

Did Fillmore believe in evil? The answer to that question is yes, but I want to qualify it. Because Emilie Cady came along later and said there’s no such thing as evil. And then the absolute, that’s probably accurate. But Fillmore believed in evil. He even said, “There is evil in the world. And it’s because of man.” Now, we are being spiritually naive in my opinion, if we stand in a mud puddle in a firm divine order without taking action. I think that spiritual naivety, and that’s not really what Fillmore taught. And I think we can get almost too absolute.

Now, there’ll be a time in our spiritual growth and I really believe this, when we will be able to see nothing but good and there will be nothing but good. But right now, there is this appearance of evil. Now Fillmore didn’t think it was a separate power. Don’t hear me. I’m not advocating duality. But Fillmore said it was a prostituted use of the positive power. And there’s been no better thing to come along and demonstrate this to the people of the world more as recently and demonstrated so effectively as the Star Wars saga.

Because the whole purpose of this Star War saga is to demonstrate that there’s only one force, but that we can manipulate that force in ways that we should. Now, that doesn’t make the force evil. It makes our interpretation of how we should live evil. There’s no evil power. But Fillmore did believe that there was the appearance of evil.

Did Fillmore believe in social drinking?

Did Fillmore believe in social drinking? I get that a lot. We’ve already heard that he believes it rots your gut and burns your stomach and it’s miserable. So we know that he didn’t believe in that.

Did Fillmore advocate celibacy?

Here’s a very frequent one. Did Fillmore advocate celibacy? The answer to that is yes. As he got older, he advocated it. And one of the main people, I see somebody elbowing somebody, one of the main people in Unity, one of the delightful souls in Unity is Vera Tait. Vera Tait spoke to our class one day and she said, “There were an awful lot of funny people running around Unity farm for a while because they were beginning to believe that Fillmore was accurate.” And she said, “Now Papa Charlie did advocate celibacy, but you must remember, he was up there in his 60s and 70s.” And she said, “It was really kind of bad because these poor little ministerial students were running around trying to practice what Papa Charlie was teaching. It was driving them nuts.” So Fillmore did believe and that’s the truth, he did believe in celibacy and he did teach it.

What were his hobbies and outside interests?

People asked me a lot, "What were his hobbies and outside interests?" What else did he do? Well, one of the things he did was he went to the theater a great deal. He went to symphony all the time. If ever there was a lecture come to town, whether it was about Madam Montessori and her new teaching principles or a musical lecture or a speaker in any kind of mysticism, any time there was a door open where there was something that could enhance his intelligence, Charles Fillmore was there.

The reason I know that is because in most of his talks, he says something about a lecture he just heard, or somebody talked about this or a symphony that he’d been to. And he’d met this interesting man who had said the following. He was always out doing things and he was a doer. So in addition to being an avid reader and he meditated every day quite a bit, he had hobbies and interests.

We can pretty well assume that one of his hobbies and this is an assumption, could have been fishing because one of his objectives was to build some pretty lakes out at Unity village and stock them with fish. And I have to assume that he might have joy fishing, but I don’t know. I haven’t seen that anywhere.

Did Fillmore believe in a literal heaven after death?

Three more. Did Fillmore believe in a literal heaven after death? No. We’ve already talked about that. The idea of prolonged sleep and then reoccupation of another body.

Is Unity today still teaching what Fillmore taught?

Is Unity today still teaching what Fillmore taught? That’s a loaded question because we have to ask ourselves as Edwene did earlier when we were talking about this, what form of Unity? You’ve got churches all over the world. You’ve got Unity village, AUC.

So let’s just take Unity as a whole. Let’s imagine that we could look at Unity from a grandiose level and see Unity as one movement. My answer is yes, pretty much Unity is today teaching the things that Charles Fillmore taught. I believe that. I see it in UICE. You’ve got the village where they’re licensing teachers. I see it in ministerial school.

I think they’re doing a pretty good job of teaching what Fillmore taught. I really do. Now, I think they’ve got editorial policies that will keep them from sharing things that we’ve talked about. And the editorial policies are designed to protect Unity school and Unity village and AUC obviously, because as we all know, certain ideas put in the wrong hands can really cause some problems.

I hope that throughout the course of these four weeks, you’ve understood that my motivation was totally for the fun of it. Just totally for fun to explore the things that he believed in.

Does the Unity movement lack the vision that Fillmore had?

The final question that I hear, “Does the Unity movement lack the vision that Fillmore had?” And the answer to that in my opinion is most definitely. I believe that the Unity movement somewhere along the line, and I won’t point in any fingers at any people, because I don’t believe it’s any one person or any small group of people’s fault. I just think that there was a man who was caught on fire with new thought and with Jesus and with Christianity and that fire has never blazed like it did when he was alive.

At 90 years old, when Charles Fillmore, 90 years old, he started a school in California and when he first mentioned that he was going to open a school, he had over a thousand people enroll in that school just to teach positive Christianity. That’s when the guy was 90 years old. Now, he had some visions. From time to time, Unity village has had some visions. One of the visions that I can share with you is this. It’s called The Great Vision. And it was put out in 1964 at Unity village on the occasion of their 75th anniversary.

Now, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with the fact that at this vision didn’t take place, but I have to ask myself why. Here was Fillmore speaking to thousands of people all over the world. Here was a movement that was blossoming all over the world while he was alive. They had magnificent plans. He said he was going to preach the truth to every living creature if he could. He talked about creating Unity Church Universal and he called it the Army of the Lord. And he said, when enough Christian metaphysicians bind together and unleashed the truths that we know are true, then Jesus will return and rule as king of the earth.

He was so turned on by these principles and Unity village caught the glimpse. In 1964, they predicted, they said that their dream was by 1975 to have an elementary school at Unity village. They went even further. They said that in 1980, that there would be Unity college, a fully accredited liberal arts college. They even hired an architect to do a rendering.

What you’ll notice here is the tower and then building after building after building of educational facilities, to train people in liberal arts about New Thought and Unity. This came out in 1964 and was handed out to hundreds and thousands of people as the Unity vision. What happened? What happened? I don’t know.

I’m sure not going to point any fingers at anybody? Because like I said earlier, I don’t believe it’s anybody’s fault. Any one person or any small group. I sure wouldn’t point the finger at Unity village, because they’ve done everything in their power to maintain a good working organization. You can’t point the finger at the Association of Unity Churches, because they’re doing their best.

What we’ve got to do is point the finger in a mirror. What we’ve got to do is say, “If somebody doesn’t catch this fire that Fillmore had or rather if a group of people don’t, will Unity be in evidence 250 or three years from now?” I believe it will. But I believe that we have seen in the lives of Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, what can happen when people really practice what they preach.

It is folly, for me as a Unity minister or Jack Boland or Eric Butterworth or any other human being to believe that we alone are capable of creating what Fillmore believed should become reality. It’s very easy for me to stay centered and realize that it’s not my goal to be another Charles Fillmore.

What my objective is to get other ministers on the grassroots level as fired up as the Fillmores were because what we’ve learned because of the Fillmores is when a human being makes his transition, then his work simply becomes a shadow, an extension of what he had done. And if any one of us, whether it’s Edwene, or me or Eric, if any, one of us caught this same glimpse and same enthusiasm Fillmore had upon our transition, much of the momentum would be lost.

So the whole purpose of Unpublished Fillmore has been twofold. One, to share cute quotes out of his talks that haven’t been published. But secondly, to create a set of tapes that answer specific questions and point to the fact that we had a dynamic couple in the Fillmores and that it is important if we’re going to fulfill their dream, that all of us catch the fire of Truth. That all of us get turned on and all of us become willing to be ministers just like they were.

If we can do that, I think the end result will be exactly what he advocated, the kingdom of God on earth. I think Unity can become a vehicle through which that kingdom can come about. If all of us catch the fire rather than just one of us. That’s about all I’ve got to say. Are there any questions?

Was the vision lost when Fillmore passed on?

Yeah. Pauline. He was 94 and it was in 1948. When he was 90 is when he left Unity village and went out to California. No, of course not. He’s not there. See, that’s what I mean. There were so many things that within 10 years after his transition fizzled. Many, many things. Thanks for the question. It was when did Fillmore pass on? Yeah.

What was it that Vera Dawson Tait said?

The question was, “What did Vera Dawson Tait say?” The idea of celibacy? The idea of abstention from sex, from sexual intercourse with partner. He did teach that. He did believe in that. He was married, that’s correct, but he did believe that and he did teach it.

I think probably what it happened. Now, this is a guess. Believe me, it is a large guess, but I think what happened is Fillmore ran into a set of principles as he got a little bit older and this set of principles was Eastern in its origin. Today, there are many books that have been written about the idea of taking the energy that is wrapped up in the activity of intercourse and transferring that energy into another mode, transforming that energy at a higher level.

There are all kinds of books you can find out today about that very subject. I think it was a combination of the fact that getting a little older and his sexual activities were kind of slowing down, but then he probably also picked up a book somewhere that got him turned on to transmuting.

He probably thought that this was part of the activity of regeneration, that this was an animal act that he did no longer need to procreate. And so therefore why not divert the energy? Now, that is a guess, please. Just a guess. Are there any other questions?

Well, I thank you all for coming. It’s been a lot of fun.