Charles Fillmore said, “The Grand Man, Christ, has twelve powers, represented in the history of Jesus by the twelve apostles. So each one of us has twelve powers to make manifest, to bring out and use in the attainment of his ideals.” (Keep A True Lent, 113) Many years ago a beginning Unity teacher wanted to schedule her first class. When I asked her what class she wanted to teach she told me, “Twelve Powers.” My first thought was, “My God! Even I don’t understand them enough to teach them yet.” It was more than twenty years later before I taught the Twelve Powers for the first time. This material can be one of the most difficult concepts in Unity to understand.

To me it seems easiest to think of the twelve powers as white light which is passed through a prism. The prism refracts the light into its various wavelengths which are visible as the different colors of the rainbow. The “Grand Man” or Christ within you expresses through twelve faculties of mind just as the pure white light is visible as any combination of its component colors. As we become more spiritually developed, we become more aware of these faculties of mind and their function and consciously call them into action.

The Disciples and the Twelve Powers

Charles Fillmore saw the human body as having places, he called them nerve centers, through which these faculties arc expressed. In the ideal, we might appear as a perfect sphere—all the faculties fully and equally developed.

Figure A represents the twelve powers perfectly and equally developed. This is the ideal. However, in practice we may be more or less developed in the use of some of the faculties as represented by figure B. For example, one person may have developed a great expression of the faculty of strength. This individual may be able to endure great challenges and difficulties but not be able to let go of things, negative experiences, or even outgrown beliefs because the faculty of elimination is not as well developed. It could prove useful that the ability to endure is so developed because of the inability to let go. When we achieve full awareness of the Christ as the true Self, we express all of the faculties to the fullest. Each of us is in the process of learning and evolving. No one outside ourselves chooses the lessons for us; we choose. Every lesson or growth experience we face brings us a little closer to the full expression of our spiritual selves.

Since we are using our faculties all the time, it is important to begin to develop these mind faculties more fully and to also consciously use them to solve the daily challenges and questions which we all face. Because the Christmas candlelighdng service is a celebration and recognition of the twelve powers and their expression as the twelve faculties within us under the direction of the Christ, it is a perfect time to begin not only to look at the twelve powers in greater depth, but also to develop and perfect their expression within ourselves. The disciples recognized and followed Jesus; this represents our awakening to spiritual awareness and beginning to give all our faculties fuller expression. Before this awakening, our faculties of mind are mostly controlled by personal consciousness (the ego) and its narrow field of interest. As we bring the faculties under the direction of the Christ, they work to serve the increase of spiritual mastery and become our tools to achieve health, wholeness, prosperity, confidence, and peace of mind.

... the perfect man must have his twelve great powers developed, operating in perfect tune with Divine Mind, in order to bring forth the image and likeness man.
—Cora and Charles Fillmore, Teach Us To Pray, 59.

Let us think of man as a king having twelve sons or princes, who execute his will. Each of these princes has a throne, or brain and nerve center, from which he issues his orders and distributes his goods.

Each of the twelve faculties has a center and a definite place of expression in the body. Physiology has designated these faculty locations as brain and nerve centers. Spiritual perception reveals them to be aggregations of ideas, thoughts, and words.
—Charles Fillmore, Christian Healing, 74.