What Charles Fillmore Said About Sense Consciousness and the Kingdom of God
§11 We believe that, through indulgence in sense consciousness, men fell into the belief in the reality of matter and material conditions. We believe that the “kingdom of God” can be attained, here and now, by overcoming the world, the flesh, and the devil, through Jesus Christ.
Meditation in the Silence
1. Choose a time and a place where you will be alone and undisturbed for at least 20 minutes.
2. Assume a comfortable position so that there is no feeling of tension or strain in your body.
3. If sitting, place both feet flat upon the floor. Put your hands comfortably in your lap with either both palms up to receive blessings, or with the left palm up and the right down to receive and give a blessing.
4. Close your eyes, be still, and relax.
5. Focus your attention upon your head and begin to relax the muscles in your scalp, face, and neck. Say softly or silently:
In the name of Jesus Christ relax, relax, relax. Peace, be still; wait upon the Lord only.
6. When you are ready, move your attention to trunk, arms and legs and repeat:
In the name of Jesus Christ relax, relax, relax. Peace, be still; wait upon the Lord only.
7. Now bring your attention to the throat and the power center where the creative Word is forming to give life, substance, and intelligence to your declared word of faith. Affirm sofdy and then several times silently:
I am no longer in bondage to the world and the impressions from the world; I AM free to think, to speak, and to live according to my highest understanding in Christ.
8. Rest in the silence letting the affirmation reveal its Truth to you.
9. When you are ready, return your awareness first to your physical body, and then to your surroundings as you re-enter your world.
The human senses are wonderful; they bring to the awareness great works of art, wonderful music, the taste of chocolate, the knowledge that the food in the oven was done several minutes ago, or that the earth moved and your house didn’t. However, the senses do not tell you the nature of Reality or how things are in the light of Truth. The senses report where you are in time and space but not the true nature of time and space. The senses are good and necessary but when we see lack or feel separate, we are experiencing error consciousness.
In the Correspondence School Annotations to Lessons in Truth it says:
Error consciousness is a negative state of mind built up in the human consciousness by wrong use of the divine ideas that are our inheritance. Man’s belief in what is untrue ... is associated with the expression “fall of man,” which originated with the allegory in the 3rd chapter of Genesis... The “fall of man” is not just something that took place in the far distant past. A fall takes place in our human consciousness (soul) every time we lower our thinking and feeling from the divine standard of Truth. This fallen or error state of consciousness can never be permanent, for we are essentially spiritual beings... The so-called fall is not experienced by our divine nature but only by our evolving consciousness.
—Lessons in Truth, Lesson 3, Annotation 5.
The good news is that error thinking is temporary; it changes the moment that we see with insight instead of with the physical eyes. The fullness of life, love, substance, and intelligence is here now. To experience the good we must look beyond the senses, turn from the impressions of the world, and open our minds and hearts to the inner voice of inspiration. The limitations of human experience and human ego (the devil) are overcome by awakening to the Christ nature just as Jesus did so that we face life with a Christ-centered awareness. The Correspondence School lessons called the devil “free will exercised in the wrong direction.” (Series 2, lesson 5, Annotation 16)
In contrast, Jesus Christ represents free will exercised in the right direction.
“The world” is a state of consciousness...that believes in the reality of...“worldly pleasures” and “human sorrows,’ ... believes in reality ... of mixed experiences ... in traditions, customs, convention, habits of thought ... that limit and bind mankind ... [to] wrong concepts about God and man .... However, let us remember that THE WORLD that God created is good, but man’s limited error view or consciousness forms “the world” for him.
—Series 2, Lesson 5, Annotation 10.
The place of man’s overcoming is in his own individual consciousness, “the wilderness of his own mind,” the soul, the conscious, thinking phase of mind, and the subconscious, feeling phase of mind, ... Overcoming is a coming up and over into Christ consciousness, up and over all false beliefs, negative thoughts, feelings, concepts, notions, impulses, emotions, words, actions, reactions, and finally over conditions, situations, circumstances, experiences, and things.
—Series 2, Lesson 5, Annotation 14.
There may be found in the traditions of nearly all peoples, reference to a time when man was in a state of consciousness very much superior to that which he now manifests. In the Hebrew scriptures that superior plane is symbolically described as the Edenic state, and the departure from that place in the divine economy is called the “fall of man.” Of late years we have been taught ... that there never was a “fall of man;” that man never fell; that his creation was spiritual, and that he is just as spiritual today as he ever was, or ever will be. Of man as an idea in Divine Mind, this is true; .... Man cannot thwart the divine plan, but by virtue of his own creative or formative power he can turn his part of the work in that plan out of its true course and impede the consummation of it... So we have to admit that the “fall of man” is in a measure true.
—Charles Fillmore, Talks on Truth, 161-162.
The heavenly kingdom to which Jesus so often referred is the unlimited spiritual consciousness where mind and body are equal in all activities. When we come into the full consciousness of "the heavens,” the body will respond instantly to every thought; then time, space, and all the limitations of matter will disappear.
—Charles Fillmore, Atom-Smashing Power of Mind, 169.