Chapter 11
SPIRITUALIZING THE INTELLECT
Charles Fillmore
Keep a
True Lent
WE HAVE NO independent
mind; there is only universal Mind, but
we have consciousness in that mind and
we have control over that
consciousness. We have control over our
own thoughts, and our thoughts make up
our consciousness. By analyzing
ourselves we find that we unconsciously
separate ourselves into different
personalities. We should do this work
consciously. We should enter into the
understanding that the I AM power is
given to us in consciousness, and then
join or unify that consciousness with
the great Christ Mind.
Thus the central idea in
this word affirmation that we are
seeking to understand and to
incorporate into our consciousness is
the Christ Mind. As spiritual
metaphysicians we find that the Christ
Mind is the Mind of Spirit. In the
consciousness of man it functions as
two states of consciousness: one in the
flesh, the other in Spirit. But Spirit
is the source of all.
In daily worship it is
well to impress on the sensitive mind
that it is unified with Divine Mind
through Christ or the same mind that
was in Christ Jesus.
With this understanding
as the basic principle of our thought,
and realizing the power of thought to
impress itself on the sensitive plate
of man's mind, this prayer is
invaluable:
I separate myself in
consciousness from the mind of the
flesh, that I may enter into the mind
that was in Christ Jesus.
First we disentangle our
thoughts from the flesh and lift them
up to Spirit. We hold them steady in
spiritual consciousness until they
begin to get hold of Spirit essence,
Spirit power, Spirit love. Everything
that we see in the manifest world comes
from this one Spirit-mind; so it is
well to hold this affirmation until the
most sacred ethers respond to our
realization:
I separate myself in
consciousness from the mind of the
flesh, that I may enter into the mind
that was in Christ Jesus.
In connection with the
value of prayer and realization we call
to mind the experience of Jacob and
Esau in receiving the blessing of their
father Isaac.
It was customary to give
the first-born the prior blessing, and
this blessing of the first-born
belonged to Esau. But Jacob through
connivance with his mother Rebekah, got
the blessing, and of course it was by
subterfuge. The procedure was
dishonest. Esau was wroth against his
brother Jacob for taking precedence in
this case, and threatened his life. The
mother advised Jacob to flee to the
country of her brother Laban, and Jacob
immediately set out on his journey. He
was, however, in a wilderness of
thought.
As metaphysical
Christians we take this Scripture to be
a spiritual history of man as well as a
history of outer events. We try to read
it according to the meaning. Spiritual
things must be spiritually discerned.
The Bible is a spiritual book. We
arrive at a greater understanding and
enhance our interest in these two
different characters, Jacob and Esau,
when we look on them as representative
not only of individuals but of the race
as a whole.
If we study the
characters Jacob and Esau, we find that
they represent dominant ideas in man,
ideas that pertain to his very being.
They are of vital interest to us. As we
read out of the law we find that
Esau--a hunter and a lover of the
things of appetite--represents the
flesh, the body. A man of a little
different turn of mind, one who loved
home and the quiet, spiritual things of
life, Jacob represents the mind, the
intellectual man.
Of course in the process
of evolution the natural man comes
first. Then the spiritual man begins to
unfold in us. But here we find that the
spiritual man, or rather the
intellectual man illumined by Spirit,
gets the blessing. The Israelites set
great store by this blessing. Rightly
understood, blessing is a great source
of inspiration. It lays a firm
foundation in the mind and it brings
out the good. A curse emphasizes evil;
a blessing emphasizes only good. Thus
we come into an understanding of the
importance to the soul's evolution of
the development of these two
characters, Jacob and Esau.
As we look at the
blessing that Isaac gave Jacob and Esau
(for he did bless Esau after he had
blessed Jacob, giving Esau the blessing
that would bring out his character), we
discover that he was governed by law.
The blessing he gave Jacob belonged to
the mind and not to the body; in fact,
it belonged to the part of the race
mind concerned with service, the part
that has to do with the exercise of
authority.
In this blessing there
is a calling forth of the inherent
faculties of the mind that enter into
the exercise of authority: "Let peoples
serve thee." The mind dominates the
body. "Let . . . nations bow down to
thee." We see nations being dictated to
by some great mind, some great
dictator.
"Let thy mother's
sons bow down to thee:
Cursed be every
one that curseth thee,
And blessed be
every one that blesseth
thee."
Here we can see the
power of ideas to bless or to curse. We
see that he who uses his mind to curse
gets the curse in return, while the
mind that blesses receives blessings in
return.
If we study our mind we
find that they are radiating energy
constantly and that whatever we send
out comes back. We see this in evidence
everywhere, not only individually but
collectively.
To Esau Isaac
said,
"Behold, of the
fatness of the earth shall be thy
dwelling,
And of the dew of
heaven from above;
And by the sword
shalt thou live, and thou shalt
serve thy brother."
Here in these symbols we
have the body man or man of the flesh.
"The fatness of the earth shall be thy
dwelling": man lives very close to the
earth. "And by thy sword shalt thou
live": he is the man of flesh that the
man of the mind sends forth to carry
out his warring ideas. Intellectual man
is the general or the governor or the
dictator that sends the man of the
flesh to do his bidding.
"And it shall come
to pass, when thou shalt break
loose,
That thou shalt
shake his yoke from off thy
neck."
In the evolution of man,
the body (Esau) finally comes into its
own. The Isaac blessing is carried out
in the world today. We find that the
working classes that have been under
the yoke of the intellect--the
intellectual man--now are beginning to
assert themselves. They are breaking
loose from the yoke of bondage of the
intellect, the mind; the flesh is
beginning to assert itself. We are
giving more attention to the flesh
every day. People are awaking to the
fact that the body is an important part
of man, and so we see everywhere the
fulfillment of this blessing. If we
study ourselves, we find a tendency
toward the working out of the two
minds. The tendency of the intellect is
to dominate, to have its way and ignore
the body. But the body is beginning to
break loose from this bondage and
demand its own. It is saying to us:
"Why, I am a very important part of
this world. You can't leave me and go
off to some faraway place. I am an
important part of you." So with Esau
the flesh begins to break loose from
this dominance of the mind that has
separated it from the good things of
the heavenly estate. We raise it up,
and it begins to become a power in the
world.
We must soon come to a
place in our social and economic
evolution where the earth and all that
it has will be recognized in a larger
way, and become an integral part of our
life. This is very clearly taught in
this story of the mind and the heart.
Isaac (the I AM) recognized this unity
and brought it into expression in his
blessings of his two sons. We have
these two sons, the mind and the body.
It is the mind that connects us with
Principle. Jacob made this connection,
but Esau had as yet failed to come to
the place where he could recognize that
he was a son of God. Jacob took that
blessing from him. He became the sole
representative when he was really the
secondary one, but he forged ahead in
the race, and today we have the
intellect dominating almost everything.
It is evident that the Jacob faculty
(the illumined intellect) has assumed
its prerogative in the world today. The
illumined intellect rules. God is
omnipresent, God is intelligence, just
as much in the mind as anywhere. The
blessing of the I AM consciousness
brings out the intelligence that has
the greatest ruling power. But we find
also that we must bless not only the
body but everything connected with
it.
As we study the Bible we
find that after he broke away from the
material consciousness Jacob had many
experiences. He went into another
country, another state of
consciousness, in which he was awakened
spiritually to a still higher plane. In
the 16th verse of the 28th chapter of
Genesis we read: "And Jacob awakened
out of his sleep, and he said, Surely
Jehovah is in this place; and I knew it
not." He was in the sleeping state of
consciousness. He had a dream and saw a
ladder extending from the earth up to
the heavens and angels or messengers of
God ascending and descending. Jehovah
was at the top of this ladder and told
him that he was to be the father of a
great nation and that a certain
blessing was to be poured out upon him.
When Jacob awoke he saw that God was in
that place; that the place was the very
"house of God," the dwelling place of
God. In other words, here was evidence
of omnipresence.
Each individual must
have his first awakening to the truth
that God is everywhere and that,
regardless of surroundings, God is
omnipresent Spirit-mind. In this
instance Jacob was surrounded by rocky
hills, and he piled up stones and made
an altar to Jehovah right there in the
desert. The great lesson for us is to
know that God is everywhere evenly
present, no matter how material the
surroundings may seem to be. To the
unregenerate man there is usually a
great awakening in an experience of
this kind.
When man begins to see
beneath the surface and realize that
God is functioning with him constantly,
he seeks to make a union with infinite
Mind, omnipresent God-Mind. In the
Scripture we read: "And Jacob vowed a
vow, saying, If God will be with me,
and will keep me in this way that I go,
and will give me bread to eat, and
raiment to put on, so that I come again
to my father's house in peace, and
Jehovah will be my God, then this
stone, which I have set up for a
pillar, shall be God's house: and of
all that thou shalt give me I will
surely give the tenth unto
thee."
Here was a covenant or
an agreement made by a man in his first
great illumination on the subject of
the one omnipresent substance. He may
have realized before that God was the
great I AM, the Jehovah leading him,
but he had not realized that this
earthly substance, the rocks about him,
were really representative; that they
are a part, a living part, of the God
substance; that the I AM man in his
illumination has a part in that
substance; that it is his substance
through infinite Mind. The covenant of
Jacob to give one tenth of all his
increase was the real meaning of what
in modern times we call tithing, making
God a partner in all our
finances.
Jacob became a great
financier of the ancient world, and
through the illumination that he got
from Jehovah he knew how to take
advantage of every
opportunity.
We do not take Jacob as
an example of what man should do in his
finances, for he was something of a
trickster. He represents the world in
its trickery and cunning in finances.
But apparently Jehovah, the one Mind,
was with him. (Sometimes there are
contradictions that we cannot
understand.) When we know that we are
the directive power as regards all that
belongs to us, we may get on
financially; however, in the end we
have to account to infinite
Mind.
But with it all, Jacob
loved Jehovah and shared his wealth
with the Lord. He proved the law of
tithing, that tithing is one of the
foundation principles of financial
increase. Man can become a great
possessor of the substance of this
world if he follows certain rules of
tithing. Jacob gives us the key, which
is the recognition that God is part of
all substance, and that if man wants to
handle substance wisely and well, if he
wants to handle it for great financial
success, he should do what Jacob did:
take God into partnership with
him.
There is an omnipresent
financial Mind, and if man begins to
deal with this financial Mind he will
have a partner that has all resources
at His command.
If you want to become a
rich man, if you want to be possessed
of every good thing in the world, take
God as your partner, incorporate His
mind into your mind, in your daily
giving. Give of your substance with the
thought that it is God's money you are
handling. Realize that it is His tenth
that you are giving for His glory. With
this thought in your mind you will
begin to attract new spiritual
resources, and things will begin to
open up in your affairs. You will know
that infinite Mind is with you. This is
what Jacob realized, and he became a
greater financier. I would say to
everyone who wishes to demonstrate
prosperity: take God into partnership
with you and you will demonstrate
abundance.
