Chapter 4
MAN, THE
INLET AND OUTLET OF DIVINE
MIND
Charles Fillmore
Prosperity
THE POSSESSIONS of the
Father are not in stocks and bonds but
in the divine possibilities implanted
in the mind and soul of every man.
Through the mind of man ideas are
brought into being. Through the soul of
man God's wealth of love finds its
expression.
It is well said that the
mind is the crucible in which the ideal
is transmuted into the real. This
process of transformation is the
spiritual chemistry we must learn
before we are ready to work
intelligently in the great laboratory
of the Father's substance. There is no
lack of material there to form what we
will, and we can all draw on it as a
resource according to our purpose.
Wealth of consciousness will express
itself in wealth of
manifestation.
One who knows Principle
has a certain inner security given him
by the understanding of God-Mind. Our
affirmations are for the purpose of
establishing in our consciousness a
broad understanding of the principles
on which all life and existence depend.
Our religion is based on a science in
which ideas are related to Principle
and to other ideas in a great universal
Mind that works under mental laws. It
is not a new religion nor a religious
fad but points out the real and the
true in any religion. If you know
Principle, you are able to know at once
whether a religion is founded on facts
or has a basis of man-made
ideas.
In order to demonstrate
Principle we must keep establishing
ourselves in certain statements of the
law. The more often you present to your
mind a proposition that is logical and
true the stronger becomes that inner
feeling of security to you. The mind of
man is built on Truth and the clearer
your understanding of Truth is the more
substantial your mind becomes. There is
a definite and intimate relation
between what we call Truth and this
universal substance of Being. When the
one Mind is called into action in your
mind by your thinking about it, it lays
hold of the substance by the law of
attraction or sympathy of thought. Thus
the more you know about God the more
successful you will be in handling your
body and all your affairs. The more you
know about God the healthier you will
be, and of course the healthier you are
the happier, more beautiful, and better
you will be in every way. If you know
how to take hold of the universal
substance and mold it to your uses, you
will be prosperous. Mind substance
enters into every little detail of your
daily life whether you realize the
Truth or not. However, to establish
yourself in a certain security in the
possession and use of universal life,
love, intelligence, and substance, you
must get a consciousness of it by first
mentally seeing the Truth.
All true action is
governed by law. Nothing just happens.
There are no miracles. There is no such
thing as luck. Nothing comes by chance.
All happenings are the result of cause
and can be explained under the law of
cause and effect. This is a teaching
that appeals to the innate logic of our
mind, yet we sometimes feel like
doubting it when we see things happen
that have no apparent cause. These
happenings that seem miraculous are
controlled by laws that we have not yet
learned and result from causes that we
have not been able to understand. Man
does not demonstrate according to the
law but according to his knowledge of
the law, and that is why we must seek
to learn more of it. God is law and God
is changeless. If we would bring forth
the perfect creation, we must conform
to law and unfold in our mind, body,
and affairs as a flower unfolds by the
principle of innate life, intelligence,
and substance.
The United States
Congress establishes laws that rule the
acts of all American citizens. Those
who keep the laws are rewarded by the
protection of the law. Congress does
not see to it that men obey the laws.
That is left to the executive
department of the government. The same
thing is true of the universal law. God
has ordained the law but does not
compel us to follow it. We have free
will, and the manner of our doing is
left entirely to us. When we know the
law and work with it, we are rewarded
by its protection and use it to our
good. If we break the universal law, we
suffer limitations, just as a convicted
lawbreaker is limited to a cell or
prison. The Holy Spirit is the
executive official through whom Divine
Mind enforces its laws.
You can see from this
consideration that God has bestowed the
power of Divine Mind on every man. You
are using your organism, body, mind,
and soul, to carry out a law that God
established as a guide for all
creation. If you righteously fulfill
this mission, you cannot fail to get
the righteous results. If you fail to
live in accordance with the law--well,
that is your affair. God cannot help it
if you are not following the law and by
it demonstrating health, happiness,
prosperity, and all good. Blackstone
said that law is a rule of action. So
with God's law: if you follow the rules
of action, you will demonstrate Truth.
You will have all that God has prepared
for you from the foundation of the
world.
What are the rules of
the law? First, God is good and all His
creations are good. When you get that
firmly fixed in your mind, you are
bound to demonstrate good and nothing
but good can come into your world. If
you let in the thought that there is
such a thing as evil and that you are
as liable to evil as to good, then you
may have conditions that conform to
your idea of evil. But remember, evil
and evil conditions are not recognized
by Divine Mind. If you have thought of
evil as a reality or as having any
power over you, change your thought at
once and begin to build up good brain
cells that never heard about anything
but good. Pray thus: I am a child of
the absolute good. God is good, and I
am good. Everything that comes into my
life is good, and I am going to have
only the good. Establish this
consciousness and only the good will be
attracted to you and your life will be
a perpetual joy. I cannot tell you why
this is true but I know that it is and
that you can prove it for yourself to
your satisfaction.
If you will start right
now with the idea of universal and
eternal goodness uppermost in your
mind, talk only about the good, and see
with the mind's eye everything and
everybody as good, then you will soon
be demonstrating all kinds of good.
Good thoughts will become a habit, and
good will manifest itself to you. You
will see it everywhere. And people will
be saying of you, "I know that that man
is good and true. I have confidence in
him. He makes me feel the innate
goodness of all men." That is the way
in which the one Mind expresses itself
through man. It is the law. Those who
live in accordance with the law will
get the desired results. Those who fail
to do so will get the opposite
results.
The law also applies to
our demonstrations of prosperity. We
cannot be very happy if we are poor,
and nobody needs to be poor. It is a
sin to be poor. You may ask whether
Jesus cited any example of poverty's
being a sin? Yes. You will find it in
the story of the prodigal son. That is
often used as a text to preach to moral
sinners, but a close study of it shows
that Jesus was teaching the sin of lack
and how to gain plenty. It is a
wonderful prosperity lesson.
The prodigal son took
his inheritance and went into a far
country, where he spent it in riotous
living and came to want. When he
returned to his father's house he was
not accused of moral shortcoming, as we
should expect. Instead the father said,
"Bring forth quickly the best robe and
put it on him." That was a lesson in
good apparel. It is a sin to wear poor
clothes. This may seem to some to be
rather a sordid way of looking at the
teaching of Jesus, but we must be
honest. We must interpret it as He gave
it, not as we think it ought to
be.
The next act of the
father was to put a gold ring on the
prodigal's finger, another evidence of
prosperity. The Father's desire for us
is unlimited good, not merely the means
of a meager existence. The ring
symbolizes the unlimited, that to which
there is no end. It also represents
omnipresence and omnipotence in the
manifest world. When the father gave
that ring to the son, he gave him the
key to all life activity. It was the
symbol of his being a son and heir to
all that the father had. "All that is
mine is thine." The Father gives us all
that He has and is, omnipotence,
omniscience, all love, and all
substance when we return to the
consciousness of His house of
plenty.
"Put ... shoes on his
feet" was the father's next command to
the servants. Feet represent that part
of our understanding that comes into
contact with earthly conditions. In the
head or "upper room" we have the
understanding that contacts spiritual
conditions, but when we read in
Scripture anything about the feet, we
may know that it refers to our
understanding of things of the material
world.
The next thing the
father did for his returned son was to
proclaim a feast for him. That is not
the way we treat moral sinners. We
decree punishment for them; we send
them to jail. But the Father gives a
feast to those who come to Him for
supply. He does not dole out only a
necessary ration but serves the "fatted
calf," universal substance and life in
its fullness and richness.
The parable is a great
lesson on prosperity, for it shows us
that people who are dissipating their
substance in sense ways are sinners and
eventually fall into a consciousness of
lack. It also proves that they may
become lawful and prosperous again by
returning to the Father-Mind. When
there are so many lessons in the Bible
for moral delinquents, there is no need
to twist the meaning of this parable to
that purpose. It is so plainly a lesson
on the cause of lack and want. Jesus
expressly states that the youth wasted
his substance in a "far country," a
place where the divine law of plenty
was not realized. There is a very close
relation between riotous living and
want. Persons who waste their substance
in sensation come to want in both
physical and financial ways. If we
would make the right use of the divine
substance and the divine law, we must
come back to the consciousness of the
Father and conserve our body substance.
Then health and prosperity will become
naturally manifest. If we are not
resourceful or secure in our use of the
one divine substance, we are not secure
in anything. Substance is a very
important thing in our world, in fact
the foundation of it. Therefore we
should be secure in our understanding
of it and use it according to God's
law.
Then let us enter into
the very Truth of Being and observe the
divine law. Let us realize that our
Father is always here and that we are
in a "far country" only when we forget
His presence. He is constantly giving
us just what we will acknowledge and
accept under His law. We can take our
inheritance and divorce ourselves in
consciousness from the Father, but we
shall suffer the results, for then we
shall not do things in divine wisdom
and divine order, and there will be a
"famine" in that land. Let us rather
seek the divine wisdom to know how to
handle our substance and the law of
prosperity will be revealed to us. To
come into this realization, declare
with faith and all assurance: The
all-providing Mind is my resource, and
I am secure in my
prosperity.
Primitive men did not
contend for the products of nature so
long as they could easily pick the
fruits from the trees and sleep beneath
the branches. When they began to live
in caves contention arose over the best
places, and the strongest were usually
the victors. "Success leads to
success." Those who were able to take
the best did so and proved the law that
"whosoever hath, to him shall be given,
and he shall have abundance." This
seems at first thought to be an unjust
law, but it has always prevailed in the
affairs of the world. Jesus, the
greatest of metaphysicians, taught it
as a divine law and gave it His
commendation. He could not have done
otherwise, for it is a righteous law
that man shall have what he earns, that
industry, effort, and ability be
rewarded and laziness
discouraged.
This law operates in
every department of being. Those who
seek the things that the material realm
has to offer usually find them. Those
who strive for moral excellence usually
attain that goal. Those who aspire to
spiritual rewards are also rewarded.
The law is that we get what we want and
work for, and all experience and
history have proved it a good law. If
this law were removed, world progress
would cease and the race become
extinct. Where there is no reward for
effort, there will be no effort and
society will degenerate. We may talk
wisely about the inner urge, but when
it has no outer field of action it
eventually becomes discouraged and
ceases to act.
When men evolve
spiritually to a certain degree, they
open up inner faculties that connect
them with cosmic Mind, and attain
results that are sometimes so startling
that they seem to be miracle workers.
What seems miraculous is the action of
forces on planes of consciousness not
previously understood. When a man
releases the powers of his soul, he
does marvels in the sight of the
material-minded, but he has not
departed from the law. He is merely
functioning in a consciousness that has
been sporadically manifested by great
men in all ages. Man is greater than
all the other creations of God-Mind
because he has the ability to perceive
and to lay hold of the ideas inherent
in God-Mind and through faith bring
them into manifestation. Thus evolution
proceeds by man's laying hold of primal
spiritual ideas and expressing them in
and through his
consciousness.
In the exercise of his I
AM identity man needs to develop
certain stabilizing ideas. One of them
is continuity or loyalty to Truth. In
the Scriptures and in life we have many
examples of how love sticks to the
thing on which it has set its mind.
Nothing so tends to stabilize and unify
all the other faculties of mind as
love. That is why Jesus gave as the
greatest commandment that we love
God.
When you first begin to
think of God as everywhere present
substance, your mind will not adhere
continuously to the idea. You will drop
your attention after a while and think,
"I haven't enough to meet all our
bills." There you have made a break and
have lost momentum in your ongoing, and
you must patch it up quickly. Affirm,
"I am not going to be led astray. The
old ideas are error and they are
nothing. They have no power over me. I
am going to stick to this proposition.
God is love, the substance of my
supply."
Ruth, the Moabitish
woman, became so attached to Naomi
(spiritual thought) that she would not
leave her but accompanied her back to
Palestine. She was loyal and steadfast
because of her love. What was the
result of her stick-to-itiveness? She
was at first a gleaner; then became the
wife of a very rich man and was
immortalized as one of the ancestresses
of David. This lesson of abiding in our
highest ideals is one that we must
understand. Nothing is so important as
sticking to the ideal and never giving
up the work we have set out to
accomplish. Affirm the law continuously
and be loyal to it and you will become
successful in its
demonstration.
You have doubtless found
that there is a spiritual law that
brings into manifestation the thoughts
we concentrate our attention on, a
divine universal law of mind activity
that is unfailing. Some adverse
condition of your own thought has
prevented a full demonstration. Do not
let this swerve you from your loyalty
to the law. You may seem to attain
results very slowly, but that is the
best reason for sticking closely to
your ideal and not changing your mind.
Be loyal to Principle and the adverse
condition will break up. Then the true
light will come and the invisible
substance you have been faithfully
affirming will begin to reveal itself
to you in all its fullness of
good.
Jesus stressed the idea
that God has made abundant provision
for all His children, even to the birds
of the air and the lilies of the field.
The Lord has clothed you with soul
substance as gloriously as He did
Solomon. But you must have faith in
this all-providing substance of good
and by your continuity of imagination
set it to forming the things you
desire. If you are persistent in
working this idea in your conscious
mind, it will eventually drop down into
your subconscious mind and continue to
work there where things take form and
become manifest. Invisible substance,
when your subconsciousness becomes
filled with it to the overflowing
point, will ooze out, as it were, into
all your affairs. You will become more
prosperous and successful so gradually,
simply, and naturally that you will not
realize that it derives from a divine
source and in answer to your prayers.
We must realize all the while however
that whatever we put as seed into the
subconscious soil will eventually bring
forth after its kind and we must
exercise the greatest caution so that
we do not think or talk about
insufficiency or allow others to talk
to us about it. As we sow in mind so
shall we reap in
manifestation.
Some of our well-meaning
friends have a way of loading us up
with "hard-times" ideas that disperse
this prosperity substance that we have
accumulated. Sometimes even one adverse
thought will cause it to escape; then
we must go back and patch up the broken
reservoir of substance thinking. We
have to hold it in our mind in all its
fullness and we should not let go of it
for a minute lest the work of
demonstration be delayed. When you
retire at night, let your last thought
be about the abundance of spiritual
substance. See it filling all the house
and the minds of all the people in the
house. That potent thought will then
sink into your subconsciousness and
continue to work whether you are asleep
or awake.
The law of supply is a
divine law. This means that it is a law
of mind and must work through mind. God
will not go to the grocery and bring
food to your table. But when you
continue to think about God as your
real supply, everything in your mind
begins to awaken and to contact the
divine substance, and as you mold it in
your consciousness, ideas begin to come
which will connect you with the visible
manifestation. You first get the ideas
in consciousness direct from their
divine source, and then you begin to
demonstrate in the outer. It is an
exact law and it is scientific and
unfailing. "First the blade, then the
ear, then the full grain in the
ear."
When you work in harmony
with this universal law, every needed
thing is abundantly supplied. Your part
is simply to fulfill the law; that is,
to keep your mind filled with mind
substance, to store up spiritual
substance until the mind is filled with
it and it cannot help but manifest in
your affairs in obedience to the law
"Whosoever hath, to him shall be
given." But you are not fulfilling the
law when you allow poverty-stricken
thoughts to dwell in your mind. They
draw other like thoughts, and your
consciousness will have no room for the
truth that prosperity is for you.
Poverty or prosperity, it all depends
on you. All that the Father has is
yours, but you alone are responsible
for the relationship of the Father's
good to your life. Through conscious
recognition of your oneness with the
Father and His abundance you draw the
living substance into visible
supply.
Do not hesitate to think
that prosperity is for you. Do not feel
unworthy. Banish all thoughts of being
a martyr to poverty. No one enjoys
poverty, but some people seem to enjoy
the sympathy and compassion they can
excite because of it. Overcome any
leaning in that direction and every
belief that you were meant to be poor.
No one is ever hopeless until he is
resigned to his imagined fate. Think
prosperity, talk prosperity, not in
general but in specific terms, not as
something for the other fellow but as
your very own right. Deny every
appearance of failure. Stand by your
guns and affirm supply, support, and
success in the very face of question
and doubt, then give thanks for plenty
in all your affairs, knowing for a
certainty that your good is now being
fulfilled in Spirit, in mind, and in
manifestation.
A Prosperity
Treatment
Twenty-Third
Psalm
(Revised)
The Lord is my banker;
my credit is good.
He maketh me to lie down
in the consciousness of omnipresent
abundance;
He giveth me the key to
His strongbox.
He restoreth my faith in
His riches;
He guideth me in the
paths of prosperity for His name's
sake.
Yea, though I walk in
the very shadow of debt,
I shall fear no evil,
for Thou art with me;
Thy silver and Thy gold,
they secure me.
Thou preparest a way for
me in the presence of the
collector;
Thou fillest my wallet
with plenty; my measure runneth
over.
Surely goodness and
plenty will follow me all the days of
my life,
And I shall do business
in the name of the Lord
forever.
