FOREWORD
Charles Fillmore
Prosperity
It is perfectly logical
to assume that a wise and competent
Creator would provide for the needs of
His creatures in their various stages
of growth. The supply would be given as
required and as the necessary effort
for its appropriation was made by the
creature. Temporal needs would be met
by temporal things, mental needs by
things of like character, and spiritual
needs by spiritual elements. For
simplification of distribution all
would be composed of one primal
spiritual substance, which under proper
direction could be transformed into all
products at the will of the operator.
This is a crude yet true illustration
of the underlying principles on which
the human family is supplied on this
earth. The Father has provided a
universal seed substance that responds
with magical power to the active mind
of man. Faith in the increasing
capacity of this seed substance,
whether wrapped in visible husks or
latent in invisible electrical units,
always rewards man with the fruits of
his labor.
The farmer may seem to
get his supply from the seeds he
plants, but he would never plant a seed
unless he had faith in its innate
capacity to increase, and that seed
would never multiply without the
quickening life of Spirit. Thus we see
that all increase of substance depends
on the quickening life of Spirit, and
this fact gives us the key to mental
processes that when used spiritually
will greatly increase and at the same
time simplify our appropriation of that
inexhaustible substance which creative
Mind has so generously
provided.
In the following lessons
we have attempted to explain man's
lawful appropriation of the supplies
spiritually and electrically provided
by God. When we understand and adjust
our mind to the realm or kingdom where
these rich ideas and their electrical
thought forms exist we shall experience
in our temporal affairs what is called
"prosperity."
We said "their
electrical thought forms." Let us
explain that all creative processes
involve a realm of ideas and a realm of
patterns or expressions of those ideas.
The patterns arrest or "bottle up" the
free electric units that sustain the
visible thing. Thus creation is in its
processes a trinity, and back of the
visible universe are both the original
creative idea and the cosmic rays that
crystallize into earthly things. When
we understand this trinity in its
various activities we shall be able to
reconcile the discoveries of modern
science with the fundamentals of
religion.
Modern science teaches
us that space is heavily charged with
energies that would transform the earth
if they could be controlled. Sir Oliver
Lodge says that a single cubic inch of
the ether contains energy enough to run
a forty-horse-power engine forty
million years. The divergence of
opinion among physicists as to the
reality of the ether does not nullify
the existence in space of tremendous
potentialities. Sir Arthur Eddington
says that about half the leading
physicists assert that the ether exists
and the other half deny its existence,
but, in his words, "both parties mean
exactly the same thing, and are divided
only by words."
Spiritual understanding
says that the ether exists as an
emanation of mind and should not be
confused in its limitations with
matter. Mathematical measurements
applied to the ether work it out of
existence because its reality is in the
Mind that conceived it and its being is
governed and sustained by ideas, and
ideas have no physical dimensions. So
the ether will have existence and
deposit matter only so long as Mind has
use for it. When infinite Mind has
completed the cycles of creation, both
the invisible and the visible universes
will be rolled up as a scroll and
disappear and only Mind remain. "And
all the host of heaven shall be
dissolved, and the heavens shall be
rolled together as a scroll; and all
their host shall fade away."
It adds greatly to the
stability of a Christian's faith to
know that Jesus anticipated the
discoveries of modern science of the
existence of that kingdom called "the
ether." He named it the kingdom of the
heavens, and His illustrations of its
possibilities are unsurpassed. He did
not say it was a place the good would
inherit after death but an estate we
could have here and now. "It is your
Father's good pleasure to give you the
kingdom."
Jesus taught that we can
incorporate life-giving rays into our
mind, body, and affairs through faith.
Where physicists merely describe the
mechanical presence of life as energy,
Jesus taught man how by the exercise of
his mind he can make that life obey
him. Instead of a universe of blind
mechanical forces Jesus showed the
universe to be persuaded and directed
by intelligence.
What we need to realize
above all else is that God has provided
for the most minute needs of our daily
life and that if we lack anything it is
because we have not used our mind in
making the right contact with the
supermind and the cosmic ray that
automatically flows from it.
