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Talks on Truth, by Charles Fillmore, [1912], at sacred-texts.com
Jesus weeping over Jerusalem is the picture of a great love welling up in the heart and flowing out to all the earth--the love of the good Father for His erring and willful children. Such is the love of Christ for His own; such is the love of God through Christ for all creation.
2. We may talk about the wisdom of God, but the love of God must be felt in the heart. It cannot be described, and one who has not felt it can have no concept of it from the descriptions of others. But the more we talk about love, the stronger it grows in the consciousness, and if we persist in thinking loving thoughts and speaking loving words, we are sure to bring into our experience the feeling of
that great love that is beyond description--the very love of God.
3. It is popularly taught and believed that there is but one love; that God is love and that all love is from Him, hence that all love is God's love.
4. Love is a divine principle and man can know it in its purity by touching it at its fountainhead. There it is not tinged in any way by man's formative thought, but flows forth a pure, pellucid stream of infinite ecstasy. It has no consciousness of good or evil, pure or impure, but pours itself out in great oceans of living magnetic power, to be used by whosoever will.
5. Man has a faculty through which he receives love from Being; this faculty is commonly called the heart. The heart, however, is but the visible expression of an invisible center of consciousness. Sense discerns that man has a heart, but soul discerns an inner faculty in man through which he may express an attribute of Being. By his word, man calls his powers into activity, that through them he may manifest God.
6. Jesus was the orderly man of God, manifesting under divine law the attributes of Being. Jesus "called unto him his disciples"; that is, by His word He spiritually quickened and educated His twelve faculties. Peter, faith active in the thinking faculty, is the first disciple called. Peter is the rock foundation of that consciousness which is the church of Christ. You will find that the character of your whole consciousness depends upon how you think. You may have great love, but unless you guide it with
right thoughts it will not build up a harmonious consciousness. Love poured through the heart of a mother who has fear in her thought, shatters the body of a delicate child. The thinker must be strong and sure in his grasp of right thoughts. The second disciple is Andrew, brother to Peter; he represents strength. James represents judgment, discrimination, the faculty that chooses the good and eschews the evil. This faculty must be brought out before love in its fullness is safe in the life of man. Love has not will and volition, except as they are infused into it by the other faculties. John is love, and he leaned on the Master's bosom. This is to symbolize the innocence, tenderness, and dependence of love. Peter is bold, impetuous, executive--affirms his undying allegiance to the Master one moment and denies Him the next--but the loyalty and the constancy of love were dominant in the character of John.
7. We find that these four faculties, evenly balanced, will form the foundation of a harmonious body and mind.
8. You must think, and think with faith in both God and yourself--that is Peter.
9. You must think with strength and power--that is Andrew.
10. You must think with judgment and discretion--that is James.
11. You must center all your thought, your strength, and your judgment in love--that is John.
12. To Peter (the faithful thinker) is given the key to the kingdom of heaven, but he can never open the gate until he has reconciled all the other
faculties. Many people in this day have found how much depends upon right thinking, and they are counting on getting into the kingdom of health and harmony by holding good thoughts only. They have not always taken into consideration the fact that the thinking faculty is merely the executive power in the consciousness, and that it depends upon many other faculties for the material out of which its thoughts are formed.
13. To think without strength is to bring forth weakly--without effect. To think without judgment is to bring forth malformed mental creations, good and evil, spirit and matter, sickness and health, life and death, and the thousand other Babylonish conditions found in the world. To think without love is to bring forth hate, discord, and inharmony.
14. So it is not thought alone that opens the way into the kingdom, but a right use of all the powers of mind and body centered in thought.
15. Thinking gives color, tone, shape, character, to all creation, but the essences or materials of creation are drawn from the realm of Spirit.
16. In the world we find love so turned awry by wrong thinking that it does not represent God. In its beginning it came forth from God, but it has been taken into "another country" of error thought and there wasted in riotous living.
17. Error thought has put greed into love, and we find that the love of money is "a root of all kinds of evil." Error thought has said to love, "We are flesh and blood; this is my child, this is my husband, my father, my mother, my sister, my brother. We
are separate from others." Thus error thought has made love to serve it in family selfishness.
18. "And he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples, and said, Behold, my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother." This is the love of God in its purity, fresh from the fountainhead.
19. Wherever love is tainted with selfishness, we may know that error thought has made muddy its clear stream, so that it no longer represents the purity of its source.
20. Love is the drawing power of mind. It is the magnet of the universe, and about it may be clustered all the attributes of Being, by one who thinks in divine order.
21. Many who have found the law of true thinking and its effect wonder why supply does not come to them after months and years of holding thoughts of bounty. It is because they have not developed love. They have formed the right image in mind, but the magnet that draws the substance from the storehouse of Being has not been set into action.
22. To demonstrate supply, we must think supply, and thus form it in the consciousness. We must conserve all the ideas of substance in the mind--and also the fluids of the body, their representatives--because we must have a base for our form. We must vibrate the love center in thought, word, and act. Then there will come to us on the wings of invisibility that which will satisfy every need. This is the secret of demonstrating plenty from the ethers.
23. "Love . . . taketh not account of evil." Love never sees anything wrong in that which it loves. If it did, it would not be pure love. Pure love is without discriminating power. It simply pours itself out upon the object of its affection, and takes no account of the result. By so doing, love sometimes casts its pearls before swine, but its power is so great that it transforms all that it touches.
24. Do not be afraid to pour out your love upon all the so-called evil in the world. Deny the appearance of evil, and affirm the omnipotence and the omnipresence of love and goodness. Take no account of the evil that appears in your life and your affairs. Refuse to see it as evil. Declare that what seems evil has somewhere a good side, which shall through your persistent affirmation of its presence be made visible. By using this creative power of your own thought you will change that which seemed evil into good, and divine love will pour its healing balm over all.
25. Sickness is not good, because it is not of God; but if, through past ignorance in thought or act, a person finds himself in its grasp, he can hasten his deliverance by affirming the experience to be a good lesson that he will take to heart and profit by.
If he bemoans his sad fate, he throws the shadow of gloom into the healing waters of love, thereby corrupting them and weakening their restorative action for him.
26. Always remember that love is the great magnet of God. It is, of itself, neither good nor evil. These are qualities given to it by the thinking
faculty in man. Whatever you see for your love, that it will draw to you, because as a magnet it attracts whatever you set your desire upon. To focus your love about self and selfish aims will cause it to draw around you the limited things of personality and the hollow shams of sense life. To focus your love upon money and the possessions of the material world will make you the slave of mammon, and will make your life a failure and a disappointment. To focus your love upon anything less than All-Good will eventually cause you to fall short of your highest aspiration, and will keep you outside the kingdom of heaven.
27. "Love suffereth long, and is kind." Love does not resent injuries. It does not take affront and insult into account. Pure love does not recognize personality; hence when a person is in the consciousness of love, he cannot be hurt at what may be said to him or about him. "A soft answer turneth away wrath" is ever on the lips of love, and whoever makes this his thought focus will be able to reduce to peace and harmony the tides of impatience and anger that may be surging about him.
28. One with strong love and the right focal idea may control turbulent multitudes by his silent thought alone.
29. When we speak of the power of love, it should be understood that we mean power exercised through love. Power is a faculty of mind. It associates itself with some other faculty and in conjunction with that faculty it is made manifest. In the relation of man's faculties in Divine Mind, power
and love are associated in action, but in man's present concept of relations he has associated intellect and power. From this wrong relation arise the tyranny and oppression so evident in the world.
30. Power should never be exercised except through love. Whoever associates his power and his intellect and attempts in a blind way to force his desire to fulfillment will always bring about discord and unrighteous oppression.
31. Power cannot be used successfully through intellect, because intellect lacks wisdom. Wisdom associates itself with love, and can be found in its purity only at the heart center, hence we speak of the "still small voice" within. Elijah found that the voice of God was not in the wind, not in the earthquake or the fire--these being of the intellect--but in the "still small voice."
32. Intellect is not wise. Wisdom is not its office. Intellect is the executive officer of wisdom, and can do right only when faithfully carrying out the instructions of its principle.
33. We see how dangerous to the welfare of man it is for intellect to assume knowledge and to call upon power to help it in carrying out its unsubstantial ideas. Power is the faculty in mind that propels outward, and it must necessarily have balance in some other faculty in order to hold its equilibrium. There is but one other faculty that has opposite action, and that is love, whose office is attraction. When power and love are associated, the centrifugal and the centripetal forces of Being are equalized; man unifies all the work that the Lord
God has given him to do, and his dominion over the forces of Being is exercised in peace and harmony. Peace and harmony are the focalizing ideas that chord with the divine nature of love, and when they are associated in the mind there is no limit to man's power. It is said by those who know the power of spiritual forces that one man developed large enough in love might dissolve this planet with his word. But one so developed would never do anything to interfere in any way with the life and the rights of another. Love does not offend or take offense.
34. Among a certain class of Hindu mystics are those called Bhakti, or Disciples of Love. They know the power of love to protect and to care for them, and they cultivate it until all nature is in love with and befriends them. Thousands of the common people of India are killed annually by serpents and wild animals, yet these mystics have so brought forth the power of love in themselves that serpents and savage animals do not injure them. They live in the wildest jungles; during periods of silent devotion, lasting sometimes weeks and even months, they make the open forest their home. It is recorded that birds have built their nests in the hair of such devotees during their period of silence. They respect the rights of the tiniest insect, and under no circumstances kill anything or interfere with it in any way. When put to practical test, love always proves its divine origin and power.
35. You may trust love to get you out of your difficulties. There is nothing too hard for it to accomplish for you, if you put your confidence in it
and act without dissimulation. But do not talk love and in your heart feel resentment. This will bring discord to your members and rottenness to your bones. Love is candor and frankness. Deception is no part of love; he who tries to use it in that sort of company will prove himself a liar, and love will desert him in the end.
36. There is no envy in love. Love is satisfaction in itself, not that satisfaction with personal self, its possessions and its attractions, which is vanity, but an inner satisfaction that sees good everywhere and in everybody. It insists that all is good, and by refusing to see anything but good it causes that quality finally to appear uppermost in itself and in all things. When only good is seen and felt, how can there be anything but satisfaction?
37. The one who has made union with divine love through his inner consciousness, who lets it pour its healing currents into his soul and his body, is fortunate beyond all description. Instead of envying another, he desires to show others the great joy that may be theirs when they have opened the floodgates of their love nature. Truly, "love envieth not."
38. Yet with all these glorious possessions, beyond the power of man to describe, "love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." Love does not brag about its demonstrations. It simply lives the life, and lets its works speak for it.
39. Love does not seek its own. It does not make external effort to get anything, not even that which intellect claims belongs to it. It is here that love
proves itself to be the invisible magnet that draws to man whatever he needs. But instead of leaving this department of the work to love, intellect sees what it wants and in its blundering way goes about getting it. Thus the real begetting power in man has been ignored until its true office has been forgotten and its power has been suppressed.
40. When love, the universal magnet, is brought into action in the consciousness of our race, it will change all our methods of supplying human wants. It will harmonize all the forces of nature and will dissolve the discords that now infest earth and air. It will control the elements until they obey man and bring forth that which will supply all his needs, without the labor that is called the sweat of his face. The earth shall yet be made paradise by the power of love. That condition will begin to set in for each one just as soon as he develops the love nature in himself.
41. When love has begun its silent pulsations at one's solar center, no one can keep one in want or poverty. From the invisible currents of the inner ether, love will draw to man all that belongs to him; and all belongs to him that is required to make him happy and contented.
42. This mighty magnet is a quality of God that is expressed through man, and it cannot be suppressed by any outside force. No environment or external condition can keep back love, when once you have firmly decided in mind to give it expression. The present unloving condition of the world is no bar to your exercise of love; in fact, it is an
incentive. You will know, as you begin to make love manifest, how great a sinner you have been, how far you have fallen short of making yourself the man or the woman of God. This will show you by comparison how greatly you have missed the mark of the high calling that is yours in Christ.
43. We have been taught the beauties of love and its great power in the world, but no one else has explained that it has a center of action in the body, a center that was designed by the Creator to do a specific work. The man or the woman who has not developed the love center is abnormal, is living in only partial exercise of consciousness. The love center has its nerves and muscles in the body. Through neglect these have become atrophied in nearly the whole race, but they are just as necessary to the perfect man as are legs and arms. In fact they are more necessary. With the love center active, one might live happily and successfully without legs and arms; one might even grow new legs and arms in an adherence to the completeness of life in which love proves to be the fulfillment of the law of perfection.
44. The body is the instrument of the mind; no one has even seen his real body as it is in the sight of God, except through the mind. The body of flesh, bones, and blood that the eye of sense beholds is not the true body any more than the heart of flesh is the true organ of love.
45. The true body is an ethereal body, an indestructible body; the body of flesh is the grosser vibration that the sense consciousness beholds. The Spirit body is not absent or dead, but is simply
inactive. When, through purification of his ideas and acceleration of his mental energies, man comes into sight of the real forces of Being, his whole body is quickened into new life, and the body of flesh responds to its vibrations. He does this work through the mind--by thinking right thoughts and doing right things also, because man is, in the ultimate, a unit, and the thinking and the doing cannot be separated.
46. To develop the love center, begin by affirming: From this time forth and forevermore I shall know no man after the flesh. I shall not see men and women as body and mortal thought. I shall always behold them with the eye of love, which sees only perfection. Ask daily that love be made alive in you, that it take up its abode at your magnetic center, and make it alive with strong, steady pulsations of spiritual energy.
47. Let your attention rest for a few moments every day at the heart center in your body, the cardiac plexus, while you declare silently: You are the abode of love. You are filled and thrilled with the mighty magnetic forces that love uses in doing its work. You are powerful and active to do only good, and you see only goodness and purity everywhere.
48. Many people say that they cannot see love in others who are not manifesting it clearly--that they themselves do not feel loving and therefore cannot exercise love. But this development of one's own love center will make one see it, just as the eye sees light. It is difficult to feel love with a dormant love organ, but exceedingly easy when that organ
begins to exercise its true inherent potentialities.
49. Love is in the world in a diluted form as affection between husband and wife, parents and children, friend and friend, but it can be made manifest in its original strength and purity by each man and woman's opening the fountainhead and letting its mighty currents stream forth.
50. Sex lust has diverted the vital forces in the body away from the love center, the cardiac plexus, which is almost inactive in many men. When a pure-minded woman sends forth her desire for love, such men interpret it sexually and are excited to lust. Love is disappointed, and loathing of the ignorant animal eventually follows. Love is not sex lust.
51. The love of God for His children is beyond description--a love so tender and so deep that it cannot be mentioned in the same breath with the ordinary love as known by the world. The great love of Being is deeper and wider than the thoughts and the words of man have compassed since the beginning of language. It can be known only on its own plane, and man must awaken within himself the capacity to feel a mighty love before he can comprehend how great is the love of God.
52. But only the meek and lowly in heart may know the depths of the Father's love. It is not revealed to the self-sufficient, because they do not open the way through their own childlike, innocent hearts.
53. The Father yearns to have His love felt by every one of us. He has given us the capacity to feel it, and He waits until we develop the love faculty and open our lives to the flood of good that He pours
out to us through His all-sufficient love.
54. Father almighty! We bow before Thy goodness, and invoke in prayer and supplication Thy silent presence as love. May its steady currents of power draw us into Thy mighty arms, where we shall rest secure from all the buffets of the world. We come as little children into the sacred precincts of Thy love, knowing full well that no hand of force even finds a welcome there. Open to us the inner peace and the inner harmony that are born of love. Let all fear depart from our mind as the shadows from the morning light. Let us bask forever in the sunshine of perpetual love, Thy love, Thy never-failing love!