The Power of Oneself. Charles Fillmore

take heed lest they incorporate human selfishness into the divine love that is expressed in and through them.

      The most popular expression of love in the world is the love between men and women. Here also love is misunderstood, and for that reason she has been forced to act in ways that are unnatural to her. She has also been compelled to do things that are abhorrent to her, yet under the compelling power of man's will she could not do otherwise. Right here is a crying need for a purer judgment of love and her right adjustment in the most sacred relation existing between men and women. Love is from God, and it is given to man in its virgin purity. It is the pure essence of Being that binds together the whole human family. Without love we should lose contact with out mother earth, and, losing that, we should fly off into space and be lost in the star dust of unborn worlds. "Gravity" is mortal man's name for love. By the invisible arms of love we are held tight to earth's prolific bosom, and there we find the sweetest home in all the universe. All love of home is founded on man's innate love for this planet. When John Howard Payne wrote "Home, Sweet Home," he was inspired by mother love to sing of the only abiding place of this race--our dear mother earth.

      The original Eden of the human family was planted by God on earth, and it is still here. Its prototype is within the human soul, but we have not entered it, because we have not understood the relation that love bears to the original substance of Being, out of which all things are formed.

      It is no great task to tell of the higher aspects of love, but who will champion love submerged in human consciousness and smothered with selfishness? You say: "This is not love, but passion and lust." But we should remember that we have laid down, as a foundation principle, that God is love, and, as there is but one God, there can be but one love. This being true, we must find place in the creative law for every manifestation, regardless of its apparent contradictions of the righteousness of First Cause.

      Love is submerged or cast down to sense consciousness between men and women in the marriage relation, and great misery floods the world in consequence. This marriage should be a perpetual feast of love, and so it would be if the laws of love were observed. Courtship is usually the most joyous experience that comes to men and women, because love is kept free from lust.

      If the laws of conjugality were better understood, the bliss of courtship would continue throughout all the years of married life and divorces would be unknown. It is a fact well known to psychologists that the majority of estrangements between husbands and wives result from the breaking of sex law. This sin that ends in feebleness and final disintegration of the physical organism is symbolically pictured in the so-called fall of man, in the early chapters of Genesis. Adam and Eve represent the innocent and uneducated powers of the masculine and feminine in every individual. The serpent symbolizes sensation, which combines with life and substance in all living organisms. The desire for pleasure, and for a seemingly short and easy way to get wisdom, tempts the feminine, and she eats, or appropriates. The masculine also eats. In the "cool of the day" (after the heat of passion has cooled off) they both find that they are naked. They have had pleasure with pleasure as the only object, which is contrary to the law of Being. All things should be done with a purpose, with pleasure as a concomitant only. Pleasure lends zest to all action, but it should never be exalted to the high place in consciousness.

      Sex indulgence for mere pleasure is an eating or appropriating of the pure substance that pervades the whole nervous system, which is appropriately compared to a tree. This excess of pleasure is sooner or later followed by equal reaction, which is destructive, and the body cries out in pain. The pleasure we call "good," and the pain we call "evil." Here, in a nutshell, is an explanation of eating of the tree of the "knowledge of good and evil."

      When the substance in the organism is conserved and retained, the nerves are charged with a spiritual energy, which runs like lightning through an organism filled with the virgin substance of the soul. When in the ignorance of sensation men and women deplete their substance, the rose of the cheek and the sparkle of the eye fade away. Then the kiss and the touch that were once so satisfying become cold and lifeless.

      In the conservation of this pure substance of life is hidden the secret of body rejuvenation, physical resurrection, and the final perpetuation of the whole organism in its transmuted purity. (John saw Jesus in this state of purity, as described in Revelation 1:12-16.) No man can in his own might attain this exalted estate, but through the love of God, demonstrated by Jesus, it is attainable by everyone. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life."

      Regeneration is not possible without love. As through the union of the male and female elements the new body of the infant is brought forth, so through the joining of the creative forces of Spirit by souls attuned in love the new body in Christ is speedily formed. The work can be done through individual effort, and there must always be continuous constructive action between the masculine and feminine faculties of soul and body; but the anointing with the precious love of the divine feminine is necessary to the great demonstration. The woman who anointed the head and feet of Jesus "loved much," and Jesus said that which she did would be remembered wherever the Gospel should be preached in the whole world. This symbolical representation of pouring into the masculine the pure love of the feminine is a guide for all women. All over the world the submerged love of the feminine is crying for release from the sensual dominance of the masculine. The remedy is: Anoint man's head (will) and his feet (understanding) with the Christ love, and he will be purified and satisfied. Not a word need be spoken to bring about the change. If in quietness and confidence the presence and the power of divine love are affirmed, the law will be fulfilled.

      Love submerged in sense still retains the remembrance of her virginity, and repels and resists the onslaughts of lust. Some of the most terrible ills are brought upon the body by the misuse of love. This is not the way of freedom; through a steady and firm holding to the one Presence and one Power will the son of man be lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.

      Wisdom and love combined are symbolically described in Scripture as the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (A.V.). But now men and women are studying the laws of Being, and in some degree are striving to observe them in the marriage relation. Instead of submerging love in lust, the children of light retain their virgin purity and go hand in hand toward the dawn of a new order, in which there will be a bringing forth of the multitude of waiting souls in a way which is now hidden, but which will be revealed when love is lifted up.

      Call it not love, for love to heaven is fled

       Since sweating lust on earth usurp'd his name;

       Under whose simple semblance he hath fed

       Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;

       Which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves,

       As caterpillars do the tender leaves.

       Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,

       But lust's effect is tempest after sun;

       Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,

       Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;

       Love surfeits not, lust like a glutton dies;

       Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies.

      --Shakespeare--

      Chapter VI

      Power, Dominion, Mastery

       Table of Contents

      MAN DOES not exercise the power of his spiritual nature, because he lacks understanding of its character and of his relation to the originating Mind in which he exists. From Divine Mind man inherits power over the forces of his mind--in truth, power over all ideas. A quickening from on high must precede man's realization of his innate control of thought and feeling. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is a quickening of the spiritual nature, which is reflected in intellect and in body. When one understands the science of Being, one is prepared to receive this baptism and to utilize it along deeper lines of thought. Jesus had taught His apostles and followers, and they were prepared