The Revealing Word: A Dictionary of Metaphysical Terms. Charles Fillmore

Those who think of themselves as descended from human ancestors are in bondage to all the limitations of those ancestors, regardless of their claims to the contrary. It is a falling short of the full stature of man to regard himself as descending from the human family. This is the sin that keeps the majority of men in bondage to sense consciousness.

      angel--A messenger of God; the projection into consciousness of a spiritual idea direct from the Fountainhead, Jehovah. "And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar" (Luke 1:11). The word of Truth, in which is centered the power of God to overcome all limited beliefs and conditions.

      angel, of Jehovah--The quickening thought of God appearing in the form of light or divine intelligence, intuition, and understanding.

      angels, ascending and descending--The imaging power of the mind receiving divine ideas and reflecting them into the consciousness.

      angels, office of--To guard, to direct, and to redeem the natural forces of the body and mind, which have in them the future of the whole man.

      anointed of God, the--One who is conscious of the real spiritual outpouring from the source of his being; a consecrated person, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me" (Luke 4:18).

      anointing--A symbolical expression of the pouring out of the spirit of love on one who has faith in God. Rubbing with oil; consecrating the body with the living Spirit of Christ. "But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face" (Matt. 6:17).

      antichrist--That which denies or opposes the idea that the Christ dwells in and is the true self of each individual. The active effort in the world to exalt death and to delude men into believing that death is the way to eternal life is an instance of work that is antichrist. Such a thought is opposed to Christ. Jesus came to deliver the human race from death and to fulfill in man God's perfect will, abundant life. The antichrist thoughts must be persistently denied. The perfect will of God for all men is abundant life, not death.

      anxiety--A form of fear; a negative mental attitude that keeps God's good from man.

      apostles--Those sent forth; messengers; ambassadors; active spiritual thoughts. Jesus conferred this title on the Twelve whom He sent forth to teach and to heal.

      In order to command our powers and to bring them into unity of action, we must know what they are and their respective places on the staff of Being. The Grand Man, Christ, has twelve powers of fundamental ideas, represented in the history of Jesus by the Twelve Apostles. So each of us has twelve faculties or fundamental ideas to make manifest, to bring out, and to use in the attainment of his ideals. There are innumerable other ideas, but each one stems from some one of these fundamental ideas.

      Jesus' twelve apostles were: Peter (faith); Andrew (strength); James, son of Zebedee (wisdom or judgment); John (love); Philip (power); Bartholomew (imagination); Thomas (understanding); Matthew (will); James (order); Simon the Cananaean (zeal); Thaddaeus (renunciation or elimination); and Judas (life conserver). (see disciple, calling of)

      appetite--Either the craving of the sense man for fulfillment of his fleshly desires or the hunger and thirst of the spirit for its divine inheritance. "But he awaketh . . . and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite" (Isa. 29:8).

      appetite, carnal or sensual--A hunger and thirst for sensual pleasures; misdirected effort to obtain satisfaction through feeding the insatiable sense man. All indulgence of such appetite must be denied out of man's consciousness before Christ can be manifested.

      appreciation--The act of appreciating; esteeming. Spiritually, man's mind esteems to a great measure the loveliness and power of omnipresent God, All-Good. "I will give thee thanks with my whole heart" (Psalms 138:1).

      appropriation--The act of taking possession of something. To appropriate the word of Truth is to take the substance of the word into one's mind and heart.

      ark--A holy place; a sanctuary; a tabernacle; the Christ center within wherein man is one with pure Being.

      ark, Noah's--Symbolizes the spiritual part of oneself, built in the midst of the flood of error. One builds one's ark on the scientific understanding of the wisdom, presence, and power of God and on the affirmations of what one is in Spirit.

      The only refuge from the Flood (see Gen. 6:18) was the ark of Jehovah. The ark represents a positive, saving state of consciousness, which agrees with or forms a covenant with the principle of Being, with subconscious inspiration, with Christ. This ark is the product of "rest" (Noah) in the spiritual part of us, right in the midst of the flood of error.

      Ark of the Covenant--Represents the original spark of divinity in man's being, which is a sacred and holy thing. On its development depends man's immortality. The original spark (Ark of the Covenant) occupies the most holy place in the body temple and must be cared for with great devotion; otherwise, the spiritual forces are scattered.

      No human hand is allowed to touch this ark of the covenant. No human thought can enter the sacred precincts, which are kept veiled from all eyes.

      armor of God--The robe of righteousness. Error cannot enter the consciousness that is strongly fortified with the light, life, power, and substance of Spirit.

      ascension--The ascending or progressive unfoldment of man from the animal to the spiritual. It is measured by three degrees or states of consciousness: first, the animal; second, the mental or psychical; and third, the spiritual. Jesus first manifested Himself as the man on the physical plane, from which He was resurrected to the mental or psychical; from thence He ascended to the spiritual.

      asceticism--The practice of severe self-denial; the attempt to deny the body itself as an evil thing instead of beholding it as the sacred temple of the living God to be revered, respected, and loved.

      aspirations--The deep longing of man for union with his source, with his Father-Mother, God.

      "As the hart panteth after the water brooks,

      So panteth my soul after thee, O God.

      My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God"

      (Psalms 42:1, 2).

      ass--In Oriental countries in Bible times kings and rulers rode the ass, and it was the accepted bearer of royalty. The animal part of the human consciousness is typified by the ass, and the purpose of Jesus' riding an ass into Jerusalem was to portray the mastery by the I AM of the animal nature and its manifestation (colt). Jerusalem is the city of peace or spiritual consciousness. The characteristics of the ass are stubbornness, persistency, and endurance. To ride these is to make them obedient to one's will.

      association, spiritual--Living in an uninterrupted relationship with ideas that come into consciousness from God.

      astrology--"The pseudo science which treats of the influence of the stars upon human affairs, and of foretelling terrestrial events by their position and aspects" (Webster). Astrology represents the belief in man that his good depends wholly on something outside himself--his ruling star, fate, providence--instead of depending on the power of his own thoughts to establish within himself and his world what he wills.

      It is true that we are in sympathy with all nature, which includes the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars. These are all ensouled, and their actions can affect us when we do not believe in a higher power. But there is a higher power in everyone: Spirit. In Genesis it is stated that spiritual man, the image-and-likeness man, was given dominion over all creation.

      astronomy--"The science which treats of the celestial bodies, their magnitudes, motions, constitution, etcetera" (Webster).

      The material universe is only the outpicturing of the spiritual universe. The pulsations of the spiritual forces impinge on and sway men, nations, and planets according to laws whose sweep in space and time is so stupendous as to be beyond the ken or comprehension of astronomy. But the fact should not be overlooked that higher astronomy had its votaries in the past. The Magi and the illumined sages of Chaldea and Egypt had astronomical knowledge of universal scope.

      There is evidence that proves that the sages of the distant past knew a higher astronomy than