Chapter 4
MAN
Charles Fillmore
Dynamics For Living
MAN IS an idea in Divine Mind. He is the epitome of Being. Man is the apex of God’s creation, created in His image-likeness. Ideal man is the perfect man, the Christ, the offspring of Divine Mind. Before there could be a man there must have been an idea of man. God, the Father, Divine Mind, had an idea of man, and this idea is his Son, the perfect-man idea, the offspring of God-Mind. This Son is the Christ, the only begotten of the Father. The Son, being the expressed image-likeness of the Father, is perfect, even as the Father is perfect. All that we find in Divine Mind we find in its offspring.
Manifest Man
Manifest man should be as the ideal. He will be when the individual identifies himself with the Christ. When he is identified with anything less than perfection he manifests some degree of imperfection.
Man makes his world through the activity of ideas in his consciousness. The realm man is the embodiment of God. All the God-substance and the power to make it active is inherent within him.
Image-Likeness
When we are quickened to spiritual understanding and fully realize the true character of God and our own nature as the image, or idea, of God we will begin to live as Jesus lived in order that we may bring forth the likeness. To perceive the true character of God and His attributes and then to grasp our relationship to Him is to realize that His attributes are our attributes. His power is our power. His character is our character.
Man is not limited in life. He has existed with the Father always. At the very beginning of creation he was born into being through the Son, the Christ, the perfect, ideal man.
Three Departments of Man
Every man asks the question at some time, “What am I?” God answers: “Spiritually you are My idea of Myself as I see Myself in the ideal; physically you are the law of My mind executing that idea.” Know yourself as an integral idea in Divine Mind. The mind of God is Spirit, soul, body; that is, mind, idea, expression. The mind of man is Spirit, soul, body–not separate from God-Mind, but existing in it and making it manifest in an identity peculiar to the individual.
Every man is building into his consciousness the three departments of God-Mind, and his success in the process is evidenced by the harmony, in his consciousness, of Spirit, soul, and body. If he is all body, he is but one-third expressed. If to body he had added soul, he is two-thirds man. If to these two he is adding Spirit, he is on the way to the perfect manhood that God designed.
Man has neither Spirit, soul, nor body of his own–he has identity only. He can say “I.” He uses God Spirit, God soul, and God body, as his “I” elects. If he uses them with the idea that they belong to him, he develops selfishness, which limits his capacity and dwarfs his product. In his right relation, man is the inlet and the outlet of an everywhere-present life, substance, and intelligence. It is imperative that the individual understand this relation in order to grow naturally. Conscious identification must prevail in the whole man before he can be in right relation. This involves not only a recognition of the universal intelligence, life, and substance, but also their various combinations in man’s consciousness.
Spirit-Man
Spirit in man is the I AM, the individuality. The individuality is the true self; that which is undivided from God; our spiritual identity; the God part of us. It is that which characterizes one as a distinct entity or particular manifestation of divine Principle. Individuality is eternal. It can never be destroyed. Spirit is the seat of power. Its abode is on the invisible side of man’s nature. The I AM is the name of the spiritual self. I AM is man’s self-identity, the center around which man’s system revolves. It is established in Principle. It is divinely guided in its acts and they are in harmony with divine law. Spirit is the same in character as God. The Spirit is the divine center in man and is always in the Absolute; it does not become involved in effects but stands as the creative Cause of the absolute good. It is the indwelling Christ or spiritual nucleus within each individual.
Soul-Man
The soul is man’s consciousness. It is the underlying idea back of any expression. In man, the soul is the many accumulated ideas of his present expression. In its original and true sense, the soul of man is the expressed idea of man in Divine Mind. It is that which man has apprehended or developed out of Spirit. The soul is not of the realm of God ideas but is the second emanation in the creative law. The soul touches both the inner realm of Spirit, from which it receives direct inspiration, and the external world, from which it receives impressions.
Body-Man
The body of man is soul expressing. Soul makes the body. It is the outer expression of the soul, or consciousness. The body is the precipitation of the thinking part of man. God created the idea of the body of man as a self-perpetuating, self-renewing organism which man reconstructs into his personal body. God creates the body idea, or divine idea, and man, by his thinking, makes it manifest. All thoughts and ideas embody themselves according to their character. Material thoughts make a material body. Spiritual thoughts make a spiritual body. The body is the outer court of the soul, an exact representative in form of the ideals that are revolving in the inner realms of its domain.
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Dynamics For Living by Charles Fillmore
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