Chapter 14
DISEASE
Charles Fillmore
Dynamics For Living
IT IS NOW almost universally accepted by physicians that the majority of diseases are caused by minute forms of life commonly called germs. Each disease has its specific germ. They may be seen with very strong microscopes, and the form and the character of the different varieties are described by experts.
The antidotes for these destructive little germs have been widely advertised. The remedies consist in destroying them. They do not attempt to explain their origin. They find the little worker busy in the bodies of mankind, and they seek to put it out of action, not asking whence it came nor whither it may go.
The reflective mind is not satisfied with this superficial way of dealing with such destructive agents. It asks their cause, but no answer is vouchsafed on the part of those who study them. Only the students of mind can answer the question of the origin of disease germs. Only in terms of mind can there be given a rational explanation of these minute life forms.
The Adam man, the intellect, is responsible for them. He gives character to all the ideas that exist–he “names” them. This process is intricate, and it may be explained and understood in its details only by metaphysicians of the deepest mental insight. It is summed up in what is commonly called thinking.
Thoughts Produce
Thoughts of health produce germs whose office it is to build up healthy organisms. Thoughts of disease produce germs of disorder and destruction. Here we have the connecting link between materia medica and metaphysics. The physician observes the ravages of the disease germ. The metaphysician stands in the factory of mind and sees thoughts poured into visibility as germs. This opens up a field of causes unlimited in extent. Every thought that flits through the mind of every man, woman, and child in the universe produces a living organism, a germ of a character like its producing thought. There is no escape from this conclusion, no escape from the mighty possibilities of good and ill that rest with the thinker.
Following Directions
Anger, jealousy, malice, avarice, lust, ambition, selfishness, and in fact all of the detestable patterns that mankind harbors, produce living organisms after their kind. If we had microscopes strong enough, we should find our body to be composed of living germs, doing to the best of their ability the tasks which our thoughts have set before them.
If you have said, “I hate you,” there have been created in your atmosphere hate germs that will do the work for which you created them. If one’s enemies alone were attacked by these germs of thought, the law would not be so severe, but they have no respect for anyone, and are likely to turn upon the body of their creator and tear it down.
So the fear, the doubts, the poverty, the sin, the sickness, the thousand erroneous states of consciousness have their germs. These organisms whose office it is to make men miserable do their work to the very best of their ability. They are not responsible for their existence. They are the formed vehicles of thought. They are the servants of those who gave them life. It is not to the germs that the wise regulator of affairs should look, but to those who are creating them and thereby bringing into existence discord and disease.
Counterfeit
Remedies beyond number are advertised for germs. They are guaranteed to kill the germ only. What is needed is a medicine that will prevent its appearance. To apply the remedy to the poor little germ is like trying to stop the manufacture of counterfeit money by destroying all that is found in circulation.
All counterfeit thought comes from the intellect, which alone originates the disease germ. We need to go no further than the disobedient intellect to find the cause of all the ills to which humanity has become slave. Wisdom is not an attribute of the intellect. The assumption that its observations are a source of wisdom is the one thing against which the Lord God especially warned Adam. This very clearly indicates the inability of the intellect, on its own account, to set up a standard of knowledge of good and evil. It also declares the end to which man will come if he disregards the prohibition specified.
“But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Good and Evil
That there is something wrong in the present standard of good is evidenced by the variety of opinions in the world as to what is good and what is evil. There should be no question on such vitally important points. There would not be if the intellect would relinquish its claim to a knowledge of good and evil, and would relegate to Spirit the offices of wisdom and understanding.
The intellect is the formative, character-giving mechanism in the man. It draws its substance and intelligence from the Spirit. Like the prism through which the ray of white light is passed, it shows the potentialities of Spirit. If it looks within and seeks the guidance of Spirit, it reflects divine ideas upon the screen of visibility. This is the plan that the Lord has for it, and it is building according to that plan only when it admits that there is a higher source of wisdom than itself, when it submits to wisdom, for approval or disapproval, the ideas that it conceives.
Manifestation
The manifestation of life is through the Adam consciousness, which is, in a way, attached to and responsible for the forms thus made visible. Hence the reform–the transformation–of existing conditions must be made from the standpoint of Adam as an important factor. To ignore Adam is to slight one of the established creations of Jehovah God. If Adam were not a part of the divine plan, why was he formed from the dust of the earth, the breath of life breathed into him, and a living soul capacity given to him?
We are not to erase Adam. We are to transform him. He is not a safe guide in anything. His conclusions are derived from observation of conditions as he sees them in the external world. He judges according to appearance, which is but one side of the whole. Appearances say that germs are dangerous and destructive, but one who is familiar with their origin is not alarmed. He knows that there is a power and wisdom stronger and wiser than the ignorant intellect. It is to this power that we are compelled to go before we can right the wrongs that now dominate the mind of man. There is but one fount of wisdom, and that is wisdom itself.
Wisdom
The belief that wisdom is attained through the study of things is an error prevalent in this age. They who wait upon the Lord shall be wise. That the wisdom of health can be evolved from the study of disease germs is a concept of the intellect in its tendency to look without instead of within. The without, the universe of things formed, is not and never can be a source of wisdom. The things formed are the result of efforts to combine wisdom and love, and their character indicates the success or the failure of the undertaking. When wisdom and love have been invoked, and their harmony has been made manifest in the thing formed, God is manifest.
We love to name or give character to the ideas of Jehovah God, because it is our office in the grand plan of creation to do so. The glory of the Father is thus made manifest through the Son. In no other way can the ideas in Being be made manifest, and man should rise to the dignity of his office and formulate them according to the plans of Divine Mind.
Disease germs would quickly disappear from the earth if men would consult God before passing judgment upon His creations. It is not man’s province to give form to anything but what will be a pleasure in God’s eye. If he makes germs it is because he thinks germ thoughts. When he thinks God thoughts he will form only the beauties of nature and mankind, and there will no longer be anything in all his world that will cause a fear or a moment of pain. God is not the author of this condition of so-called “progress from matter to mind.” God is the one source from which and of which man makes his existence.
Unfoldment
There is a law of unfoldment in Being, a law as exact as the progressive steps in a mathematical problem in which no error is made, a law as harmonious as that which governs a musical production where discord has found no place. Disease germs are not a part of the divine law. They are as far removed from it as would be error in the steady, careful steps in the progressive unfoldment of numbers, or false notes in symphony or song.
It does not require labored arguments or hard thinking to see how easily the problems of life would be made orderly and divine if men would let the Lord into his mind. Jesus said that the yoke was easy and the burden light. He was victor over all the hard conditions to which men and women yoked themselves. He made light of sin, disease, and poverty, by annulling them and preaching boldly in the face of an adverse theology that it was the prerogative of the Son of man to blot these errors from the world of mankind.
Royal Road
There is a royal road for every man–a road in which he will be conscious of the dominion that is his by divine right. That road, Jesus said, leads out from the I AM. As Moses delivered the Children of Israel from the Egyptian darkness of their ignorance by affirming in their ears the power of the I AM, so Jesus gives us a series of affirmations that will deliver us from the wilderness of ignorance.
Your I AM is the polar star around which all your thoughts revolve. Even the little, narrow concept of the personal “I am” may be led out into the consciousness of the great and only I AM by filling its thought sphere with ideas of infinite wisdom, life, and love. Your I AM is that which carries you up or down, to heaven or to hell, according to the concept to which you have attached it. Hitch it to a star. Let it carry you to the broad expanse of heaven. There is room aplenty. You will not knock elbows with anyone if you get out of the surging crowd and hitch your I AM to the star of spiritual understanding.
Disease Antidote
Cease making disease germs. Turn your attention to higher things. Make love alive by thinking love. Make wisdom the light of the world by affirming God’s omnipresent intelligence. See in mind the pure substance of God, and it will surely appear. This is the way to destroy disease. This is the antidote for disease germs. The real, the enduring things of God are to be brought into visibility in just this simple way. This is the way in which the I AM makes itself manifest. The method is so easy that the man of great intellect passes it by. It is so plain that a simpleton may understand it. One does not have to know about anything whatsoever except God. How easy it is: how light the burden! No long, tedious years of study, no delving into depths of intricate theories and speculations are necessary. All that is required is a simple, childlike attention directed to the everywhere present Spirit, and a heart filled with love and goodness for everything.
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Dynamics For Living by Charles Fillmore
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