THE SEED IS THE WORD
By
Charles Fillmore
(First Appearance in Unity Magazine February 1912)
BEING exists under two phases: invisible and visible, abstract and concrete. The visible comes forth from the invisible, and this coming forth is always according to a universal method of growth from minute generative centers. All forms are built according to this law. From center to circumference is the plan of procedure throughout the universe. The one who studies form alone, and expects to learn from it and its evolutions the secret of existence, never goes back of the Seed—never catches sight of the Spirit moving upon every generating center.
Causes are always invisible—spiritual. “God is Spirit,” “and the Seed is the Word of God.” Thus that which produces the Seed is the Spirit. It is popularly presumed that the seed produces that which appears, after its kind. This is but a superficial conclusion, and a moment’s logical consideration will convince anyone that a cause so insignificant, as compared with the effect, could not produce without an anterior principle results so large and varied. The oft-repeated illustration of the acorn having folded within its heart the oak, is not correct. The acorn is a generative center through which intelligence manipulates substance, and produces that form called the oak. Thus the acorn of itself is powerless to produce anything, but as an avenue through which interior forces become exterior, it is important.
We should never lose sight of the fact that things are but the evidences of intelligence and power. In and of themselves they are without causation in any way. The Seed is the symbol of the Word of God, and in its generative qualities it represents the apparent insignificance of the spiritual Word as it goes forth from its invisibility and silence. But this Word is a generative center with all the possibilities of God at its call. It is the idea of God—”the image and likeness.” It is just like God in its essentials, and needs only to be planted in fertile ground to produce the living picture of which it is the subjective image. In its highest degree of expression this is man. Jesus Christ is the Word of God. It was in the beginning with God, and is now with God. It came forth from God. It became flesh and dwelt among men. It always dwells among men; it is the real generative center through which man draws all his intelligence, life, love, substance. It is the one point at which we tap the deific storehouse—it is the inlet and outlet of God.
So the “Seed,” that is, “the Word of God,” is man— not the external thinking personality that has consciousness of separation, but the internal spiritual germ. This central seed is the generative center from which the personal man forms himself. He draws upon the universal forces within and without, just as the tree draws upon the invisible Spirit, manifesting in earth, air and water. He may be totally unconscious of this in certain stages of his building, but this does not nullify the fact. Because the babe is not conscious of the method of its sustenance during the first months of its prenatal life, does not have any weight with those who have observed the law.
Man is the idea of God, and the idea of God is the Word of God. Man is not a thing of small beginnings, but of infinite beginnings. His resource is the Infinite, and he draws his substance from an inexhaustible store. He is never at a loss for supply, be it never so scarce in the markets of the world.
At the heart-center of everyone is this “Seed—the Word of God.” It is there as a door opening into the Infinite. Man opens this door or closes it at his will. Some open it just a little crack, and others not at all. Some open the door wide, and they manifest such rare powers that they are exalted, even deified, by those who have closed their own doors. This little inner door has great powers of expansion, and he who opens it wide finds on its inner side the kingdom of God. It is the way into that kingdom. It is the Christ Spirit speaking through those who have opened it, “I am the door.”
It is strange, but true, that this inner Seed of God may have been so neglected as to have been entirely forgotten by some people. They may have a slight recollection of having at some remote period been aware of a state in which they did not have to endure the burdens of self-sustenance, but this is so faint that it is like a dim, far-away dream. When this seed has thus been forgotten, and other sources of growth sought, the man loses his symmetry. He is gnarled and crooked. His body is filled with knots, and his limbs die before their time. This is the paralysis of non-recognition of the generative seed. No true growth results from earth and air alone. Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word proceeding out of the mouth of God. This “Seed is the Word of God”—that is, man’s real self, because it is the umbilical cord that forever connects him with the infinite fountain of supply. No growth takes place except through this “Seed,” this high ideal of what man is. And other ideal is a reflection, and there are reflections in descending degree, until man finds himself comparing himself with his own creations—a worm of the dust.
As Emerson says: “Whilst a necessity so great caused man to exist, his health and erectness consists in the fidelity with which he transmits influences from the vast and universal to the point on which his genius can act. The ends are momentary; they are vents for the current of inward life which increases as it is spent. A man’s wisdom is to know that all ends are momentary, that the best end must be superseded by a better. But there is a mischievous tendency in him to transfer his thought from the life to the ends, to quit his agency and rest in his acts; the tools run away with the workman, the human with the divine. I conceive a man as always spoken to from behind, and unable to turn his head and see the speaker. In all the millions who have heard the voice, none ever saw the face. As children in their play run behind each other, and seize one by the ears and make him walk before them, so is the Spirit the unseen pilot. That well-known voice speaks in all languages, governs all men, but none ever catch a glimpse of its form. If the man will exactly obey it, it will adopt him, so that he shall not any longer separate it from himself in his thoughts; he shall seem to be it, he shall be it. If he listens with insatiable ears, richer and greater wisdom is taught him; the sound swells to ravishing music, he is borne away as with a flood, he becomes careless of his food and of his house, he is the tool of ideas, and leads a heavenly life. But if his eye is set on things to be done, and not on the truth that is still taught, and for the sake of which the things are to be done, then the voice grows faint, and at last it but a humming in his ears. His health and greatness consists in his being the channel through which heaven flows to earth; in short, in the fullness in which an ecstatical state takes place in him. It is pitiful to be an artist, when by forbearing to be artists we might be vessels filled with divine overflowings, enriched by the circulations of omniscience and omnipresence.”
Let not this Seed of God within your soul lie fallow for want of conscious recognition on your part. You want to express all the possibilities of Being, which you can do if you will acknowledge the source through which they methodically come forth.
Many people think man grows a little differently from other things. They are sure he is a special creation, formed by the Lord God in a miraculous way, from the “dust of the ground” and “set up against de palin’s to dry.” This style of creation will do for the backwoods preacher, but not for thinking people. Man is the creation of God. God creates in a definite manner. Man is created in a definite manner. He comes forth into the visible world in a regular, everyday sort of a way, through the simple process wrapped up in the mystery of this inner “Seed.” To think that man is created in any but a methodical way, is to think without reasonable consideration. There is no evidence anywhere of a miraculous creation for anything, and it is folly to presume that the Almighty stepped out of his course to make man. Man in his selfhood makes himself. His process is precisely that of God’s, through the power of his word. Without the Christ-Word man has no life in him. Man does not make anything that lasts unless it has its point of departure in this inner Seed-idea of the Father. Men think they are building, but they are deceived. They may spend thousands of years rearing states of consciousness, that, in the days of judgment between the real and the evanescent, must be dissolved into the vapor of nothingness.
Every idea is a seed, and will bring forth according to the character of the mind-soil in which it is planted. There is a law of growth in mind parallel with that of earth. A thistle seed will always produce thistles, regardless of the character of the soil; so a low ideal will work out low conditions in a high type of mind. You may be a giant in strength today, but if you get into your mind the idea of sickness it will bring you down as surely as if you were a weakling. So with every idea that finds lodgment, and at the same time credence, in your mind; it will produce fruit of its kind just as surely as will the material seed planted in the earth. It goes through a similar process of growth also. It does not always spring forth at once and rapidly come to fruition, but it goes through a methodical series of changes, from inertness to tiny sprout, away deep down in the consciousness, where it is not observed by the external thinking mind. In due course it sends out a shoot in the direction of external consciousness, which finally comes to the surface in some discord, or some harmony. The time of planting is usually so remote that even he who knows the law of growth from thought to thing cannot remember when he sowed the seeds that are manifest in his consciousness as thistles. When told that certain thoughts have produced certain effects in his case, the patient will invariably respond, “But I was not thinking those thoughts.”
The first lesson to be learned by the student in metaphysics is that the “Seed is the Word.” The next is that this kind of seed hides itself in the darkness of the mind, where it germinates, sprouts and comes into visibility with all the scientific accuracy of detail of the ordinary plant. The fruit is a living organism, too, and has the power to throw off seeds that find lodgment, and produce crops in other receptive minds.
But there is a gardener who has absolute charge of each mind, and can determine just what kind of seeds shall be planted in his domain. That gardener is the I Am of every soul. What it says is law in the garden over which it has control. If that gardener is lax, shiftless and ignorant of his privileges, he may let the thistle seeds from other foolish minds blow over his fence and take root in his garden. But it is not at all necessary. By his simple word of command he can protect his domain from all intruders. Not all gardeners know this, nevertheless it is true.
These seed-ideas are subject to some very intricate combinations in the mind, and you cannot tell just how they will work out. They may be a very long time in producing a crop, or they may do so quickly. They may give a crop after a few moments in some instances, while in others it may take years.