Myrtle and Charlie Fillmore

This is a short piece on the origins of Unity—and what it’s all about—a topic that seem to have gotten lost in recent times. After all, Unity’s origins are in the hoary past, over a hundred and thirty years ago. And yet, when we take a look at what the founders of Unity taught, we find it’s very modern. In fact, there’s a lot we can learn from them. So what follows is a little about Myrtle and Charlie Fillmore.

Myrtle (1845-1931) had always been a sickly child. She had tuberculosis, as did Charlie. (His friends called him Charlie, not Charles.) Myrtle’s doctors gave her two years to live, as they couldn’t make her well. Not willing to accept this, they went searching for alternatives. Eventually they ran across Mary Baker Eddy and her new organization Christian Science. In fact, they became two of the better-known students of Emma Curtis Hopkins, who was herself a student of Eddy. These people were all part of a movement back then called New Thought, which has a very imperfect reflection today in the New Age movement. I’ve included some references at the end of this article if you want to find out more, but as it happened, the Unity School of Christianity became the largest denomination of the New Thought movement, and remains so today.

In an aside, it’s interesting to note that Charlie started a prayer group and called it Christian Science, not after Mary Baker Eddy, but after one of her teachers, Phineas Quimby, who was certainly an interesting and controversial character. However, Ms. Eddy had a lock on the name, so after a legal battle brought by her, Charlie changed the name of his group to Silent Unity, a prayer group that, after 120 years, still exists today within Unity. What’s perhaps surprising, is that there was plenty of real-life drama back in those days. For example, at one point Emma Hopkins had a major falling out with Mary Baker Eddy and was excommunicated by her. Actual preacher shenanigans!

But what exactly did Myrtle and Charlie teach? What was Unity all about? By 1906, the name had become The Unity Society of Practical Christianity, centered in Kansas City, Missouri. The emphasis was on the word “practical,” and here’s the reason why. By certain processes of meditation, which they later taught, Myrtle did not die in those next two years; she lived for another fifty years, in excellent health.

The very heart of Unity teaching is healing the ills of mind, body and affairs. This healing began with Mrytle’s self-healing. Then she healed her friends and neighbors by what they called the “Christ” powers within. Be sure, though, that you don’t interpret this as meaning the action of someone who lived two thousand years ago. It was not this for the Fillmores. It was, and still is, an active, power within each of us that they taught people how to tap into. Charlie put it this way:

“The difference between Jesus and us is not one of inherent spiritual capacity, but in difference of demonstration of it. Jesus was potentially perfect, and He expressed that perfection; we are potentially perfect, [but] we have not yet expressed it.”

So how did Myrtle heal herself? She put into practice this simple idea:

“I am a child of God, therefore I do not inherit sickness.”

You mean this cured her? Yes, it was the first step, knowing without a doubt it was true. This is called faith today, but “faith” is sometimes considered a term of derision by those who don’t have it, and don’t understand it. In fact, it’s defined at times as “believing in something you know isn’t true, but hope is true.” This results from buying into something someone else has told us, without having direct, experiential knowledge ourselves that it is true; we wind up believing things that aren’t true, and not believing things that are true. It is in this last sense that Myrtle used the word, and here’s an anecdote that makes her usage clear.

At one point in the early 1900’s Unity was in financial trouble. So Myrtle, Charlie and their senior staff met in Kansas City to tackle the problems they were having. One of the staffers said, “Let’s pray that the money holds out.” Myrtle replied quietly, “On, no. Let’s pray that our faith holds out.” Charlie and Myrtle never lost faith in what they were doing. They had the courage to follow their faith into new areas.

For the Fillmores, the word “practical” meant four things: 1) healing one’s own body, mind and affairs, first, 2) then teaching others who were interested to do the same, 3) building (Unity Village in Missouri was started at that time), and 4) teaching about everyday thinking, feeling and living.

In Unity, salvation is attained by atonement with God. This is, possibly, a meaningless statement – it was for me – until I broke it down. “Salvation” just means to save from harm. There’s no reason to get all biblical about this; that just muddies the water these days – something Myrtle and Charlie were experts at avoiding. Being saved from harm is synonymous with being healed in body, mind and affairs, that’s all. (See, this stuff is really easy.)

Next, “atonement” just means “at-one-ment,” being at one with something, being in union with something, coming into a state of resonance with something, being in a state of unity with something. (Get it? Unity? Ah.) And what is that something? Here, the word “God” means Universal Spiritual Presence. So what we have translates to this:

To be fully healed, we need to come into union with Universal Spiritual Presence.

A simple idea. But how?

The key for the Fillmores is in this statement of Charlie’s:

“The highest and the inmost are one.”

This is the central concept, the central teaching, in Unity.

But this is really a tough one for us moderns, because we’re almost completely outer-directed these days. When we go inward at all, it’s likely “into” the screen of a computer device on our desk, in our lap or hand, or one that’s up to our ear. Maybe into a book, or a hobby, or a sport. Rarely into ourselves. Butinto ourselves is exactly the direction in which healing and at-one-ment lie.

Myrtle Fillmore is the exemplar par excellence for this. And as she and Charlie were such good teachers, we might expect them to have left explicit instructions for us on how to do this.

They did.

The instructions are written on a wall on every Unity building. These instructions are, in fact, what makes a Unity building. Have you seen them? They will be our topic next time.

Going further …

For more on the early history and activities of Unity and the Fillmores, check out admin.unityonline.org/aboutunity/WhoWeAre/unityhistory.html

For a look at the bigger picture, take a look at The Secret Source by Maja D’Aoust and Adam Parfrey (Process Media, LA, 2007) This book is subtitled “The Law of Attraction is one of seven hermetic laws. Here are the other six.” If you’ve tried the Law of Attraction and found it doesn’t work as advertised, or seems to be about the wrong things, here’s why. Or you can just stay tuned right here, as this Union idea is going to be an on-going topic.