Our building here on Tracy Avenue was already under construction when the most
prolonged and pronounced controversy in Unity’s early history began. It
started with the October, 1905, issue of Unity which included an
inserted page, bright red in color, printed with the healing and prosperity
affirmations to be used for the month. On the reverse side of the red page was
the announcement that this was "a test." The explanation which accompanied
this new element to appear in Unity magazine stated:
This leaf has been spiritually treated by the Unity Society members in Kansas
City. It is charged with healing thought power and will connect all who use it
with the Jesus Christ consciousness.
Hold it in your hands while
repeating over and over the words of Truth and you will feel the
Power of the Holy Spirit and the promise of Jesus Christ will be fulfilled in
you according to your faith.
Thus was born the "Red Leaf" controversy.
Month after month Charles Fillmore defended the use of the Red Leaf from those
who questioned its purpose and the necessity to use anything other than
spiritual mind power. Was Unity not a leader in the new "mental science" and
"spiritual mind cure"? Did it not teach that healing came through the activity
of the Holy Spirit working within the individual consciousness to replace
error thought with the Truth of Being?
Two months after its first appearance, Charles Fillmore wrote in the December,
1905, Unity, "We respect the conservative element, but we are not to be
hampered by what others think. We are guided by the Spirit in Man." He
reminded his readers that Jesus placed his hands on the sick to heal them.
"Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any that were sick with
various diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on every one of
them and healed them." (Luke 4:40) He repeated the story of Paul who
distributed cloths to the sick which carried healing power. "And God did
extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons
were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the
evil spirits came out of them." (Acts 19:12) Charles Fillmore also spoke of
the healing power of Peter’s shadow! "And more than ever believers were added
to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women, so that they even carried out
the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and pallets, that as Peter
came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them." (Acts 5:15) "There is
a vast difference between laying on of hands with prayer, and laying on of
hands without prayer," Fillmore said. One he called spiritual healing and the
other he said was "merely magic."
In January of 1906 Charles Fillmore wrote:
The Red Leaf is not to be used as a mustard plaster or a magnetic belt, by
those who are in the understanding of the Truth, but as an aid to
concentration. Hold it in your hands and slowly read the words over, then
close your eyes and repeat them mentally. Do this until your mind is saturated
with the thought. Then meditate upon its meaning, and let it sink deep into
your consciousness. This is the right use of the Red Leaf.
When I was in Ministerial School, during a class in Unity history, I was told
that Charles Fillmore stopped publishing the Red Leaf because people were
applying it to parts of the body, and it certainly appears that this
information was correct in the light of the preceding statement in Unity.
However, further investigation reveals a somewhat different picture. "To use
the Red Leaf in this Month’s Unity," Charles Fillmore said in May,
1906:
Place it on the nerve center nearest the affected part and mentally affirm,
‘Spirit-Mind illumines and heals.’ If it is a headache, place the sheet on the
forehead. If a stomach ache, place it on the pit of the stomach, etc.
He continued the instruction by saying that the object of the process is to
concentrate spiritual thoughts in the mind that moves the body so that the
body may then be transformed by Spirit.
I said that this was a "prolonged and pronounced" controversy. In July, 1906
The New York Times became involved when E. B. Lyman wrote an inquiry in the
newspaper about the "Christian Science in a plaster shape!"
...pay a dollar for a year of Unity, published in Kansas City, MO., and
receive as an insert in each month’s number the wonderful Red Leaf. Have you a
toothache ... anything that can be classed as an ill of the flesh? Merely
apply the Red Leaf to or near the affected organ and, presto, you are healed.
There are no expensive books to buy.... Just a little Red Leaf and you....
Simply apply the little Red Leaf to pocketbook or business letter head, or
sleep with it under your pillow, and you will experience a turn in the tide of
your affairs....
When Charles Fillmore received this news article, he published it in Unity
and stated that he could not have written a better summary of the virtues
of the Red Leaf. He also reported that, as a result of the publicity in The
New York Times, he had received many serious letters of inquiry. He even
offered to send the little leaf "under separate cover" to any of his readers
who desired more than one copy. Discussion and inquiry continued into 1908.
Even after that time the affirmation page was printed in red ink later
evolving to black with red highlights. There followed several years of
experimentation with color as a symbol or expression of certain ideas and the
mental energy behind them.
Is the idea of the Red Leaf useful? I believe it is. When I take visitors to
the third floor of this building, to the area that was the first Silent Unity
department and Myrtle Fillmore’s office, many remark on the feeling they sense
there and I agree—there is something remarkable about the room. I believe that
a quantum physicist could explain the phenomenon and that it is related to the
Christian Church’s doctrine of transubstantiation. Through the activity of the
mind, working through powerful affirmations of Truth, the atoms of the plaster
in the walls were spiritualized and electrified by Myrtle Fillmore and her
co-workers, speaking and writing their affirmative prayer. That same mind
action changes the vibration and essence of simple gifts of bread and wine
into more vitalized forms which become the spiritual food of communion. Those
plain, red sheets of paper were imprinted with words of Truth which conveyed a
certain power by the very nature of the ideas upon them. More importantly,
they were charged with spiritual energy by the many Silent Unity workers and
by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore as they prayed over them. Like the plaster in
these walls and the elements of communion, those little leaves became
something more. They became for the people who used them, first a point of
focus and second, a catalyst for the union of the mind and the body. Too often
we experience a gulf between a healing statement held in the mind and its
actual expression in some area of the body. The little sheet helped users span
that gulf. We have all noticed that we have experienced a sense of relief in
some aching part of the physical body when a mother, a father, a friend—even
ourselves—have placed a hand over the area in a spirit of love.
In this issue you have received a facsimile of the original Red Leaf. It, too,
has been charged with spiritual power. It has been prayed over; a circle of
Reike practitioners—spiritual healers—have laid hands, minds, and hearts upon
this paper, and it has been kept in Myrtle Fillmore’s office where the
original Red Leaf was blessed. Its atoms are no longer simply those of red
paper and ink. They have been changed by the power of the Spirit into an open
channel of healing and prospering power. During the month ahead, use this leaf
according to the instruction Charles Fillmore provided. See that the windows
of heaven are open for you and an overflowing blessing is now poured out upon
you. (After Malachi 3:10)