Atom-Smashing Power of Mind: Chapter 13

This is an essay from Charles Fillmore's 1949 book, written from the perspective of New Thought metaphysical Christianity — the tradition Fillmore founded as Unity Church. The essay argues that Shakespeare was not merely a dramatist but a metaphysician, prophet, and spiritual teacher whose works encode advanced truths about the mind, the soul, and the unseen world. Fillmore's central and most distinctive claim is that Shakespeare's extraordinary insight despite limited formal education proves the doctrine of reincarnation: he was "a very old soul" carrying forward wisdom accumulated across multiple past lives, stored in the subconscious mind. The essay reads specific plays — *Julius Caesar*, *Hamlet*, *King Lear*, *The Winter's Tale*, and others — as evidence that Shakespeare understood spirit communication, prophetic dreams, the power of thought over circumstance, and the source of good and evil (notably citing Hamlet's "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" as a metaphysical axiom). Fillmore dismisses the Bacon authorship theory as a failure to grasp how soul development transcends academic credentials, and draws a direct parallel between Shakespeare's genius and Jesus's spiritual authority. The overall argument is less about Shakespeare scholarship than about using Shakespeare's canonical prestige to validate New Thought teachings on mind power, the afterlife, and spiritual healing.

Atom-Smashing Power of Mind: Chapter 13

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