I used to have the view, like most people, that the death of the body means death, and when the body is moving around, it means life. That death is something we all want to avoid, and we want to keep bodies alive.
And then I read ACIM and I thought, okay, death is an illusion, so things aren't supposed to die, meaning that the body supposed to be kept in a state of life. I read support for the idea that a sick body represents attack, and death is failure and an attempt to be unconscious. So it makes sense to say that we should "swear not to die" and try to make the body symbolize eternal life.
But while there is some truth to this and support for it in the course, there can also be mixed in a kind of spiritualization of bodies. We might start to think that a repurposed "holy body" is full of life and totally natural. But this can also disguise an underlying desire to have the body "always be alive" and to still avoid states of death. As if bodily death is still death, and being good at avoiding it is more spiritual.
But there is a deeper teaching in the course. Things which pass for life in this world are not really life, either. And we have arbitrarily decided that certain forms or states mean death. We've decided that a dead body means death, and that moving bodies mean life. But these are really separation-based judgements, designed to take one single illusory world and split it into acceptable and unacceptable parts.
In fact, it must be an illusion that a healthy vital youthful "living" body, is in any way really different to a decrepit diseased broken dying body. Their forms present illusions that they are not the same, as a deception. Their forms are disguises designed to tempt you to believe they are not the same one thing. A decoy, so that you won't realize they are both really the same dream. "The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."
Jesus teaches in the course that bodies do not really live, OR die. That they are not really even remotely similar to life in heaven. Real life is immortal eternal life. A vitality and livingness of the mind, almost like an excited energy, which can spontaneously spawn new life by will alone. And any such life is permanent and lives forever in an immaculate and formless state.
So-called "life" on Earth is not like this. Bodies are inherently etremely limited and limiting. They anchor us into tiny little locations in space and time, inhibit our abilities, and make it difficult to create anything. They appear to be born and to grow and change, all of which cannot happen in reality, where life is a constant state. And then they seem to grow old and wither and die and decompose, something which is utterly unnatural with regard to life in heaven.
What Jesus really says is that so-called "life" in this world is not really life. Nor is it really death, but a dream of death. It is in fact nothing. It is nothingness, an illusion of the ABSENCE of existence (heaven), the opposite of reality. It is an unreality and a lack of either real life OR real death. Real death is impossible because it does not exist at all. So at most this world represents only illusions of living and dying, and neither of them are true.
"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."
"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."
So in this world, "life" is an illusion of life, which is not really life. And death is an illusion of death, not really death. Because this world itself isn't really a "something", or an anything. It's actually a nothing, pretending to be a something. And in fact Jesus calls the whole thing a "dream of death" with varying degrees of death symbolized in different forms. "Without the idea of death there is no world." Even "life forms" are "forms of death".
As a Teacher of God our task is to recognize that there is NO DIFFERENCE between "living bodies" and "dead bodies", in the big picture. In truth they are just images of bodies, forms, whose appearance is temporary and symbolic at most, and which cannot really be alive or dead. Walking bodies are not really living bodies. Bodies in a morgue are not really dead bodies. In truth, they are EXACTLY the same ONE illusion, pretending to be many illusions. There is no life OR death in a world of fiction.
"They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful."
"But this you do not see; that you made death, and it is but illusion of an end. Death cannot be escape, because it is not life in which the problem lies."
"God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion."
"Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die."
At first it might seem as if this means there's not much point "healing" bodies. Or trying to preserve their health. Or raising the physically dead. Or restoring broken limbs. Or any other act which might seem like it is siding with "the illusion of life" versus the illusion of death. Why try to steer bodies towards what we think of as "a living state" rather than a dead state? If all their conditions are the same one illusion, what is the point in avoiding sickness or death in any form?
The clear teaching in ACIM is that, nevertheless, even though a "healthy living" body is just as unreal as a dead one, bodies ARE symbols. And they are communicators. And their form "means" something to those who look upon it. And so the body's form can communicate something. It can communicate for example that there has been attack, or that sin has happened. But it can also communicate that attack has not happened, and therefore symbolize eternal life.
"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."
It is in fact by recognizing that bodies don't live or die, that the body is no longer "attacked" by thoughts and laws you make up to try to preserve them. When you stop trying to believe that a body is alive, or can cause sickness, or be healed, the mind in fact "heals" it, or corrects the image, removing symbolic appearances of attack and death. And now the body seems to resurrect towards "looking like life", because the mind cannot conceive of illness and ceases to project ideas of death onto it.
"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."
A healed healthy body, even if an illusion of health, CAN symbolize eternal life in the world, CAN teach "with a power greater than a thousand tongues" that its harmlessness proves your brother's innocence, and CAN teach innocence. This is a repurposing of the FORM of the body, for a higher purpose, to USE form to symbolize actual eternal life, as best it can, rather than symbolizing the idea of attack and death. It is to this end that we aim to "heal" the body and make it be "more alive". A such, physical health comes from a healthy mind.
"Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."
After some recent insights, I have a theory... that God's Kingdom actually has locality and non-locality, meaning there is a kind of timeless time, and spaceless space. Whereas 'spacetime' is the idea of locality only.
God's whole system runs on a BOTH/AND kind of logic. Something true of me is true of you - golden rule, etc.
God is both personal and impersonal. He's personal because he gives 100% full attention to each individual being, yet he is impersonal because he treats all beings the same.
Similarly there has to be locality in order to have a creation distinct from God - "separate beings", souls that God created. It requires some sense of multitudes and some way to say "I'm here, you're there" sort of thing. But at the same time, non-local as in - we're both overlapping at one everywhere.
I think what happened in the separation is we denied the non-locality shared qualities of reality and tried to emphasise just the local ones, which produced space and time. Space is this idea of being isolated to one location, similarly with time being isolated to one moment.
If true, this suggests that in heaven there is a kind of "space" but it's not the same as the space of spacetime... its simultaneously locations but also the presence of everything everywhere all at once. That God is in everything still. Both local and non-local.
This would go on to allow there to be multiple creations, and for example the course makes reference to things like "you too have a kingdom your soul has created" and "your mind has the power to create worlds" etc. Why have the power to create worlds, if we haven't created worlds somewhere? And he says we basically have created kingdoms somewhere.
It requires a kind of 'space' but it's like... the things in the space are so shared and so one that everything is also everywhere. And it could imply that there is an enormous amount of universes of 'stuff' up there in reality. Not PHYSICAL forms, but forms of some kind that are also formless.
Another important property of reality is that everything is always open and fully accessible to everyone. And nothing real can be threatened. This means there's no hard surfaces, no walls, no impacts, no possibility of destruction or attack, nothing firm or solid, no things that can reject or repel or resist.
There could be for example some kind of 'thought creation' or 'idea' of a thing, perhaps a place, a gathering, a created world/environment or structure perhaps .... but its not made of of things which "keep people out" or "keep people in". You can't attack it because it's made of spirit. You go to touch it and you become one with it, overlap it, pass through it. No-one is denied any access ever.
So I think its possible on this basis that heaven could have "stuff in it", made of spirit/light, but the stuff doesn't have the repelling hard surfaces of spacetime matter, and because everyone IS everything nothing can sort of "block you" or "attack you" or anything like we see with physical objects. There could be spirit forms, ideas, thought-creations ("miracles are thought creations"), which we can merge with, pass through, overlap with, share, be one with.
Our experience there would be quite different than in the physical realm. In physicality, it's all made of walls, blocks, resistance, attack, denial, imprisonment, impacts, rebounds, forces keeping things separate, damage, decay, etc.... all these physics things all require a 'barrier' of some kind that says "keep out". Those barriers don't exist in heaven - you can pass right through it and be one with it. Total freedom to come and go anywhere and everywhere.
This is also why spacetime and the physical are illusions because they're basically formed from the idea of saying "no" to something, not allowing freedom, not allowing access, pushing away, forcing, etc.... a world of walls and blocks and solid lies and prison cells. This is how spacetime is fundamentally different from heaven. And also is why the physical world is a total illusion, formed from ideas of separations between everything rather than shared unity. And without separateness there can be no solid matter.
Also an interesting part of this is the non-locality of time. In 'time' we have localised time but not non-local time. So it's all sort of like one moment of 'now' but the things in it come and go (die), there is no sense of "always and forever". In heaven there could be local time - which is actually necessary in order to allow for example "the kingdom to increase", and for you to "add to the kingdom". And for God to create the holy spirit in response to the separation, and being in our right minds before the separation etc, and there being an "after the atonement".
All that creation requires is essentially a kind of causal chain which requires a kind of linear progression - a sort of time. But at the same time, heaven has total non-locality so it has non-local time everywhere as well, meaning, the now moment ie every moment in which we "live and move" through local/non-local space, also features a sense of this being always and forever, that all times exist at once as one thing, transcending 'local time' as we know it.
Cus there's some things about heaven's reality, creation, God's nature, which really need to have the presence of some kind of progression or time or sequence, as well as some kind of order or sort of places to create kingdoms and such. It has to have a 'kind of spacetime', it's just that it's not purely spacetime - it's spacetime + non-localised space and non-localised time. It's BOTH, eternal and time, unlimited and local.
Space is the local+non-local space of heaven stripped of its non-local shared nature. Time is the local+non-local time of heaven stripped of its non-local eternal nature. Separate spaces, separate times, instead of 'oneness spaces' and 'all times'. This idea at least seems to, for me, clean up some loose ends and open some doors to some possibilities that were overlooked.
Talking out loud to flesh this out... might be right, might not. But it's interesting.
"When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and SEEN it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and WATCHED them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need PERSUADE you to accept the gift of vision?" UrT20I12
"You are wholly lovely. A perfect shaft of pure light." UrT1B30W
"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky." UrT30D8
"When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was." UrW167L9 "If you created GOD and He created you, the KINGDOM could not increase through its OWN creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would NOT be co-creators WITH God. As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations. In this way only can ALL creative power EXTEND OUTWARD. God's accomplishments are NOT yours. But yours are LIKE His. HE created the Sonship, and YOU increase it. You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom." UrT7A2
"it was forever created TO increase. If you perceive it as NOT increasing, you do not know what it IS." URT7B5
"And His Sons, who create LIKE Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the INCREASE of the Kingdom depends on it, just as THEIR creation did." UrT7C7
"We have spoken often of the INCREASE of the Kingdom by YOUR creations, which can only BE created as YOU were." UrT7F12
"You, too, have a Kingdom which your Soul has created. It has not ceased to create because your ego has set you on the road of perception." URT4D3
"A co-creator with the Father must have a Son. Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. A perfect Being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken FROM; not born of size nor weight nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of ANY kind." UrT24H7
"Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order." UrT9A2
Jesus speaks in ACIM about translating hell into heaven, converting somehow the Earth into heaven's reflection. ie that the Earth is neutral/devoid of meaning and we project meaning onto it. Or to put it another way, we decided that certain states or forms or situations "must mean" something in partcular.
We associate meanings like they are outcomes or inherent definitions of what is happening. As if, when such and such happens it always means "this". As if the meaning is inherent in the form. Jesus speaks of this as form appearing to shut out all meaning to the extend that the form itself seems to describe what the forms means. And that this is a total illusion.
"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."
The truth is that we give everything all the meaning it has, and the world has NO inherent meaning of its own. It is indeed a meaningless world, which is why it acts like a mirror reflecting back whatever you project onto it. We actually decide that it means whatever we think it means, and then pretend it meant this without our contribution.
But when you think about it, he's talking about a process of interpretation or translation. There's plenty of interesting quotes about both those terms. We basically interpret the world. Interpretation means, a process of judging or evaluating, what WE BELIEVE something is, which in some way TRANSLATES it into some other preferred form in our minds that we find acceptable. We decide to interpret it to mean whatever we WANT it to mean, hence "there is no world apart from what you wish."
Similarly, the idea of a translation does not simply mean that the thing itself changes. The world doesn't actually "turn into" the meaning that you give it. You can take the example of translating a language.
If the world is writen in English, and you translate the world into Spanish, and you can only speak Spanish, then you can "read" or interpret a VERSION of the world, an image of it, written in the Spanish language, that seems to represent the world. But the translation you are reading isn't the ORIGINAL form. The world is essentially still in English, but your interpretation of it is transforming its meaning.
Translation is also a kind of math term, translating means to move something from one location to another. And it's part of a broader group of operations such as rotation and scaling, which are all types of "transforms". In effect the thing goes through a transformation of some kind and ends up different to how it began.
So in ACIM terms, our minds are giving the world meaning by interpreting it, putting that meaning onto it. Sometimes we give it meaning from our egos and sometimes from the Holy Spirit. When the ego gives it meaning, we believe the world is inherently hell or reflects a hell-like nature. When the Holy Spirit gives it his meaning, the world now reflects the love of God.
But we should note here that the TRANSLATED VERSION of the world is in fact once removed from the world, just as a Spanish translation is once removed from the original English. When you have interpreted the world to mean that it reflects heaven's meaning, we're saying that we now look AT the translated version, a sort of copy of the world, which is a different way of looking at it.
So when ACIM talks of earth translating into heaven etc it's not really saying that a meaningless world, having the meaning of God projected ONTO it, reflected back, now is actually a meaningful world. But that the REFLECTION is meaningful, and the TRANSLATED alternative dream which INTERPRETS the world is heaven-like. You are then seeing what you put there to see, rather than necessarily what is there. Because really the world is not there at all.
Our task then is simply to recognize that we do not want the translations that are converting the world into a hell-like language, and we instead want to "read into" the world a heaven-like language. We want the Holy Spirit's translation of the world, his purpose for it, his use of it, instead of what the ego is trying to "make of" it or use it for. And that applies to the body too.
"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth."
"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something. This is why perception involves an exchange, or a translation, which knowledge does NOT need. The interpretive function of perception, (actually, a distorted form of creation), then permitted man to interpret the body as HIMSELF, which, although depressing, was a way out of the conflict he induced."
"Thus are the Holy Spirit's lesson plans arranged in easy steps, that, though there be some lack of ease at times, and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence on its behalf."
"For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its TRANSLATION into Heaven. The RE-INTERPRETATION of the world is the transfer of ALL perception to knowledge."
""Father, Christ's vision is Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world! Yet how much more will I perceive in it than sight can give."
"For the instant of peace is eternal, BECAUSE it is wholly WITHOUT fear. It WILL come, being the lesson God gives you, through the Teacher HE has appointed, to translate time to eternity."
"Blessed is God's Teacher, Whose joy it is to teach God's holy Son his holiness. His joy is not contained in time. His teaching is for you, BECAUSE His joy is yours. Through Him, YOU stand before God's altar, where He gently translated hell into Heaven."
"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. Yet God created One Who has the power to translate into form the wholly formless."
"Forgiveness is the ONLY function meaningful in time. It is the means the Holy Spirit uses to TRANSLATE specialness from sin into salvation. "
"For to RECOGNIZE fear is not enough to escape FROM it, although the recognition IS necessary to demonstrate the NEED for escape. The Holy Spirit must still TRANSLATE it into truth. If you were LEFT with the fear, having RECOGNIZED it, you would have taken a step AWAY from reality, not TOWARD it."
"Never forget that the Holy Spirit does not depend on your words. He understands the requests of your heart and answers them. Does this mean that, while attack remains attractive to you He will respond with evil? Hardly! For God has given Him the power to translate your prayers of the heart into His language. He understands that an attack is a call for help. And He responds with help accordingly."
"Miracles are natural to God, and to the One Who speaks for Him. For His task is to TRANSLATE the miracle into the knowledge which it REPRESENTS, and which IS lost to you."
"However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM. You can place ANY relationship under His care, and be sure that it will NOT result in pain, if you offer Him your willingness TO HAVE IT SERVE NO NEED BUT HIS." "Every attack is a call for His patience, because ONLY His patience can translate attack into blessing."
"Thus does the Holy Spirit replace fear with love, and translate error into truth. And thus will YOU learn of Him how to replace your dream of separation with the fact of unity."
"When a child is helped to translate his "ghost" into a curtain, his "monster" into a shadow and his "dragon" into a dream, he is no longer afraid, and laughs happily at his own fear."
"The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device FOR you. Again, as always, it re-interprets what the ego uses as an argument FOR separation into an argument AGAINST it."
"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT."
"Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations, that show you all fearful outcomes of imagined sin, into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. They are HIS substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego's purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step AWAY from sin, reminding you that it is NOT reality that frightens you, and that the errors which you made CAN be corrected."
"By RE-INTERPRETING the ability to ATTACK, which you DID make, into the ability to SHARE, He TRANSLATES what you have made, into what God created."
"For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one."
True perception, aka Christ Vision, means seeing with forgiveness, ie seeing with a forgiving attitude. This is a mind that does not believe in sin and does not see sin.
False perception, aka the body's vision, means NOT seeing with forgiveness, ie seeing with an unforgiving attitude. This is a mind that believes in sin and sees sin.
What you SEE, when you have false perception, you ONLY see BECAUSE your perception is unforgiving. And what you see with false perception (yes, the world, bodies) ONLY EXIST WITHIN your false perception, NOT beyond it.
What you SEE, when you have true perception, CANNOT BE SEEN when you have false perception. And false perception is DENIAL OF REALITY.
The way to perceive with Christ Vision is to NOT USE anything that exists in the realm of false perception. That means THE BODY, because the body is FALSE and a denial of reality.
The body has permanent false perception. "These eyes made not to see will never see." You CANNOT use the body's eyes to see reality. "The body sees ONLY ILLUSIONS."
To see reality you must use the spiritual eye, aka christ vision, which DOES NOT USE the body's eyes or depend on them in any way, because THEY are made of false perception.
Using the body's eyes disables the use of the spiritual eye because they DENY forgiveness. The body's eyes DO NOT OVERLOOK, and therefore what they SEE they only see because they FAIL to see PAST what they see.
When they look AT surfaces of objects, it is because they are UNFORGIVING. If they were forgiving, they would OVERLOOK ALL WALLS. A sight that is BLOCKED BY WALLS is false perception.
Given that christ vision means to be forgiving, because it is true perception, christ vision MUST OVERLOOK and NOT SEE whatever the BODY sees. Therefore Christ Vision DOES NOT SEE WALLS, BODIES, OR THE WORLD.
The body sees only other sinful bodies. That is false perception.
"FORGIVENESS DOES NOT LOOK UPON BODIES."
"TO SEE A SINLESS BODY IS IMPOSSIBLE."
You cannot look AT a body WITHOUT using false perception. Which means you believe in sin, and as a result are then SEEING sinful things in a sinful way. If you want to look at a body WITHOUT sin, it is IMPOSSIBLE!!! You must overlook the body and NOT SEE IT, in order to BE in a state of mind of innocence. The innocent ONLY LOOK UPON GOD and his creation. The innocent DO NOT HAVE, AND DO NOT SEE BODIES. There are no bodies in reality. "Gone are bodies."
Seeing the face of Christ causes you to CEASE USING the body's eyes. The world which the body is made of, exists within, is seen within, and symbolizes, DISAPPEARS from your sight when you see the face of Christ. Because to see the face of Christ requires TOTAL true perception, which does not see bodies OR the world of bodies AT ALL. In fact the world vanishes and is FORGOTTEN when you see the face of christ.
"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; ***the world forgotten***, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. "
When the face of Christ is UNVEILED, it is because THE VEIL has disappeared. And the physical world IS THE VEIL which the body's vision is blinded by.
The "body's eyes" is ANY state of egotism. ANY state of confusion as to what is true and false. ANY state of a belief in sin. ANY state of death or suffering or fear. And the fact is, that this STATE, is what has CAUSED the physical human body to appear. The human body ONLY EXISTS WITHIN that state. It is the state of false perception. If you perceive the false as true, you will make false things real, and materialize an illusory FORM OF ERROR - a body.
The BODY, has ONLY false perception. It is only seen WITH false perception. It sees other bodies ONLY WITH false perception. You CANNOT SEE bodies with forgiveness. To see a sinless body is IMPOSSIBLE. To "Forgive bodies" has to mean to OVERLOOK THEM AND NOT SEE THEM.
"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them." "...the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal."
False perception includes therefore the state of mind in which Heaven is denied, and ALSO therefore the ENTIRE WORLD that comes from it, which includes the physical body itself AND ITS PHYSICAL EYEBALLS. "These eyes made not to see will never see" is referring to the BODY'S EYES, its seeing mechanism, its eyeballs, its reliance on external photons of light which are DENIED by the forms of error (matter), and its interpretation of those sensory signals which were MADE TO BLOCK KNOWLEDGE.
"The body sees only illusions." Literally. ONLY illusions. "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it." The body can ONLY SEE what GOD DID NOT CREATE.
Here is the fact of the body PHYSICALLY seeing ONLY the world of forms and illusions, which is physical matter, flesh and bones, other bodies, and the planet:
"The body's eyes see only form. They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. And they were made to look on error and not see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside surface of nothing. To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."
Do the body's eyeballs see only forms? YES.
Do the body's eyeballs fail to see PAST forms? YES.
Do the body's eyeballs see only the outside surfaces of objects? YES
Are physical objects therefore the "Granite block of sin"? YES.
Is the PLANET literally a PHYSICAL WALL that stands between you and reality? YES.
"The world of bodies is the world of sin". PLURAL bodies, not just your body, not just your body's eyes. The world where MULTIPLE BODIES exist, the container of the location of bodies, is the WORLD OF SIN. OUTSIDE the bodies. The ENVIRONMENT in which bodies appear to exist, is THE WORLD OF SIN! The entire world including all physical objects and bodies is MADE OF SIN AND DEATH.
"Without the idea of DEATH there is no world."
The world of sin, which is the world of bodies, is the world that the body is BLINDED BY and CANNOT SEE PAST, because the body CANNOT OVERLOOK ERRORS, and physical objects are the FORMS OF ERROR that the body cannot see past. The body has permanent false perception.
"These eyes, made not to see, will never see. For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. What was its maker's goal but not to see. For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but not for seeing. See how the body's eyes rest on externals and cannot go beyond. Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning. Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form means understanding has been obscured."
Are the body's eyeballs SEEN THROUGH by their maker? YES.
Do the body's eyes REST ON EXTERNALS? YES.
Does their vision stop at the surface of nothing unable to see past it because it is an UNFORGIVING false perception that does not overlook FORMS OF ERROR? YES.
Are the body's eyes BLINDED by perceiving FORMS? YES. When you SEE FORMS - **OBJECTS** - BODIES. ... you are BLINDED. Because the forms are the outside surface of NOTHING, they are not real, and they do not really exist! And seeing them PREVENTS YOU FROM SEEING REALITY. They block your vision. This is why the body's eyes cannot see reality EVER. You cannot USE the body see reality EVER.
This is why you have to forget the body and develop the SPIRITUAL EYE, because it's a way of SEEING that bypasses THE BODY totally and OVERLOOKS EVERYTHING THE BODY SEES, meaning it is NOT blocked by the surface of objects, it is NOT blinded by perceiving forms, it does NOT fail to overlook the granite block of SIN that the world is made of, it DOES NOT SEE BODIES, and it CAN LOOK AT REALITY. Reality is BEYOND the physical.
"Your brother's reality is beyond his body."
"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."
The dream is the PHYSICAL WORLD. It's the world you made. The world of sin and death that the BODY LIVES IN and CANNOT SEE PAST. Reality is BEYOND THE PHYSICAL WORLD. And you can only see it by OVERLOOKING, literally seeing THROUGH, the physical world. Because the world IS THE VEIL OF SIN over the face of christ.
"And so you and your brother stand ... before the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ. "
"This world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ, because its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself."
"Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world. It lets you recognize the Son of God"
"Let not your eyes be blinded by the veil of specialness that hides the face of Christ from him, and you as well. "
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face."
A PHYSICAL BLOCK. WHICH THE BODY IS BLINDED BY. A WALL OF SIN.
"But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear"
The PHYSICAL MATERIAL VEIL WILL DISAPPEAR, revealing the face of Christ which is BEYOND IT.
"Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the **world forgot**, with time forever ended as ***the world spins into nothingness from where it came."*** - because THE WORLD, the PLANET, EARTH, where BODIES exist, the WORLD OF SIN, is a world of NOTHINGNESS - it is a THIN VEIL over the face of christ BLOCKING REALITY. Physical matter is a block to awareness and is IN the mind because your mind is BIGGER than this world.
"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts" "Both heaven (formless eternity) and EARTH (physical planet) are in your mind."
"A world forgiven cannot last. 2 It was the home of bodies."
Even a forgiven world was WHER BODIES EXIST. The world of SIN. Which is turned into the forgiven world. BUT>....
But forgiveness looks past bodies. 4 This is its holiness; this is how it heals. 5 The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. 6 From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. 7 And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? 8 For place has gone as well, along with time. 9 Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. 10 Forgiveness proves it is impossible ****because it sees it not****. 11 And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."
"C-4.1. The world you see is an illusion of a world. 2 God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. 3 Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. 4 Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. 5 But the time will come when all things visible will have an end.
C-4.2. The body's eyes are therefore ***not the means by which the real world can be seen***, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. 2 And so they do. 3 For ****everything they see not only will not last****, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. 4 While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."
This is very clearly spelled out in the course. If you're seeing THIS WORLD, you are USING THE BODY. The world of bodies is the world of sin. Forgiveness DOES NOT look upon bodies. It sees unity BEYOND bodies, BEYOND the physical veil of matter, BEYOND this world. ANOTHER WORLD. Heaven and earth are totally opposite.
You cannot look at physical bodies in a forgiving way. They CANNOT BE SEEN by forgiveness.
You cannot look at the physical planet in a forgiving way. A FORGIVEN WORLD CANNOT LAST.
"To forgive is to OVERLOOK", not to look AT.
There is no body. There is no world. They exist only WITHIN states of mind that are false. They are hallucinations by insane individuals.
"The world is the INSANE THOUGHT SYSTEM of those DRIVEN MAD by guilt." "The world IS FALSE PERCEPTION".
They are seen only WITH false perception because they exist INSIDE OF false perceiving. And you cannot see them if you are innocent. There is no Earth in Heaven.
"Only the creations of light are real." "The living world of Light" is God's Kingdom, not the world of sin or bodies or forms or planets.
There is no world here.
Let's have a closer look at what the course says about the world and whether it is God's creation. This is going to be a long post so bear with me or pick and choose which quotes you want to look at. I put a comment after each one.
To me, the way that all of these statements sound paints a clear picture that the "physical world" i.e. the physical universe - planet Earth, is NOT God's creation whatsoever in any way shape or form.
It also says to me and that every time Jesus refers to the world as something we do not want, he is not referring to some "misperception of it" that we don't want - some imagined version of the world, which he talks about in other passages - but rather, literally "the world" - planet Earth. It is an illusion not created by God, and it does not exist, and it is not our home.
Confusion comes in because at times, Jesus IS speaking about our false perceptions and the need for the correction of perception. But at other times, he is speaking at a higher "level" either at the level of someone with true perception, or even higher at a level of the One Son of God who made this universe. Not having a clear distinguish about WHICH level he is talking at in any given quote leads many people to a lot of confusing and false conclusions. Let's take a look at some quotes....
"You do not want the world." (who would want a world God didn't create?)
"The world provides no safety." (because it is an attack on God)
"This world was over long ago." (because it never happened)
"Nothing the world believes is true." (because the world itself is fundamentally a lie)
"Love was never in the world of dreams." (because God cannot be in the world or of the world nor can He create the world. The world of dreams is not your dreamy interpretation of planet Earth, it IS planet Earth, a dream which you are inside of right now, sleeping - look around you! "Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all." - tells us that when we wake up in the morning to eat breakfast, WE ARE INSIDE A DREAM, not a world that God created.)
"There are no satisfactions in the world." (because the world was made by us as a substitute for God's universe)
"It is the world you see that is impossible." (because the world we see - literally planet earth, not your interpretation of planet earth - is impossible. It cannot exist because God did not create it.)
"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world." (because this world is entirely an EFFECT and it has no power to do anything)
"The world is not left by death but by truth." (because the world ITSELF is death, and truth is its undoing)
"Without the idea of death there is no world." (see .. the world is MADE OF DEATH and it will not ever be made of Life or given life or resurrected or turned into something living or God-created).
"All the "pleasures" of the world are nothing." (because they are illusions, and substitutes for God's love. This means the world can NEVER be a satisfying replacement for God's Creation).
"Perception selects, and makes the world you see." (Many many people think this means, that you have misperception OF the world, peeking out from a separate body, looking incorrectly at planet earth which somehow objectively came to exist "on its own" or created by God. What this really means is, YOUR perception, as the One Son of God, MADE THE ENTIRE WORLD, and the world *itself* IS a state of mind containing images. Trees, houses, people, it's all part of perception. Not perception OF trees and houses and people, but literally the things themselves. Those objects, your body, planet earth, are misperceptions.)
"The world you see is but a judgment on yourself." (because you are the One Son of God and the ENTIRE WORLD is a judgement against you. It's an attempt to deny who you are, to turn you into a form which dies, to picture what it would be like to be dead, and to completely obscure the light of Christ. The world itself IS judgement. Judgements OF or ABOUT the world are an entirely additional LAYER of bullshit that you added as a separate human, and is a SECOND LAYER of sleeping you added on top of dreaming the world.)
"The world you see has nothing to do with reality." (Again, this is one which many people think means, the world your little separate body-located self sees... thus your private perception. No. It's the world your eyes see. You see trees. You can call the trees good trees or bad trees, hated trees or loved trees, you still see trees. The trees you SEE - trees AT ALL - are nothing to do with reality. God did not create trees.)
"If this were the real world, God would be cruel." (This SHOULD be an obvious one. Given all the suffering and terror and death in the world, which is inherent to the world's nature, should NOT be possible if God created it. And claiming that it's really love or life if viewed correctly, is a complete distortion, again based in one person's body-identified personal opinion about the world. God does not create worlds where there are forms or bodies or things which die, NOR does he create worlds where even if those things are all part of one lovely "whole", they are possible either. God only creates HEAVEN, which is formless and has absolutely nothing to do with planet Earth in any way.)
"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness." (Yes, planet Earth, is a bleak little world, and it will vanish into nothingness, because God did not create it. This does not mean your personal misperception of the world will vanish (though it will also) - the world ITSELF will vanish, because it is a lie).
"The world was made that problems could not be escaped." (the purpose for this self-made world was to create problems that are inescapable, such as sickness and death. These problems however have no power over miracles which can undo them all BECAUSE God did not create a world of problems.)
"This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." (I like this one because it says it like it is. The entire world, the entire physical universe, is a "picture" in the MIND of the Son of God, who is absolutely vast and unlimited, who is dreaming this ENTIRE physical universe and everything in it, and it was designed by him as the crucifixion of himself. Its depiction of things which have beginnings and ends, stars which are born and die, flowers which wilt, people who die of disease, planets that die, etc... is a picture of CRUCIFIXION not a picture of "God is very loving." While you can come to perceive it in a more forgiving way, that does not make or prove it is God's creation either, because if you recognize it for the illusion/lie it is, it MUST disappear.)
"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all." (This is because the world is an effect of dreaming. What appears in it as "causes" are illusions of causes put in place by the dreamer. The world has no consequences. Anything God creates MUST have the power to CAUSE, and since the world cannot cause anything, it cannot be a creation of God.)
"The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never be." (There can only be joy and love and peace in what CAN be, i.e. God's creation, heaven, the kingdom, but outside of that there is no life and nothing can be joyful or loving or peaceful. The world is inherently a depiction of what peace is NOT like. Separation in all its forms is played out here, and every single particle of matter is at war with all the rest.)
"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home." (This world is not your home... literally, planet Earth is not your home. This entire physical universe is not your home. But some people interpret this to mean, well, this imaginary interpretation of the world is not my home - the world I'm putting on top of the world is not my home. Bullshit. "The world" is simply planet earth. Planet earth is not your home. Surely you FEEL this? Surely you recognize that you feel like an alien here, and that the more you wake up the more you recognize that you do not belong in this illusory place? I know I do.)
"There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten."(Thank God, because this world is not something God would ever create. God is suddenly the author of duality and sickness and death? God sees sickness and death as lovely and precious? I think not.).
"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state." (Planet Earth has never existed at all. This is hard to accept I know. There is no world. This is the one core teaching in ACIM which many people refuse to entertain. This is because we believe the world is REAL and cannot conceive of how it would not be. Especially if you come to the course with a background in beliefs which say God made the world in some way, that's hard to put down. This isn't referring to a privately perceived interpretation of the world. Again, it's just simply... this world, planet earth, has never existed. We can deny and fight this all we want.)
"In the world of scarcity, love has no meaning and peace is impossible." (Would you say planet earth is a world of scarcity? I sure would. That's not a judgement or an inability to see its pure loveliness. Yes there's a forgiven world, which is the recognition that this world is an illusion and is nothing, but I think most would agree this is a world of lack and rarity. Just look at how empty outer space is and how distant civilizations or inhabitable planets are. Extreme scarcity.)
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt." (So here again you could say, well, this means my perception is nuts and I'm not seeing the world correctly. Ok. That's one LAYER of the problem. Once you undo that false perception you're going to find out, that the world is STILL a delusional system. Inherently, the mountains, trees, planets, forests, oceans, it's all a state of DELUSION, and that's not going to change when you get over your personal misinterpretations of it. See, the problem is, we think that when we overcome "my" personal misperceptions, that's going to be the end of the story. It's not. You have to not only get over your personal interpretations (which is ONE level of awakening), AND then go beyond the definition of "my self" to incorporate ALL SELVES into one single Son of God - as Christ. And in that view, there is an entirely second level of awakening which leads to God, and the acceptance that the One Son of God MADE this world out of insanity and guilt. Guilt, denied, became unconscious, and projected out as the physical universe, in which we are now hiding from it by pretending to be innocent. Hmmm)
"The Holy Spirit sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home." (because the world ITSELF is not your home. It's just a way Holy Spirit can USE it to help you to ESCAPE from it through truth - because it doesn't exist)
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." (Plain and simple. Normal language. The world you see, with your eyes, regardless of your mental interpretations or labelling or judgements, is an illusion of a world. God did NOT create it. Many people want this mean, my personal interpretation of the world is not the world God created, and once I am free of my personal interpretation, God is going to reveal that this world - planet Earth - is his lovely creation. Good luck with that. Planet Earth does not exist. It is an illusion. The course even tells us the "real world" is an illusion and will disappear.)
"There is no world! This is the central thought the Course attempts to teach." (AHA!.. .. If you can GET this one and accept it, you've made a huge leap away from the ILLUSION that this world dis real, or that God could have created it whatsoever, to the awareness that this world can NEVER be real because to believe that requires a belief in sin and death. There is no world. Yes, planet Earth. There is no planet earth, neither as a separate planet nor as part of some seamless "soup" of God-stuff. Pretty threatening to the ego which is why it fights it tooth and nail.)
"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone." (Miracles can UNDO the world itself, and everything the world says cannot be undone (itself), BECAUSE the world CAN be undone, proving that it is NOT REAL. What is real cannot be undone. If miracles can undo the world, they can bring about RESURRECTION - the undoing of death in ALL its forms, including physical and mental death. Eventually the entire physical universes is going to be UNDONE, because it does not exist. Only God's kingdom will remain.)
"This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity." (Obviously, but this actually does not just mean that the people in the world are nuts (and most are, me included), it means the world ITSELF, the very fabric of spacetime, is insanity. It is impossible to be separate from God and this universe attempts to prove otherwise.)
"On confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon." (here, we're told the world RESTS UPON confusion. The world itself. Now, if this means your perception, sure, that'd seem to make sense. You can be confused, and become unconfused. Sure, makes sense. But this statement isn't speaking about you or your personal world. In fact, most of the course is not speaking to or about anyone's EGO SELF, and yet 90%+ of ACIM students THINK that the Course is talking about THEIR PERSONAL EGO, which leads to a ton of confusion. The world ITSELF is based on confusion because it's an expression of a belief that separation from God is possible, which is a confused state of mind.)
"It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for this world." (And this never changes. The world is BASED ON death, made of death, and is ALWAYS DEAD. There is no life here. There is no life outside of heaven. All forms of "life" in the world, all bodies, animals, plants etc, the sun and stars, it is all part of a DREAM OF DEATH, and not one part of it has eternal life. Death was the motivation that MADE THIS WORLD. This world was MADE BY A DEATH WISH, not by God. That's quite extremely opposite to the folk who believe God created this world somehow).
"The world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself." (When this says "yourself" note that it does not just mean "you in a body and not other people." Most people take it that way because they have an ego. Statements about you making the world or the world being in your mind, is not about it being in your SEPARATE MIND. It's about it being in THE ONE MIND of the son of God. The ONE son of God is the maker of this entire world. It is not outside of THAT SELF. You are busy focusing on how to get your LITTLE SELF to a state of awakening of maximal naturalness, but there is more beyond that - realizing that you are the entire sonship and more. You are Christ, not just one Son.)
"What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" (Who wants the crappy world anyway? It's full of shit.)
"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up." (You can believe you are victimized when you believe the world itself is a CAUSE and you are its EFFECT. But when this is reversed (this is a course in cause not effect), YOU become the cause and the world is recognized as an EFFECT. It has no power over you because it is an EFFECT of YOUR dreaming it (as the One Son). This is how you are not a victim of it. Otherwise, the world can still kill you against your will. No-one dies without their own consent.)
"Holy are you, eternal, free and whole, at peace forever in the Heart of God. Where is the world, and where is sorrow now?" (Apparently Jesus is clear that the world is not a place of peace or freedom or holiness. So God cannot have created it.)
"What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up. The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth." (Yes dreams seem very real. What if i told you right now that you are actually INSIDE A HUGE DREAM? Right now... this room you are in or whatever, the people you are near, it's part of a DREAM. This is not what God created because it is a DREAM, not a reality. God does not dream or make worlds of dreams, or dreams of death. God did not create a dream world. You're dreaming, and you need to wake up FROM this dream, not TO it.)
"Forgive the world, and you will understand that every thing that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real." (Objects in this world have ends and beginnings. Every particle begins and ends. Every flower is sown and grows and blooms and dies. Beginnings and endings. It's not just a matter of not seeing them correctly or not realizing that "God is making them grow" or some BS, it's simply that, ALL FORMS ARE FORMS OF DEATH, and they all end, and that is why they are NOT eternal, and God did not create them.
"Temptation has one lesson it would teach in all its forms wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty and bound by what it orders him to feel." (Exactly, and elsewhere Jesus tells us that love (God) did not make the body. God does not create forms, or planets, or a physical universe).
"The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal, passed away in Heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come. What disappeared too quickly to affect the simple knowledge of the Son of God can hardly still be there, for you to choose to be your teacher." (The entire world and all things in it were MADE by us to be NOT ETERNAL, which is WHY it passed away, because it could not last. Nothing God creates can die or end or transform or change, no matter what words you use to try to make out that it wouldn't be seen "as change" when you're awake.)
"Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness." (I like this quote also because it locks in the form of the world as being evidence of a mistake. Everything in the world, bodies, objects, even the planet, are "little". All little particles and atoms. All little tiny little creatures walking around thinking they are big. Go up in an airplane and you'll see how little it all is. Every FORM in this world is little, as an idea of not being unlimited or infinite, because it's an idea of contraction AWAY from God. This is not God's creation or God's will, and God would not maintain this for an instant.)
"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see and all the world must change accordingly. (mind over matter)" (Again this is another one which people can and do use to try to prove that references to the world are all about "your personal misperception", and that you need to fix how you see in order to see it properly, and that afterwards, you'll keep the world and stay in it because it's real. No. Your WISHES have MADE A PLANET. The wishes of the one son of God, has made an entire physical universe. These are wishes to die. Wishes to be crucified. Wishes to sin. Wishes against God's will. God did not make this. What you want to see, changes, IN FORM, as mind-over-matter, because your mind is THAT POWERFUL. It doesn't just mean you change your perception OF stuff, when your perception properly changes, the world ITSELF must change form, and so must the body.)
"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you. The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition." (You put it there (forms, bodies, trees, buildings) because you WANT TO. Do you think you don't have that much power? The mind is very powerful. The world must match the outward picture of the inward condition of the mind of the ONE SON. The One Son is attempting to destroy himself BY fragmenting himself into many many individuals and forms scattered across many worlds. What shows up as objects and bodies is what the Son of God wants to see there. It IS his perception. The course says literally "the world IS PERCEPTION", which does not mean that your little human "perception" contains the illusory world, it means the ENTIRE WORLD OF EARTH is inside the perception of a vast mind - it is that mind's IMAGINATION. Meaning, physical objects, are actually a part of SEEING, the mechanism of trying to VISUALIZE STUFF, which brings it into appearance as fake images i.e. objects and forms and bodies. When the mind is free of all this, the physical world - yes - planet earth in all its ways - MUST DISSAPPEAR.)
"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true." (I would rather have what the Kingdom of God offers than what this world offers. This world is not my home. It does not contain the truth. It is not real. And God did not create it. It HAS blinded the sons to the father, which was its purpose. You cannot behold (see in any way) the world (physical planet earth) and behold the kingdom. Only one of them is true and real. Planet earth does not exist, was not created by god, is an illusion, and if you're still SEEING IT in any way, with any mind whatsoever, you are not in the Kingdom. To suggest you can BE in God, in his kingdom, while the world continues to appear or move or change or have form, you are in denial.)
"O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is. Hallowed your Name and His, for they are joined here in this holy place. Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love." (Looking forward to this! Finally a relief from this world of nightmares and death and suffering. THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD BEYOND THIS which God did create - his kingdom, heaven, filled with joy and life and peace and celebration. It is HOME. It is where you really want to be. Do not let the world, planet earth, bodies, objects, forms, people, places, idols, or anything else, KEEP YOU FROM going there and accepting it as your true home where your true nature is free at last. The world offers nothing in comparison. Pleasure is not love. Specialness is not love. Forms are not love. Sunsets and kittens are not love. "Never was love in the world."
There is no world. The people who do not believe this will continue to not believe this, and will object to this post and everything it says. They are free to do so, but they are not free of the confusion that is going to accompany those beliefs, or the fear that will be induced upon being confronted with this truth. I would hope people will change their mind and see what the course is really telling us. Then we have real hope.