T-11.VII.1."The world as you perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is not as you see it. 2 God created only the eternal, and everything you see is perishable. 3 Therefore, there must be another world that you do not see."
"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."
"T-8.VI.2. 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. 2 You cannot behold the world and know God. 3 Only one is true. 4 I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours to make. 5 If it were, you would have destroyed yourself. 6 Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having created them for eternity."
M-20.5. "You see in death escape from what you made. 3 But this you do not see; that you made death, and it is but illusion of an end. 4 Death cannot be escape, because it is not life in which the problem lies. 5 Life has no opposite, for it is God. 6 Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life. 7 Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real."
W-pI.14.1. "God did not create a meaningless world. ... What God did not create does not exist. 3 And everything that does exist exists as He created it. 4 The world you see has nothing to do with reality. 5 It is of your own making, and it does not exist.
"T-25.III.2. God's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning. "
W-pI.132.9"You are as God created you. 3 There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state. 4 How can a world of time and place exist, if you remain as God created you?"
T-7.XI.1."The world goes against your nature, being out of accord with God's laws. 6 The world perceives orders of difficulty in everything. 7 This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable."
"T-13.VII.1. Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself: "The real world is not like this. 2 It has no buildings and there are no streets where people walk alone and separate. 3 There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. 4 It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. 5 There is no day that brightens and grows dim. 6 There is no loss. 7 Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever."
T-13.VII.2. The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. 2 You cannot see both worlds, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. 3 The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other."
T-14.V.1."Leave the world of death behind, and return quietly to Heaven. 9 There is nothing of value here, and everything of value there."
"3 Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you."
Forgiveness does not react to problems you think are real and then try to fix them. Forgiveness ensures THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS TO FIX.
Simple isn't it? What forgiveness means, is that you simply are "being forgiving". That you have a forgiving attitude. An attitude in which you see correctly, you do not make illusions, you do not separate, you do not attack, you do not judge, you do not make sin real, and you simply observe clearly that nothing has happened.
This awareness of truth simply shows you the proof that there is no ego, there is nothing to really undo, there is not even really anything to forgive.
Forgiveness should NOT be an attempt to "fix" or "undo" stuff which seems to really exist. The things which seem to exist, as ego stuff, are illusions of things existing. These perceptions have ONLY come about as a result of FAILING to be forgiving.
"He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive."
Forgiveness is fore-giveness. It is a willingness to give love fully, at all times. That is what makes for a forgiving attitude, versus being "unforgiving" ie attacking. By constantly emitting truth and love and light, a forgiving mind simply does not MAKE errors. That means it does not MAKE ego.
It is only when we slip into being unforgiving that we MAKE the ego at all, and then it seems to show up as something that seems real, but still isn't. Through being unforgiving, we weave dreams, fiction and illusions.
It is not really then that you need to DO anything about any of the errors that you make, any of the mistakenness, or anything to do with the ego at all. The ego is not the problem. The problem is that you stopped being forgiving. Or simply, that you tried to be separate from God. That's the only problem. So returning to being with God, to being forgiving, is the solution.
Forgiveness then is not a process as such. It is a permanent attribute of the Son of God. Even after the world disappears and you're back in full awareness of God, you will still be forgiving. God is permanently forgiving. This has absolutely nothing to do with whether there is anything TO forgive as such. God does not "forgiven you because you did stuff". It's not a pardon. He forgives you forever knowing that you cannot sin. And it is the "privilege of the forgiven to forgive" meaning those who are in a state of forgiveness having accepted atonement are PERMANENTLY forgiving.
Forgiveness is not a matter of... well.. something has gone wrong, or someone sinned, and now I have to DO something to clean up the mess. That is not forgiveness. That is "forgiveness to destroy." That has made the problem real and now is fighting with the problem to try to make it go away. And who hasn't attempted to use the Course to make bad stuff go away? Or to "forgive other people for what they did"? It doesn't work because that isn't the real problem.
It's not about tackling the error itself directly. The error is an indirect side-effect of moving away from a forgiving attitude. The problem is not the error. The problem is the sense of separation from love/forgivingness. Returning TO a state of pure forgivingness ie love is the ANSWER which automatically will undo and disappear any of the errors which were manifest. And that is miraculous.
We really need to learn not to fight with illusions, but instead to drop the belief that you NEED to fight with them at all, to recognize that they are not the problem, that they are not even real and do not exist, and thereby return TO a mindset of a forgiving attitude.
A fore-giving mind gives ahead of time to ENSURE that there is no error made, that perception remains true, and therefore that ego simply is not MADE at all. There being no ego and no error, there is nothing TO forgive. But rather, forgiveness MAINTAINS a state of "having nothing to forgive".
Therefore when forgiveness is "complete", it means that all things which seemed to need to be forgiven are now forgiven, and it is really only that you are being forgiving NOW (and peramenently) that those errors appear to not be showing up any more. They are not showing up because you are not MAKING them, rather than that you really tackled "real substance" of ego stuff and manipulated it through some process to transform it.
The ego does not need to be undone, because it does not really exist in the first place. Rather, we need to simply come to RECOGNIZE that it does not exist, by stepping out of judgement (unforgivingness) and back into a forgiving attitude. A forgiving attitude looks and sees that there IS no sin, there is no ego, there is no separation, there is no reality to sickness or death, and literally nothing has happened.
Forgiveness and atonement and salvation are all words for the same thing.
So how do you "DO" forgiveness? You really don't. If you are DOING "forgiveness" (as a process) it is because you believe there is something to forgive, which means you are actually being unforgiving, and therefore your doing of forgiveness is really an attack - an attempt to make a "real problem" change. But what you DO need to, or seem to need to "do", is to become clear that there IS NOT ANYTHING TO FORGIVE, by correctly perceiving, and thus correcting perceptual errors so that you do not see stuff AS real sin.
To get to that place does appear to require a process or a transition, in which you question what it is you think needs to be forgiven, and LEARN WHY IT DOES NOT. ie, to learn to see it correctly and not in a distorted way, so that you can RECOGNIZE it for what it is, realize it was not a real attack, there has not BEEN any real effects, the causes you thought were causes are not causes, and withdraw from it all sense of belief that it even exists or has happened at all, and therefore completely circumvent the ego's insistence that there is a "real problem" to deal with.
The Holy Spirit does not fight the ego because He knows there is no ego. The Holy Spirit reminds us that what we THINK we need to forgive, does not exist, and therefore it IS forgiven.
We do not need to forgive other people, because they have NOT done what we thought they did and they are NOT being the source of OUR unforgiveness. They do not need to change at all. And we ourselves are also not in need of any real change, only recognition. We have not done what we thought we had done. It's an illusion.
We must learn to recognize it is NOT REAL and therefore what we THOUGHT we had to "deal with" or to "forgive" or "overcome" or "prevent" really isn't even there in the first place. We're not seeing correctly because we are in error, and we are in error ONLY because we are not being forgiving. We've bought into some lies. Lies are not solved by attacking the lies, they are solved by TRUTH.
You are already forgiven and you are already purely forgiving. God created you to be permanently forgiving, SO THAT there would never arise any kind of error or thing TO forgive, given that everything was already seen correctly as perfectly innocent. Everything else is "unforgiveness", judgement, attack, and so-called "ego", which does not really exist at all.
If you remove a part of the body, take away an arm and a leg? Do you still exist? Yes you do.
If you take away the other arm and leg, do you still exist? Yes you do.
If you take away the torso, do you still exist? Yes you do.
If you take away the head, so that there is literally nothing left of the physical body, do you still exist? Yes you do.
What does that tell you? It means that EITHER
1) You are purely physical and when the last trace of the physical body is gone YOU are gone forever. Total death. OR
2) What you are CANNOT BE SEEN by the body's eyes, you are effectively INVISIBLE, and this means that there is an ENTIRE WORLD which is invisible to your body, which it cannot see. The spirit world. A whole dimension or environment which the body CANNOT EVEN SEE!
"What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."
"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."
Consider that for a minute. The body cannot actually see the spiritual world. The spiritual world, and God, are INVISIBLE to the body's eyes. The body's eyes were in fact made in order NOT TO SEE it, and to focus on illusory solid surfaces instead, to block your vision. Nor can the body's eyes EVER be used to see it. Only the spiritual eye or mind's eye can see with vision, and it does not depend on the body or on photons of light.
"Do not seek vision through YOUR eyes. For you MADE your way of seeing, that you might see in darkness, and in this you ARE deceived. BEYOND this darkness, and yet still WITHIN you, is the vision of Christ, Who looks on all in light."
"The universe of love does not stop because you do not see it, and your closed eyes have not lost the ability to see. Look upon the glory of His creation, and you will learn what God has kept for YOU."
"You do not SEE your brothers, and, in the darkness, you cannot look upon the light you GAVE to them."
"The world as YOU perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is NOT as you see it. God created ONLY the eternal, and everything YOU see is perishable. Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see."
"For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only answer."
"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you CAN see His MANIFESTATIONS. And UNLESS YOU DO, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak FOR it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function."
"You CANNOT see the Holy Spirit, but you CAN see your brothers truly. And the light in them will show you all that you NEED to see."
"But the memory of God cannot shine in a mind which has MADE it invisible, and WANTS TO KEEP IT SO."
"When you made what is NOT true visible, what is true became INVISIBLE. Yet it cannot be invisible in ITSELF, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. It IS invisible to you, because you are looking at SOMETHING ELSE."
"And Christ is invisible to you BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU HAVE MADE VISIBLE TO YOURSELVES. Yet it does not matter how much distance you have tried to interpose between your awareness and Truth. God's Son CAN be seen, because His Vision is shared."
It's not just death that we fear, it's permanent death. We tried to give all illusions a sense of eternity, constancy, permanence and irreversibility. We aren't just afraid of dying, or that someone will die. We're afraid it will be a total absolute permanent separation from which there is no return, a total annihilation, extermination, utter blotting out of life forever and ever, never again to be seen. A complete a total real separation and an absolute loss of all relationship and all hope of resurrection or communication. Forever.
If so-called life on the physical level were real, this would be true. For here bodies do indeed become permanently dead, the corpses rot and are become worm food, and all supposedly living things meet with permanent endless locked-in destruction. Bodies wither and die and testify to the victory of the God of death over the God of life. The ego's crown jewel, it's final statement that there is no life and all that was immortal has been fully killed.
Such was the purpose of the ego world we made, to try to prove that permanent irreversible death is real. A world of suffering and torment and final execution. The inevitable sword of doom that finally strikes, not if but when.
Such is the lie, because nothing that has eternal life can die, not even slightly. Perma-death is the ego's final illusion, its utter bullshit, and its total defense against God. In your complete and successful death, the ego triumphs over God's creation, and then take a shit on your grave for good measure.
Only in you becoming utterly non-existent would it be satisfied, and the ego itself is the idea of total non-existence. But that is why is does not exist, and that is why there is no such thing as permanent death. Permanent actual non-existence does not exist. Which means that death is not real, is always temporary, reversible, and can never prove God's son can be murdered. And this means that anything that seems to die must be a deception and not a reality.
Death is an illusion. No-one is ever lost forever. The entire sonship of God's family is permanently and irreversibly united in permanent life and an endless eternity of absolute joy. No-one can ever split us apart. Nothing can ever come between us. There can be no real loss, and nothing real can ever be threatened. Death is a lie. There is no death, and the sons of God are free forever.
"There is no death, because the living share the Function their Creator gave to them."
"Salvation seeks to prove there IS no death, and ONLY life exists. The sacrifice of death is NOTHING lost. An idol CANNOT take the place of God"
"There is no death because what God created shares His Life.
There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist.
There is no death because the Father and the Son are One."
"There IS no death, but there IS a belief in death."
"In the dreams HE brings, there IS no murder, and there IS no death."
"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father."
"Death is a human affirmation of a belief in fate. That is why the Bible says "There is no death," and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist."
"There is no death. The Son of God is free. And in his freedom is the end of fear."
"Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him."
God does not, cannot, will not, has not, and never could, create anything that is even capable of death. God is eternal, permanent, unchanging, unflinching, constant, always, perfect in every way and utterly incapable of degradation, decay, destruction, disease, or death.
If something even has the POSSIBILITY of seeming to do any of these things, it cannot possible have come from God. That much should be obvious. A divine being who can only create in his own image and likeness could never even conceive of creating suffering, sickness, pain, misery, torture, war, murder and suicide.
God could not possibly have created seasons in which entire populations of seeming lifeforms are wiped out through temperature changes. God could not possibly have created stunning vistas and sunsets only to later have them destroyed by an atomic bomb. God could never in any way conceive of creating an environment for his beloved children which entails any form of suffering, conflict or terror whatsoever.
For God to create such a place God would have to be cruel. God would have to have a mean streak. Some kind of aspect of his own nature which, when creating in his likeness, produces more of the same. God Himself would have to be diseased, suffering, dead and destructive, in order to create anything that exhibits these tendencies.
It is utter complete total bullshit nonsense to suggest that God created this world. This is a cruel, vicious, unfair, cold, lifeless world, houses in a dream of death, framed by sickness and set off against a background of suffering. It is absolutely not in any way related to God's nature or God's will. It has absolutely nothing to do with reality, truth, love, perfection, happiness or holiness. The world is a total illusion that has no reality, is not possible, and cannot exist. Because if God cannot participate in what exists, it cannot exist, because God is the creator.
Again, this is why there is no world. A world of bullshit cannot come from a God of love. And it doesn't have anything what so fucking ever to do with perception. It does not matter whether you are looking at this world with utter contempt, or whether you are looking at it with love. The world's character, features, makeup, dependency on spacetime, separateness, fluctuations, changing images and so on are all evidence of being NOT LIKE GOD. It doesn't matter if you view it with the most holy pure perception possible, it STILL cannot exist because it is still not like God. Looking at bullshit correctly doesn't turn it into the truth.
Your ego is the denial of the Self that God created. Its foundation is the belief that you do not have a Self - that you are not the whole. It represents your attack upon your SELF, in an attempt to destroy yourself, which is why the ego wants you dead.
Being rooted in limitation and separation, it is a sense of self that depends on being separate from other selves. It has to reject other selves in order to seem to exist. And so you have to make an ego for yourself AND for others in order to distinguish that you have one.
"Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for everyone he perceives, which is equally variable."
Your ego is obviously in a state of contradiction, because its goal is to be a full self, but it simultaneously hates the full self and denies it. It requires that it lacks something that others have, and has something that others lack, in order to be different and unique and stand out. It is made of relative differences, because it is not absolute. This is why it can never be satisfied or achieve its goal. But that doesn't mean it won't try, so long as "seek and do not find" is its guiding rule.
So the ego is the search for your self, where your mind is trying to find the self that it is denying. It refuses to stop denying self and actually find self, and wants to always be in a state of not knowing what it is. It will search intently to try to increase its awareness of self, to have more and more sense of self, of existing, but without ever questioning the original denial of self.
In order to increase the sense of self, this partial, limited, finite, less than whole, small self, has to constantly build itself up, bolster itself, increase its sense of identity, reinforce itself, validate itself, prove itself, get recognition, and generally increase the attention it gets.
Your ego does not care how it does this, only that it does this. It doesn't care if it means identifying negatively about yourself, being hard on yourself, beating yourself up, being a victim, because these all still have the hidden payoff that it validates the EXISTENCE of the ego. If you are suffering, you must exist.
Your ego will wear any kind of clothing including negative unhappy hurtful senses of identity, if it means you still at least exist in some way. A hurt, damaged, suffering, sick, lonely, unhappy self is still a separate self. Just as much as a separate self that seems happier and more successful and rich and famous.
This is because the ego's fundamental drive is to become more self. To exist more. It doesn't care how it does it. It wants something separate to identify with. It wants to be validated as existing at all. It wants attention, even if it is highly negative attention, or positive attention, so long as it is the attention that it wants to be the centre of.
It wants to be noticed, even if that means being a victim, being abused, being attacked, being threatened. It doesn't care, so long as someone somewhere is validating its existence. And even wanting to AVOID attention is another way to stand apart and be different, to be secretly noticed as avoidant and hiding and ashamed.
As Jesus says in the course the ego also loves the idea of analysing the ego, even if the goal seems to be to try to undo the ego and figure out its functioning so that you can rise above it. Because by thus focusing on the ego and its workings you are STILL validating it and giving it attention. It loves to be talked about regardless of what is said about it.
The overall theme here is that the egos tools can take many different forms, but its fundamental PURPOSE or USE OF those tools is always towards its singular aim of making itself exist more. It could even come up with the thought and emotion, "I'm suffering so badly, it hurts", as though it does not want this. But you might not notice the secret underlying assertion here: *I* am a suffering self that exists, and *I* am having real hurt, therefore I must exist.
It always revolves around a sense of "me". But this sense of me is a limited identity. Since it lacks self and lacks existence, your ego needs to "get more self" from somewhere. It seeks for others to confirm its existence, it seeks to be superior to others so that it can be more right and have more truth, it seeks to be inferior to others so that it can wallow in its real suffering and be a suffering self, and it even seeks to pretend to be indifferent so as to be a neutral self that sits on a fence.
"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."
Always in whatever way the ego expresses, it always is with the PURPOSE of finding a way to bolster the sense of existing. And usually this purpose is hidden and not overtly stated. There is a kind of indirect payoff. While ego is busy putting attack thoughts in your mind, you might not realize that the REASON WHY its putting them there is so that it can get more mind-power to use to reinforce itself, or that it is busy adding to its stockpile of labels and definitions of itself.
When you are angry at someone for example, hurling guilt and pretending that you're innocent, you may not realize the subtler hidden purpose of WHO it is that is angry. WHO is benefiting from the game - it's the ego. If you are an angry self, you are still a self. If you can increase the sense of separation with another person by dissociating from them and wanting nothing to do with them, wanting them to stop existing, it intensifies the sense of being separate from them, which in turn increases the sense of existing as a separate self.
It's always very helpful to ask yourself, "how is my ego benefiting from this?" With any emotions, any reactions, and projections, any attack thoughts, anything that is not peace and love, you should ask yourself how this is benefiting the existence of your ego. And you will likely see that there is always some kind of payoff, some way that it benefits "you", some way that you get something out of it. If nothing else, that it simply confirms that you as ego exist.
Another of the egos big tools is to be right. When you are trying to be right, it's because you believe you are guilty and wrong, and are trying to project that onto someone else, so that someone else can be wrong and you can pretend to be right. It may seem at first that the benefit here is that someone else gets to be the guilty one. But that's not the real goal. The real goal is to increase the sense of separation between you and others, which splits your mind, intensifies the sense of being "not them", and thereby intensifies the sense of "being me."
Another of its devices is being judgemental. It may seem at first that the payoff in judging is that you're finding something wrong with someone else, perhaps to be superior to them, or to confirm how you are inferior to them. But the real secret payoff is that if you are superior you are "more than", and "more real" and "more true." And this increases the sense of existing. And being inferior to others or less than or insecure, even if unpleasant, still increases the sense of being something - existing. And all the labels you pile on are just more definitions for what you are.
Another big tool is grievances. If you are bearing a grudge it means you are holding onto the past, which means you are pulling your self away from the present. The present is where your real self has presence, and exists, so the ego does not want anything to do with it. It wants to maintain unhealed unresolved ties to the past so that it can be anchored in it. It needs the past in order to have grudges and grievances that it can keep blaming other people for, so that it can keep projecting and separating and reinforcing itself. Without grievances there can be no way to distinguish that you are separate from others, and so can't exist as an ego.
So it's not just about scapegoating, or being a negative or positive victim, or being at the effect of the world, or people attacking you, or you projecting guilt, or disowning of responsibility, or trying to identify with idols, or becoming a body, or whatever else. The CORE motivation of the entire ego thought system, the GOAL, is to keep being a separate self and REPLACE (kill off) the Self that God created. To keep reinforcing ego, building it, armouring it, defending it, intensifying it, having pride in it, decorating it, increasing it through any means possible.
This is all rooted in the core belief that you are not as God created you. And by denying the self God created, you seem to believe you lack self. That you lack love, power, identity, causal will. And it is these beliefs - these blocks to the awareness of love's (Self's) presence - these denials, that you lack all these things, that really needs to be undone.
Undoing these things doesn't directly attack the ego, and trying to get rid of ego by demonising or attacking it will just be more ego attacking itself to make itself exist more. You can't undo it by using ego tactics to fight it. You have to surrender it.
You undo it by basically withdrawing belief from it, not listening to it, noticing how you're adding to it, being willing to be mistaken, but even moreso by looking at the beliefs you have about NOT being a self, about being unwhole or unholy, about how you lack and are in need, how you don't have love, how you've lost something, how you've been diminished, and this general theme of "something is wrong with me." Your "self attack" has to stop.
Without these faults, these lacks, these needs, this wanting, this self denial and self attack, there can be no guilt and no ego. And the way to undo self attack is through the secret of salvation, in which you recognize you're doing it to yourself and you stop doing it because you want a better way. And that is the path of forgiveness - to undo ego by questioning its foundation. By accepting that you are still as God created you, lacking nothing, needing nothing, ending victimhood, reclaiming power and responsibility for what you are, and opening up to your real identity as the Christ self - the whole holy self, which is based on oneness not separation.
"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion."
"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will."
"You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves you."
"Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker."
"For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt."
This is possibly the most threatening and mind-blowing teaching in A Course in Miracles. There is in fact NOT a world here! It's not even a matter of who made the world, it's the even higher truth that it DOES NOT EXIST. Earth is in fact NOTHING.
"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it"
"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere?"
Everything that happened in the separation from God, involves a belief in something existing which does not exist, something being true which is false, something being real which is unreal.
For example, we made a separate self which seems to have free will to do as it pleases. However, this self is in fact the DENIAL of self, which is why it results in death. But it APPEARS to be the presence of a self. This is why it's an illusion - it seems to be showing you something which is not there, as if it is. It's supposed freedom of will is in fact an imprisoned will, which is not free, but SEEMS free.
Take a look at the body. "The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist." The body SEEMS to picture "you", presenting an appearance and form, it seems to positively exist and move and do stuff. But, the body is NOT you, it is a replacement for you, and is only an image of what you THINK you are. What it SEEMS to be, is the opposite of what it actually is. The body is the ABSENCE OF YOU. And you do not look like your body. "What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."
It is the same thing with regards the difference between light and darkness. Darkness is not possible. Where there seems to be an absence of light, there must be an ILLUSION of darkness. If you believe the darkness is real, you are giving it false reality and are claiming it "is a something." But a shadow on a wall is not the PRESENCE of darkness, it is the absence of light. It appears to be a something, but is really the lack of a something.
It is also the same with regards to sin and error. Error or mistakes are just illusions of impossibilities, recognized as false. In their "true form" it is clear they cannot be true. But if you invest belief in them, are deceived and tempted by them, and buy into them, they turn into sin. And now it seems that they assert that something has REALLY happened, and something is REALLY possible, that isn't. So sin is really a lie, depicting stuff happening that CANNOT happen, as though it is really happening. It is deceptive.
The same applies to this world. This world is in fact NOTHING. But by believing in it and investing it with reality, it turns from an illusion of a something to an ACTUAL something. It seems to exist. It seems to host events and happenings. Things in it seem possible. But the world is impossible, and the things which happen are impossible, and sin is not real. The world was made to try to prove that sin and guilt are real.
"Their aim is to fulfill the purpose which the world was made to witness and make real. They see in its illusions but a solid base where truth exists, upheld apart from lies."
"The world of bodies is the world of sin."
So basically, we have a world that SEEMS to be here, which is made of sin, which testifies and proves that impossible things are possible, which hosts the idea of the death and murder of reality, and SEEMS to have real consequences. But it has none. And it does nothing. And it causes nothing. And it has no power. And it isn't really there at all.
"It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere."
"The world does nothing to him."
"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."
The really deep thing to realize is this. The world is in fact, the ABSENCE OF EXISTENCE. It is the antithesis of heaven. It is the LACK OF HEAVEN. It is a HOLE, which we call the spacetime bubble, in which are housed impossibilities and unrealities. It is an hallucinated world, because it seems to be there to see, but isn't. You are projecting it and making it up as you go along.
The idea that there is no world isn't simply that the world "exists" and it has to be "undone". It's really the RECOGNITION that the world you thought was here, does not exist. And this doesn't mean there's a better view of it. It means the WHOLE THING IS GONE. It has no reality at all. No presence. No life.
"There is no life outside of heaven."
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
"He does NOT realize that HE MAKES THIS WORLD, for there IS no world outside him."
Through unwillingness, we resisted God. We failed to create. We wanted not to shine. We tried to end eternal life. We wanted to stop reality. We opposed the Kingdom. We attacked will. We tried to deny our own existence. We blocked awareness. We tried to destroy. And ultimately this is all a matter of TRYING NOT TO EXIST.
In so doing, we seemed to make a world which SEEMS to exist, which is really actually the LACK OF A WORLD. It's like you took a part of heaven and DRAINED IT of all life. Held it back and prevented its extension. As though you could attack heaven and remove its presence. This world, which includes the Earth, is the ANTI-world. It is a mis-creation. It is empty and it is nothing.
We have GIVEN the world, the fake world, all manner of belief in trying to MAKE IT BE SIN, so that it is GIVEN reality, so that we can try to make it exist. It's our attempt to give it life and immortality. But we can't. We tried to make the world be a cause. We tried to make it have power. We gave our power to it to try to animate it. We tried to make it appear to be alive with "life forms", which are illusions of life. We tried to imagine it has a mind and alien will of its own. We tried to make ourselves subject to it and affected by it, to confirm its reality. We made bodies to sense it and to tell us that it is there.
"Only the body makes the world seem real."
"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."
Quite simply, this world, this planet, this galaxy, all the stars, all bodies, all animals and "life forms", are NOTHING. They are life's ABSENCE. They are the LACK OF LIFE. They are something that is really NOT there, appearing to be there. Like an hallucination. A lack of light, appearing to be the presence of a real darkness. And to believe in it is to believe that evil is real, asserting that the world has power OVER heaven. That the world CAN CAUSE immortal beings to die. Believing this world is real is level confusion.
Our task in forgiveness, then, is not to find a way to give EXTRA reality to the world, but to recognize ITS UNREALITY, and see finally that it SO NOTHING, that it disappears and fades into nothingness. All it is is a veil of illusions, a block, hanging in front of the face of christ, pretending to exist. Our guilt makes it seem solid. Our fear gives it reality. Our belief in sin anchors it in our minds. But it is not there at all. It is an empty shell.
"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within YOU, there is a force which NO illusions can resist."
"What can the causeless BE but nothingness. The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent, and has never been."
"Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its NOTHINGNESS is guarantee that it can NOT be sick."
"The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. "
"Yet its nothingness IS your salvation, from which you would flee."
"His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death."
"For here is nothingness, where neither birth nor death is real"
"The final judgment on ****the world**** contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, ****it merely slips away to nothingness.****"
"Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols; pills, money, "protective" clothing, "influence," "prestige," being liked, knowing the "right" people, and an endless list of forms of nothingness which you endow with magical powers."
"To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it. As such, it is the prerequisite for vision."
"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it WERE a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see."
"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."
"But if you refuse to worship him, in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made."
"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."
"The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."
"The "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different."
"We can but go from nothingness to everything; from hell to Heaven." "What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed!"
"***The world stands like a block*** before Christ's face. 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***, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. 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."
"What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. How could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form?"
"What can correct illusions but the truth? And what are errors but illusions which remain unrecognized for what they are? Where truth has entered errors disappear. They merely vanish, leaving not a trace by which to be remembered. They are gone because without belief they have no life, and so they disappear to nothingness, returning whence they came. From dust to dust they come and go, for only truth remains."
"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the presence of God."
"God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you."
"Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly." "Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary, and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it."
"All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help, and all mistakes in judgment which the mind had made before are open to correction as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized."
"How can a battle be perceived as nothingness, when you ENGAGE in it?" "There is a silence covering the world that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to have is nothingness. The dream has gone, and all its dreams of gifts have disappeared as well."
"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death.
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death."
"The more complicated the results become, the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine ALL possible outcomes to which premises give rise to judge the PREMISES truly."
"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth.""
"EVERY illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness."
"And so is ALL time past, and everything EXACTLY as it was before the way to nothingness was made. The tiny tick of time, in which the first mistake was made, and ALL of them within that ONE mistake, held also the Correction for that one, and ALL of them that came within the first. And in that tiny instant time was gone, for that was all it ever was. What God gave Answer to IS answered, and IS gone."
"Specialness is the idea of sin MADE REAL. Sin is impossible even to imagine, without this base. For sin rose from it, out of nothingness, an evil flower with no roots at all."
"In the Divine psyche, the Father and the Holy Spirit are not incomplete at all. The Sonship has the unique faculty of believing in error, or incompleteness, if he so elects. However, it is quite apparent that so to elect IS to believe in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement."
"Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, WHERE EARTH WILL DISAPPEAR, and separate thoughts unite in glory as the Son of God. ... Let us today BEHOLD EARTH DISAPPEAR, at first transformed, and then, forgiven, fade entirely into God's holy Will."
"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release."
"Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one."
"He does not realize that he MAKES this world, for there IS no world outside him."
""Heaven & Earth shall pass away" means that they will not always exist as separate states. My Word, which is the Resurrection and the Light, shall not pass away, because Life is Eternal."
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."
"There is no life outside of heaven."
"From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God's Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, eternity has shined away the world, and only Heaven now exists at all."
"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again. But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. ... Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world."
"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth."
"The idea for today is, of course, the reason why a meaningless world is impossible. What God did not create does not exist."
"How can a meaningless world exist if God did not create it?"
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
"The world stands like a block before Christ’s face. 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, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready."
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."
"Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does. And then-and then-I cannot speak of that. A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death."
"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."
Actually think about why this makes sense. God is infinite, unlimited, omnipresent, He exists in a totally expanded abstract state in which He is everywhere. Totally spread out to infinity. He is not localized anywhere. There is no way that God can be "only" in one location, and not another.
The idea of a body, is the idea in SPACE and TIME to being spatially and temporarily separated out from the whole. It's the idea of limitation, confinement, imprisonment. "The body is a device for separation". The body was made to represent the idea that you are NOT everywhere, and therefore your mind is trapped in your brain. That you are "located" inside the body, not outside the body.
God, however, who is everywhere, cannot be squeezed down and inserted into the insides of a body, in exclusion of being also outside of the body. He cannot separate off a part of himself and put it "into" a body separately from being outside the body or in all other bodies also. Being everywhere means NOT being in any specific location to the exclusion of any others. Nor does that mean he is in all bodies. He cannot be in ANY bodies.
"God cannot enter a body"
Similarly, you who are trying to be One with God, to experience God, to express God, so long as you confine yourself to a body, limit your awareness to only the body's senses, regard yourself as being "in" or "having" a specific body, or in any way are not experiencing yourself as being infinite, unlimited, larger than the universe, all-expansive, all-encompassing and omnipresent, you are NOT experiencing the fullness of what you are.
And the fact is that God is not going to ever narrow himself down and put himself into a body. He remains in an expanded, abstract state at all times. The only way for you to MEET him and to be in total communion with Him, is to expand your self, expand your awareness, to go beyond the size of the universe, to infinity, to such an extent that you become just as ever-present and transcendent of space, place, location, or time, that you exist EVERYWHERE with Him.
That is the only way that you can be One with God. That is the only way that you can commune with Him, join with Him, be IN him, and experience Heaven. You literally cannot do that by being in ANY WAY limited, in any way less than WHOLE, in any way smaller than the entire magnitude of infinite creation. You are vast, unlimited, and only complete when you are EVERYWHERE. Not confined to your little body, not confined to only one body, not confined to ANY bodies. Larger than the planet. Larger than the solar system. Larger than the galaxy. Aware of EVERYWHERE simultaneously. That is who you are.
So I hear some people saying, believing, thinking, interpreting, that they are having experiences of being one with God in a body, being awake in a body, experiencing the fullness of God in a body. They are mistaken. It is literally impossible to have a FULL complete total experience of God while maintaining the body. Because the body is localization. It is limitation. You cannot keep localization and be infinite and unlimited. You cannot be finite and specific and located in space or time and be simultaneously infinitely abstract.
"The body cannot stay without illusions." "The body cannot remain." "To be WITHOUT a body is to be in your natural state." "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." "You are not a body." "The body is a limit."
"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."
You can approach God, you can get closer to God, you can feel the warmth of the light, you can radiate love and joy into the world as though joined with God, but you cannot FULLY, TOTALLY, COMPLETELY immerse yourself in God while maintaining isolation, localization, temporal separation in one moment of time. To be eternal is transcendent of time and space. It means you not only exist EVERYWHERE you also exist EVERYWHEN. You exist in and beyond all moments of time. It makes you a time traveler, transcendent of the temporal order, not merely "I'm in 2019".
Do you really how VAST you are? Do you realize how VAST God is? How totally utterly unlimited? Then look at the body, look at how it IS a limitation, and that having one, using one, seeing one, or believing one exists at all, is causing you to NOT BE WITH GOD.
"You cannot behold the world and know God."
"To see a sinless body is impossible."
"God did not create the body."
"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."
You HAVE TO LEAVE THE BODY to be with God. You have to leave the body entirely, permanently, never again to need a body EVER. You have to overcome reincarnation. You have to overcome death. You have to overcome the NEED to be in a body AT ALL, if you want to be with God. You cannot KEEP the body and maintain that kind of abstract infinite knowledge. "You cannot remain in the world with this knowledge." You cannot STAY HERE in this fictional world, and be totally joined with God. You can perceive him perhaps, you can see him perhaps, you can love with him perhaps, but you cannot be ONE with Him in a body.
Is Jesus in a body? Nope. I rest my case.
"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.