All things are given you. God's trust in you is limitless. He knows His Son. He gives without exception, holding nothing back that can contribute to your happiness. And yet, unless your will is one with His, His gifts are not received. But what would make you think there is another will than His?
Here is the paradox that underlies the making of the world. This world is not the Will of God, and so it is not real. Yet those who think it real must still believe there is another will, and one which leads to opposite effects from those He wills. Impossible indeed; but every mind which looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone. But never in One God.
The gifts of God are not acceptable to anyone who holds such strange beliefs. He must believe that to accept God's gifts, however evident they may become, however urgently he may be called to claim them as his own, is being pressed to treachery against himself. He must deny their presence, contradict the truth, and suffer to preserve the world he made.
Here is the only home he thinks he knows. Here is the only safety he believes that he can find. Without the world he made is he an outcast, homeless and afraid. He does not realize that it is here he is afraid indeed, and homeless too; an outcast wandering so far from home, so long away, he does not realize he has forgotten where he came from, where he goes, and even who he really is.
Yet in his lonely, senseless wanderings God's gifts go with him, all unknown to him. He cannot lose them. But he will not look at what is given him. He wanders on, aware of the futility he sees about him everywhere, perceiving how his little lot but dwindles as he goes ahead to nowhere. Still he wanders on in misery and poverty, alone though God is with him, and a treasure his so great that everything the world contains is valueless before its magnitude.
He seems a sorry figure, weary, worn, in threadbare clothing, and with feet that bleed a little from the rocky road he walks. No one but has identified with him, for everyone who comes here has pursued the path he follows, and has felt defeat and hopelessness as he is feeling them. Yet is he really tragic when you see that he is following the way he chose, and need but realize Who walks with him, and open up his treasures to be free?
This is your chosen self, the one you made as a replacement for reality. This is the self you savagely defend against all reason, every evidence, and all the witnesses with proof to show this is not you. You heed them not. You go on your appointed way, with eyes cast down lest you might catch a glimpse of truth, and be released from self deception and set free.
You cower fearfully lest you should feel Christ's touch upon your shoulder, and perceive His gentle hand directing you to look upon your gifts. How could you then proclaim your poverty in exile? He would make you laugh at this perception of yourself. Where is self-pity then? And what becomes of all the tragedy you sought to make for him whom God intended only joy?
Your ancient fear has come upon you now, and justice has caught up with you at last. Christ's hand has touched your shoulder, and you feel that you are not alone. You even think the miserable self you thought was you may not be your identity. Perhaps God's Word is truer than your own. Perhaps His gifts to you are real. Perhaps He has not wholly been outwitted by your plan to keep His Son in deep oblivion, and go the way you chose without your Self.
God's Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will. There was a need He did not understand, to which He gave an Answer. That is all. And you who have this Answer given you have need no more of anything but this.
Now do we live, for now we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the sight that looked upon it now has been replaced by vision which perceives that you are not what you pretend to be. One walks with you Who gently answers all your fears with this one merciful reply, "It is not so." He points to all the gifts you have each time the thought of poverty oppresses you, and speaks of His Companionship when you perceive yourself as lonely and afraid.
Yet He reminds you still of one thing more you had forgotten. For His touch on you has made you like Himself. The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God. He has reminded you of all the gifts that God has given you. He speaks as well of what becomes your will when you accept these gifts, and recognize they are your own.
The gifts are yours, entrusted to your care, to give to all who chose the lonely road you have escaped. They do not understand they but pursue their wishes. It is you who teach them now. For you have learned of Christ there is another way for them to walk. Teach them by showing them the happiness that comes to those who feel the touch of Christ and recognize God's gifts. Let sorrow not tempt you to be unfaithful to your trust.
Your sighs will now betray the hopes of those who look to you for their release. Your tears are theirs. If you are sick you but withhold their healing. What you fear but teaches them their fears are justified. Your hand becomes the giver of Christ's touch; your change of mind becomes the proof that who accepts God's gifts can never suffer anything. You are entrusted with the world's release from pain.
Betray it not. Become the living proof of what Christ's touch can offer everyone. God has entrusted all His gifts to you. Be witness in your happiness to how transformed the mind becomes which chooses to accept His gifts and feel the touch of Christ. Such is your mission now. For God entrusts the giving of His gifts to all who have received them. He has shared His joy with you. And now you go to share it with the world.
You still think holiness is difficult, because you cannot see how it can be extended to include EVERYONE, and you HAVE learned that it MUST include everyone, to BE holy. Concern yourselves not with the EXTENSION of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do NOT understand. Nor do you DO them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did NOT do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship, when you do not understand the miracle itself? One ATTRIBUTE is no more difficult to understand than is the whole. If miracles ARE at all, their attributes would have to be miraculous, being PART of them.
There is a tendency to fragment, and then to be concerned about the truth of just a little PART of the whole. And this is but a way of avoiding, or looking AWAY FROM the whole, to what you think you might be better able to understand. And this is but another way in which you would still try to keep understanding TO YOURSELF. A better and FAR more helpful way to think of miracles is this: You do NOT understand them, either in part OR whole. Yet you have DONE them. Therefore, YOUR understanding CANNOT be necessary. Yet it is still impossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so there must be Something IN you that DOES understand.
To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them. And when you are TOLD about it, you cannot UNDERSTAND it. The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you. WHOLLY natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles MEAN. And, if you could understand their MEANING, their ATTRIBUTES could hardly cause you perplexity.
You HAVE done miracles, but it is QUITE apparent that you have NOT done them alone. You have succeeded whenever you have reached another mind, and JOINED with it. When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made. When you have made this joining, as the Holy Spirit bids you, and have OFFERED it to Him to use as HE knows how, His natural perception of your gift enables HIM to understand it, and YOU to USE His understanding on YOUR behalf. It is impossible to convince you of the reality of what has clearly BEEN accomplished, through your willingness, as long as you believe that YOU must understand it, or else IT is not real.
You think your LACK of understanding is a LOSS to you, and so you are unwilling to believe that what HAS happened is true. Yet can you REALLY believe that all that has happened, EVEN THOUGH you do NOT understand it, HAS NOT HAPPENED? Yet this IS your position. You would have PERFECT faith in the Holy Spirit, and in the EFFECTS of His teaching, if you were not AFRAID to acknowledge what He taught you. For this acknowledgement MEANS that what has happened you do NOT understand, but that you are willing to ACCEPT it, BECAUSE it has happened. How can faith in reality be yours, while you are bent on making it UNreal? And are you REALLY safer in maintaining the UNreality of what has happened, than you would be in joyously accepting it FOR WHAT IT IS, and giving thanks for it?
Honor the truth that has been given you, and be glad you do NOT understand it. 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. Let HIS understanding of the miracle be enough for you, and do not turn away from all the witnesses that He has given you to His reality. NO evidence will convince you of the truth of what you do NOT want. Yet your relationship with Him IS real, and HAS been demonstrated. Regard this not with fear, but with rejoicing. The One you called upon IS with you. Bid Him welcome, and honor His witnesses, who bring you the glad tidings that He HAS come.
It IS true, JUST AS YOU FEAR, that to acknowledge Him, IS to deny ALL that you think you know. But it was NEVER true. What gain is there to you in clinging to it, and denying the evidence for truth? For you have come too near to truth to renounce it now, and you WILL yield to its compelling attraction. You can delay this now, but only a little. The host of God has called to you, and you HAVE heard. Never again will you be wholly willing NOT to listen. This is a year of joy, in which your listening will increase, and peace will grow with its increase.
The power of holiness AND THE WEAKNESS OF ATTACK, have BOTH been brought into awareness. And this has been accomplished in minds firmly convinced that holiness is weakness, and attack is power. Should not that be a sufficient miracle to teach you that your Teacher is NOT of you? But remember also that, whenever you have listened to HIS interpretation, the results have brought YOU joy. Would you PREFER the results of YOUR interpretation, considering honestly what they have been? God wills you better. Could you not look with greater charity, on whom God loves with perfect love? Do not interpret AGAINST His love for you. For you have many witnesses that speak of it so clearly, that only the blind and deaf could fail to see and hear them.
This year, determine NOT to deny what has been given you BY God, to use for Him. He has Himself reminded you of Him. Awake and SHARE it, for that is the only reason He has called to you. His Voice has spoken clearly, and yet you have so little faith in what you heard, because you have preferred to place still greater faith in the disaster YOU have made. Today, let us resolve TOGETHER to accept the joyful tidings that disaster is NOT real, and that reality is NOT disaster. Reality is safe and sure and wholly kind to everyone and everything. There is no greater love than to accept this, and be glad. For love asks only that YOU BE HAPPY, and will GIVE you everything that makes for happiness.
You have never given ANY problem to the Holy Spirit He has not solved. NOR will you ever do so. You have never tried to solve ANYTHING yourself and been successful. Is it not time you brought these facts TOGETHER, and made SENSE of them? This is the year for the APPLICATION of the ideas that have been given you. For the ideas are mighty forces, to be USED, and not held idly by. They have ALREADY proved their power sufficiently for you to place your faith in THEM, and NOT in their denial. This year, invest in truth, and let it work in peace. Have faith in what has faith in YOU. Think what you have REALLY seen and heard, and RECOGNIZE it. Can you BE alone, with witnesses like these?
Attitudes toward the body are attitudes toward ATTACK. The ego's definitions of ANYTHING are childish, and are ALWAYS based on what it believes a thing is FOR. This is because it is incapable of true generalizations, and equates what it sees with the function IT ascribes to it. It does NOT equate it with what it IS. To the ego, the body IS TO ATTACK WITH. Equating YOU with the body, it teaches that YOU are to attack with, because THIS IS WHAT IT BELIEVES. The body, then, is not the source of its own health. Its condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function.
The reason why definitions by function are inferior is merely because they may well be inaccurate. Functions are part of being, since they arise FROM it. But the relationship is NOT reciprocal. The whole does define the part, but the part does NOT define the whole. This is as true of knowledge as it is of perception. The reason why to KNOW in part is to know entirely is merely because of the fundamental difference between knowledge and perception. In perception, the whole is built up of parts, which can separate and reassemble in different constellations. Knowledge never changes, so that its constellation is permanent. The only areas in which part-whole relationships have any meaning are those in which change is possible. There IS no difference between the whole and the part where change is impossible.
The body exists in a world which seems to contain two voices which are fighting for its possession. In this perceived constellation, the body is regarded as capable of shifting its control from one to the other, making the concept of both health and sickness possible. The ego makes a fundamental confusion between means and ends, as it always does. Regarding the body as an end, it has no real use for it at all, because it is NOT an end. You must have noticed an outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has accepted as its own. When you have achieved it, IT HAS NOT SATISFIED YOU. This is why the ego is forced to shift from one end to another without ceasing, so that YOU will continue to hope it can offer you something.
It has been particularly difficult to overcome the ego's belief in the body as an end because this is synonymous with ATTACK AS AN END. The ego has a REAL INVESTMENT IN SICKNESS. If you are sick, how can you object to the ego's firm belief that you are NOT invulnerable? This is a particularly appealing argument from the ego's point of view, because it obscures the obvious attack which underlies the sickness. If you accepted THIS, and also decided AGAINST attack, you could not give this false witness to the ego's stand. It is hard to perceive this as a false witness, because you do not realize that it IS entirely out of keeping with what YOU want. This witness, then, appears to be innocent and trustworthy only because YOU have not seriously cross-examined him.
If you did, you would not consider sickness such a strong witness on behalf of the ego's views. A more honest statement would be as follows: Those who WANT the ego are predisposed to defend it. Therefore, their choice of witnesses should be suspect from the beginning. The ego does not call upon witnesses who might disagree with its case, NOR DOES THE HOLY SPIRIT. We have said before that judgment IS the function of the Holy Spirit, and one which He is perfectly equipped to fulfill. The ego, as a judge, gives anything BUT an impartial trial (judgment.) When the ego calls on a witness, it has ALREADY MADE IT AN ALLY. It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end. The ego, however, establishes it AS an end because, as such, IT WILL LOSE ITS TRUE FUNCTION.
This is the purpose of everything the ego does. Its sole aim is to lose sight of the functions of EVERYTHING. A sick body does not make any sense. It COULD not make any sense, since sickness is not what it is FOR. Sickness is meaningful only if the two basic premises on which the ego's interpretation of the body rests are true. These are specifically first that the body is for attack, and also that you ARE a body. Without this, sickness is completely inconceivable. Sickness is a way of demonstrating that YOU CAN BE HURT. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance. The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for ITS guidance. It dictates endless prescriptions for AVOIDING this catastrophic outcome. The Holy Spirit, perfectly aware of the same data, does not bother to analyze it at all. If the data are meaningless, there is no point in treating them at all.
The function of truth is to collect data which are TRUE. There is no point in trying to make sense out of meaningless data. ANY way they are handled results in nothing. 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.
A learning DEVICE is NOT a teacher. IT cannot tell you how you feel. YOU do not KNOW how you feel, because YOU HAVE ACCEPTED THE EGO's CONFUSION, and YOU think A LEARNING DEVICE CAN TELL YOU HOW YOU FEEL. Sickness is merely another example of your insistence on asking for guidance of a teacher who DOES NOT KNOW THE ANSWER. The ego is INCAPABLE of knowing how you feel. When we said that the ego DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING, we said the one thing about the ego that is wholly true. But there is a corollary. If knowledge is being, and the ego has no knowledge, then the ego HAS NO BEING.
You might ask how the voice of something which does not exist can be so insistent. Have you ever seriously considered the distorting power of something you WANT, even if it is not true? You have had many instances of how what you want can distort what you see and hear. No one can doubt the ego's skill in building up false cases. And no one can doubt your willingness to listen, until YOU will not to tolerate ANYTHING except truth.
When YOU lay the ego aside it will be gone. The Holy Spirit's voice is as loud as your willingness to listen. It cannot be louder without violating your will, which He seeks to free but never to command. He will teach you to use your body ONLY to reach your brothers so He can teach His message through you. This will heal them and THEREFORE heal you. Everything used in accordance with its function as HE sees it CANNOT be sick. Everything used otherwise IS.
Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind. Do not let it be an image of your own perception of littleness. Do not let it reflect your will to attack. Health is the natural state of anything whose interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, who perceives no attack on anything. Health is the result of relinquishing ALL attempts to use the body lovelessly. It is the beginning of the proper perspective on life, under the guidance of the one teacher who knows what life IS, being the voice for Life Itself.
(On Wed. evening, Nov. 24, Helen Schucman had sudden flash of illumination and very much wanted to offer prayer for Bill, which she did as follows: "Jesus, help me see my brother (Bill ) as he really is, and thus release both him and me." Helen Schucman also thought later: Every time there is anything unlovable that crosses one's mind (re sex, possession, etc.) you should immediately recognize that you do not want to hurt your brother.) On Thurs. morning, the prayer for the miracle occurred as follows stated above.)
You had a lot of trouble afterwards with the words (which are essentially irrelevant) partly because you were dissatisfied with yourself at the time, but also because you ARE confused about the difference between perception and cognition. You will note that we have said very little about cognition as yet. (Aside: One of the exceptions is in the correction formula for fear, which begins with KNOW first) The reason is because you must get your perceptions straightened out before you can KNOW anything.
To know is to be certain. Uncertainty merely means that you DON'T know. Knowledge is power BECAUSE it is certain, and certainty is strength. Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love. Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge. True perception is the BASIS for knowledge, but KNOWING is the affirmation of truth.
All of your difficulties ultimately stem from the fact that you do not recognize, or KNOW, yourselves, each other, or God. "Recognize" means "know again." This means that you knew before. (Note that it does not mean SAW before.) You can see in many ways, because perception involves different interpretations, and this means it is not whole. The miracle is a way of PERCEIVING, not a way of knowing. It is the right answer to a question, but you do not ask questions at all when you know.
Questioning delusions is the first step in undoing them. The miracle, or the right answer, corrects them. Since perceptions CHANGE, their dependence on time is obvious. They are subject to transitory states, and this implies variability by definition. How you perceive at any given time determines what you DO, and action MUST occur in time. Knowledge is timeless because certainty is not questionable. You KNOW when you have ceased to ask questions.
The "questioning mind" perceives itself in time, and therefore looks for FUTURE answers. The unquestioning mind is closed merely because it believes the future and the present will be the same. This establishes an unchanged state, or stasis. This is usually an attempt to counteract an underlying fear that the future will be WORSE than the present, and this fear inhibits the tendency to question at all.
Visions are the natural perception of the spiritual eye, but they are still corrections. B's question about the "spiritual eye" was a very legitimate one. The "spiritual eye" is symbolic, and therefore NOT a device for knowing. It IS, however, a means of right perception, which brings it into the proper domain of the miracle, but NOT of revelation. PROPERLY speaking, a "vision of God" is a miracle rather than a revelation. The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge. That is why these visions do not last.
The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God. When you love someone, you have PERCEIVED him as he is, and this makes it possible for you to KNOW him. But it is not until you RECOGNIZE him that you KNOW him. Only then are you ABLE to stop asking questions about him.
While you ask questions about God, you are clearly implying that you do NOT know Him. Certainty does not require action. When you say you are ACTING on the basis of sure knowledge, you are really confusing perception and cognition. Knowledge brings MENTAL strength for creative THINKING, but not for right doing.
Perception, miracles and doing are closely related. Knowledge is a result of revelation, and induces only thought (thinking). Perception involves the body even in its most spiritualized form. Knowledge comes from the altar within, and is timeless because it is certain. To perceive the truth is not the same as KNOWING it. This is why Bill is having so much trouble in what he calls "integrating" the notes. His tentative perception is too uncertain for knowledge, because knowledge is SURE. Your perception is so variable that you swing from sudden but real knowledge to complete cognitive disorganization. This is why Bill is more prone to irritation, while you are more vulnerable to rage. He is consistently BELOW his potential, while you achieve it at times and then swing very wide of the mark.
Actually, these differences do not matter. But I thought you might be glad to learn that you are much better off with DIFFERENT perceptual problems than you would be if you suffered from similar ones. This enables each of you to RECOGNIZE (and this is the right word here) that the misperceptions of the other are unnecessary. It is because you do not KNOW what to do about it that Bill reacts to yours with irritation, and you respond to his with fury.
I repeat again that if you ATTACK error, you will hurt yourself. You do not RECOGNIZE each other when you attack. Attack is ALWAYS made on a stranger. You are MAKING him a stranger by misperceiving him, so that you CANNOT know him. It is BECAUSE you have made him into a stranger that you are afraid of him. PERCEIVE him correctly, so that your Soul can KNOW him.
Right perception is necessary before God can communicate DIRECTLY to his own altars, which he has established in His Sons. There he can communicate His certainty, and His KNOWLEDGE will bring the peace WITHOUT question.
God is not a stranger to His Own Sons, and His Sons are not strangers to each other. Knowledge preceded both perception and time, and will also ultimately replace (or correct for) them. This is the real meaning of the Biblical account of God as "Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End." It also explains the quotation "Before Abraham WAS, I AM." Perception can and must be stabilized, but knowledge IS stable. "Fear God and keep His Commandments" is a real scribal error. It should read, "KNOW God and accept His certainty." (This error is why the commandments are all negative, in contrast to Christ's statement about "Thou shalt love." etc.) There are no strangers in His Creation. To create as He Created, you can create only what you KNOW and accept as yours.
God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them. He recognizes them perfectly. When they do not recognize each other, they do not recognize Him. Brothers can misperceive one another, but they rarely maintain that they do not KNOW each other. This is possible only if they maintain that they are NOT really brothers. The Bible is VERY specific on this point.
You WILL attack what does not satisfy, and thus you will not see you made it up. You ALWAYS fight illusions. For the truth behind them is so lovely and so still in loving gentleness, were you AWARE of it, you would forget defensiveness entirely, and rush to its embrace. The truth could never BE attacked. And this you knew when you made idols. They were made that this might be forgotten. You attack but FALSE ideas, and NEVER truthful ones. All idols ARE the false ideas you made to fill the gap you think arose between yourself and what is true. And you attack them for the things you think they REPRESENT. What lies BEYOND them cannot BE attacked.
The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children's toys. A child IS frightened when a wooden head springs up as a closed box is opened suddenly. Or when a soft and silent wooly bear begins to squeak as he takes hold of it. The rules he made for boxes and for bears have failed him, and have broken his control of what surrounds him. And he is afraid because he thought the rules PROTECTED him. Now must he learn the boxes and the bears did NOT deceive him, broke no rules, nor mean his world is made chaotic and unsafe. HE WAS MISTAKEN. He misunderstood what MADE him safe, and thought that it had left.
The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms. And each one seems to break the rules you set for it. It never WAS the thing you thought. It MUST appear to break your rules for safety, since the RULES are wrong. But YOU are not endangered. You can laugh at popping heads and squeaking toys, as does the child who learns they are no threat to him. But while he likes to play with them, he still perceives them as obeying rules he made for his enjoyment. So there still are rules which they can seem to break, and frighten him. Yet IS he at the mercy of his toys? And CAN they represent a threat to him?
Reality observes the laws of God, and NOT the rules you set. It is His laws which GUARANTEE your safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey NO laws. They seem to dance a little while, according to the rules you set for them. But then they fall, and cannot rise again. They are but toys, my children. Do not grieve for them. Their dancing never brought you joy, but neither were they things to frighten you, nor make you safe if they obeyed your rules. They must be neither cherished NOR attacked, but merely looked upon as children's toys, without a SINGLE meaning of their own. See ONE in them, and you will see them all. See NONE in them, and they will touch you not.
Appearances deceive BECAUSE they are appearances, and not reality. Dwell not on them in ANY form. They but OBSCURE reality. And they bring fear BECAUSE they hide the truth. Do not attack what you have made to LET you be deceived. For thus you prove that you HAVE BEEN deceived. Attack HAS power to make illusions real. Yet what it makes is nothing. Who could be made fearful by a power that can have no REAL effects at all? What could it BE but an illusion, making things appear like to itself? Look calmly at its toys, and understand that they are idols which but dance to vain desires. Give them not your worship, for they are not there. But this is EQUALLY forgotten in attack.
God's Son needs NO defense against his dreams. His idols do not threaten him at all. His ONE mistake is that he thinks them real. What can the power of illusions DO? Appearances can but deceive the mind that WANTS to be deceived. And you can make a simple choice that will forever place you far BEYOND deception. You need not concern yourself with HOW this will be done, for this you CANNOT understand. But you WILL understand that mighty changes have been quickly brought about, when you decide one very simple thing; you do not WANT whatever you believe an idol gives. For thus the Son of God declares that he is free of idols. And thus IS he free.
Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be EXCEPT a happy dream? For you are asked but to forgive all things that no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to look upon the unreal as reality. You are but asked to let your will be done, and seek no longer for the things you do not want. And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the dreams of what you never were, and seek no more to substitute the strength of idle wishes for the Will of God. Here does the dream of separation start to fade and disappear. For here the gap that is not there begins to be perceived without the toys of terror that you made.
No more than this is asked. Be glad indeed salvation asks so little, NOT so much. It asks for NOTHING in reality. And even in illusions it but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear. Such is the ONLY rule for happy dreams. The gap is emptied of the toys of fear, and then its unreality is plain. Dreams are for nothing. And the Son of God CAN have no need of them. They offer him no single thing that he could ever want. He is DELIVERED from illusions by his will, and but restored to what he IS. What could God's plan for his salvation BE, except a means to give him to Himself?
All magic is a form of reconciling the irreconcilable. All religion is the recognition that the irreconcilable cannot BE reconciled.
Sickness and perfection ARE irreconcilable. If God created you perfect, you ARE perfect. If you believe you can be sick, you HAVE placed other gods before Him. GOD is not at war with the god of sickness which you made, but YOU are. He is the symbol of willing AGAINST God, and you are afraid of him BECAUSE he cannot be reconciled with God's will. If you ATTACK him, you will make him real to you. 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.
Reality can dawn only in an unclouded mind. It is always THERE, to BE accepted, but its acceptance depends on your WILLINGNESS TO HAVE IT. To know reality MUST involve the willingness to judge Unreality FOR WHAT IT IS. This is the RIGHT use of selective perception. To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO. Knowledge cannot dawn on a mind full of illusions, because truth and illusions are irreconcilable. Truth is whole, and CANNOT be known by PART of a mind.
The Sonship cannot be perceived as PARTLY sick, because to perceive it that way, is not to perceive it at all. If the Sonship is ONE, it is one in ALL respects. ONENESS CANNOT BE DIVIDED. If you perceive other gods, YOUR mind is split, and you will not be able to LIMIT the split, because the split IS the sign that you have removed part of your mind from God's Will, and this MEANS that it is out of control. To be out of control is to be out of REASON, and the mind DOES become unreasonable without reason. This is merely a matter of DEFINITION. By DEFINING the mind wrongly, you perceive it as FUNCTIONING wrongly.
God's laws will keep your minds at peace, because peace IS His Will, and His laws are established to uphold it. His are the laws of freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. Since freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD TOGETHER. The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His. Everything else is merely lawLESS, and therefore chaotic. But God Himself has protected EVERYTHING He created BY His laws. Therefore, everything that is not under them does not exist.
"Laws of chaos" are meaningless, by definition. Creation is perfectly lawful, and the chaotic is without meaning, BECAUSE IT IS WITHOUT GOD. You have given your peace to the gods you made, but they are not there to take it FROM you, and you are NOT able to give it TO them. You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it. YOU CANNOT DO WHAT GOD DID NOT INTEND, because what He did not intend DOES NOT HAPPEN. Your gods do not BRING chaos; you are ENDOWING them with chaos, and accepting it OF them.
All this has never been. Nothing but the laws of God has ever operated, and nothing except His Will will ever be. You were created through His laws and by His Will, and the manner of your creation established you AS CREATORS. What you have made is so unworthy of you, that you could hardly want it, IF YOU WERE WILLING TO SEE IT AS IT IS. You will see nothing at all. And your vision will AUTOMATICALLY look beyond it, to what is IN you, and all AROUND you. Reality cannot BREAK THROUGH the obstructions you interpose, but it WILL envelop you completely, WHEN YOU LET THEM GO.
When you have experienced the protection of God, the making of idols becomes inconceivable. There are no strange images in the Mind of God, and what is not in His Mind CANNOT be in yours, because you are of One Mind, and that Mind belongs to HIM. It is yours BECAUSE it belongs to Him, for ownership is sharing to Him. And if it is so for Him, it is so for you. His definitions ARE His laws, for by them He established the universe as what it is. No false gods you attempt to interpose between yourself and your reality, affect truth at all. Peace is yours because God created you. And He created nothing else.
The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal.
In many, only the spark remains, for the great rays are obscured. But God has kept the spark alive, so the rays can never be completely forgotten. If you but see the little spark, you will learn of the greater light, for the rays are there unseen. Perceiving the spark will heal, but knowing the Light will create. Yet in the returning, the little light must be acknowledged first, for the separation was a descent from magnitude to littleness. But the spark is still as pure as the Great Light, because it is the remaining call of Creation. Put all your faith in it, and God Himself will answer you.
As all therapy is psychotherapy, so all illness is mental illness. It is a judgment on the Son of God, and judgment is a mental activity. Judgment is a decision, made again and again, against creation and its Creator. It is a decision to perceive the universe as you would have created it. It is a decision that truth can lie and must be lies. What, then, can illness be except an expression of sorrow and of guilt? And who could weep but for his innocence?
Once God's Son is seen as guilty, illness becomes inevitable. It has been asked for and will be received. And all who ask for illness have now condemned themselves to seek for remedies that cannot help, because their faith is in the illness and not in salvation. There can be nothing that a change of mind cannot effect, for all external things are only shadows of a decision already made. Change the decision, and how can its shadow be unchanged? Illness can be but guilt's shadow, grotesque and ugly since it mimics deformity. If a deformity is seen as real, what could its shadow be except deformed?
The descent into hell follows step by step in an inevitable course, once the decision that guilt is real has been made. Sickness and death and misery now stalk the earth in unrelenting waves, sometimes together and sometimes in grim succession. Yet all these things, however real they seem, are but illusions. Who could have faith in them once this is realized? And who could not have faith in them until he realizes this? Healing is therapy or correction, and we have said already and will say again, all therapy is psychotherapy. To heal the sick is but to bring this realization to them.
The word "cure" has come into disrepute among the more "respectable" therapists of the world, and justly so. For not one of them can cure, and not one of them understands healing. At worst, they but make the body real in their own minds, and having done so, seek for magic by which to heal the ills with which their minds endow it. How could such a process cure? It is ridiculous from start to finish. Yet having started, it must finish thus. It is as if God were the devil and must be found in evil. How could love be there? And how could sickness cure? Are not these both one question?
At best, and the word is perhaps questionable here, the "healers" of the world may recognize the mind as the source of illness. But their error lies in the belief that it can cure itself. This has some merit in a world where "degrees of error" is a meaningful concept. Yet must their cures remain temporary, or another illness rise instead, for death has not been overcome until the meaning of love is understood. And who can understand this without the Word of God, given by Him to the Holy Spirit as His gift to you?
Illness of any kind may be defined as the result of a view of the self as weak, vulnerable, evil and endangered, and thus in need of constant defense. Yet if such were really the self, defense would be impossible. Therefore, the defenses sought for must be magical. They must overcome all limits perceived in the self, at the same time making a new self-concept into which they cannot return. In a word, error is accepted as real and dealt with by illusions. Truth being brought to illusions, reality now becomes a threat and is perceived as evil. Love becomes feared because reality is love. Thus is the circle closed against the "inroads" of salvation.
Illness is therefore a mistake and needs correction. And as we have already emphasized before, correction cannot be achieved by first establishing the "rightness" of the mistake and then overlooking it. If illness is real it cannot be overlooked in truth, for to overlook reality is insanity. Yet that is magic's purpose; to make illusions true through false perception. This cannot heal, for it opposes truth. Perhaps an illusion of health is substituted for a little while, but not for long. Fear cannot long be hidden by illusions, for it is part of them. It will escape and take another form, being the source of all illusions.
Sickness is insanity because all sickness is mental illness, and in it there are no degrees. One of the illusions by which sickness is perceived as real is the belief that illness varies in intensity; that the degree of threat differs according to the form it takes. Herein lies the basis of all errors, for all of them are but attempts to compromise by seeing just a little bit of hell. This is a mockery so alien to God that it must be forever inconceivable. But the insane believe it because they are insane.
A madman will defend his own illusions because in them he sees his own salvation. Thus, he will attack the one who tries to save him from them, believing that he is attacking him. This curious circle of attack-defense is one of the most difficult problems with which the psychotherapist must deal. In fact, this is his central task; the core of psychotherapy. The therapist is seen as one who is attacking the patient's most cherished possession; his picture of himself. And since this picture has become the patient's security as he perceives it, the therapist cannot but be seen as a real source of danger, to be attacked and even killed.
The psychotherapist, then, has a tremendous responsibility. He must meet attack without attack, and therefore without defense. It is his task to demonstrate that defenses are not necessary, and that defenselessness is strength. This must be his teaching, if his lesson is to be that sanity is safe. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the insane believe that sanity is threat. This is the corollary of the "original sin"; the belief that guilt is real and fully justified. It is therefore the psychotherapist's function to teach that guilt, being unreal, cannot be justified. But neither is it safe. And thus it must remain unwanted as well as unreal.
Salvation's single doctrine is the goal of all therapy. Relieve the mind of the insane burden of guilt it carries so wearily, and healing is accomplished. The body is not cured. It is merely recognized as what it is. Seen rightly, its purpose can be understood. What is the need for sickness then? Given this single shift, all else will follow. There is no need for complicated change. There is no need for long analyses and wearying discussions and pursuits. The truth is simple, being one for all.
This manual is not intended to answer all questions which both teacher and pupil may raise. In fact, it covers only a few of the more obvious ones, in terms of a brief summary of some of the major concepts in the text and workbook. It is not a substitute for either, but merely a supplement. While it is called a manual for teachers, it must be remembered that only time divides teacher and pupil, so that the difference is temporary by definition. In some cases, it may be helpful for the pupil to read the manual first. Others might do better to begin with the workbook. Still others may need to start at the more abstract level of the text.
Which is for whom? Who would profit more from prayers alone? Who needs but a smile, being as yet unready for more? No-one should attempt to answer these questions alone. Surely no teacher of God has come this far without realizing that. The curriculum is highly individualized. And all aspects are under the Holy Spirit's particular care and guidance. Ask and He will answer. The responsibility is His, and He alone is fit to assume it. To do so is His function. To refer the questions to Him is yours. Would you want to be responsible for decisions about which you understand so little? Be glad you have a Teacher Who cannot make a mistake. His answers are always right. Would you say that of yours?
There is another advantage,- and a very important one, - in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious. To follow the Holy Spirit's guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt. It is the essence of the Atonement. It is the core of the curriculum. The imagined usurping of functions not your own is the basis of fear. The whole world you see reflects the illusion you have done so, making fear inevitable. To return the function to the One To Whom it belongs is thus the escape from fear. And it is this that lets the memory of love return to you. Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you.
Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none. The Holy Spirit knows the truth about you. The image you made does not. Yet, despite its obvious and complete ignorance, this image assumes it knows all things because you have given that belief to it. Such is your teaching and the teaching of the world which was made to uphold it. But the Teacher Who knows the truth has not forgotten it. His decisions bring benefit to all, being wholly devoid of attack. And therefore incapable of arousing guilt.
Who assumes a power that he does not have is deceiving himself. Yet to accept the power given him by God is but to acknowledge his Creator and accept His gifts. And His gifts have no limit. To ask the Holy Spirit to decide for you is merely to accept your true inheritance. Does this mean that you cannot say anything without consulting Him? No, indeed! That would hardly be practical, and it is the practical with which this course is most concerned. If you have made it a habit to ask for help when and where you can, you can be confident that wisdom will be given you when you need it. Prepare for this each morning, remember God when you can throughout the day, ask the Holy Spirit's help when it is feasible to do so, and thank Him for His guidance at night. And your confidence will be well founded indeed.
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. God would be cruel if He let your words replace His Own. A loving father does not let his child harm himself or choose his own destruction. He may ask for injury, but his father will protect him still. And how much more than this does your Father love His Son?
Remember you are His completion and His Love. Remember your weakness is His strength. But do not read this hastily or wrongly. If His strength is in you, what you perceive as your weakness is but illusion. And He has given you the means to prove it so. Ask all things of His Teacher, and all things are given you. Not in the future but immediately; now. God does not wait, for waiting implies time and He is timeless. Forget your foolish images, your sense of frailty and your fear of harm, your dreams of danger and selected "wrongs." God knows but His Son, and as he was created so he is. In confidence I place you in His Hands, and I give thanks for you that this is so.
And now in all your doings be you blessed.
God turns to you for help to save the world.
Teacher of God, His thanks He offers you,
And all the world stands silent in the grace
You bring from Him. You are the Son He loves,
And it is given you to be the means
Through which His Voice is heard around the world
To close all things of time, to end the sight
Of all things visible; and to undo
All things that change. Through you is ushered in
A world unseen, unheard, yet truly there.
Holy are you, and in your light the world
Reflects your holiness, for you are not
Alone and friendless. I give thanks for you,
And join your efforts on behalf of God,
Knowing they are on my behalf as well
And for all those who walk to God with me.
FINIS
From the ego came sin and guilt and death, in OPPOSITION to life and innocence, and to the Will of God Himself. Where can such opposition lie, but in the sick minds of the insane, dedicated to madness, and set AGAINST the peace of Heaven?
One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself.
You who believe you have condemned the Son of God to this ARE arrogant. But you who would RELEASE him are but honoring the Will of his Creator. The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the sepulchre of separation, all are part of your unrecognized dedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience. But what obeys it not, it CANNOT kill. You have ANOTHER dedication which would keep the body incorruptible and perfect, as long as it is useful for your holy purpose.
The body no more dies than it can feel. IT DOES NOTHING. Of itself, it is neither corruptible nor incorruptible. IT IS NOTHING. It is the result of a tiny, mad IDEA of corruption, WHICH CAN BE CORRECTED. For God has ANSWERED this insane idea with His Own, an Answer which left Him not, and therefore brings the Creator to the awareness of every mind which heard His Answer, and ACCEPTED it. You who are dedicated to the incorruptible, have been given, through YOUR acceptance, the power to RELEASE from corruption. What better way to teach the first and fundamental principle in a course on miracles than by showing you the one that SEEMS to be the hardest can be accomplished FIRST?
The body can but serve your purpose. As you look upon it, so will it seem to be. Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which IS the ego's goal. Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they CALL to it, and bid it come to SAVE them from communication. For death is seen as SAFETY, the great dark savior from the light of truth, the answer to the Answer, the silencer of the Voice that speaks for God. Yet the retreat to death is NOT the end of conflict. Only God's ANSWER is its end.
The obstacle of your seeming love for death, which peace must flow across, SEEMS to be very great. For in it lies hidden all the ego's secrets, all its strange devices for deception, all its sick ideas and weird imaginings. Here is the final end of union, the triumph of the ego's making over creation, the victory of lifelessness on life Itself. Under the dusty edge of its distorted world. the ego would lay the Son of God, slain by its orders, proof in his decay that God Himself is powerless before the ego's might, unable to protect the life that He created, against the ego's savage wish to kill.
My brothers, children of our Father, this is a DREAM of death. There is no funeral, no dark altars, no grim commandments, nor twisted rituals of condemnation, to which the BODY leads you. Ask not release of IT. But FREE it from the merciless and unrelenting orders you laid upon it, and forgive it what you ordered it to do. In its exaltation, you COMMANDED it to die, for only death COULD conquer life. And what but insanity could look upon the defeat of God, and think it REAL?
The fear of death will go as its appeal is yielded to love's REAL attraction. The end of sin, which nestles quietly in the safety of your relationship, protected by your union, ready to grow into a mighty force for God, is very near. The infancy of salvation is carefully guarded by love, preserved from every thought that would attack it, and quietly made ready to fulfill the mighty task for which it was GIVEN you. Your new-born purpose is nursed by angels, cherished by the Holy Spirit, and protected by God Himself. It NEEDS not your protection; it is YOURS. For it is deathless, and within it lies the END of death.
What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack the guiltless? What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness? What has been given you, even in its infancy, is in full communication with God AND you. In its tiny hands, it holds, in perfect safety, every miracle you will perform, held out to YOU. The miracle of life is ageless, born in time, but nourished in eternity. Behold this infant, to whom you gave a resting place by your forgiveness of EACH OTHER, and see in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, NOT to the cross, but to the Resurrection and the Life.
When anything seems to you to be a source of fear, when any situation strikes you with terror and makes your body tremble and the cold sweat of fear comes over it, remember it is ALWAYS for one reason; the ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, a sign of sin and death. Remember, then, that neither sign nor symbol should be CONFUSED with source, for they must STAND FOR something OTHER than themselves. Their meaning CANNOT lie in them, but must be sought in what they REPRESENT. And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the truth or falsity of the IDEA which they reflect.
Confronted with such seeming uncertainty of meaning, judge it not. Remember the holy Presence of the One GIVEN you to be the Source of judgment. Give it to Him to judge FOR you, and say:
"Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me.
Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction.
Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE to peace, but let You use it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming."
We have already discussed the Last Judgment in some though insufficient detail. After the Last Judgment, there isn't any more. This is symbolic only in the sense that everybody is much better off WITHOUT judgment. When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own. The choice to judge rather than know has been the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not cognition rests. We covered this before in terms of selectivity. Evaluation was said at that time to be its obvious prerequisite.
Judgment ALWAYS involves rejection. It is not an ability which emphasizes ONLY the positive aspects of what is judged, whether it be in or out of the self. However, what has been perceived and rejected, (or judged and found wanting) remains in the unconscious because it HAS been perceived. Watson had a very relevant notion of the unconscious in this connection. In fact, it was so relevant that he dropped it as officially out of accord with Behaviorism. He was right on both counts.
One of the illusions from which human perception suffers is that what it perceives and judges against has no effect. This cannot be true, unless man also believes that what his judgment vetoes does not exist. He evidently does not believe this, or he would not have judged against it. It does not really matter, in the end, whether you judge right or wrong. Either way, you are placing your belief in the unreal. This cannot be avoided in any type of judgment, because it IMPLIES the belief that reality is yours to choose FROM.
Neither of you has any idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourselves and your brothers totally without judgment. If you will look back at the earlier notes about what you and your brothers ARE, you will realize that judging them in any way is really without meaning. In fact, their meaning is lost to you precisely BECAUSE you ARE judging them. All uncertainty comes from a totally fallacious belief that you are under the coercion of judgment. You do not need it to organize your life, and you certainly do not need it to organize yourselves.
When you look upon knowledge, all judgment is automatically suspended, and this is the process that enables recognition to REPLACE perception. Man is very fearful of everything he has perceived and refused to accept. He believes that because he has refused to accept it, he has lost control over it. This is why he sees it in nightmares, or in pleasant disguise in what seems to be happier dreams. Nothing that you have refused to accept can be brought into awareness. It does NOT follow that it is dangerous. But it DOES follow that you have made it dangerous.
When you feel tired, it is merely because you have judged yourself as capable of being tired. When you laugh at someone it is because you have judged him as debased. When you laugh at yourself, you are singularly likely to laugh at others, if only because you cannot tolerate being more debased THAN others. All of this does make you tired, because it is essentially disheartening. You are not really capable of being tired, but you are very capable of wearying yourselves.
The strain of constant judgment is virtually intolerable. It is a curious thing that any ability which is so debilitating should be so deeply cherished. But there is a very good reason for this. (This, however, depends upon what you mean by good.)
If you wish to be the author of reality, which is totally impossible anyway, then you will insist on holding on to judgment. You will also use the term with considerable fear and believe that judgment will someday be used against you. To whatever extent it IS used against you, it is due ONLY to your belief in its efficacy as a weapon of defense for your own authority.
The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has a "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself, and resents his own projection that you share his delusion in this respect. He then perceives the situation as one in which two people are literally fighting for his own authorship. This is the fundamental error of all those who believe they have usurped the power of God.
The belief is very frightening to them, but hardly troubles God at all. He is, however, eager to undo it, not to punish His children, but ONLY because He knows that it makes them unhappy. Souls were given their own true authorship, and men preferred to remain anonymous when they chose to separate themselves FROM their Author. The word "authority" has been one of their most fearful symbols ever since. Authority has been used for great cruelty, because, being uncertain of their true Authorship, men believe that their creation was anonymous. This has left them in a position where it SOUNDS meaningful to consider the possibility that they must have created themselves.
The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all. Despite the apparent contradiction in this position, it is in one sense more tenable than the view that they created themselves. At least, it acknowledged the fact some TRUE authorship is necessary for existence.
Only those who give over all desire to reject can KNOW that their own rejection is impossible. You have not usurped the power of God, but you HAVE lost it. Fortunately, when you lose something, this does not mean that the something has gone. It merely means that YOU do not know where it is. Existence does not depend on your ability to identify it, or even to place it. It is perfectly possible to look on reality without judgment, and merely KNOW it is there. By knowing this, you are not doubting its reality at all.
Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS. The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship. All fear comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship. The offense is never to God, but only to the denier himself. He has thrown away the reason for his own peace, and sees himself only in pieces. This strange perception IS an authority problem. It is also the basis for castration anxiety, since both forms of error are fundamentally the same.
Neither you nor Bill can find peace while this authority problem continues. But the truth is still that there IS no problem about this. There is no man who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this has been the result of his own free will, he must regard his will as if it were NOT free, or the obviously circular reasoning of his own position would be quite apparent.
Free will MUST lead to freedom. Judgment always imprisons, because it separates segments of reality according to highly unstable scales of desire. Wishes are not facts, by definition. To wish is to imply that willing is not sufficient. However, no one really believes that what is wished is as real as what is willed. Instead of "seek you first the Kingdom of Heaven" say "Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven," and you have said "I know what I am, and I will to accept my own inheritance."
It is ESSENTIAL that this whole authority problem be voluntarily dismissed at once and for all before B's course. Neither of you understands how important this is for your sanity. You are both quite insane on this point. (This is not a judgment. It is merely a fact. (No, Helen, you SHOULD use the word "fact." This is just as much a fact as God is. A fact is literally a "making" or a starting point. You DO start from this point, and your thinking is inverted because of it.)