"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach."

Everything in the course culminates with the clear recognition of what is true, and what is false. What is real, and what is unreal. What exists, and what does not.

This includes the recognition that THERE IS NO WORLD. It does not exist. Recognizing this IS forgiveness. This is the mindset in which wrong-mindedness ends, and right-mindedness automatically transitions to one-mindedness.

Jesus tells us that we are to become aware of dreaming. What this means is we become aware that the world IS A DREAM. We recognize it as ONLY a dream. And therefore we are not deceived by it.

"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

"Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in the dream. And so they bring the dreamer full release from dreams of fear."

Recognizing that the world is a dream, and NOT a reality, ties into the secret of salvation. The secret tells you that provided you do not mistake the dream for reality, you will not react to it. This is the SINGLE LESSON that the Holy Spirit teaches.

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth."

This means that you attain salvation by recognizing that the world is not real and does not exist. By recognizing it IS A DREAM, not a reality, you don't give it any credit, any truth, any reality, or any value. You know that you are dreaming it, but you are not deceived by it. And therefore you are not confused by notions that the dream is doing anything TO YOU, or that events are happening, or that sin is real, or that attack is occurring, or that anyone is really suffering.

The view that there is no world is like a KEY, which unlocks the door to heaven. It is not just information or some fact to learn. It is the atonement. It is forgiveness. It requires you to SEE and EXPERIENCE from a healed-mind vantage point, which sees that the world is only fiction and not real. And this places you OUTSIDE the dream. It puts you in a position of recognizing also:

"Only the truth is true, and nothing else is true."

and "Nothing unreal exists."

It's a clear distinction between what the real truth IS, and what it ISN'T. And therefore it frames the world in the light of truth, SHOWING that it is a false world and really is NOTHINGNESS. That there isn't even REALLY a world there. And in the cancelling of the world, the illusion is seen through, and disappears. And this leaves ONLY HEAVEN.

"Heaven is all that remains."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made."

"There is no life outside of heaven."

That there is no world, is an assertion that there IS ONLY HEAVEN. It is the resurrection because it is the assertion of life. It is sanity because it acknowledges only God's truth is true. And is salvation because in this awareness, you realize that ONLY GOD and His creation exists.

God is at peace because He knows that there is not really a world here. Nothing unreal exists. And since nothing unreal exists, nothing evil, dark, dangerous, harmful, bad, wrong, etc exists either. Thus there is no suffering, no sickness, no death, no guilt or fear or sin, and no space or time. And ALL THAT IS LEFT is the good, the immortal, the true and the holy. And this makes you feel very safe and happy.

Essentially this requires us to realize, fully, and to perceive, that this world we made IS NOTHING. It is made of nothingness, pretending to be something. When we are deceived by its illusion of existing, we are tempted to believe nothing exists. But when we see through it, we remember that nothingness does NOT exist, and so the world of nothingness does not exist.

"...as the world spins into the nothingness from which it came."

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."

"At no time does the body exist."

The entire message is EXTREMELY PIVOTAL. The reason is to do with uprooting the ENTIRE PREMISE of the ENTIRE ego thought system, and that system IS this universe. All of space and time are the ego's system of thinking.

"Every system of thought must have a starting point. It begins with either a making or a creating, a difference we have already discussed."

God is the logical premise of truth, the original starting point of creation, and the origin from which all extension and expression happens. Creation is the logical outcome of his premise and truth. And everything that comes from Him is based on His nature.

In the separation, we attempted to REPLACE the premise of truth with a FALSE premise. The false premise was the belief that everything STARTS with the OPPOSITE TO GOD. The opposite of reality, eternal life, truth, happiness, love, health, wholeness, unlimitedness, etc. The assertion of the opposite to God is the ego and the world.

"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

"And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

The world is nothing other than the idea that what IS NOTHING, is something. What DOES NOT exist, exists. What CANNOT HAPPEN, is happening. What is IMPOSSIBLE, is possible. What is NOT alive, is alive. What IS alive, is dead. What IS false, is true. It is the negation of reality and the opposite to God.

Atonement is the clear recognition that the world IS NOT what it claims to be. IT IS false, it is non-existent, it is an illusion, it is not real, it is not happening, and it is entirely fictional. Recognizing this is awareness of dreaming, the clear true perception that nothing in the world is real. Remembering it is just a dream. And therefore having NO reaction TO it, remembering that IT IS NOT THERE.

Seeing this is to OVERLOOK the world, which is forgiveness, and is what shows you the forgiven world. "A world forgiven cannot last". To forgive the world is to NOT SEE IT. Because "forgiveness does not look upon bodies". Christ vision sees PAST and BEYOND the world. The world is a thin veil which becomes transparent and vanishes when reality is acknowledged AS real, and "illusions recognized must disappear."

By changing the PREMISE of this world back to its ACTUAL premise, which is that the world is founded on a FALSE IMPOSSIBLE IDEA, rather than being confused that the world is founded on the truth and reality of God, this REFRAMES everything in the world. Even just remembering "this is just a dream" does this. It completely changes the MEANING of everything that happens. It completely INVALIDATES all notions of this being an ACTUALLY sinful, guilty, bad, wrong, dark, twisted, threatening, dangerous, suffering world. Because what everything IS is completely turned upside down when you realize it IS ONLY HAPPENING IN A DREAM.

There is no world.

There is no body.

There is no solar system.

There are no galaxies.

There is no space.

There is no time.

There is no sin.

There is no guilt.

There is nothing to fear.

There is no sickness.

There is no death.

There is no matter.

There is no universe.

There is no decay.

There is no malfunction.

There is no problem.

There is no attack.

There is no war.

There is no conflict.

There is no disease.

There is no history.

There is no ANYTHING THAT YOU CAN THINK OF THAT'S IN THIS WORLD.

Remembering there is no world, makes you feel instantly happy. This is the PROPER USE OF DENIAL. To deny the denial of the truth. Because there is no world, EVERY SINGLE THREAT that you believe in does not exist. ALL attacks are not happening. EVERY sickness is an illusion and no one is really sick. DEATH doesn't even exist. This SETS YOU FREE. And this is what ACIM is trying to teach us. To become COMPLETELY clear that there IS no world AT ALL, there never was, and only God's Kingdom remains as it always has. The recognition of this is enlightenment, and this is how you awaken to Heaven.

"W-pI.132.6. But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is. 2 There is no world! 3 This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. 4 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. 5 He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

W-pI.132.7. But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. 2 Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. 3 Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. 4 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.

W-pI.132.8. And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today. 2 Today's idea is true because the world does not exist. 3 And if it is indeed your own imagining, then you can loose it from all things you ever thought it was by merely changing all the thoughts that gave it these appearances. 4 The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death."

In the very big picture, this is what ACIM is getting at. This entire world does not exist. No bodies, no planet, no sun, no galaxies, no spacetime, no events, no happenings, no consequences. It is all nothing. Only the Kingdom of God - a world of spirit and light - really exists at all. Only that means anything and is of any value to you.

"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?"

"The world you see does not exist BECAUSE the place where you perceive it is not real."

"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."

We made up this world when we tried to separate from God. We invented time and space. We made the galaxies and planets. We invented bodies to hide in. It's all a hallucinated wishful-thinking dream of denial and the belief in the opposite to eternal life - death.

"Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one."

"There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought." "What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal?"

In order to accept this profound, extremely radical idea, we have to first acknowledge that we do NOT believe it. We are heavily invested in this world, we give it reality, we value it, we want it, we think it has things to offer us, we are attached to it, we fancy ourselves as being human bodies, we seek for bodily relationships, we want to collect stuff, we idolise and worship objects and bodies and places, and we just basically want to stay here as long as possible, all the while believing this is reality.

This is a problem.

In order for us to accept the atonement truth, that none of this has happened and this world doesn't exist, we're first going to have to go through a process of relinquishment. We're going to have to come to recognize, primarily, that this world is not actually a world - it is nothing. Bodies are not really bodies, they are nothing. Nothing is really happening here. Spacetime itself is an illusion. There is no space or time and nothing in it. All events are nowhere. All of the sickness and death is a lie and doesn't exist.

"It (mind) dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

This means we're going to have to become willing to not only recognize that the world is nothing and not worth having, we're going to have to stop trying to accumulate it. We're going to have to stop having psychological "ownership", possession and attachment to objects, people and places. We're going to have to recognize that the world holds nothing that we want, that it cannot give us anything, it cannot cause us to be happy, it cannot inherently mean anything to us, and it has no real value. And this also means letting go of all identification with (attachment to) the body, and re-identifying as a spirit being.

This is going to take an uprooting of everything that keeps you rooted in this world, all your commitments, all your investments, all your hopes and dreams and wishes, all your denials and anticipations, all your attempts to deny that this world is made of death. A big part of this involves recognising that death is woven into everything in this world, even in those things which seem like new or just born. That all the world's roads lead to death, all its laws are laws of punishment, and that it will always disappoint you. You have to come to realize that the world will not ever satisfy you, and that in itself can seem depressing.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

"There IS no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to try them all, before you REALLY learn they are but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way EXCEPT the pathways offered by the world. And, learning THEY led nowhere, lost their hope. And yet this was the time they COULD have learned their greatest lesson. All must reach this point, and go BEYOND it. It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. But this is NOT the lesson in itself. The lesson has a PURPOSE, and in THIS you come to understand what it is FOR."

Basically, we have to recognize that this world is fundamentally broken, spacetime is an attack on omnipresence and eternity, everything you try to do here will end in death and destruction eventually, there is no point and no meaning to this life, and then turn around and realize that there MUST be a better way, there MUST be another world, there MUST be a light and a way out of this nightmare. There MUST be a world that means something, there MUST be a truth and a light that you can depend on, and there MUST be a way to live forever. You're not going to find any of that in this world. Heaven is the reality that you heart really desires.

So then you're going to have to sort through all the ways in which you depend on, want, attach to, value, find important, give meaning to, want to keep, believe has power and will, believe can attack or heal you, basically anything to do with this world that might be a reason why you'd want to stay here and not go home to God. You're going to have to give up the whole world.

You're going to have to surrender and let go of absolutely everything and recognize you DO NOT WANT ANY OF IT. And thus you will let it all go and detach from it and become empty handed. And only by being empty handed, or rather, empty of your desire for spacetime and its bullshit offerings, will you be ready and willing to choose heaven.

So when Jesus says there is no world, which is literally true, that is the central theme of the course. The thing to "get". That there is not really a separation, there is not really a spacetime, or a planet earth, or a world of bodies and suffering and death. It's all a fiction.

In order for you to wean your mind off of it, you're going to have to go through a process of purification, of withdrawing power from the world, of recognising the world does nothing to you or for you, that it can no more please and save you than that it can offend and hurt you, of withdrawing all value and desire for the world and all wish to resist its impossible nature, recognizing that the world literally is nothing at all, and that giving up truly entails giving up a non-world.

Empty your hands of this world and reach for what God has given you in your creation in heaven. Accepting atonement is nothing more than accepting God's reality.

"Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you, for the simple willingness to give up nothing, BECAUSE it is nothing. The new perspective you will gain, from crossing over, will be the understanding of WHERE HEAVEN IS. From HERE, it seems to be outside, and ACROSS the bridge. But, as you cross to JOIN it, IT will JOIN WITH YOU, and BECOME ONE with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this, YOU GAVE UP NOTHING!"

"the sorry gifts of earth are joyously relinquished. In my hands is everything you want and need and hoped to find among the shabby toys of earth"

"It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven." "The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed. Until then, bits and pieces of its thinking will still seem sensible. The final lesson which brings the ending of the world cannot be grasped by those not yet prepared to leave the world and go beyond its tiny reach."

"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you."

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

"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!"

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father. But He would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ's face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it."

'"And so, our Father, we return to You, remembering we never went away; remembering Your holy gifts to us. In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give."

"Heaven Itself is reached by empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own"

"Simply do this: Be still and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false or good or bad; of every thought it judges worthy and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

"Here He leans down to lift you back to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and into timelessness; out of all fear and given back to Love."