Miracles and Immortality is a direct, uncompromising spiritual journey from suffering, conflict and death back to God, eternal life and the truth of what we are.
Written by Paul West, a student and practitioner of the teachings of A Course in Miracles for over 25 years, this book offers a clear and independent presentation of deep spiritual ideas in simpler, more linear language. It is designed as an easier-to-understand bridge for beginner and intermediate readers who want to grasp the larger patterns behind forgiveness, miracles, the ego, the world, the body, sickness, death, resurrection, awakening and the return to God.
At around 260,000 words, with over 60 unique diagrams, spanning 823 pages, this is a substantial spiritual work for serious readers who want more than a watered-down version of the truth. It is thorough, deep, honest and uncompromising, covering a wide range of topics. It carefully builds one idea upon another, helping the reader follow the whole journey from the condition of the world, through the nature of God and Heaven, into the undoing of fear, guilt, sickness and death, and the return to immortality through forgiveness, miracles, holy relationships and resurrection.
The book is divided into three major parts:
Part 1 — Life
This section lays the foundation. It explores absolute truth, the nature of God, Heaven, oneness, the sons of God, eternal life, innocence, holiness, free will and the Kingdom of God. It presents the reality of an immortal life as God created it: changeless, perfect, whole, loving and eternal, and acts as the light of truth as we explore the nature of life in the world and how to rise above it.
Part 2 — Death
This section looks honestly at the world of separation: spacetime, ego, sin guilt and fear, suffering, special relationships, bodies, sickness, murder and death. It examines why the world does not work, why suffering seems so convincing, and why death cannot be the truth of what we are.
Part 3 — Resurrection
This section turns toward the way out. It becomes more practical, focusing on the Holy Spirit, forgiveness, Atonement, guidance, healing, miracles, holy relationships, identity, the forgiven world and awakening to reality. It offers tools, ideas and ways of seeing that help the mind move out of hell and back toward God.
The diagrams throughout the book help clarify difficult metaphysical ideas visually, including absolute reality, the nature of God and creation, the separation, ego, projection and perception, relationships, the Holy Spirit, miracles, forgiveness and the forgiven world, healing, and reunion with God as we reclaim our immortality.
This is not a light or casual book. It is a deep and sincere spiritual rescue manual for those who have experienced the world's suffering and death and felt: there must be a better way.
Its central message is simple but profound:
Death is not the truth.
Hell is not your home.
You are not a body.
The world isn't reality.
God created you immortal.
And the way home to God is always open.
The book is available in paperback printed format, digital kindle ebook format, and also in downloadable audiobook format.
The paperback and ebook are distributed through all Amazon websites. The audiobook is only available specifically from amazon.com or audible.com - it is not available in other country-specific versions of the sites at this time. The ebook can be viewed on an Amazon kindle device or with the desktop Kindle app which is available for Mac and Windows and possibly other devices also.
For the audiobook, Amazon may be working to expand their production capabilities eventually. Currently you can create an account at amazon.com and order the audiobook from anywhere in the world (it's digital, so no shipping), and it will then show up in your account at audible.com - which can be logged into with your amazon.com account.
You can find the book on the Amazon.com site here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H7L2SKN6
You can look inside the book and read about 20% of the front of the book on the amazon page.
You can also find it on any Amazon.com site by searching for the book title. You can find the audiobook also by a direct search at audible.com
Currently the pricing (in US dollars) is $24.95 for the paperback, 7.95 for the ebook, and $11.95 for the audiobook.
Each of the books has an overhead or printing fee which I have to pay out of my profit margin. For example the paperback costs about $11 to print. Amazon also takes a hefty cut from the remaining profit The pricing is set so that I receive about $5 from each sale.
"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose." - Lesson 152
This is an extremely black and white level of responsibility. If you give your CONSENT, then sickness and death will occur. If you do NOT give your consent, then sickness and death of the body become IMPOSSIBLE.
Paraphrase: What you use the body for it becomes to you. If you use it to attack it becomes weak and sick and dies. If you use it for love it is healed and sickness is reversed and death becomes *IMPOSSIBLE*. "A sane mind heals the body."
This as Jesus says is a CENTRAL TEACHING of ACIM - that sickness and death of the body are OPTIONS THAT YOU CHOOSE (or not).
The body is not supposed to die or go through the death process. The body is not supposed to get sick. Death is nothing but another more extreme form of sickness, and sickness is just an earlier form of death. It's all the same thing. The ego mind attacks and kills the body as a result of a belief that sin and death are real, in an ARROGANT attempt to symbolically kill the Son of God. If you do not have that belief, you will not attack the body, it will not become sick, and it cannot die.
"Use it (the body) to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. 5 Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. 6 When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. 7 The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition."
The mind makes ALL decisions about the body's condition, including whether it is sick, and whether it dies. It CANNOT DIE if the mind does not CONSENT and CHOOSE to kill it. "From the ego came sin and guilt and death" .... "The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would kill it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience".
The body then becomes a "symbol of immortality" in the dream, as a DEMONSTRATION that your mind truly believes in God's laws over the egos. It is useful purely as a communication device.
"The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become IMPOSSIBLE."
You will then retain the body, which is really nothing, but in this state effectively is invulnerable and cannot be destroyed. This produces a supernatural protection because "a broken body is proof the mind has not been healed" and therefore if the mind IS healed it WILL heal the body. It must.
"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."
When you have ceased attacking the body, "a sane mind heals the body", the body will be restored miraculously to "perfect health" and become "holy", in the dream. It is used to bring God to those who need help, to perform miracles and raise the dead. And then when its usefulness is done, the body is DISAPPEARED, not laid down on the ground to rot and die. The dream of death is not left by death, but by truth.
Anyone whose body dies does so because THEY BELIEVE IN DEATH AND HAVE CONSENTED TO DIE. Death is a choice against God's Will. Death is NEVER a doorway out of dreaming. Death is DENIAL OF GOD.
Jesus describes how he finished dreaming not through death but through the recognition that the body was nothing/illusion and thus made it literally disappear:
"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand."
Death of the body is optional and is a FAILURE to live according to the Will of God. Whatever you believe you demonstrate. If you demonstrate death, you MUST believe in death. If you do not believe in death, you CANNOT demonstrate death. We are to demonstrate "immortality" of the body, in the dream, before we can stop dreaming. "There is no death, the Son of God is free" applies ONLY AFTER PROVING IT by making the body free of death, as demonstration of your actual acceptance that you are under no laws but God's.
Let's take a look at these statements about overcoming death.
1) "When you learn to make ME manifest, you will never see death. For you will have looked upon the deathless IN yourself, and you will see only the eternal, as you look out upon a world that cannot die."
2) "The body cannot live nor die, because it cannot contain you who are life. If we share the same mind, you can overcome death because I did."
3) "The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."
These statements make sense when seen from the perspective of True Perception. Bear with me while I think out loud...I'm still fleshing this out....
I will use an analogy to describe what the illusion of a world is. Imagine that the entire world is all one color. It's made of all one single material. It is mostly transparent. Let's say absolutely everything is made of glass. All the trees, bodies, animals, clouds, oceans, mountains, everything is made from this same material and it all looks the same.
Other than certain shapes which are formed by this worldwide material, there is absolutely nothing different about any part of it. It's all made of the same stuff. Also within this world, any illusions of one object causing another are completely overlooked and ignored.
In no way and under no conditions can any part of this world do anything TO any other part. ALL of it is just an effect, inert, lifeless, void of will. It is just a static image. It does nothing at all. There is nothing attacking anything else, because you recognize that all parts are coming from the same material, made by the same person, seen in the same way, and nothing can really do anything to anything else. There is no cause within that image of a world itself, the cause of it is outside of it. It is being PROJECTED within your mind and you are its sole cause. A frozen dream.
This is basically what you will see the world AS when you attain full True Perception. When you then look from this perspective, you will see that ALL illusions within the world are equal. In this way, THERE IS NO DEATH. Ie, this image cannot live, this image cannot die, it just remains being an image. This image cannot contain you in any way, who are life, because what is LIFE has nothing to do with forms or bodies or images. Images of bodies being in one state or another are all the same.
That said, as Jesus explains, when the mind is not using the body for sin, which means, attempting to confuse levels and reverse cause and effect and to make out that some part of this IMAGE of a world is able to attack another, then the IMAGE of that body will change to represent sickness and death. It will be seen as containing weakness, and thus it will seem to weaken, become sick, and die.
When it is not being used for purposes of *false perception*, it will not be distorted or unnaturally forced to be SICK. It will just be seen as perfectly neutral and free of attack. And because it is free of attack, it cannot be attacked. Or rather, in recognizing attack is not REAL, symptoms of attack will not show up in the image. Thus the body image will show up as having "natural health".
Jesus talked about how when he recognized his body for what it is, it could not disintegrate. It was not alive because illusions are not life. It could not die because there was no attack projected onto it. He therefore simply saw the end of its usefulness, laid it down and MADE IT DISAPPEAR, because he saw it was nothing but an illusion/image which was *not really there*. The image of the body, while showing up as part of the dream world, was essentially incapable of sickness, aging, change, or death, even within time and space.
I feel I don't quite have this whole picture yet, but it's a work in progress. Feel free to correct or add to this if you see fit. I'm gradually forming a clearer picture of how this all fits together.