"17. Miracles are the absence of the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from lower order reality. That is why they heal. "

"And as you see him shining in the space of light where God abides within the darkness, you will see that God Himself is where his body is. Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows MUST give way to light. The darkness cannot CHOOSE that it remain. The coming of the light MEANS it is gone."

"This is the same as saying that by seeing light, darkness automatically disappears."

" The Great Rays would establish the total LACK of value of the special relationship, IF THEY WERE SEEN. For, in seeing THEM, the body WOULD disappear, BECAUSE ITS VALUE WOULD BE LOST. And so your whole INVESTMENT in seeing it would be WITHDRAWN from it. "

"Dreams disappear when light has come, AND YOU CAN SEE."

"All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. "

"Idols MUST disappear, and leave no trace behind their going."

"...the body. It has faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED."

"Here does the dream of separation start to fade and disappear."

"What disappears in light is NOT attacked. It merely vanishes, because it is not true."

"The body disappears because you have no need of it except the need the Holy Spirit sees."

"As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns."

"Every illusion brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked, and disappears."

"Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared"

"Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear"

"If you choose to see the body, you behold a world of separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at all."

"Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, WHERE EARTH WILL DISAPPEAR, and separate thoughts unite in glory as the Son of God. ... Let us today BEHOLD EARTH DISAPPEAR, at first transformed, and then, forgiven, fade entirely into God's holy Will."

"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release."

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

"He does not realize that he MAKES this world, for there IS no world outside him."

""Heaven & Earth shall pass away" means that they will not always exist as separate states. My Word, which is the Resurrection and the Light, shall not pass away, because Life is Eternal."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"There is no life outside of heaven."

"From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God's Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, eternity has shined away the world, and only Heaven now exists at all."

"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again. But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. ... Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world."

"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth."

"The idea for today is, of course, the reason why a meaningless world is impossible. What God did not create does not exist."

"How can a meaningless world exist if God did not create it?"

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

"The world stands like a block before Christ’s face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready."

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

"Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does. And then-and then-I cannot speak of that. A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death."

Before the separation, let's say you were wholly Christ, you were everywhere, and you looked upon yourself and saw yourself everywhere.

Then the separation came along and put a "rift" down the middle of you, separating you from the other half of yourself, like a deep wound.

The other half of you remained in Heaven, but this half of you seemed to believe in the split and saw a wall keeping you from yourself. You couldn't see through this gap that formed, because it looked like a solid wall of sin.

That wall is this universe. Physical matter is that wall of sin. This world is the content of the wound. It is the world of attack and pain and misery and death attempting to convince you that you are separate from yourself and God.

As you awaken, you gradually learn that this wall of sin is not really there, the universe doesn't really exist, and you start to look past its illusory forms and obstacles. To heal the world, is really to heal the world away, so that it is Christ who is healed, and the world-shaped wound is undone. Your vision begins to see through it, like it becomes transparent, as if the mists are clearing and you see beyond the veil.

Eventually, you start to catch a glimpse of Christ, which seems to reflect back to you from across the gap, and the gap diminishes in this sight. You are starting to see the reflection of yourself, or rather, the other half of you. You see this by not seeing the wound any more, and forgetting the world that arose in your madness.

As the gap closes, swallowing up the entire universe in its going, and disappearing into nothingness, Christ's Vision is finally healed, the wound is fully undone, and there is a wholeness again. In this wholeness there is no gap, no separation, no rift, no world, no bodies, no images, no forms.

There is only Christ looking upon himself once again, just as the Holy Spirit loves to do, sharing His vision. The wall of sin is gone, invisible. The planet has faded into nothing. And all that remains is the Heaven God created. The Son of God in all His glory.

Some people say heaven is not a place. It’s usually based around the quote "heaven is an awareness of perfect oneness." This is one of those things where you have to look at what other quotes say to build a full picture.

Logically, this world that you think is a place, is not a place, because it is an opposite to God’s creation. Secondly, this world will cease to appear to exist when it disappears into the nothingness it came from. The question then will be, WHERE will you (your soul) be located? It definitely WILL NOT be located in this world.

A further question is, where is Jesus hanging out right now? He’s not in a body - and when the world disappears ("together we will watch the world disappear"), His Home will not be lost. So where is he?

How about "Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made"?

How about over *10* references to "in heaven"?

How about, "Heaven is the sum of all God created" or "Heaven includes all of God’s children and their creations"? Do you think Creation takes place in this world? It does not.

So when Jesus says "Heaven is an awareness of perfect oneness", He is correctly saying that it entails AWARENESS of God and Creation. It IS a "state of mind" in God’s mind. But there is more to Creation than just mind. There is also BEING. And being requires "somewhere" for you to BE. Yes Heaven is suspended in God’s mind.

But let’s also be clear, awareness IS NOT perception. And the the world you made is a world of perception. Being AWARE of Heaven can only take place IN Heaven. PERCEPTION of Heaven (a reflection) can only take place IN perception - in this word.

Let’s also be clear on the other favorite quote, "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind." Fact is, this is talking about PERCEPTION. The entire lesson talks about this. You cannot PERCEIVE God. You can be AWARE of God, and this awareness requires - REQUIRES - the END of perception, which in turn requires you to NOT BE IN A BODY because the body was made SO THAT you had something to perceive with.

When God finally scoops you up and takes you TO HEAVEN, you will regain full *awareness* of perfect oneness, replacing your perception of oneness. And when this world disappears - not forgetting that THERE IS NO WORLD (so the world is NOT a place), "all that remains" is Heaven. It is the "place" where you LIVE, BE, CREATE and EXTEND.

Heaven is not inside of spacetime. It’s not a place as in, a physical location in space. But it is somewhere. It is everywhere. You can BE THERE, without a world. And the course describes it as "a living world."

So yes, Heaven is a place. Heaven is the ONLY place.

Finally Jesus says of heaven, "I can take you there any time."

HEAVEN IS REAL!

HEAVEN IS A PLACE, AND A STATE OF MIND

Some people say heaven is not a place. It’s usually based around the quote "heaven is an awareness of perfect oneness." This is one of those things where you have to look at what other quotes say to build a full picture.

Logically, this world that you think is a place, is not a place, because it is an opposite to God’s creation. Secondly, this world will cease to appear to exist when it disappears into the nothingness it came from. The question then will be, WHERE will you (your soul) be located? It definitely WILL NOT be located in this world.

A further question is, where is Jesus hanging out right now? He’s not in a body - and when the world disappears ("together we will watch the world disappear"), His Home will not be lost. So where is he?

How about "Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made"?

How about over *10* references to "in heaven"?

How about, "Heaven is the sum of all God created" or "Heaven includes all of God’s children and their creations"? Do you think Creation takes place in this world? It does not.

So when Jesus says "Heaven is an awareness of perfect oneness", He is correctly saying that it entails AWARENESS of God and Creation. It IS a "state of mind" in God’s mind. But there is more to Creation than just mind. There is also BEING. And being requires "somewhere" for you to BE. Yes Heaven is suspended in God’s mind.

But let’s also be clear, awareness IS NOT perception. And the the world you made is a world of perception. Being AWARE of Heaven can only take place IN Heaven. PERCEPTION of Heaven (a reflection) can only take place IN perception - in this word.

Let’s also be clear on the other favorite quote, "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind." Fact is, this is talking about PERCEPTION. The entire lesson talks about this. You cannot PERCEIVE God. You can be AWARE of God, and this awareness requires - REQUIRES - the END of perception, which in turn requires you to NOT BE IN A BODY because the body was made SO THAT you had something to perceive with.

When God finally scoops you up and takes you TO HEAVEN, you will regain full *awareness* of perfect oneness, replacing your perception of oneness. And when this world disappears - not forgetting that THERE IS NO WORLD (so the world is NOT a place), "all that remains" is Heaven. It is the "place" where you LIVE, BE, CREATE and EXTEND.

Heaven is not inside of spacetime. It’s not a place as in, a physical location in space. But it is somewhere. It is everywhere. You can BE THERE, without a world. And the course describes it as "a living world."

So yes, Heaven is a place. Heaven is the ONLY place.

Finally Jesus says of heaven, "I can take you there any time."

HEAVEN IS REAL!

Heaven is vertically opposite to the Earth. Heaven is love, yet love has no opposite. The earth is the opposite to love and does not exist, hence "there is no world."

"Never was love in the world."

"The truth is simple; it is one without an opposite."

"There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist."

"Perfect love casts out fear. If fear exists, Then there is not perfect love. But: Only perfect love exists. If there is fear, It produces a state that does not exist."

The Earth is made of fear, guilt, and sin. It is an illusion. It is the idea of the opposite to love, and opposite to God. Yet, an opposite to love does not exist.

If you take heaven an earth and put them alongside each other, seemingly with a separation between them, you are suggesting that you can evaluate them as though comparable equals. This is dualistic, horizontal logic. Heaven’s relationship to the earth is NOT horizontal.

Heaven, love, God, creation, do not HAVE an opposite. They are ABOVE, on a higher level. Earth is BELOW, on a lower level. Their relationship is not horizontal, it is vertical.

Heaven is infinite. Earth is finite. Heaven is reality. Earth is illusion. Heaven is truth. Earth is a lie. Heaven is everywhere. Earth is nowhere. Heaven is all that exists in God. Earth is nothing that exists anywhere but in a fiction.

You cannot compare them like apples to apples. You also cannot suggest that if you remove the separation between them, then they will BECOME ONE. That would only happen in a horizontal logical comparison, which is how the EGO THINKS about oneness.

Compare them vertically, and what happens?

Vertically, because love has no opposite, it means:

1) There is no world. It does not exist ANYWHERE.

2) When the "real world" disappears, and the supposed "separation between heaven and earth" is dissolved, this does NOT mean that they blend together into ONE state that includes them both. IT DOES NOT. It means, that which was EVERYTHING REAL - heaven - is all that will be left. That which was NOTHING REAL - earth - will be recognized as ceasing to exist.

3) Earth is not a part of heaven. It never will be. There is no world. Not even the "real world" exists but as a dream. Dreams end and what was dreamed ceases to exist anywhere.

4) Earth does not "Translate into heaven" as a way for it to BECOME heaven, to be included in heaven, to turn into heaven, or to blend with heaven. What was thought to be there, as a world which DOES NOT EXIST, disappears entirely, being recognized. Jesus teaches "Illusions recognized must disappear", not "illusions recognized are kept and transformed into part of heaven."

5) The removal of the separation between heaven and earth does NOT MEAN that heaven ceases to exist afterwards. Opposition is the idea that exists only in the illusory earth. Heaven does not oppose. Heaven does not participate in the separation or in becoming one half of a duality. Heaven recognizes there is ONLY heaven. "There is no life outside of heaven." When the idea of separation disappears, the CONTENT OF THAT IDEA will disappear, which was entirely ONE SIDED! The ego’s opposition to Heaven was NOT part of Heaven’t opposition to the ego. Heaven does not attack or separate. Heaven is not a PART OF the separation idea. When the separation is undone, vertically, ONLY THE WORLD DISAPPEARS, NOT HEAVEN. What remains is ONLY HEAVEN.

6) This is the meaning of "nothing unreal exists" - the earth DOES NOT EXIST. Trying to find a way to make it continue to exist "in God" or "fused with Heaven" is DENIAL, based in fear. Heaven/God/reality is all that exists. Ego/separation/earth/illusions is UNREALITY and does not exist. Never do the two become one. Only one of them is TRUE. The world is FALSE. Never will "what is false" be converted into or kept or become a part of heaven or ANY state of oneness no matter what you call it or how you try to read into it.

7) There is no world. This is the central thought the course would attempt to teach. It is an extremely radical idea. It threatens the ENTIRE ego thought system. Resistance against it is the sum total of ALL of the resistance of the entire ego thought system. No-one with an ego wants to admit it is true. It means nothing in the world, no forms, no bodies, no pretty animals and rainbows, no lakes and mountains and oceans, no special relationships, no bodily relationships, NONE OF IT EXISTS.

That’s why this threatens so many people. Believing YOU are made of or are a part of the ego world (earth) makes you certain that IF it does not exist, NOR DO YOU. And that is interpreted like a threat of DEATH by the ego. And then the person will put up *defenses* against the truth, moving into sickness in an attempt to explain why the world is real and part of God’s creation. It is nothing less than the fear of death.

It takes WILLINGNESS to accept that this is true and that Jesus is literally telling us there is no world here at all. This is also why Jesus repeatedly says that "nothing you see means anything" and "the world you see does not exist". Literally, planet earth does not exist. NEVER will it be a part of heaven in any way under any circumstances or interpretations whatsoever. Love has no opposite. What is not love does not exist NOW, even if it’s showing up as a fake planet. And it will not begin to exist LATER, after the universe disappears.

Only love is real.

If mind becomes split, there are now two causes.

The 2nd cause will seem to will against the first.

The conflict and self-attack will manifest as sickness AS the body.

If mind reclaims the fact that it is fighting its own self, and stops doing so, the split disappears.

When the split disappears, the body MUST stop showing up as sick. All symptoms of attack must disappear.

Sick mind, sick body.

Healthy mind, healthy body.

NEVER is it healthy mind, sick body. EVER.

NEVER is it healthy mind, dead body. EVER.

The only cause of sickness is the belief that you are separate from YOURSELF, are in two minds, and are willing against yourself. Therefore you willing against yourself is SELF ATTACK. And all self attack produces SYMPTOMS OF ATTACK, ie sickness in the body.

Symptoms in the body are not caused at one moment in time and thereafter "linger" with nothing willing them to be there,as though existing on their own, or sustained by time or ego laws. They only appear to linger if the mind is CONTINUOUSLY IN A STATE OF SELF ATTACK.

The same goes for short-term illness and chronic illness. Chronic illness is a long-term belief in being divided against yourself.

There is no belief the mind cannot undo. There is no sense of separation that cannot be reversed. Therefore there is no MANIFESTATION of that belief which cannot be UNDONE COMPLETELY in all its forms and expressions at EVERY LEVEL including the physical.

Physical sickness is you being in two wills willing against yourself as if you have an enemy that is not you, but is you. Stop doing that, be whole, be one mind in love, and THERE CAN BE NO SICKNESS OR DEATH.

"There IS a wariness that is aroused by learning that the body is not real. And there ARE overtones of seeming fear around the happy message "God is Love." Yet all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal."

Jesus talks about "a gap". What is that?

Originally there was wholeness. A single complete something. And then the separation idea happened. The idea was that the wholeness was not the only thing, and that there was something else. A second thing. Since only wholeness existed, this idea of "another" could only be formed by SPLITTING the wholeness into two parts, based on the idea that something was lacking in the wholeness - that it was not whole. This resulted in the split mind.

But you have to then ask yourself, what is it that seems to "divide" the wholeness into two parts, which forms a disassociation of the two? Well this is what Jesus refers to as "the gap". It's a seeming place in the whole where there seems to be signs of lack, a place where one half stops and the other starts, a place where they don't share or overlap, a kind of rift or chasm like a gaping gulf which "parts" the two and holds them off from each other.

This little gap is also the idea of attack, and it contains all ideas of murder and hurt and suffering and sickness and death. It is a kind of rift of protest attempting to push the two halves apart and emphasize the ways that they are not one thing. The more it can emphasize separation the more it can induce illusions that this "wall" or "gap" is actually keeping the parts apart from each other.

Within this gap, and formed BY the gap, and made OF the gap, and not existing prior to the gap, is PLANET EARTH. Planet Earth was made as an attack on God. The body and all bodies are all part of this gap. They are walls drawn around the mind to try to fence it off. They are part of the split mind. They are literally forms of attack which were made solely to try to rip apart wholeness and divide and separate, producing ends and all forms of suffering. This gap is literally the "pit of hell" that you tried to make to divide heaven.

An entire physical universe has formed as this gap. It is a device for separation. It's like a wall of death, designed to come between and block sight of the whole. Its function and purpose in your making it was to block sight, decrease awareness, corrupt unity, and bring about death. This planet, Earth, and all the planets, and the stars, and this whole universe, IS THE GAP. It is the content of the various ways that we have tried to attack God.

Now, the fact is, that you cannot keep the gap and know God. You cannot keep having the gap and be happy. You cannot keep the gap and be WHOLE. The gap IS a block to awareness. The body IS a wall of flesh surrounding the mind designed to make you limited. The world IS a veil drawn across the face of Christ so that you would forget that Christ exists. This OBSTACLE TO PEACE HAS TO GO.

At first, the gap is gently healed. Soothed. Anointed. At first, it is forgiven and overlooked. At first, its defenses are dismantled and withdrawn. At first, it is questioned for its original intention and given a different purpose of helping you to learn to overcome the NEED for the gap, or the desire to keep making it. It is repurposed by the Holy Spirit to help to bring you home to wholeness. And it ONLY has this purpose. When this purpose is fulfilled, this world, this entire gap, this universe-sized gaping hole of hell, will close up and disappear and exist no more.

It is like a wound. It heals. The parts on either side which were kept apart are reunited. There is a rejoining. There is celebration. There is wholeness. There is the ability to see past the walls. There is the ability of Christ Vision to overlook forms and see the unity they were hiding. This vision RECOGNIZES that the gap and its contents, including Earth, are nothing more than ILLUSIONS, which DO NOT EXIST, and NEVER HAD THE POWER TO SEPARATE. And in recognizing these illusions, the GAP DISAPPEARS, and the Earth being part of that gap disappears along with it.

"Without the idea of death, there is no world."

The idea of death and separation, once it ends, ends the gap, and therefore the whole world is swallowed up and disappears into the nothingness from which it came. This is healing. Healing HEALS AWAY the world. IT ERASES the separation idea. IT REMOVES and UNDOES everything that was manifest as a result of this gap and the belief in separation being real. You do not need this world. You do not need bodies. You do not need special earthly places and desires. All you need is the wholeness of Heaven. In wholeness there is no gap, no Earth, and no world here.