Fear is deception. It attests that you have seen yourself as you could never be, and therefore look upon a world which is impossible. Not one thing in this world is true. It does not matter what the form in which it may appear. It witnesses but to your own illusions of yourself. Let us not be deceived today. We are the Son of God. There is no fear in us, for we are each a part of Love Itself.

"How foolish are our fears! Would You allow Your Son to suffer? Give us faith today to recognize Your Son and set him free. Let us forgive him in Your Name, that we may understand his holiness, and feel the love for him that is Your own as well."

Section 7 - The Justification for Forgiveness

This is the false forgiveness which the world employs to KEEP the sense of sin alive. And recognizing God is just, it seems impossible His pardon COULD be real. Thus is the fear of God the sure result of seeing pardon as unmerited. No-one who sees himself as guilty CAN avoid the fear of God. But he is SAVED from this dilemma if HE can forgive. The mind MUST think of its Creator as it looks upon itself. If you can see your brother MERITS pardon, you have learned forgiveness is YOUR right, as much as his. Nor will you think that God intends for you a fearful judgment which your brother does not merit. For it is the truth that you CAN merit neither more nor less than he.

Forgiveness RECOGNIZED as merited will heal. It gives the miracle its strength to OVERLOOK illusions. This is how you learn that you must be forgiven too. There CAN be no appearance that can NOT be overlooked. For, if there were, it would be necessary FIRST there be some sin which stands BEYOND forgiveness. There would be an error that is MORE than a mistake; a special FORM of error, which remains unchangeable, eternal, and beyond correction or escape. There would be one mistake which had the power to UNDO creation, and to make a world which could REPLACE it and DESTROY the Will of God. Only if this were possible could there be SOME appearances which could withstand the miracle, and NOT be healed by it.

There is no surer proof idolatry is what you wish than a belief there are some forms of sickness and of joylessness forgiveness CANNOT cure. This means that you prefer to keep SOME idols, and are not prepared, as yet, to let ALL idols go. And thus you think that SOME appearances are real, and not appearances at all. Be not deceived about the MEANING of a fixed belief that SOME appearances are harder to look past than others are. It ALWAYS means you think forgiveness must be limited. And you have set a goal of partial pardon and a limited escape from guilt FOR YOU. What can this be, except a false forgiveness of YOURSELF, and everyone who seems APART from you?

It MUST be true the miracle can heal ALL forms of sickness, or it CANNOT HEAL. Its purpose cannot be to judge which FORMS are real, and which APPEARANCES are true. If one appearance must remain APART from healing, one illusion must be part of truth. And you could NOT escape all guilt, but only SOME of it. You must forgive God's Son ENTIRELY. Or you will keep an image of yourself that is not whole, and will remain afraid to look within, and find escape from EVERY idol there. Salvation rests on faith there CANNOT be some forms of guilt which you can NOT forgive. And so there cannot be appearances which have replaced the truth about God's Son.

Look on your brother with the willingness to see him as he is. And do not keep a part of him outside your willingness that he be healed. To heal is to make whole. And what is whole can HAVE no missing parts that have been kept outside. Forgiveness rests on recognizing this, and being GLAD there cannot be some forms of sickness which the miracle must LACK the power to heal. God's Son is perfect, or he cannot be God's Son. Nor will you KNOW him, if you think he does not merit the escape from guilt in ALL its forms and ALL its consequence. There IS no way to think of him but this, if you would know the truth about yourself:

"I thank you, Father, for your perfect Son,

And in his glory will I see my own."

Here is the joyful statement that there are NO forms of evil which can overcome the Will of God; the glad acknowledgment that guilt has NOT succeeded, by your wish, to make illusions real. And what is this, except a simple statement of the truth? Look on your brother with this hope in you, and you will understand he COULD not make an error that could change the truth in him. It is NOT difficult to overlook mistakes that have been given no effects. But what you see as having power to make an idol of the Son of God, you will NOT pardon. For he has become to you a graven image, and a sign of death. Is THIS your Savior? Is his Father WRONG about His Son? Or have YOU been deceived in him who has been given you to heal for YOUR salvation and deliverance?

Section 4 - The Fundamental Law of Perception

God's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning. Yet are His laws reflected everywhere. NOT that the world where this reflection is, is real at all. ONLY because His Son BELIEVES it is, and from His Son's belief He COULD not let Himself be separate entirely. He could not enter His Son's insanity with him, but He could be sure His sanity went there WITH him, so he could not be lost forever in the madness of his wish.

There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God. NOT as the Law Itself upholds the universe as God created it. But in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error. There IS another purpose in the world that error made because it has another Maker, Who CAN reconcile its goal with His Creator's Purpose.

In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it. The lamps of Heaven are NOT for it to choose to see them where it will. If it elects to see them elsewhere from their home, as if they lit a place where they could never be, AND YOU AGREE, then must the Maker of the world correct your error, lest you still remain in darkness, where the lamps are NOT.

Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no-one has entered it alone. Nor need he stay more than an instant. For he has come with Heaven's help within him, ready to lead him OUT of darkness into light at ANY time. The time he chooses can be ANY time, for help is there, awaiting but his choice. And when he chooses to AVAIL himself of what is given him, then will he see each situation that he thought before was means to justify his anger, turned to an event which justifies his love.

He will hear plainly that the calls to war he heard before are really calls to peace. He will perceive that where he gave attack is but another altar where he can, with equal ease and FAR more happiness, bestow forgiveness. And he will re-interpret ALL temptation as just another chance to bring him joy. How CAN a misperception be a sin? Let ALL your brother's errors be to you nothing except a chance for YOU to see the workings of the Helper given YOU to see the world HE made, instead of yours.

Sin is the fixed belief perception CANNOT change. What has been damned IS damned, and damned forever, BEING FOREVER UNFORGIVABLE. If, then, it IS forgiven, sin's perception MUST have been wrong. And thus is change made possible. The Holy Spirit, too, sees what HE sees as far beyond the chance of change. But on His Vision sin can NOT encroach. For sin HAS BEEN corrected by His sight. And thus IT MUST HAVE BEEN AN ERROR, NOT a sin. For what it claimed could never be, HAS BEEN. Sin is ATTACKED by punishment, and so PRESERVED. But to FORGIVE it is to change its state from error into truth.

Section 2 - Healing and the Mind

The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose which the mind would use it FOR. And it IS obvious that a segment of the mind CAN see itself as SEPARATED from the Universal Purpose. When this occurs, the body becomes its weapon, used AGAINST this Purpose to DEMONSTRATE the "fact" that separation HAS occurred. The body thus becomes the instrument of illusion, acting accordingly, seeing what is not there, HEARING what truth has never said, and BEHAVING INSANELY, being imprisoned BY insanity.

Do not overlook our earlier statement that faithlessness leads straight to illusions. For faithlessness IS the perception of a brother AS a body, and the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union. If, then, you SEE him as a body, YOU have established a condition in which UNITING with him becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to him has separated you FROM him, and kept you BOTH apart from being healed. Your faithlessness has thus OPPOSED the Holy Spirit's purpose, and brought illusions, CENTERED ON THE BODY, to stand BETWEEN you. And the body WILL seem to be sick, for you have made of it an "enemy" of healing, and the OPPOSITE of truth.

It CANNOT be difficult to realize that faith MUST be the opposite of faithLESSness. But the difference in how they operate is less apparent, though it follows directly from the fundamental difference in what they ARE. Faithlessness would always LIMIT AND ATTACK; faith would remove ALL limitations, and MAKE WHOLE. Faithlessness would destroy and SEPARATE; faith would unite and HEAL. Faithlessness would interpose illusions between the Son of God and his Creator; faith would remove ALL obstacles that SEEM to rise between them. Faithlessness is wholly dedicated to illusions; faith wholly to truth.

PARTIAL DEDICATION IS IMPOSSIBLE. Truth is the ABSENCE of illusion; illusion the ABSENCE of truth. Both cannot BE together, nor perceived in the SAME PLACE. To dedicate yourself to BOTH, is to set up a goal forever impossible to attain. For PART of it is sought through the body, THOUGHT OF as a means for seeking out reality through ATTACK. While the OTHER part would HEAL, and therefore calls upon the mind, and NOT the body. The INEVITABLE compromise is the belief that the BODY must be healed, and NOT the mind. For this divided goal has given both an EQUAL reality, and can SEEM to be possible only if the mind is limited TO the body, and divided into little parts with SEEMING wholeness, but WITHOUT CONNECTION.

This will NOT harm the body. But it WILL keep the delusional thought-system IN THE MIND. Here, then, is healing needed. And it is here that healing IS. For God gave healing not APART from sickness, nor established remedy where sickness CANNOT be. They ARE together, and when they are SEEN together, ALL attempts to KEEP both truth AND illusion in the mind, where both MUST be, are recognized as DEDICATION TO ILLUSION. And GIVEN UP when BROUGHT to truth, and seen as totally UNRECONCILABLE with truth, in ANY aspect, or in any WAY.

Truth and illusion HAVE no connection. This will remain FOREVER true, however much YOU seek to connect them. But ILLUSIONS are ALWAYS connected, AS IS TRUTH. Each is united, a COMPLETE thought-system, but totally DISconnected to EACH OTHER. Where there is NO overlap, there separation MUST be complete. And to perceive THIS is to recognize where separation IS, and WHERE IT MUST BE HEALED. The RESULT of an idea is NEVER separate from its source. The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it.

Faith is the gift of God, through Him Whom God has GIVEN you. Faithlessness looks upon the Son of God, and judges him UNWORTHY of forgiveness. But, through the eyes of faith, the Son of God is seen ALREADY forgiven, free of all the guilt he laid upon himself. Faith sees him only NOW, because it looks not to the past to judge him, but would see in him ONLY what it would see in YOU. It sees NOT through the body's eyes, nor looks to bodies for its justification. It is the messenger of the NEW perception, sent forth to gather witnesses unto its coming, and to return their messages to YOU.

Faith is as easily exchanged for knowledge as is the real world. For faith ARISES from the Holy Spirit's perception, and is the sign you share it WITH Him. Faith is a gift you offer to the Son of God THROUGH Him, and WHOLLY acceptable to his Father as to him. And therefore offered YOU. Your holy relationship, with its NEW purpose, offers you faith to give unto EACH OTHER. Your faithlessness had driven you APART, and so you did not RECOGNIZE salvation in each other. But faith UNITES you in the holiness you see, NOT through the body's eyes, but in the sight of Him Who joined you, and in Whom YOU are united.

Grace is not given to a BODY, but to a MIND. And the mind that RECEIVES it, looks INSTANTLY beyond the body, and sees the holy place where IT was healed. THERE is the altar where the grace was given, in which IT stands. Do you, then, offer grace and BLESSING to each other, for you stand at the SAME altar, where grace was laid for BOTH of you. And be you healed by grace TOGETHER, that YOU may heal through faith.

In the holy instant, you stand before the altar God has raised unto Himself and BOTH of you. Lay faithlessness aside, and come to it TOGETHER. There will you see the miracle of your relationship, as it was MADE AGAIN through faith. And there it is that you will realize that there is NOTHING faith can NOT forgive. NO error INTERFERES with its calm sight, which brings the miracle of healing with equal ease to ALL of them. For what the messengers of love are sent to do THEY DO. Returning the glad tidings that it was done, to you who stand before the altar from which they were sent forth, TOGETHER.

As faithlessness will keep your little kingdoms barren and separate, so will faith help the Holy Spirit prepare the ground for the most holy garden that He would make of it. For faith brings peace, and so it calls on truth to enter and make lovely, what has already BEEN prepared for loveliness. Truth FOLLOWS faith and peace, completing the process of making lovely that they begin. For faith is still a learning goal, no longer needed when the lesson has been learned. *But Truth will stay forever.

Let, then, your dedication be to the eternal. And learn how NOT to interfere with it, and make it slave to time. For what you think you do to the eternal, you do to YOU. Whom God created as His Son is slave to nothing, being lord of all, along with his Creator. You CAN enslave a body, but an IDEA is free, INCAPABLE of being kept in prison, or limited in ANY way,EXCEPT BY THE MIND THAT THOUGHT IT. For it remains JOINED to its source, which is its jailor or its liberator, according to which it chooses as ITS purpose FOR ITSELF.

Lesson 21 "I am determined to see things differently."

The idea for today is obviously a continuation and extension of the preceding one. This time, however, specific mind-searching periods are necessary in addition to applying the idea to particular situations as they arise. Five practice periods are urged, allowing a full minute for each.

In the practice periods, begin by repeating the idea to yourself. Then close your eyes and search your mind carefully for situations past, present or anticipated, which arouse anger in you. The anger may take the form of any reaction ranging from mild irritation to rage. The degree of the emotion you experience does not matter. You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury.

As you search your mind for all the forms in which attack thoughts present themselves, hold each one in mind and tell yourself;

"I am determined to see ____ (name of person) differently."

"I am determined to see ____ (specify the situation) differently."

Try to be as specific as possible. You may, for example, focus your anger on a particular attribute of a particular person, believing that the anger is limited to this aspect. If your perception of the person is suffering from this form of distortion, say:

"I am determined to see____ (specify the attribute) in____ (name of person) differently."

Chapter 6 - Attack and Fear

Section 1 - Introduction

The way to undo an insane conclusion is always to consider the sanity of the premises on which it rests. You cannot BE attacked, attack HAS no justification, and you ARE responsible for what you believe. You have been asked to take me as your model for learning. And we have often said that an extreme example is a particularly helpful learning device. EVERYONE teaches, and teaches all the time. This is a responsibility which he assumes inevitably, the moment he has accepted any premises at all. And NO ONE can organize his life without ANY thought system. Once he has developed a thought system of any kind, he lives by it and TEACHES it.

You have been chosen to teach the Atonement precisely BECAUSE you have been EXTREME examples of allegiance to your thought systems, and therefore have developed the capacity FOR allegiance. It has indeed been misplaced. Bill had become an outstanding example of allegiance to apathy, and you have become a startling example of fidelity to variability. But this IS a form of faith, which you yourselves had grown willing to redirect. You cannot doubt the STRENGTH of your devotion when you consider how faithfully you observed it. It was quite evident that you had ALREADY developed the ability to follow a better model, if you could ACCEPT it.

Section 3 - The Laws of Chaos

The "laws of chaos" CAN be brought to light, though NEVER understood. Chaotic laws are hardly meaningful, and therefore out of reason's sphere. Yet they APPEAR to constitute an obstacle to reason and to truth. Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look BEYOND them, understanding what they ARE, NOT what they would maintain. It IS essential it be understood what they are FOR, because it is their PURPOSE to make meaningless, and to ATTACK the truth. Here are the laws that rule the world you made. And yet they govern nothing, and need NOT be broken; merely looked upon and gone beyond.

Think how this SEEMS to interfere with the first principle of miracles. For this establishes degrees of TRUTH among illusions, making it appear that some are HARDER to be overcome than others. If it were realized that they are all the same and EQUALLY untrue, it would be easy, then, to understand that miracles apply to ALL of them. Errors of ANY kind can be corrected, BECAUSE they are untrue. When brought to truth, instead of TO EACH OTHER, they merely disappear. No PART of nothing CAN be more resistant to the truth than can another.

The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of sin, is that each one MUST sin, and therefore DESERVES attack and death. This principle, closely related to the first, is the demand that errors call for punishment, and NOT correction. For the DESTRUCTION of the one who makes the error places him BEYOND correction, and beyond forgiveness. What he has done is thus interpreted as an irrevocable sentence on himself, which God Himself is powerless to overlook. Sin cannot BE remitted, being the belief the Son of God can make mistakes for which his own destruction becomes inevitable.

Think what this SEEMS to do to the relationship between the Father and the Son. Now it appears that they can NEVER be One again. For One must ALWAYS be condemned, AND BY THE OTHER. Now are they different, and ENEMIES. And THEIR relationship is one of opposition, just as the separate aspects of the Son meet ONLY to conflict, but NOT to join. One becomes weak, the other strong BY HIS DEFEAT. And fear of God, and of each other, now appears as sensible, made real by what the Son of God has done, both to himself AND his Creator.

The arrogance on which the laws of chaos stand could not be more apparent than emerges here. Here is a principle which would define what the CREATOR of reality must be; what He MUST think, and what He must believe; and how He must RESPOND, believing it. It is not seen as even necessary that He be asked about the truth of what has been established for His belief. His Son can TELL Him this, and He has but the choice whether to take his word for it, or be mistaken.

And now is conflict made inevitable, and beyond the help of God. And now salvation MUST remain impossible, because the Savior HAS become the enemy. There can be NO release and NO escape. Atonement thus becomes a myth, and vengeance, NOT forgiveness, is the Will of God. From where all this begins, there IS no sight of help that can succeed. ONLY destruction can BE the outcome. And God Himself SEEMS to be siding with it, to overcome His Son. Think not the ego will enable you to find ESCAPE from what it wants. THAT is the function of this course, which does NOT value what the ego cherishes.

The ego values only what it TAKES. This leads to the fourth law of chaos which, if the others are accepted, MUST be true. This seeming law is the belief you HAVE what you have taken. By this, another's loss becomes your gain, and thus it fails to recognize that you can never "take away" save from YOURSELF. Yet all the other laws must lead to this. For enemies do NOT give willingly to one another, nor would they seek to SHARE the things they value. And what your ENEMIES would keep from you must BE worth having, just BECAUSE they keep it hidden from your sight.

And now there is a vague, unanswered question, not yet "explained." What IS this precious thing, this priceless pearl, this hidden secret treasure, to be wrested in righteous wrath from this most treacherous and cunning enemy? It must be what you want, and never found. And now you "understand" the reason WHY you found it not. For it was TAKEN from you by the enemy, and hidden where you would not think to look. He hid it in his BODY, making it the cover for his guilt; the hiding place for what belongs to YOU.

Behold, unveiled, the ego's secret gift, torn from your brother's body; hidden there in malice and in hatred for the one to whom the gift belongs. HE would deprive you of the secret ingredient which would give meaning to your life. The substitute for love, born of your enmity to one another, MUST be salvation. IT has no substitute, and there IS only one. And ALL relationships have but the purpose of seizing it, and making it your own. Never is your possession made complete. And never will your brother cease his own attack on YOU, for what you stole. Nor will God end His vengeance upon both, for, in His madness, HE must have this substitute for love, and kill you both.

You who believe you walk in sanity, with feet on solid ground, and through a world where meaning CAN be found, consider this: These ARE the laws on which your "sanity" appears to rest. These ARE the principles which makes the ground beneath your feet seem solid. And it IS here you look for meaning. These are the laws YOU made for your salvation. They hold in place the substitute for Heaven that you prefer. This is their PURPOSE; they were MADE for this. There is no point in asking what they mean. This is apparent. The MEANS of madness MUST be insane. Are you as certain that you realize the GOAL is madness?

NO-ONE wants madness, nor does anyone cling to his madness if he sees that this is what it IS. What PROTECTS madness is the belief THAT IT IS TRUE. It is the FUNCTION of insanity to TAKE THE PLACE of truth. It must be seen AS truth, to be believed. And, if it IS the truth, then must its opposite, which was the truth before, be madness now. Such a reversal, COMPLETELY turned around, with madness sanity, illusions true, attack a kindness, hatred love, and murder benediction, IS the goal the laws of chaos serve. These are the means by which the laws of God APPEAR to be reversed. Here do the laws of sin APPEAR to hold love captive, and let sin go free.

These do not SEEM to be the goals of chaos. For, by the great reversal, they appear to be the laws of ORDER. How could it NOT be so? Chaos is lawlessness, and HAS no laws. To be believed, its SEEMING laws must be perceived as REAL. Their goal of madness MUST be seen as sanity. And fear, with ashen lips and sightless eyes, blinded and terrible to look upon, is lifted to the throne of love, its dying conqueror, its substitute, the savior from salvation. How lovely do the laws of fear make death appear! Give thanks unto the hero on love's throne, who saved the Son of God for fear and death!

And yet, how can it be that laws like these can BE believed? There is a strange device that makes this possible. Nor is it unfamiliar; we have seen how it APPEARS to function many times before. In truth, it does NOT function, yet in dreams, where ONLY shadows play the major roles, it seems most powerful. No law of chaos COULD compel belief, but for the emphasis on form, AND DISREGARD OF CONTENT. No-one who thinks that one of them is true SEES WHAT IT SAYS. Some FORMS it takes seem to have meaning, and that is all.

How can some FORMS of murder NOT mean death? Can an attack in ANY form be love? What FORM of condemnation is a blessing? Who makes his Savior powerless, and FINDS salvation? Let not the FORM of the attack on him deceive you. You CANNOT seek to harm him, and be saved. Who can find SAFETY from attack by turning on himself? How can it matter what the FORM this madness takes? It is a judgment that defeats ITSELF, condemning what it says it wants to save. Be not deceived when madness takes a form you think is lovely. What is intent on your destruction, is NOT your friend.

You would maintain, and think it true, that you do NOT believe such senseless laws, nor act upon them. And, when you look at what they SAY, they CANNOT be believed. Brothers, you DO believe them. For how else could you PERCEIVE the form they take, with content such as this? Can ANY form of this be tenable? Yet you believe them FOR the forms they take, and DO NOT RECOGNIZE the content. IT never changes. Can you paint rosy lips upon a skeleton, dress it in loveliness, pet it and pamper it, AND MAKE IT LIVE? And can you be content with an illusion that YOU are living?

There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true.

The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others. Yet each one rests as surely on the belief the laws of chaos ARE the laws of order, as do the others. Each one upholds these laws completely, offering a certain witness that these laws are true. The seeming gentler FORM of the attack is no less certain in its witnessing, OR ITS RESULTS. Certain it is illusions will bring fear, because of the beliefs that they imply, NOT for their form. And lack of faith in love, in ANY form, attests to chaos AS REALITY.

From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is BECAUSE it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos DO follow neatly from their starting-point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and AWAY from truth. Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. And where your thinking starts, there must it end.

Brothers, take not one step in the descent to hell. For, HAVING taken one, you will NOT RECOGNIZE the rest for what they are. And they WILL follow. Attack in ANY form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads FROM Heaven. Yet, any instant, it is possible to have this all undone. How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell? Quite easily. What do you feel? Is peace in your awareness? Are you CERTAIN which way you go? And are you sure the goal of Heaven CAN be reached? If not, you walk alone. Ask, then, your Friend to JOIN with you, and GIVE you certainty of where you go.

Question 13 - What is a Miracle?

A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time's limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love's awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it gives.

Forgiveness is the home of miracles. The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. Perception stands corrected in His sight, and what was meant to curse has come to bless. Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. And each is laid before the Word of God upon the universal altar to Creator and creation, in the Light of perfect purity and endless joy.

The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought you saw.

Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality.

Section 5 - Praying with Others

Until the second step at least begins, one cannot share in prayer, for until that point, each one must ask for different things. But once the need to hold the other as an enemy has been questioned, and the reason has been recognized if only for an instant, it becomes possible to join in prayer. Enemies do not share a goal, and it is here their enmity is kept. Their separate wishes are their arsenals; their fortresses in hate. The key to rising further still in prayer lies in this simple thought; this change of mind:

We go together, you and I.

Prayers for specifics always ask to have the past repeated in some way. What was enjoyed before, or seemed to be, -- what was another's and he seemed to like, -- all these are but illusions from the past. The aim of prayer is to release the present from its chains of past illusions; to let it be a freely chosen remedy from every choice that stood for a mistake. What prayer can offer now so far exceeds all that you asked before that it is pitiful to be content with less.

You have a newborn-chance each time you pray. And would you stifle and imprison it in ancient prisons, when the chance has come to free yourself from all of them at once? Do not restrict your asking. Prayer can bring the peace of God. What time-bound thing can give you more than this, in just the little space that lasts until it crumbles into dust?

Section 5 - The Process of Illness

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.

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.

Lesson 51 The review for today covers the following ideas: (1-5)

1) "Nothing I see means anything."

The reason this is so is that I see nothing, and nothing has no meaning. It is necessary that I recognize this that I may learn to see. What I think I see now is taking the place of vision. I must let it go by realizing that it has no meaning, so that vision may take its place.

2) "I have given what I see all the meaning it has for me."

I have judged everything I look upon. And it is this and only this that I see. This is not vision. It is merely an illusion of reality, because my judgments have been made quite apart from reality. I am willing to recognize the lack of validity in my judgments because I want to see. My judgments have hurt me, and I do not want to see according to them.

3) "I do not understand anything I see."

How could I understand what I see when I have judged it amiss? What I see is the projection of my own errors of thought. I do not understand what I see because it is not understandable. There is no sense in trying to understand it. But there is every reason to let it go, to make room for what can be seen and understood and loved. I can exchange what I see now for this merely by being willing to do so. Is not this a better choice than the one I made before?

4) "These thoughts do not mean anything."

The thoughts of which I am aware do not mean anything because I am trying to think without God. What I call "my" thoughts are not my real thoughts. My real thoughts are the thoughts I think with God. I am not aware of them because I have made "my" thoughts to take their place. I am willing to recognize that "my" thoughts do not mean anything, and to let them go. I choose to have them replaced by what they were intended to replace. "My" thoughts are meaningless, but all creation lies in the Thoughts I think with God.

Chapter 22 - Salvation and the Holy Relationship

Section 1 - Introduction

Take pity on yourselves, so long enslaved. Rejoice whom God hath joined have come together, and need no longer look on sin APART. No two can look on sin TOGETHER, for they COULD never see it in the same place and time. Sin is a strictly INDIVIDUAL perception, SEEN in the other, yet BELIEVED by each to be within HIMSELF. And each one seems to make a DIFFERENT error, and one the other cannot understand. Brothers, it IS the same, MADE by the same, and forgiven for its maker in the SAME way.

They come together, each to complete HIMSELF and ROB the other. They stay until they think there's nothing left to steal, and then move on. And so they wander through a world of strangers, UNLIKE themselves, living with their bodies perhaps beneath a common roof that shelters neither; in the same room and yet a world apart. A holy relationship starts from a different premise. Each one has looked within, and seen NO lack. ACCEPTING his completion, he would EXTEND it by JOINING with another, whole as himself.

He sees no DIFFERENCES between these selves, for differences are ONLY of the body. Therefore, he looks on nothing he would TAKE. He denies NOT his own reality BECAUSE it is the truth. Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough NOT to return to earth. For this relationship HAS Heaven's holiness. How far from home can a relationship so like to Heaven BE? Think what a holy relationship can teach! Here is BELIEF in differences undone. Here is the FAITH in differences shifted to sameness. And here is sight of differences transformed to VISION.

And reason now can lead you to the logical conclusion of your union. IT must extend, as YOU extended when you joined. It must reach out BEYOND itself, as YOU reached out beyond the body, to LET yourselves be joined. And now the sameness which you saw extends, and finally removes ALL sense of differences, so that the sameness that lies beneath them all becomes apparent. Here is the golden circle, where you RECOGNIZE the Son of God. For what is born into a holy relationship can NEVER end.

Section 11 - The End of Sacrifice

Fear not to recognize as SOLELY OF YOUR MAKING the whole idea of sacrifice. And seek not safety by attempting to PROTECT yourself from where it is NOT. Your brothers and your Father have become VERY fearful to you, and you would bargain with them for a few special relationships, in which you think you see some scraps of safety. Do not try longer to KEEP APART your thoughts and the Thought that has been GIVEN you. When they are brought together, and perceived WHERE THEY ARE, the choice BETWEEN them is nothing more than a gentle awakening, and as simple as opening your eyes to daylight, when you have no more need of sleep.

The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not OUTSIDE of yourself, but as shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come. He comes demanding NOTHING. No sacrifice of ANY kind, of ANYONE, is asked by Him. In His Presence, the whole IDEA of sacrifice loses ALL meaning. For He is Host to God. And you need but invite Him in Who is there ALREADY, by recognizing that His Host is One. And no thought ALIEN to His Oneness can abide with Him there. Love MUST be total to give Him welcome, for the Presence of holiness CREATES the holiness which surrounds It. No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ. For the Host is as holy as the Perfect Innocence that He protects, and Whose Power protects HIM.

This Christmas, give the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING that would hurt you. LET yourself be healed completely, that you may JOIN with Him in healing. And let us celebrate our release together, by releasing everyone WITH us. Leave nothing behind, for release is TOTAL. And when you have accepted it WITH me, you will GIVE it with me. All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in OUR relationship, which is as innocent as our relationship with our Father, and as powerful. Pain will be brought to us, and disappear in our presence. And, WITHOUT pain, there can BE no sacrifice. And WITHOUT SACRIFICE, there love MUST be.

You who believe that sacrifice IS love, must learn that sacrifice is separation FROM love. For sacrifice brings guilt, as surely as love brings peace. Guilt is the CONDITION of sacrifice, as peace is the condition for the awareness of your relationship with God. For through guilt, you EXCLUDE your Father and your brothers FROM yourself. And through peace, you will invite them back, and realize they are where your invitation bids them be. What you excluded from yourself seems fearful, for you ENDOWED it with fear, and tried to CAST IT OUT, though it was part of you. Who can perceive part of himself as loathsome, and live within himself in peace? And who can try to resolve the perceived conflict of Heaven and hell IN HIM by casting Heaven out, and GIVING IT the attributes of hell, WITHOUT experiencing himself as incomplete and lonely?

So is it that, in all your seeking for love, YOU SEEK FOR SACRIFICE, and FIND it. Yet you find NOT love. For it is impossible to DENY what love IS, and still RECOGNIZE it. The meaning of love lies in what you have cast OUTSIDE yourself, and it HAS no meaning at all, APART from you. It is what you preferred to KEEP, that has no meaning. While all that you would KEEP AWAY holds all the meaning of the universe, and holds the universe together in its meaning. For, unless the universe were joined in YOU, it would be APART FROM God, and to be without Him IS to be without meaning.

In the holy instant, the condition of love is met, for minds are joined without the body's INTERFERENCE, and where there is communication, there is peace. The Prince of Peace was born to re-establish the CONDITION of love, by teaching that communication remains unbroken, even if the body is destroyed, PROVIDED THAT you see NOT the body as the necessary means of communication. And if you UNDERSTAND this lesson, you will realize that, to sacrifice the BODY, is to SACRIFICE NOTHING. And communication, which MUST be of the mind, CANNOT be sacrificed. Where, then, is sacrifice?

The lesson I was born to teach, and still would teach to all my brothers, is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere. For communication EMBRACES EVERYTHING, and in the peace it re-establishes, love comes of itself. Let no despair darken the joy of Christmas, for the time of Christ is meaningless APART from joy. Let us join in celebrating peace by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so will you offer me the love I offer you. What can be more joyous than to perceive WE ARE DEPRIVED OF NOTHING? Such is the message of the time of Christ, which I give you, that YOU may give it, and return it to the Father, Who gave it to me.

For in the time of Christ, communication with Him is restored, and He joins us in the celebration of His Son's Creation. God offers thanks to the holy host who would receive Him, and let Him enter, and abide where He would be. And BY your welcome, does HE welcome you into Himself. For what is contained in you who welcome Him is RETURNED to Him. And we but celebrate HIS Wholeness, as we welcome Him into ourselves. Those who receive the Father are one with Him, being host to Him Who created them. And by allowing Him to enter, the remembrance of the Father enters with Him, and with Him they remember the only relationship they ever had, and ever want to have.

This is the week-end in which a new year will be born from the time of Christ. I have perfect faith in you, to do all that you would accomplish. Nothing will be lacking, and you will MAKE COMPLETE, and NOT destroy. Say and UNDERSTAND this:

I give you to the Holy Spirit, as part of myself.

I know that you will be released, UNLESS I WANT TO

USE YOU TO IMPRISON MYSELF.

In the name of MY freedom, I WILL your release,

Because I recognize that we will be released TOGETHER.

So will the year begin in joy and freedom. There is much to do, and we have been long delayed. Accept the holy instant as this year is born, and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. Make this year different, by making it ALL THE SAME. And let ALL your relationships be made holy FOR you. This is OUR will.

Amen.

Lesson 165 "Let not my mind deny the Thought of God."

What makes this world seem real except your own denial of the truth which lies beyond? What but your thoughts of misery and death obscure the perfect happiness and the Eternal Life your Father wills for you? And what could hide what cannot be concealed except illusion? What could keep from you what you already have, except your choice to see it not, denying it is there?

The Thought of God created you. It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from It an instant. It belongs to you. By It you live. It is your Source of life, holding you one with It, and everything is one with you because It left you not. The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. Eternity and Everlasting Life shine in your mind because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you.

Who would deny his safety and his peace, his joy, his healing and his peace of mind, his quiet rest, his calm awakening, if he but recognized where they abide? Would he not instantly prepare to go where they are found, abandoning all else as worthless in comparison with them? And having found them, would he not make sure they stay with him and he remains with them?

Deny not Heaven. It is yours today but for the asking. Nor need you perceive how great the gift, how changed your mind will be, before it comes to you. Ask to receive and it is given you. Conviction lies within it. 'Til you welcome it as yours uncertainty remains. Yet God is fair. Sureness is not required to receive what only your acceptance can bestow.

Ask with desire. You need not be sure that you request the only thing you want. But when you have received, you will be sure you have the treasure you have always sought. What would you then exchange it for? What would induce you now to let it fade away from your ecstatic vision? For this sight proves that you have exchanged your blindness for the seeing eyes of Christ; your mind has come to lay aside denial and accept the Thought of God as its inheritance.

Now is all doubting past, the journey's end made certain and salvation given you. Now is Christ's power in your mind to heal as you were healed. For now you are among the Saviors of the world. Your destiny lies there and nowhere else. Would God consent to let His Son remain forever starved by his denial of the nourishment he needs to live? Abundance dwells in him, and deprivation cannot cut him off from God's sustaining Love and from his home.

Lesson 47 "God is the Strength in which I trust."

If you are trusting your own strength, you have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious, and fearful. What can you predict or control? What is there in you that can be counted on? What would give you the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve them in such a way that only good can come of it? What is there in you that gives you the recognition of the right solution, and the guarantee that it will be accomplished?

Of yourself you can do none of these things. To believe that you can is to put your trust where trust is unwarranted, and to justify fear, anxiety, depression, anger, and sorrow. Who can put his faith in weakness and feel safe? Yet who can put his faith in strength and feel weak?

God is your safety in every circumstance. His Voice speaks for Him in all situations and in every aspect of all situations, telling you exactly what to do to call upon His strength and His protection. There are no exceptions because God has no exceptions. And the Voice Which speaks for Him thinks as He does.

Today we will try to reach past your own weakness to the Source of real strength. Four five-minute practice periods are necessary today, and longer and more frequent ones are urged. Close your eyes and begin as usual by repeating today's idea. Then spend a minute or two in searching for situations in your life which you have invested with fear, dismissing each one by telling yourself,

"God is the Strength in which I trust."

Now try to slip past all concerns related to your own sense of inadequacy. It is obvious that any situation which causes you concern is associated with feelings of inadequacy, since otherwise you would believe that you could deal with the situation successfully. It is not by trusting yourself that you will gain confidence. But the strength of God in you is successful in all things.

In the latter phase of the practice period, try to reach down into your mind to a place of real safety. You will recognize that you have reached it if you feel a deep peace, however briefly. Let go all the trivial things that churn and bubble on the surface of your mind, and reach down and below them to the Kingdom of Heaven. There is a place in you where there is perfect peace. There is a place in you where nothing is impossible. There is a place in you where the strength of God abides.

Repeat the idea for today often. Use it as your answer to any disturbance. Remember that peace is your right because you are giving your trust to the strength of God. W(85)

Section 2 - The Picture of the Crucifixion

Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. The picture of yourself you offer him you show YOURSELF, and give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain and NO reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence.

The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins.

Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.

It is not Will for Life, but wish for death, that is the motivation for this world. Its ONLY purpose is TO PROVE GUILT REAL. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. These are the witnesses that are called forth to be believed, and lend conviction to the system they speak for and represent. And each has many voices, speaking to your brother and yourself in different tongues. And yet to both the message is the same. Adornment of the body seeks to show how lovely are the witnesses for guilt. Concerns about the body demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life; how easily destroyed is what you love. Depression speaks of death and vanity of real concern with anything at all.

These are NOT sins, but witnesses unto the strange belief that sin and death are real, and innocence and sin will end alike, within the termination of the grave. If this were true, there WOULD be reason to remain content to seek for passing joys, and cherish little pleasures where you can. But in this picture is the body NOT perceived as neutral and WITHOUT a goal inherent in itself. For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can NEVER be denied. Your function is to PROVE to him that sin can HAVE no cause. How futile MUST it be to see yourself a picture of the proof that what your function IS can never be.

The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ALL signs of accusation and of blamefulness. Pictured WITHOUT a purpose, it is seen as neither sick nor well, nor bad nor good. No grounds are offered that it may be judged in ANY way at all. It has no life, but neither is it dead. It stands apart from ALL experience of fear OR love. For now it witnesses to NOTHING yet, its purpose being open, and the mind made free again to choose what it is FOR. Now it is not condemned, but waiting for a purpose to be GIVEN, that it may fulfill the function that it will receive.

Into this empty space, from which the GOAL of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you KNEW its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a DIFFERENT view, ANOTHER purpose, can be given it. You do NOT know its purpose. You but gave ILLUSIONS of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing WITHOUT a purpose CANNOT hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, ITS purpose and YOUR function both be reconciled at last, and seen as one.

Chapter 20 - What is Justice?

Justice is the divine correction for injustice. Injustice is the basis for all the judgments of the world. Justice corrects the interpretations to which injustice gives rise, and cancels them out. Neither justice nor injustice exists in Heaven, for error is impossible and correction meaningless. In this world, however, forgiveness depends on justice, since all attack can only be unjust. Justice is the Holy Spirit's verdict upon the world. Except in His judgment justice is impossible, for no-one in the world is capable of making only just interpretations and laying all injustices aside. If God's Son were fairly judged, there would be no need for salvation. The thought of separation would have been forever inconceivable.

Justice, like its opposite, is an interpretation. It is, however, the one interpretation that leads to truth. This becomes possible because, while it is not true in itself, justice includes nothing that opposes truth. There is no inherent conflict between justice and truth; one is but the first small step in the direction of the other. The path becomes quite different as one goes along. Nor could all the magnificence, the grandeur of the scene and the enormous opening vistas that rise to meet one as he travels on, be foretold from the outset. Yet even these, whose splendor reaches indescribable heights as one proceeds, fall short indeed of all that awaits one when the pathway ceases and time ends with it. But somewhere one must start. Justice is the beginning.

Salvation is God's justice. It restores to your awareness the wholeness of the fragments you perceive as broken off and separate. And it is this that overcomes the fear of death. For separate fragments must decay and die, but wholeness is immortal. It remains forever and forever like its Creator, being one with Him. God's Judgment is His justice. Onto this, - a judgment wholly lacking in condemnation; an evaluation based entirely on love, - you have projected your injustice, giving God the lens of warped perception through which you look. Now it belongs to Him and not to you. You are afraid of Him, and do not see you hate and fear your Self as enemy.

Pray for God's justice, and do not confuse His mercy with your own insanity. Perception can make whatever picture the mind desires to see. Remember this. In this lies either Heaven or hell, as you elect. God's justice points to Heaven just because it is entirely impartial. It accepts all evidence that is brought before it, omitting nothing and assessing nothing as separate and apart from all the rest. From this one standpoint does it judge, and this alone. Here all attack and condemnation become meaningless and indefensible. Perception rests, the mind is still, and light returns again. Vision is now restored. What had been lost has now been found. The peace of God descends on all the world, and we can see. And we can see!

Section 6 - Weakness and Defensiveness

How does one overcome illusions? Surely not by force or anger. Nor by OPPOSING them in ANY way. Merely by letting reason tell you that they CONTRADICT reality. They GO AGAINST what must be true. The opposition comes from THEM, and NOT reality. Reality opposes nothing. What merely is, NEEDS no defense, and offers none. Only illusions need defense, BECAUSE OF WEAKNESS. And how CAN it be difficult to walk the way of truth, when only WEAKNESS interferes? YOU are the strong ones in this seeming conflict. And you need NO defense. Everything that needs defense YOU DO NOT WANT. For anything that needs defense will WEAKEN you.

See how the means and the material of evil dreams are nothing! In truth, you stand together, with NOTHING in between. God holds your hands, and what can separate whom He has joined as one with Him? It is your Father Whom you would defend against. Yet it remains impossible to keep Love out. God rests with you in quiet, undefended and wholly undefending. For in this quiet state alone is strength and power. Here can NO weakness enter, for here is no attack, and therefore no illusions. Love rests in CERTAINTY. Only UNcertainty can BE defensive. And ALL uncertainty is doubt about YOURSELF.

How weak is fear; how little and how meaningless! How insignificant before the quiet strength of those whom Love has joined! This is your "enemy;" a frightened mouse which would attack the universe. How likely is it that it will SUCCEED? Can it be difficult to disregard its feeble squeaks that tell of its omnipotence, and would drown out the hymn of praise to its Creator that every heart throughout the universe forever sings as one? Which IS the stronger? Is it this tiny mouse, or everything that God created? You are NOT joined together by this mouse, but by the Will of God. And can a mouse BETRAY whom God has joined?

If you but RECOGNIZED how little stands between you and your AWARENESS of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within YOU, there is a force which NO illusions can resist. This body only SEEMS to be immovable. This force IS irresistible in truth. What, then, MUST happen when they come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended for what is quietly PAST THROUGH, and GONE BEYOND?

Forget not, when you feel the need arise to be defensive about ANYTHING, you have identified YOUR SELF with an illusion. And therefore feel that you are weak, BECAUSE YOU ARE ALONE. This is the cost of ALL illusions. Not one but rests on the belief that you are separate. Not one that does not SEEM to stand, heavy and solid and unmovable, between you and your brother. And not one that truth can NOT pass over lightly, and so easily that you MUST be convinced, in spite of what you THOUGHT it was, that it was nothing. If you forgive each other, this MUST happen. For it IS your unwillingness to overlook what seems to stand between you that makes it look impenetrable, and DEFENDS the illusion of its immovability.

Chapter 21 - What is the Peace of God?

It has been said that there is a kind of peace that is not of this world. How is it recognized? How is it found? And being found, how can it be retained? Let us consider each of these questions separately, for each reflects a different step along the way.

First, how can the peace of God be recognized? God's peace is recognized at first by just one thing; in every way it is totally unlike all previous experiences. It calls to mind nothing that went before. It brings with it no past associations. It is a new thing entirely. There is a contrast, yes, between this thing and all the past. But strangely, it is not a contrast of true differences. The past just slips away, and in its place is everlasting quiet. Only that. The contrast first perceived has merely gone. Quiet has reached to cover everything.

How is the peace of God retained, once it is found? Returning anger, in whatever form, will drop the heavy curtain once again, and the belief that peace cannot exist will certainly return. War is again accepted as the one reality. Now must you once again lay down your sword, although you will not recognize that you have picked it up again. But you will learn, as you remember even faintly now what happiness was yours without it, that you must have taken it again as your defense. Stop for a moment now and think of this: Is conflict what you want, or is God's peace the better choice? Which gives you more? A tranquil mind is not a little gift. Would you not rather live than choose to die?

Living is joy, but death can only weep. You see in death escape from what you made. But this you do not see; that you made death, and it is but illusion of an end. Death cannot be escape, because it is not life in which the problem lies. Life has no opposite, for it is God. Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life. Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything which God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real. In this one sentence is our course explained. In this one sentence is our practicing given its one direction. And in this the Holy Spirit's whole curriculum is specified exactly as it is.

What is the peace of God? No more than this; the simple understanding that His Will is wholly without opposite. There is no thought that contradicts His Will, yet can be true. The contrast between His Will and yours but seemed to be reality. In truth there is no conflict, because His Will is yours. Now is the mighty Will of God Himself His gift to you. He does not seek to keep it for Himself. Why would you seek to keep your tiny, frail imaginings apart from Him? The Will of God is One and all there is. This is your heritage. The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belong to you. God's peace is the condition for His Will. Attain His peace, and you remember Him.

Section 4 - Salvation Without Compromise

Is it not true you do NOT recognize some of the forms attack can take? If it is true attack in ANY form will hurt you, and will do so just as much as in another form which you DO recognize, then it MUST follow that you do not always RECOGNIZE the source of pain. ATTACK IN ANY FORM IS EQUALLY DESTRUCTIVE. Its PURPOSE does not change. Its sole intent is murder, and what FORM of murder serves to cover the massive guilt and frantic fear of punishment the murderer MUST feel? He may deny he IS a murderer, and justify his savagery with smiles as he attacks.

Yet he will suffer, and will look on his intent in nightmares, where the smiles are gone, and where the purpose rises to meet his horrified awareness, and pursue him still. For no-one THINKS of murder, and escapes the guilt the thought entails. If the INTENT is death, what matter the form it takes? Is death in ANY form, however lovely and charitable it may SEEM to be, a blessing and a sign the Voice for God speaks through you to your brother? The wrapping does not make the gift you give. An empty box, however beautiful and gently given, still contains nothing, and neither the receiver NOR THE GIVER is long deceived. WITHHOLD forgiveness from your brother, and you ATTACK him. You GIVE him nothing, and receive of him but what you gave.

Salvation is no compromise of any kind. To compromise is to accept but PART of what you want; to take a little; and GIVE UP the rest. Salvation gives up nothing. It is complete for everyone. Let the IDEA of compromise but enter, and the awareness of salvation's PURPOSE is lost, because it is not recognized. It is DENIED where compromise has been accepted. For compromise is the belief SALVATION is impossible. It would maintain you can attack a little, love a little, AND KNOW THE DIFFERENCE. Thus it would teach a little of the same can still be different, and yet the same remain intact, as one. Does this make sense? Can it BE understood?

This course is easy just BECAUSE it makes no compromise. Yet it SEEMS difficult to those who still believe that compromise is possible. They do NOT see that, if it is, SALVATION IS ATTACK. Yet it is certain the belief that salvation is impossible can NOT uphold a quiet, calm assurance it has come. Forgiveness cannot BE withheld a little. Nor is it possible to attack for this and love for that, and UNDERSTAND forgiveness. Would you not WANT to recognize assault upon your peace in ANY form, if only thus does it become impossible that YOU lose sight of it? It CAN be kept shining before your vision, forever clear and NEVER out of sight, if YOU defend it not.

To be RELEASED from conflict means that IT IS OVER. The door is open; you have LEFT the battleground. You have NOT lingered there in cowering hope, because the guns are stilled an instant and the fear that haunts the place of death is not apparent, that it will not return. There IS no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above, and NOT be touched. But, from within it, you can find NO safety. Not one tree left standing still will shelter you. Not one illusion of protection stands against the faith in murder. Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to communicate, and the unnatural intent to murder and to die.

Think you the FORM that murder takes can offer safety? Can guilt be ABSENT from a battlefield? Do not remain in conflict, for there IS no war without attack.

Section 5 - Dream Roles

Do you believe that truth can be but SOME illusions? They are dreams BECAUSE they are not true. Their EQUAL lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which MEANS that you have understood that dreams are dreams, and that escape depends, NOT on the dream, but ONLY on awaking. COULD it be some dreams are KEPT, and others WAKENED FROM? The choice is NOT between which dreams to keep, but ONLY if you want to live in dreams, or to awaken from them. Thus it is the miracle does not select SOME dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence. You cannot dream some dreams and wake from some. For you are either sleeping OR awake. And dreaming goes with only ONE of these.

The dreams you THINK you like would hold you back, as much as those in which the fear is seen. For EVERY dream is but a dream of fear, no matter what the form it seems to take. The fear is seen within, without, or both. Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. But never is it ABSENT from the dream. For fear is the material of dreams, from which they ALL are made. Their form can change, but they cannot be MADE of something else. The miracle were treacherous indeed if it allowed you still to be afraid, because you did not RECOGNIZE the fear. You would not then be WILLING to awake, for which the miracle prepares the way.

The dreams you THINK you like are those in which the functions YOU have given have been filled; the needs which YOU ascribe to you are met. It does not matter if they be fulfilled, or merely wanted. It is the idea that they EXIST from which the fears arise. Dreams are not wanted more or less. They are desired or not. And each one represents some function which you have assigned; some goal which an event, or body, or a thing SHOULD represent, and SHOULD achieve for you. If it succeeds, you think you LIKE the dream. If it should fail, you think the dream is sad. But whether it succeeds or fails is not its core, but just the flimsy covering.

How happy would your dreams become, if you were NOT the one who gave the "proper" role to every figure that the dream contains. No-one can fail but your IDEA of him, and there IS no betrayal but of this. The core of dreams the Holy Spirit gives is NEVER one of fear. The coverings may not appear to change, but what they MEAN has changed BECAUSE they cover something else. Perceptions are determined by their purpose, in that they seem to BE what they are FOR. A shadow figure who attacks becomes a brother giving you a chance to help, if this becomes the FUNCTION of the dream. And dreams of sadness thus are turned to joy.

What is your brother FOR? You do not know, because YOUR function is obscure to you. Do NOT ascribe a role to him which you imagine would bring happiness to you. And do not try to hurt him, when he fails to take the part which you assigned to him in what you dream your life was meant to be. He asks for help in every dream he has, and you have Help to give him if you see the FUNCTION of the dream as He perceives its function, Who can utilize all dreams as means to serve the Function given Him. Because He loves the dreamer, NOT the dream, each dream becomes an offering of love. For at its center is His Love for you, which lights WHATEVER form it takes with love.

Section 11 - The Remaining Task

What does it MEAN if you perceive attack in certain FORMS to be unfair to you? It means that there MUST be some forms in which YOU THINK IT FAIR. For otherwise, how could some be evaluated as UNfair? Some, then, are GIVEN meaning, and perceived as sensible. And only SOME are seen as meaningLESS. And this DENIES the fact that ALL are senseless; EQUALLY without a cause or consequence, and CANNOT have effects of ANY kind. Their Presence is obscured by ANY veil which stands between Their shining innocence and your awareness it is your own, and EQUALLY belongs to every living thing along with you. God limits not. And what is limited can NOT be Heaven. So it MUST be hell.

Unfairness and attack are ONE mistake, so firmly joined that where one is perceived, the other MUST be seen. You cannot BE unfairly treated. The belief you ARE is but another form of the idea you are deprived by someone NOT yourself. PROJECTION of the cause of sacrifice is at the root of everything perceived to be unfair, and NOT your just deserts. Yet it is YOU who ask this of yourself, in deep injustice to the Son of God. You HAVE no enemy except yourself, and you are enemy indeed to him, because you do not know him AS yourself. What COULD be more unjust than that he be deprived of what he IS, denied the right to be himself, and asked to sacrifice his Father's Love and yours, as NOT his due?

Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. In this view, you seek to find an innocence which is NOT Theirs, but yours alone, and at the cost of someone ELSE's guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of YOUR guilt to someone else? And IS this innocence, which your attack on him attempts to get? Is it not retribution for your own attack upon the Son of God you seek? Is it not SAFER to believe that you are innocent of this, and victimized DESPITE your innocence? Whatever way the game of guilt is played, THERE MUST BE LOSS. Someone must LOSE his innocence that someone ELSE can take it from him, making it his own.

You think your brother is unfair to you BECAUSE you think that one must be unfair to MAKE the other innocent. And in this game do you perceive one PURPOSE of your whole relationship. And this you seek to ADD unto the purpose GIVEN it. The Holy Spirit's purpose is to let the Presence of your holy Guests be known to you. And TO this purpose nothing CAN be added, for the world is purposeless except for this. To add or take away from this ONE goal is but to take away ALL purpose from the world, and from yourself. And each unfairness that the world appears to lay upon you, you have laid on it, by rendering it purposeless, without the function that the Holy Spirit sees. And simple justice has been thus denied to every living thing upon the earth.

What this injustice does to you who judge unfairly, and who see as you have judged, you cannot calculate. The world grows dim and threatening, and not a trace of all the happy sparkle that salvation brought can you perceive, to lighten up your way. And so you see YOURSELF deprived of light, abandoned to the dark, unfairly left without a purpose in a futile world. The world is fair because the Holy Spirit has brought injustice to the Light within, and there has ALL unfairness been resolved, and been REPLACED with justice and with love. If you perceive injustice anywhere, you need but say, "By this do I DENY the Presence of the Father and the Son. And I would rather know of Them than see injustice, which Their Presence shines away."

Section 8 - The New Interpretation

Would God have left the meaning of the world to YOUR interpretation? If He had, it HAS no meaning. For it cannot be that meaning changes constantly, and yet is true. The Holy Spirit looks upon the world as with ONE purpose, changelessly established. And NO situation can affect its aim, but MUST be in accord with it. For ONLY if its aim could change with every situation could each one be OPEN to interpretation which is different every time you think of it. You ADD an element into the script you write for every minute in the day, and all that happens now means something else. You TAKE AWAY another element, and every meaning shifts accordingly.

What do your scripts reflect except your plans for what the day SHOULD be? And thus you judge disaster and success, advance, retreat, and gain and loss. These judgments all are made according to the roles the script assigns. The fact they have no meaning in themselves is DEMONSTRATED by the ease with which these labels change with other judgments made on different aspects of experience. And then, in looking back, you think you see ANOTHER meaning in what went before. What have you really done, except to show there WAS no meaning there? And YOU assigned a meaning in the light of goals that change, with EVERY meaning shifting as they change.

A common purpose is the ONLY means whereby perception can be stabilized, and ONE interpretation given to the world and all experiences here. In this shared purpose is one meaning shared by everyone and everything you see. You do not have to judge, for you have learned one meaning has been GIVEN everything, and you are GLAD to see it everywhere. It cannot change BECAUSE you would perceive it everywhere, unchanged by circumstance. And so you OFFER it to all events, and LET them offer you stability. Escape from judgment simply lies in this; - All things have but one purpose, which you share with all the world. And nothing IN the world can BE opposed to it, for it belongs TO everything, as it belongs to you.

In SINGLE purpose is the end of all ideas of sacrifice, which MUST assume a DIFFERENT purpose for the one who gains and him who loses. There could BE no thought of sacrifice apart from this idea. And it IS this idea of different goals which makes perception shift and meaning change. In one united goal does this become impossible, for your AGREEMENT makes interpretation stabilize and last. How can communication REALLY be established, while the symbols which are used mean different things? The Holy Spirit's goal gives ONE interpretation, meaningful to you AND to your brother. Thus can you communicate with him, and he with you. In symbols which you BOTH can understand, the sacrifice of meaning is undone.

All sacrifice entails the LOSS of your ability to see relationships AMONG events. And, looked at SEPARATELY, they HAVE no meaning. For there is no light by which they can be seen and understood. They HAVE no purpose. And what they are FOR cannot BE seen. In any thought of loss there IS no meaning. No-one has agreed with you on what it means. It is a part of a distorted script, which cannot be interpreted with meaning. It must be forever unintelligible. This is NOT communication. Your dark dreams are but the senseless, isolated scripts you write in sleep. Look not to separate dreams for meaning. ONLY dreams of pardon can be shared. They mean the same for BOTH of you.

Do not interpret out of solitude, for what you see means nothing. It will shift in what it stands for, and you will believe the world is an uncertain place, in which you walk in danger and uncertainty. It is but your INTERPRETATIONS which are lacking in stability. And they are NOT in line with what you really are. This is a state so seemingly unsafe that fear MUST rise. Do not continue thus, my brothers. We have ONE Interpreter. And through His use of symbols are we joined, so that they mean the same to ALL of us. Our common language lets us speak to all our brothers, and to understand with them forgiveness has been given to us all, and thus we CAN communicate again.

Section 3 - Sin versus Error

It is ESSENTIAL that error be not confused with "sin." And it is this distinction which makes salvation possible. For error can be corrected, and the wrong made right. But sin, were it possible, WOULD be irreversible. The belief in sin is necessarily based on the firm conviction that minds, NOT bodies, can attack. And thus the mind IS guilty, and will forever so remain, unless a mind NOT part of it can give it absolution. Sin calls for punishment, as error for correction. And the belief that punishment IS correction, is clearly insane.

The Son of God CAN be mistaken; he CAN deceive himself; he can even turn the power of his mind AGAINST himself. But he can NOT sin. There is NOTHING he can do that would REALLY change his reality in ANY way, nor make him REALLY guilty. That is what sin WOULD do, for such is its PURPOSE. Yet, for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole IDEA of sin, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. For the wages of sin IS death, and how can the immortal die?

A MAJOR tenet in the ego's insane religion is that sin is NOT error, but TRUTH. And it is INNOCENCE that would deceive. PURITY is seen as arrogance, and the acceptance of the self AS SINFUL is perceived as holiness. And it is this doctrine that REPLACES the reality of the Son of God, as his Father created him, and willed that he be forever. Is this HUMILITY? Or is it rather an attempt to wrest creation AWAY from truth, and keep it separate?

ANY attempt to re-interpret sin as error is wholly indefensible to the ego. The IDEA of sin is WHOLLY sacrosanct in its thought-system, and quite unapproachable except through reverence and awe. It is the most "holy" concept in the ego's system; lovely and powerful, wholly true, and NECESSARILY protected with every defense at its disposal. For here lies its "best" defense, which all the others serve. Here is its armor, its protection, and the fundamental PURPOSE of the special relationship, in its interpretation.

It can indeed be said the ego MADE its world on sin. Only in such a world COULD everything be upside down. This IS the strange illusion which makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness this world's foundation SEEMS to have is FOUND in this. For sin HAS changed creation from an Idea of God to an IDEAL the EGO wants; a world IT rules, made up of bodies, mindless, and capable of COMPLETE corruption and decay.

If this is a MISTAKE, it can be undone easily by truth. ANY mistake can be corrected, if TRUTH be left to judge it. But, if the mistake is given the STATUS of truth, to what CAN it be brought? The "holiness" of sin is kept in place by just this strange device. As TRUTH, it IS inviolate, and everything is brought to IT for judgment. As a MISTAKE, IT must be brought to truth. It is impossible to have faith in sin, for sin IS faithlessness. But it IS possible to have faith that a MISTAKE can be corrected.

There is no stone in all the ego's embattled citadel more heavily defended than the idea that sin is real; the NATURAL expression of what the Son of God has MADE himself to be, AND WHAT HE IS. To the ego, THIS IS NO MISTAKE. For this IS its reality; this is the "truth," from which escape will ALWAYS be impossible. This is his past, his present, and his future. For he has somehow managed to corrupt his Father, and change His Mind COMPLETELY. Mourn then the death of God, Whom sin has killed!

And this WOULD be the ego's wish, which, in its madness, it thinks it has ACCOMPLISHED. Would you not RATHER that all this be nothing more than a MISTAKE, ENTIRELY correctable, and so easily escaped from that its whole correction is like walking through a mist into the sun? For that is all it IS. Perhaps you would be tempted to AGREE with the ego, that it is far better to be sinful than mistaken. But think you carefully before you allow yourself to make this choice. Approach it not lightly, for it IS the choice of hell or Heaven.

Lesson 126 "All that I give is given to myself."

Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about. If you believed this statement there would be no problem in complete forgiveness, certainty of goal, and sure direction. You would understand the means by which salvation comes to you, and would not hesitate to use it now.

Let us consider what you do believe in place of this idea. It seems to you that other people are apart from you, and able to behave in ways which have no bearing on your thoughts, nor theirs on yours. Therefore your attitudes have no effect on them, and their appeals for help are not in any way related to your own. You further think that they can sin without affecting your perception of yourself, while you can judge their sin and yet remain apart from condemnation and at peace.

When you "forgive" a sin, there is no gain to you directly. You give charity to one unworthy merely to point out that you are better, on a higher plane than he whom you forgive. He has not earned your charitable tolerance, which you bestow on one unworthy of the gift because his sins have lowered him beneath a true equality with you. He has no claim on your forgiveness. It holds out a gift to him but hardly to yourself.

Thus is forgiveness basically unsound; a charitable whim, benevolent yet undeserved; a gift bestowed at times, at other times withheld. Unmerited, withholding it is just, nor is it fair that you should suffer when it is withheld. The sin which you forgive is not your own. Someone apart from you committed it and if you then are gracious unto him by giving him what he does not deserve, your gift is no more yours than was his sin.

You do not understand forgiveness. As you see it, it is but a check upon overt attack, without requiring correction in your mind. It cannot give you peace as you perceive it. It is not a means for your release from what you see in someone other than yourself. It has no power to restore your unity with him to your awareness. It is not what God intended it to be for you.

Not having given Him the gift He asks of you, you cannot recognize His gifts, and think He has not given them to you. Yet would He ask you for a gift unless it was for you? Could He be satisfied with empty gestures, and evaluate such petty gifts as worthy of His Son? Salvation is a better gift than this, and true forgiveness, as the means by which it is attained, must heal the mind that gives, for giving is receiving. What remains as unreceived has not been given, but what has been given must have been received.

Today we try to understand the truth that giver and receiver are the same. You will need help to make this meaningful because it is so alien to the thoughts to which you are accustomed. But the Help you need is there. Give Him your faith today and ask Him that He share your practicing in truth today. And if you only catch a tiny glimpse of the release which lies in the idea we practice for today, this is a day of glory for the world.

Give fifteen minutes twice today to the attempt to understand today's idea. It is the thought by which forgiveness takes its proper place in your priorities. It is the thought that will release your mind from every bar to what forgiveness means, and let you realize its worth to you.

In silence close your eyes upon the world which does not understand forgiveness, and seek sanctuary in the quiet place where thoughts are changed and false beliefs laid by. Repeat today's idea, and ask for help in understanding what it really means. Be willing to be taught. Be glad to hear the Voice of truth and healing speak to you, and you will understand the words He speaks, and recognize He speaks your words to you.

As often as you can, remind yourself you have a goal today; an aim which makes this day of special value to yourself and all your brothers. Do not let your mind forget this goal for long, but tell yourself:

"All that I give is given to myself.

The Help I need to learn that this is true

Is with me now. And I will trust in Him."

Then spend the quiet moment, opening your mind to His correction and His Love. And what you hear of Him you will believe, for what He gives will be received by you.

Section 2 - The Judgment of the Holy Spirit

Perhaps the danger of this to your OWN mind is not yet fully apparent. But this by no means signifies that it is not perfectly clear. If you maintain that an appeal for help is something ELSE, you will REACT to something else, and your response will be inappropriate to reality as IT is, but NOT to your perception OF it. This is poor reality testing by definition. There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing ALL calls for help as exactly what they are, EXCEPT YOUR OWN PERCEIVED NEED TO ATTACK. It is only THIS that makes you willing to engage in endless "battles" with reality, in which you DENY the reality of the need for healing by making IT unreal.

You would not do this except for your UNWILLINGNESS to perceive reality, WHICH YOU WITHHOLD FROM YOURSELF. It is surely good advice to tell you not to judge what you do not understand. No-one with a personal investment is a reliable witness, for truth for him has become what he WANTS it to be. If you are unwilling to perceive an appeal for help AS WHAT IT IS, it is because YOU are unwilling to give help, AND RECEIVE IT. The analysis of the ego's "real" motivation is the modern equivalent of the inquisition. For in both, a brother's errors are "uncovered," and he is then attacked FOR HIS OWN GOOD. What can this be, BUT projection? For HIS errors lay in the minds of his INTERPRETERS, for which they punished HIM.

Whenever you fail to recognize a call for help, you are REFUSING help. Would you maintain that you do not NEED it? Yet this IS what you are maintaining when you refuse to recognize a brother's appeal. For only by ANSWERING his appeal, can YOU be helped. Deny him YOUR help, and you will NOT perceive God's answer to YOU. The Holy Spirit does NOT need your help in interpreting motivation, but you DO need HIS. ONLY appreciation is an appropriate response to your brother. Gratitude is due him for both his loving thoughts, and his appeals for help, for both are capable of bringing love into YOUR awareness, IF YOU PERCEIVE THEM TRULY. And ALL your sense of strain comes from your attempts NOT to do just this.

How simple, then, is God's plan for salvation. There is but one response to reality, for reality evokes no conflict at all. There is but one Teacher of Reality, Who understands what it is. He does NOT change His mind about reality, because REALITY does not change. Although YOUR interpretations of reality are meaningless in your divided state, His remain consistently true. He GIVES them to you because they are FOR you.

Do not attempt to "help" a brother in YOUR way, for you cannot help YOURSELVES. But hear his call for the help of God, and you will recognize your OWN need for the Father. Your interpretations of your brother's need is your interpretation of YOURS. By giving help, you are ASKING FOR IT. And if you perceive but one need in yourself, you WILL be healed. For you will recognize God's answer as you want it to be, and if you want it in truth, it will be truly yours. Every appeal you answer in the Name of Christ, brings the remembrance of your Father closer to YOUR awareness. For the sake of YOUR need, then, hear every call for help as what it is, so God can answer YOU.

By applying the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the reactions of others more and more consistently, you will gain an increasing awareness that HIS criteria are equally applicable to YOU. For to RECOGNIZE fear is not enough to escape FROM it, although the recognition IS necessary to demonstrate the NEED for escape. The Holy Spirit must still TRANSLATE it into truth. If you were LEFT with the fear, having RECOGNIZED it, you would have taken a step AWAY from reality, not TOWARD it. Yet we have repeatedly emphasized the need to recognize fear, and face it WITHOUT DISGUISE, as a crucial step in the undoing of the ego. Consider how well the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the motives of others will serve you then.

Having taught you to accept only loving thoughts in others, and to regard everything else as an appeal for help, He has taught you that FEAR is an appeal for help. This is what RECOGNIZING it really means. If you do NOT PROTECT it, HE will re-interpret it. That is the ultimate value TO YOU in learning to perceive attack as a call for love. We have learned surely that fear and attack are inevitably associated. If ONLY attack produces fear, and if you see attack as the call for help that it IS, the REALITY of fear MUST dawn upon you. For fear IS a call for love, in unconscious recognition of what has been denied.

Section 2 - The Message of the Crucifixion

We have not dwelt upon the crucifixion, because of its fearful connotations. The only emphasis we laid upon it was that it was NOT a form of punishment. But we know that nothing can be really explained only in negative terms. There is a positive interpretation of the crucifixion which is wholly devoid of fear, and therefore wholly benign in what it teaches, if it is properly understood. It is nothing more than an extreme example. Its value, like the value of any teaching device, lies solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. It can be, and has been, misunderstood. But this is only because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully.

I told you before that you can always call on me to share my decision and thus MAKE IT STRONGER. I also told you that the crucifixion was the last foolish journey that the Sonship need take, and that it should mean RELEASE from fear to anyone who understands it. While we emphasized the Resurrection only before, the purpose of the crucifixion and how it actually LED to the Resurrection was not clarified at that time. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your own lives, and if you will consider it WITHOUT fear, it will help you understand your own role as teachers.

You have reacted for years AS IF you were being crucified. This is a marked tendency of the separated, who ALWAYS refuse to consider what they have done to THEMSELVES. Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes fear. The real meaning of the crucifixion lies in the APPARENT intensity of the assault of some of the Sons of God upon a brother. This, of course, is impossible, and must be fully understood AS an impossibility. In fact, unless it IS fully understood as ONLY that, I cannot serve as a real model for learning.

Assault can ultimately be made ONLY on the body. There is little doubt that one BODY can assault another, and can even destroy it. But if destruction ITSELF is impossible, then ANYTHING that is destructible cannot be real. Therefore, its destruction does NOT justify anger. To the extent to which you believe it DOES, you MUST be accepting false premises and TEACHING THEM TO OTHERS. The message which the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive ANY form of assault in persecution because you cannot BE persecuted. If you respond with anger, you MUST be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely. I have made it perfectly clear that I am like you, and you are like me. But our fundamental equality can be demonstrated only through joint decision.

You are free to perceive yourselves as persecuted if you choose. But you might remember when you DO choose to react that way that I WAS persecuted as the world judges, and did NOT share this evaluation for myself. And because I did not share it, I did NOT strengthen it. I therefore offered a DIFFERENT interpretation of attack, and one which I DO want to share with you. If you will BELIEVE it, you will help me TEACH it.

We have said before, "As you teach so shall you learn." If you react as if you are persecuted, you ARE teaching persecution. This is not a lesson which the Sons of God should WANT to teach if they are to realize their own salvation. Rather teach your own perfect immunity, which IS the Truth in you, and KNOW that it cannot be assailed. Do not protect it yourselves, or you have believed that it IS assailable. You are not asked to BE crucified, because that was part of my own teaching contribution. You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive, and NOT to accept them falsely as justifications for anger.

There can BE no justification for the unjustifiable. Do not believe there is, and do not TEACH that there is. Remember always that what you believe you WILL teach. Believe with me, and we will become equal as teachers. YOUR resurrection is your re-awakening. I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your minds of what is already in them. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true forever. I believed in it, and therefore made it forever true for me. Help me to teach it to our brothers in the name of the Kingdom of God. But first believe that it is true for you, or you will teach amiss.

My brothers slept during the so-called "agony in the garden," but I could not be angry with them, because I had learned I could not BE abandoned. Peter swore he would never deny me, but he did so three times. It should be noted that he did offer to defend me with the sword, which I naturally refused, not being at all in need of bodily protection. I AM sorry when my brothers do not share my decision to hear (and be) only one voice, because it weakens them as teachers AND learners. But yet I know that they cannot really betray themselves or me, and that it is still on them that I MUST build my church.

There is no choice in this, because only you can BE the foundation of God's church. A church is where an altar is, and the presence of the altar is what makes it a church. Any church which does not inspire love has a hidden altar which is not serving the purpose for which God intended it. I must found His church on you because you, who accept me as a model are literally my disciples. Disciples are followers, but if the model they follow has chosen to SAVE THEM PAIN IN ALL RESPECTS, they are probably unwise NOT to follow him.

I elected, both for your sake AND mine, to demonstrate that the most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, did not matter. As the world judges these things, but NOT as God knows them, I was betrayed, abandoned, beaten, torn, and finally killed. It was perfectly clear that this was only because of the projection of others onto me, because I had not harmed anyone and had healed many. We are still equal as learners, even though we need not have equal experiences. The Holy Spirit is glad when you can learn enough from MINE to be re-awakened by them. That was their only purpose, and that is the only way in which I can be perceived as the Way, the Truth, and the Light.

When you hear only one voice, you are never called on to sacrifice. On the contrary, by enabling YOURSELVES to hear the Holy Spirit in others, you can learn from their experiences and gain from them WITHOUT experiencing them. That is because the Holy Spirit IS one, and anyone who listens is inevitably led to demonstrate His way for ALL. You are not persecuted, nor was I. You are not asked to repeat my experience, because the Holy Spirit which we SHARE, makes this unnecessary. But to use my experiences constructively for yourselves, you must still follow my example in how to perceive them.

I will, with God Himself, that none of His Sons should suffer. Remember that the Holy Spirit is the communication link between God the Father and His separated Sons. If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or BE hurt, but that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves. When you perceive only this need in them, and do not respond to any others, you will have learned of me, and be as eager to share your learning as I am. The crucifixion CANNOT be shared, because it is the symbol of projection. But the Resurrection IS the symbol of sharing, because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness. Only this IS knowledge.

The message of the crucifixion is very simple and perfectly clear: "teach ONLY love, for that is what you ARE." If you interpret it in any other way, you are using it as a weapon for assault rather than as the call to peace for which it was intended. The Apostles often misunderstood it, and always for the same reason that makes anyone misunderstand anything. Their own imperfect love made them vulnerable to projection, and out of their own fear they spoke of the wrath of God as His RETALIATORY weapon. They also could not speak of the crucifixion entirely without anger, because their own sense of guilt had made them angry.

There are two glaring examples of upside down thinking in the New Testament, whose whole Gospel is only the message of love. These are not at all like the several slips into impatience which I made, because I had learned the Atonement prayer, which I also came to teach, too well to engage in upside down thinking myself. If the Apostles had not felt guilty, they never could have quoted ME as saying, "I come not to bring peace but a sword." This is clearly the exact opposite of everything I taught.

Nor could they have described my reactions to Judas Iscariot as they did, if they had really understood ME. They could not have believed that I could have said, "Betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?" unless I BELIEVED IN BETRAYAL. The whole message of the crucifixion was simply that I did NOT. The "punishment" which I am said to have called forth upon Judas was a similar reversal. Judas was my brother and a Son of God, as much a part of the Sonship as myself. Was it likely that I would condemn him when I was ready to demonstrate that condemnation is impossible?

I am very grateful to the Apostles for their teaching, and fully aware of the extent of their devotion to me. But as you read their teachings, remember that I told them myself that there was much they would understand later, because they were NOT wholly ready to follow me at the time. I emphasize this only because I do not want you to allow ANY fear to enter into the thought system toward which I am guiding you. I do NOT call for martyrs but for TEACHERS.

The crucifixion was a complex of behaviors arising out of clearly opposed thought systems. As such, it is the perfect symbol of conflict between the ego and the Son of God. It was as much intrapersonal as interpersonal then, just as it is now, and it is still just as real. But BECAUSE it is just as real now, its lesson, too, has equal reality WHEN IT IS LEARNED. I do not need gratitude any more than I needed protection. But YOU need to develop your weakened ability to BE grateful, or you cannot appreciate God. HE does not need your appreciation, but you DO.

You cannot love what you do not appreciate, and FEAR MAKES APPRECIATION IMPOSSIBLE. Whenever you are afraid of what you are, you do not appreciate it, and will therefore reject it. As a result, you will TEACH REJECTION. The power of the Sons of God is operating all the time, because they were created as creators. Their influence on EACH OTHER is without limit, and MUST be used for their joint salvation. Each one MUST learn to teach that all forms of rejection are utterly meaningless.

The separation IS the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, YOU still believe it. This is NOT as God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again.

Section 9 - The Immediacy of Salvation

The one remaining problem that you have is that you see an interval between the TIME when you forgive, and will receive the benefits of trust. This but reflects the little you would keep between YOURSELVES, that you might be a LITTLE separate. For time and space are ONE illusion, which takes different forms. If it has been projected BEYOND your minds, you think of it as time. The nearer it is brought to where it IS, the more you think of it in terms of space. There is a DISTANCE you would keep apart from one another. And this space you see as time, because you still believe you are EXTERNAL to each other. This makes trust impossible. And you can NOT believe that trust would settle every problem NOW.

Thus do you think it SAFER to remain a LITTLE careful and a LITTLE watchful of interests perceived as separate. From this perception, you can not conceive of gaining what forgiveness offers NOW. The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift SEEMS to be one in which you sacrifice, and suffer loss. You see EVENTUAL salvation; not IMMEDIATE results. Salvation IS immediate. Unless you so perceive it, you WILL be afraid of it, believing that the risk of loss is great between the time its PURPOSE is made yours, and its EFFECTS will come to you. In this form is the error still obscured that is the SOURCE of fear. Salvation WOULD wipe out the space you see between you still, and let you INSTANTLY become as one. And it is HERE you fear the loss would lie.

Who can feel desolation except NOW? A FUTURE cause as yet HAS no effects. And therefore MUST it be that, if you fear, there is a PRESENT cause. And it is THIS that needs correction, NOT a future state. The plans YOU make for safety all are laid within the future, where you CANNOT plan. No purpose has been GIVEN it as yet, and what WILL happen has as yet no cause. Who can predict effects without a cause? And who could fear effects UNLESS he thought they had BEEN caused and judged disastrous NOW? Belief in sin arouses fear, and like its cause, is looking forward; looking back, but OVERLOOKING what is here and now.

Yet only here and now its cause must be, if its effects ALREADY have been judged as fearful. And, in overlooking THIS, is it protected and kept separate from healing. For a miracle is NOW. It stands ALREADY there, in present grace, within the only interval of time which sin and fear have overlooked, but which is all there IS to time. The working out of ALL correction takes no time at all. But the ACCEPTANCE of the working out can SEEM to take forever. The change of purpose the Holy Spirit brought to your relationship has IN it all effects that you will see. They can be looked at NOW. Why wait 'til they unfold in time, and fear they may NOT come, although already THERE?

You have been told that everything brings good that comes from God. And yet it SEEMS as if this is not so. Good in disaster's form is difficult to credit in advance. Nor is there really SENSE in this idea. Why SHOULD the good appear in evil's form? And is this not deception if it does? Its CAUSE is here, if it appears at all. Why are not its effects apparent, then? Why in the future? And you seek to be content with sighing, and with "reasoning," you do not understand it now, but WILL some day. And THEN its meaning will be clear. This is NOT reason, for it is unjust, and clearly hints at punishment until the time of liberation is at hand.

Given a change of purpose for the good, there is NO reason for an interval in which disaster strikes, to be perceived as good some day, but now in form of pain. This is a SACRIFICE of now, which COULD not be the cost the Holy Spirit asks for what he gave WITHOUT a cost at all. Yet this illusion has a cause which, though untrue, must be ALREADY in your mind. And THIS illusion is but one effect which it engenders, and one form in which its outcome is perceived. This interval in time, when retribution is perceived to be the form in which the good appears, is but one aspect of the little space that lies between you, unforgiven still.

Be not content with future happiness. It has NO meaning, and is NOT your just reward. For you have cause for freedom NOW. What profits freedom in a prisoner's form? Why SHOULD deliverance be disguised as death? Delay is senseless, and the reason that would maintain effects of PRESENT cause must be delayed until a FUTURE time is merely a denial of the fact that consequence and cause MUST come as one. Look not to time, but to the little space between you still, to be delivered FROM. And do not let it be DISGUISED as time, and so preserved BECAUSE its form is changed, and what it IS cannot be recognized. The Holy Spirit's purpose NOW is yours. Should not His happiness be yours as well?

Lesson 198 "Only my condemnation injures me."

Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion. If you can condemn you can be injured. For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, 'til you lay it down as valueless, unwanted and unreal. Then does illusion cease to have effects, and all it seemed to have will be undone. Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave.

Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge. To condemn is thus impossible in truth. What seems to be its influence and its effects have not occurred at all. Yet must we deal with them a while as if they had. Illusion makes illusion. Except one. Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest.

Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others. All illusions save this one must multiply a thousand fold. But this is where illusions end. Forgiveness is the end of dreams because it is a dream of waking. It is not itself the truth. Yet does it point to where the truth must be, and gives direction with the certainty of God Himself. It is a dream in which the Son of God awakens to his Self and to his Father knowing They are One.

Forgiveness is the only road that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death. How could there be another way, when this one is the plan of God Himself? And why should you oppose it, quarrel with it, seek to find a thousand ways in which it must be wrong; a thousand other possibilities?

Is it not wiser to be glad you hold the answer to your problems in your hand? Is it not more intelligent to thank the One Who gives salvation, and accept His gift with gratitude? And is it not a kindness to yourself to hear His Voice and learn the simple lessons He would teach, instead of trying to dismiss His Words and substitute your own in place of His?

His Words will work. His Words will save. His Words contain all hope, all blessing and all joy that ever can be found upon this earth. His Words are born in God, and come to you with Heaven's love upon them. Those who hear His Words have heard the song of Heaven, for these are the words in which all will merge as one at last. And as this one will fade away, the Word of God will come to take its place, for It will be remembered then and loved.

The stillness of your Self remains unmoved, untouched by thoughts like these, and unaware of any condemnation which could need forgiveness. Dreams of any kind are strange and alien to the truth. Yet what but Truth could have a Thought Which builds a bridge to truth which brings illusions to the other side?

Today we practice letting freedom come to make its home with you. The truth bestows these words upon your mind, that you may find the key to light and let the darkness end:

"Only my condemnation injures me.

Only my own forgiveness sets me free."

Do not forget today that there can be no form of suffering that fails to hide an unforgiving thought. Nor can there be a form of pain forgiveness cannot heal.

Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father. Let today be celebrated both on earth and in your holy home as well. Be kind to both, as you forgive the trespasses you thought them guilty of, and see your innocence shining upon you from the Face of Christ.

Now is there silence all around the world. Now is there stillness where before there was a frantic rush of thoughts that made no sense. Now is there tranquil light across the face of earth, made quiet in a dreamless sleep. And now the Word of God alone remains upon it. Only That can be perceived an instant longer. Then are symbols done, and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind which God forever knows to be His only Son.

There is no condemnation in him. He is perfect in his holiness. He needs no thoughts of mercy. Who could give him gifts when everything is his? And who could dream of offering forgiveness to the Son of Sinlessness Itself, so like to Him Whose Son he is, that to behold the Son is to perceive no more, and only know the Father? In this vision of the Son, so brief that not an instant stands between this single sight and timelessness itself, you see the vision of yourself and then you disappear forever into God.

Today we come still nearer to the end of everything that yet would stand between this vision and our sight. And we are glad that we have come this far, and recognize that He Who brought us here will not forsake us now. For He would give to us the gift that God has given us through Him today. Now is it time for your deliverance. The time has come. The time has come today.

Section 5 - The Holiness of Healing

How holy are the healed! For in their sight their brothers share their healing and their love. Bringers of peace - the Holy Spirit's voice, through whom He speaks for God, Whose Voice He is - such are God's healers. They but speak for Him and never for themselves. They have no gifts but those they have from God. And these they share because they know that this is what He wills. They are not special. They are holy. They have chosen holiness, and given up all separate dreams of special attributes through which they can bestow unequal gifts on those less fortunate. Their healing has restored their wholeness so they can forgive, and join the song of prayer in which the healed sing of their union and their thanks to God.

As witness to forgiveness, aid to prayer, and the effect of mercy truly taught, healing is blessing. And the world responds in quickened chorus through the voice of prayer. Forgiveness shines its merciful reprieve upon each blade of grass and feathered wing and all the living things upon the earth. Fear has no haven here, for love has come in all its holy oneness. Time remains only to let the last embrace of prayer rest on the earth an instant, as the world is shined away. This instant is the goal of all true healers, whom the Christ has taught to see His likeness and to teach like Him.

Think what it means to help the Christ to heal! Can anything be holier than this? God thanks His healers, for He knows the Cause of healing is Himself, His Love, His Son, restored as His completion and returned to share with Him creation's holy joy. Do not ask partial healing, nor accept an idol for remembrance of Him Whose Love has never changed and never will. You are as dear to Him as is the whole of His creation, for it is in you as His eternal gift. What need have you for shifting dreams within a sorry world? Do not forget the gratitude of God. Do not forget the holy grace of prayer. Do not forget forgiveness of God's Son.

You first forgive, then pray, and you are healed. Your prayer has risen up and called to God, Who hears and answers. You have understood that you forgive yourself and pray for you and in this understanding you are healed. In prayer you have united with your Source, and understood that you have never left. This level cannot be attained until there is no hatred in your heart, and no desire to attack the Son of God. Never forget this; it is you who are God's Son, and as you choose to be to him so are you to yourself, and God to you.

Come unto Me, My children, once again, without such twisted thoughts upon your heart. You still are holy with the Holiness which fathered you in perfect sinlessness, and still surrounds you in the arms of peace. Dream now of healing. Then arise and lay all dreaming down forever. You are he your Father loves, who never left his home, nor wandered in a savage world with feet that bleed, and with a heavy heart made hard against the Love that is the truth in you. Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world.

He comes for Me and speaks My Word to you. I would recall My weary Son to Me from dreams of malice to the sweet embrace of everlasting Love and perfect peace. My arms are open to the Son I love, who does not understand that he is healed, and that his prayer has never ceased to sing his joyful thanks in unison with all creation, in the holiness of God. Be still an instant. Underneath the sounds of harsh and bitter striving and defeat there is a Voice that speaks to you of Me. Hear this an instant and you will be healed. Hear this an instant and you have been saved.

Help Me to wake My children from the dream of retribution and a little life beset with fear, that ends so soon it might as well have never been. Let Me instead remind you of eternity, in which your joy grows greater as your love extends along with Mine beyond infinity, where time and distance have no meaning. While you wait in sorrow Heaven's melody is incomplete, because your song is part of the eternal harmony of love. Without you is creation incomplete. Return to Me Who never left His Son.

Listen, My child, Your Father calls to you. Do not refuse to hear the call of Love. Do not deny to Christ what is His Own. Heaven is here and Heaven is your home. Creation leans across the bars of time to lift the heavy burden from the world. Lift up your hearts to greet its advent. See the shadows fade away in gentleness; the thorns fall softly from the bleeding brow of him who is the holy Son of God. How lovely are you, Child of Holiness! How like to Me! How lovingly I hold you in My heart and in My arms. How dear is every gift that you have given Me, who healed My Son and took him from the cross.

Arise and let My thanks be given you. And with My gratitude will come the gift first of forgiveness, then eternal peace. So now return your holy voice to Me. The song of prayer is silent without you. The universe is waiting your release because it is its own. Be kind to it and to yourself, and then be kind to Me. I ask but this; that you be comforted and live no more in terror and in pain. Do not abandon Love. Remember this; whatever you may think about yourself, whatever you may think about the world, your Father needs you and will call to you until you come to Him in peace at last.

Section 3 - The Forms of Error

It is NOT difficult to understand the reasons why you do not ask the Holy Spirit to solve ALL problems for you. HE has not a greater difficulty in resolving some than others. Every problem is the SAME to Him, because each one is solved in just the SAME respect, and through the SAME approach. The aspects that NEED solving do not change, whatever FORM the problem seems to take. A problem can appear in MANY forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts. It serves no purpose to attempt to solve it in a SPECIAL form. It WILL recur, and then recur again and yet again, until it has been answered for ALL time, and will not rise again in ANY form. And ONLY then are you RELEASED from it.

You HAVE no problems, though you THINK you have. And yet you COULD not think so, if you saw them vanish one by one, WITHOUT regard to size, complexity, or place and time, or ANY attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest. Think not the limits YOU impose on what you see can limit God in ANY way. The miracle of justice can correct ALL errors. Every problem IS an error. It does injustice to the Son of God, and therefore is not true. The Holy Spirit does not evaluate injustices as great or small, or more or less. They have NO properties to Him. They are mistakes from which the Son of God IS suffering, but needlessly. And so He takes the thorns and nails away. He does not pause to judge whether the hurt be large or little. He makes but one judgment; that to hurt God's Son MUST be unfair, and therefore is not so.

You who believe it safe to give but SOME mistakes to be corrected while you keep the others to yourself, remember this: Justice is total. There IS no such thing as partial justice. If the Son of God is guilty, then is he condemned, and he DESERVES no mercy from the God of justice. But ask not God to punish him because YOU find him guilty, and would have him die. God OFFERS you the means to see his innocence. Would it be fair to punish him because you will not LOOK at what is there to see? Each time you keep a problem for YOURSELF to solve, or judge that it is one which HAS no resolution, you have made it great, and past the hope of healing. You deny the miracle of justice CAN be fair.

If God is just, then CAN there be NO problems that justice cannot solve. But YOU believe that some injustices ARE fair and good, and necessary to preserve yourself. It is THESE problems that you think are great, and cannot BE resolved. For there are those you WANT to suffer loss, and NO-ONE whom you wish to be preserved from sacrifice entirely. Consider once again your special function. ONE is given you to see in him his perfect sinlessness. And you will ASK no sacrifice of him, because you could not will he suffer loss. The miracle of justice you call forth will rest on you as surely as on him. Nor will the Holy Spirit be content until it is received by everyone. For what you give to Him IS everyone's, and BY your giving it can He ensure that everyone receives it equally.

Think, then, how great your OWN release will be, when you are willing to receive correction for ALL your problems. You will not keep ONE, for pain in ANY form you will not WANT. And you will see each little hurt resolved before the Holy Spirit's gentle sight. For all of them ARE little in His sight and worth no more than just a tiny sigh before they disappear, to be forever undone and unremembered. What seemed once to be a SPECIAL problem, a mistake WITHOUT a remedy, or an affliction WITHOUT a cure, has been transformed into a universal blessing. Sacrifice is gone. And in its place, the Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss.

He cannot BE remembered until justice is loved INSTEAD of feared. He cannot be unjust to anyone or anything, because He knows that EVERYTHING that is belongs to Him, and will forever be as He created it. Nothing He loves but MUST be sinless and beyond attack. Your special function opens wide the door beyond which is the memory of His Love kept perfectly intact and undefiled. And all you need to do is but to wish that Heaven be given you instead of hell, and every bolt and barrier that seems to hold the door securely barred and locked, will merely fall away, and disappear. For it is NOT your Father's Will that you should offer or receive LESS than He gave, when He created you in perfect Love.

Lesson 137 "When I am healed, I am not healed alone."

Today's idea remains the central thought on which salvation rests. For healing is the opposite of all the world's ideas which dwell on sickness and on separate states. Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining. It becomes a door that closes on a separate self, and keeps it isolated and alone.

Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it can not surmount. The world obeys the laws that sickness serves, but healing operates apart from them.

It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. In sickness must he be apart and separate. But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all its parts intact and unassailed. In sickness does his Self appear to be dismembered and without the unity which gives It life. But healing is accomplished as he sees the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of God's Son. Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth. But healing demonstrates that truth is true.

The separation sickness would impose has never really happened. To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple truth, and always will remain exactly as it has forever been. Yet eyes accustomed to illusions must be shown that what they look upon is false. So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real.

Healing might thus be called a counter-dream which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth, but not in truth itself. Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred. Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth.

Just as forgiveness shines away all sin, and the real world will occupy the place of what you made, so healing must replace the fantasies of sickness which you hold before the simple truth. When sickness has been seen to disappear in spite of all the laws which hold it cannot but be real, then questions have been answered. And the laws can be no longer cherished nor obeyed.

Healing is freedom, for it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the truth. Healing is shared. And by this attribute it proves that laws unlike the ones which hold that sickness is inevitable are more potent than their sickly opposites. Healing is strength. For by its gentle hand is weakness overcome. And minds which were walled off within a body free to join with other minds, to be forever strong.

Healing, forgiveness, and the glad exchange of all the world of sorrow for a world where sadness cannot enter, are the means by which the Holy Spirit urges you to follow Him. His gentle lessons teach how easily salvation can be yours; how little practice you need undertake to let His laws replace the ones you made, to hold yourself a prisoner to death. His life becomes your own as you extend the little help He asks in freeing you from everything that ever caused you pain.

And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you. Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great your offering to all the world, when you let healing come to you. But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift which you receive when you are healed.

Those who are healed become the instruments of healing. Nor does time elapse between the instant they are healed and all the grace of healing it is given them to give. What is opposed to God does not exist, and who accepts it not within his mind becomes a haven where the weary can remain to rest. For here is truth bestowed, and here are all illusions brought to truth.

Would you not offer shelter to God's will? You but invite your Self to be at home, and can this invitation be refused? Ask the inevitable to occur and you will never fail. The other choice is but to ask what cannot be to be, and this cannot succeed. Today we ask that only truth will occupy our minds; that thoughts of healing will this day go forth from what is healed to what must yet be healed, aware that they will both occur as one.

We will remember, as the hour strikes, our function is to let our minds be healed that we may carry healing to the world, exchanging curse for blessing, pain for joy, and separation for the peace of God. Is not a minute of the hour worth the giving to receive a gift like this? Is not a little time a small expense to offer for the gift of everything?

Yet must we be prepared for such a gift. And so we will begin the day with this, and give ten minutes to these thoughts with which we will conclude today at night as well:

"When I am healed I am not healed alone.

And I would share my healing with the world,

That sickness may be banished from the mind

Of God's One Son, Who is my only Self."

Let healing be through you this very day. And as you rest in quiet be prepared to give as you receive, to hold but what you give, and to receive the Word of God to take the place of all the foolish thoughts that ever were imagined. Now we come together to make well all that was sick, and offer blessing where there was attack. Nor will we let this function be forgot as every hour of the day slips by, remembering our function with this thought:

"When I am healed I am not healed alone.

And I would bless my brothers, for I would

Be healed with them as they are healed with me."

Section 8 - Pleasure and Pain

Your little part is but to give the Holy Spirit the whole IDEA of sacrifice. And to ACCEPT the peace He gave, instead. WITHOUT the limits that would hold its extension back, and so would limit YOUR awareness of it. For what He gives MUST be extended, if YOU would have its limitless power, and use it for the Son of God's release. It is not THIS you would be rid of, and having it, you CANNOT limit it. If peace is homeless, so are you. And so am I. And He Who IS our Home, is homeless WITH us.

Only the mind can set a purpose, and only mind can see the means for its accomplishment, and justify its use. Peace and guilt are both conditions of the mind, to be ATTAINED. And these conditions are the home of the emotion that called them forth, and therefore is COMPATIBLE with it. But think you which it is that is compatible with YOU. Here is your choice, and it IS free. But all that LIES in it WILL come with it. And what you think you are can NEVER be APART from it.

The body is the great SEEMING betrayer of faith. In it lies disillusionment and the seeds of faithlessness. But ONLY if you asked of it what it CANNOT give. Can YOUR mistake be reasonable grounds for your depression and disillusionment, and for retaliative attack on what you think has failed you? Use not your ERROR as the justification for your faithlessness. You have NOT sinned, but you HAVE been mistaken in what is faithful. And the correction of YOUR mistake will GIVE you grounds for faith.

It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body, and NOT find pain. It is essential that this relationship be understood, for it is one the ego sees as proof of sin. It is not REALLY punitive at all. It is but the inevitable result of equating yourself WITH the body, which is the INVITATION to pain. For it invites FEAR to enter, and become your PURPOSE. The attraction of guilt MUST enter with it, and WHATEVER fear directs the body to do IS therefore painful. It will share the pain of ALL illusions, and the illusion of pleasure will BE the same as pain.

Is not this inevitable? Under fear's orders, the body WILL pursue guilt, serving its master, whose attraction to guilt maintains the whole illusion of his existence. This, then, IS the attraction to PAIN. Ruled by THIS perception, the body becomes the servant of pain, seeking it dutifully, and obeying the idea that pain IS pleasure. It is this IDEA that underlies all of the ego's heavy investment in the body. And it is this insane relationship which it keeps hidden, and yet feeds upon. To YOU, it teaches that the body's pleasure is happiness. But to ITSELF it whispers, "It is death."

Why should the body be ANYTHING to you? Certainly what it is MADE of is not precious. And, just as certainly, IT has no feeling. It transmits TO YOU the feelings that you WANT. Like any communication medium, the body receives and sends the messages that it is given. It has NO feeling for them. All of the feeling with which they are invested is given by the sender and the receiver. The ego and the Holy Spirit both recognize this. And both also recognize that here, THE SENDER AND RECEIVER ARE THE SAME. The Holy Spirit TELLS you this with joy. The ego HIDES it, for it would keep you unaware of it.

Who would send messages of hatred and attack, if he but understood he sends them to HIMSELF? Who would accuse, make guilty and condemn HIMSELF?The ego's messages are ALWAYS sent AWAY from you, in the belief that, for your message of attack and guilt, will someone OTHER than yourself suffer. And, even if YOU suffer, yet someone ELSE will suffer more. The great deceiver recognizes that this is not so, but, as the "enemy" of peace, it urges you to SEND OUT all your messages of hate, and free YOURSELF. And, to convince you this is possible, it bids the body search for pain in attack upon another, calling it pleasure, and OFFERING it to you as freedom FROM attack.

Hear not its madness, and believe not the impossible is true. Forget not that the ego has DEDICATED the body to the goal of sin, and places in it ALL its faith that this can be accomplished. Its sad disciples chant the body's praise continually, in solemn celebration of the ego's rule. Not one but MUST believe that YIELDING to the attraction of guilt is the ESCAPE from pain. Not one but MUST regard the body as himself, WITHOUT which he would die, and yet WITHIN which is his death equally inevitable.

It is not given to the ego's disciples to realize that they have dedicated themselves to death. This has been OFFERED them, but they have not accepted it. And what is offered must also be received, to be truly given. For the Holy Spirit, too, is a communication medium, receiving from the Father, and offering His messages unto the Son. Like to the ego, the Holy Spirit is both the sender and receiver. For what is sent through Him RETURNS to Him, seeking itself along the way, and FINDING what it seeks. So does the ego FIND the death it seeks, returning it to YOU.

Chapter 18 - How do God's Teachers deal with Their Pupils' Thoughts of Magic?

This is a crucial question both for teacher and pupil. If this issue is mishandled, the teacher of God has hurt himself and has also attacked his pupil. This strengthens fear and makes the magic seem quite real to both of them. How to deal with magic thus becomes a major lesson for the teacher of God to master. His first responsibility in this is not to attack it. If a magic thought arouses anger in any form, God's teacher can be sure that he is strengthening his own belief in sin and has condemned himself. He can be sure as well that he has asked for depression, pain, fear and disaster to come to him. Let him remember, then, it is not this that he would teach because it is not this that he would learn.

There is, however, a temptation to respond to magic in a way that reinforces it. Nor is this always obvious. It can, in fact, be easily concealed beneath a wish to help. It is this double wish that makes the help of little value, and must lead to undesired outcomes. Nor should it be forgotten that the outcome that results will always come to teacher and to pupil. How many times has it been emphasized that you give but to yourself? And where could this be better shown than in the kinds of help the teacher gives to those who need his aid? Here is his gift most clearly given him. For he will give only what he has chosen for himself. And in this gift is his judgment upon the holy Son of God.

It is easiest to let error be corrected where it is most apparent, and errors can be recognized by their results. A lesson truly taught can lead to nothing but release for teacher and pupil, who have shared in one intent. Attack can enter only if perception of separate goals has entered. And this must indeed have been the case if the result is anything but joy. The single aim of the teacher turns the divided goal of the pupil into one direction, with the call for help becoming his one appeal. This then is easily responded to with just one answer, and this answer will enter the teacher's mind unfailingly. From there it shines into his pupil's mind, making it one with his.

Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no-one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appear as facts. Regardless, too, of the intensity of the anger which is aroused. It may be merely slight irritation, perhaps too mild to be even clearly recognized. Or it may also take the form of intense rage, accompanied by thoughts of violence, fantasied or apparently acted out. It does not matter. All of these reactions are the same. They obscure the truth, and this can never be a matter of degree. Either truth is apparent or it is not. It cannot be partially recognized. Who is unaware of truth must look upon illusions.

Anger in response to perceived magic thoughts is a basic cause of fear. Consider what this reaction means, and its centrality in the world's thought system becomes apparent. A magic thought, by its mere presence, acknowledges a separation from God. It states, in the clearest form possible, that the mind which thinks it believes it has a separate will that can oppose the Will of God and succeed. That this can hardly be a fact is obvious. Yet that it can be believed as fact is surely so. And herein lies the birthplace of guilt. Who usurps the place of God and takes it for himself now has a deadly "enemy." And he must stand alone in his protection, and make himself a shield to keep him safe from fury that can never be abated and vengeance that can never be satisfied.

How can this unfair battle be resolved? Its ending is inevitable, for its outcome must be death. How then can one believe in one's defenses? Magic again must help. Forget the battle. Accept it as a fact and then forget it. Do not remember the impossible odds against you. Do not remember the immensity of the "enemy," and do not think about your frailty in comparison. Accept your separation, but do not remember how it came about. Believe that you have won it, but do not retain the slightest memory of Who your great "opponent" really is. Projecting your "forgetting" onto Him, it seems to you He has forgotten, too.

But what will now be your reaction to all magic thoughts? They can but reawaken sleeping guilt, which you have hidden but have not let go. Each one says clearly to your frightened mind, "You have usurped the place of God. Think not He has forgotten." Here we have the fear of God most starkly represented. For in that thought has guilt already raised madness to the throne of God Himself. And now there is no hope. Except to kill. Here is salvation now. An angry Father pursues His guilty Son. Kill or be killed, for here alone is choice. Beyond this there is none, for what was done cannot be done without. The stain of blood can never be removed, and anyone who bears this stain on him must meet with death.

Madness but seems terrible. In truth it has no power to make anything. Like the magic which becomes its servant, it neither attacks nor protects. To see it and to recognize its thought system is to look on nothing. Can nothing give rise to anger? Hardly so. Remember then, teacher of God, that anger recognizes a reality that is not there; yet is the anger certain witness that you do believe in it as fact. Now is escape impossible until you see you have responded to your own interpretation, which you have projected on an outside world. Let this grim sword be taken from you now. There is no death. This sword does not exist. The fear of God is causeless. But His Love is Cause of everything beyond all fear, and thus forever real and always true.

Lesson 166 "I am entrusted with the gifts of God."

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.

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.

Section 10 - The Justice of Heaven

What can it be but arrogance to think your little errors CANNOT be undone by Heaven's justice? And what COULD this mean, except that they are sins, and NOT mistakes, forever uncorrectable, and to be met with vengeance, NOT with justice? ARE you willing to be released from ALL effects of sin? You CANNOT answer this until you see all that the answer MUST entail. For if you answer "yes," this means you will forego ALL values of this world, in favor of the peace of Heaven. Not one sin would you retain. AND NOT ONE DOUBT THAT THIS IS POSSIBLE will you hold dear, that sin be kept in place. You mean that truth has greater value now than ALL illusions. And you recognize that truth must be REVEALED to you, because YOU know not what it IS.

To give reluctantly is not to gain the gift. BECAUSE YOU ARE RELUCTANT TO ACCEPT IT. It IS saved for you, until reluctance to receive it disappears, and you are WILLING it be given you. God's justice warrants gratitude, NOT fear. Nothing you give is lost to you or anyone, but cherished and preserved for you in Heaven, where all the treasures given to God's Son are kept for him, and offered anyone who but holds out his hand in willingness they be received. Nor is the treasure LESS as it is given out. Each gift received but ADDS to the supply. For God IS fair. He does not fight AGAINST His Son's reluctance to perceive salvation as a gift from Him. Yet would His justice not be satisfied until it is received by everyone.

Be certain any answer to a problem the Holy Spirit solves will ALWAYS be one in which NO-ONE loses. And this MUST be true BECAUSE He asks no sacrifice of anyone. An answer which demands the slightest loss to ANYONE has not RESOLVED the problem, but has added TO it, and made it greater, HARDER to resolve, AND MORE UNFAIR. It is impossible the Holy Spirit could SEE unfairness as a resolution. To Him, what is unfair must be corrected BECAUSE it is unfair. And EVERY error is a perception in which one, at least, is seen unfairly. Thus is justice NOT accorded to the Son of God. When ANYONE is seen as losing, HE HAS BEEN CONDEMNED. And punishment becomes his due, INSTEAD of justice.

The sight of innocence makes punishment impossible, and justice sure. The Holy Spirit's perception leaves no GROUNDS for an attack. Only a LOSS could justify attack, and loss of ANY kind He cannot see. The world solves problems in another way. IT sees a resolution as a state in which it is DECIDED who shall win and who shall lose; HOW MUCH the one shall take, and HOW MUCH can the loser still defend. Yet does the problem still remain unsolved, for ONLY justice can set up a state in which there IS no loser; no-one left unfairly treated and deprived, and thus with grounds for vengeance. Problem SOLVING can NOT be vengeance, which at best can bring another problem ADDED to the first, in which the murder is not obvious.

The Holy Spirit's problem solving is the way in which the problem ENDS. It has been solved BECAUSE it has been met with justice. And UNTIL it has, it will recur because it has NOT yet been solved. The principle that justice MEANS no-one can lose is crucial to this course. For miracles DEPEND on justice. NOT as it is seen through this world's eyes, but as God knows it, and as knowledge is reflected in sight the Holy Spirit gives. NO-ONE deserves to lose. And what would be UNJUST to him can NOT occur. Healing must be for everyone BECAUSE he does not merit an attack of any kind. What order CAN there be in miracles, unless someone deserves to suffer MORE, and others LESS? And is this justice to the wholly innocent?

A miracle IS justice. It is NOT a special gift to some, to be WITHHELD from others as LESS worthy, MORE condemned, and thus APART from healing. Who is there who can be separate from salvation, if its PURPOSE is the end of specialness? Where is salvation's justice if SOME errors are unforgivable, and WARRANT vengeance IN PLACE of healing and return of peace? Salvation cannot SEEK to help God's Son be MORE unfair than HE has sought to be. If miracles, the Holy Spirit's gift, were given specially to an elect and special group, and kept APART from others as LESS deserving, then is He ALLY to specialness. What He cannot perceive He bears no witness to. And everyone is EQUALLY entitled to His gift of healing and deliverance and peace.

To give a problem to the Holy Spirit to solve FOR you means that you WANT it solved. To keep it for yourself to solve WITHOUT His help is to decide it should remain UNsettled, UNresolved, and lasting in its power of injustice and attack. No-one can BE unjust to you, unless you have decided first to BE unjust. And then MUST problems rise to block your way, and peace be scattered by the winds of hate. Unless you think that ALL your brothers have an equal right to miracles with you, you will not claim YOUR right to them, because you were unjust to one with EQUAL rights. Seek to deny, and you WILL feel denied. Seek to deprive, and you HAVE BEEN deprived.

The miracle that you receive you GIVE. Each one becomes an illustration of the law on which salvation rests; that justice MUST be done to all, if ANYONE is to be healed. No-one can lose, and everyone MUST benefit. Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish, when it is offered to everyone alike. It is received and GIVEN equally. It IS awareness that giving and receiving ARE the same. BECAUSE it does not make the same unlike, it sees no differences where none exist. And thus it is the SAME for everyone, because it sees no differences in THEM. Its offering is universal, and it teaches but one message. What is God's BELONGS to everyone, and IS his due.

Section 2 - The Illusion of an Enemy

An ancient lesson is not overcome by the OPPOSING of the new and old. It is not VANQUISHED that the truth be known, or fought against to LOSE to truth's appeal. There is no battle which must be prepared, no time to be expended, and no plans that need be laid for bringing in the new. There IS an ancient battle being waged AGAINST the truth, but truth does not respond. Who COULD be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts himself? He HAS no enemy in truth. And CAN he be assailed by dreams? Let us review again what seems to stand BETWEEN you and the truth of what you are. For there are steps in its relinquishment. The first is a decision which YOU make. But afterwards, the truth is GIVEN you.

You would ESTABLISH truth. And by your wish, you set two choices to be made each time you think you must decide on anything. NEITHER is true. Nor ARE they different. Yet must we see them both, before you can look PAST them, to the ONE Alternative that IS a different choice. But not in dreams you made, that this might be OBSCURED to you. What YOU would choose between is NOT a choice, and gives but the ILLUSION it is free, for it will have ONE outcome either way. Thus is it really not a choice at all. The leader and the follower emerge as SEPARATE roles, each seeming to possess advantages you would not want to lose. So in their fusion there appears to be the hope of satisfaction and of peace.

And what of him? What does he want of YOU? What COULD he want, but what you want of him? Herein is life as easily as death, for what you choose you choose as well for him. Two calls you make to him, as he to you. Between these two IS choice, because from them there IS a different outcome. If he be the leader or the follower to you, it matters not, for you have chosen death. But if he calls for death or calls for life, for hate or for forgiveness and for help, is NOT the same in outcome. Hear the one, and you are separate from him, and are lost. But hear the other, and you join with him, and in your answer is salvation found.

The voice you hear in him is but your own. What does he ask you for? And listen well. For he is asking what will come to you, because you see an image of yourself, and hear your voice requesting what you want. Before you answer, pause to think of this:

The answer that I give my brother is

What I am asking for. And what I learn

Of him is what I learn about myself.

Then let us wait an instant and be still, forgetting everything we thought we heard; remembering how much we do not know. This brother neither leads nor follows us, but walks beside us on the selfsame road. He is like us, as near or far away from what we want as we will let him be.

We make no gains he does not make with us, and we fall back if he does not advance. Take not his hand in anger but in love, for in his progress do you count your own. And we go separately along the way unless you keep him safely by your side. BECAUSE he is your equal in God's Love will YOU be saved from all appearances, and answer to the Christ Who calls to you. Be still and listen. Think not ancient thoughts. Forget the dismal lessons that you learned about this Son of God who calls to you. Christ calls to all with EQUAL tenderness, seeing no leaders and no followers, and hearing but ONE Answer to them all. Because He hears one Voice, He cannot hear a DIFFERENT answer from the one He gave when God appointed Him His only Son.

Be very still an instant. Come without all thought of what you ever learned before, and put aside all images you made. The old will fall away before the new, without your opposition or intent. There will be no attack upon the things you thought were precious, and in need of care. There will be no assault upon your wish to hear a call that never has been made. Nothing will hurt you in this holy place to which you come to listen silently, and learn the truth of what you really want. No more than this will you be asked to learn. But as you hear it, you will understand you need but come away WITHOUT the thoughts you did not want, and that were NEVER true.

Forgive your brother ALL appearances, which are but ancient lessons that you taught yourself about the sinfulness in you. Hear but his call for mercy and release from all the fearful images he holds of what HE is, and of what YOU must be. He is afraid to walk with you, and thinks perhaps a bit behind, a bit ahead, would be a safer place for him to be. Can YOU make progress if you think the same, advancing only when he would step back, and falling back when he would go ahead? For so do you forget the journey's goal which is but to decide to walk WITH him, so neither leads nor follows. Thus it is a way you go together, NOT alone. And in THIS choice is learning's outcome changed, for Christ has been reborn to BOTH of you.

An instant spent without your old ideas of who your great Companion is and what he SHOULD be asking for, will be enough to let this happen. And you will perceive his purpose is the same as yours. He asks for what YOU want, and needs the SAME as you. It takes, perhaps, a different FORM in him, but it is NOT the form you answer to. He asks and YOU receive, for you have come with but ONE purpose; that you both may learn you love each other with a brother's love. And AS a brother, must his Father be the same as yours, as he is like yourself. Together is your joint inheritance remembered and accepted by you both. Alone it is denied to both of you.

Is it not clear that while you still insist on leading or on following, you think you walk alone, with no-one by your side? This is the road to nowhere, for the light cannot be given while you walk alone, and so you cannot SEE which way you go. And so there IS confusion, and a sense of endless doubting, as you stagger back and forward in the darkness and alone. Yet are these but appearances of what the journey is, and how it must be made. For next to you is One Who holds the light before you, so that every step is made in certainty and sureness of the road. A blindfold can indeed obscure your sight, but cannot make the way itself grow dark. And He Who travels with you HAS the Light.

Section 11 - The Answer to Prayer

Everyone who has ever tried to use prayer to request something, has experienced what appears to be failure. This is not only true in connection with specific things which might be harmful, but also in connection with requests which are strictly in line with this course. The latter, in particular, might be incorrectly interpreted as "proof" that the course does not mean what it says. But you must remember that the course does state, and REPEATEDLY, that its purpose is the ESCAPE FROM FEAR.

Let us suppose, then, that what you request of the Holy Spirit IS what you really want, but that YOU ARE STILL AFRAID OF IT. Should this be the case, your ATTAINMENT of it would no longer BE what you want, even if IT is. This accounts for why CERTAIN SPECIFIC FORMS of healing are not achieved, even though the STATE of healing IS. It frequently happens that an individual asks for physical healing, because he is fearful OF BODILY HARM. However, at the same time, if he WERE healed physically, the threat to his thought-system would be considerably MORE fearful to him than its physical EXPRESSION. In this case, he is not really asking for RELEASE from fear, but for the removal of a symptom WHICH HE HAS SELECTED. This request is, therefore, NOT for healing at all.

The Bible emphasizes that ALL prayers are answered, and this must be true, if no effort is wasted. The very fact that one has asked the Holy Spirit for ANYTHING, will ensure a response. But it is equally certain that no response, given by the Holy Spirit, will EVER be one which would INCREASE fear. It is even possible that His answer will not be heard at all. It is IMpossible, however, that it will be lost. There are many answers which you have already received, but have NOT YET HEARD. I assure you that they are waiting for you. It is indeed true that no effort is wasted.

If you would know your prayers are answered, never doubt a Son of God. Do not question him, and do not confound him, for your faith in him is your faith in YOURSELF. If you would know God and His Answer, believe in me, whose faith in YOU cannot be shaken. Can you ask of the Holy Spirit truly, and doubt your brother? Believe his words are true, because of the truth which is in him. You will unite with the truth in him, and his words will BE true. As you hear him, you will hear me.

LISTENING to truth is the only way you can hear it now, and finally KNOW it. The message your brother gives you is UP TO YOU. What does he say to you? What would YOU have him say? Your decision ABOUT him determines the message YOU receive. Remember that the Holy Spirit is in him, and His Voice speaks to YOU through him. What can so holy a brother tell you EXCEPT truth? But are you LISTENING to it?

Your brother may not know who he is, but there is a Light in his mind which DOES know. This Light can shine into yours, making HIS words true, and you ABLE TO HEAR THEM. His words ARE the Holy Spirit's answer to YOU. Is your faith in him strong enough to LET you listen and hear? Salvation is of your brother. The Holy Spirit extends from your mind to his, and answers YOU. You cannot hear the Voice for God in yourself alone, because you are NOT alone. And His answer is only for what you ARE.

You will not know the trust I have in you, unless you EXTEND it. You will not trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or believe that it is for YOU, unless you hear it in others. It MUST be for your brother, BECAUSE it is for you. Would God have created a Voice for you alone? Could you hear His answer EXCEPT as He answers ALL of God's Sons? Hear of your brother what you would have me hear of YOU, for you would not want ME to be deceived.

I love you for the truth in you, as GOD does. Your deceptions may deceive YOU, but they CANNOT deceive ME. Knowing what you ARE, I CANNOT doubt you. I hear only the Holy Spirit in you, Who speaks to me through YOU. If you would hear ME, hear my brothers, in whom God's Voice speaks. The answer to ALL your prayers lies in them. You will be answered as you HEAR THE ANSWER IN EVERYONE. Do not listen to anything else, or you will not hear truth.

To disbelieve is to side AGAINST, or to ATTACK. To believe is to accept, and SIDE WITH. To believe is not to be credulous, but to accept and APPRECIATE. What you do NOT believe you do NOT APPRECIATE, and you CANNOT be grateful for what you do not VALUE. There is a price you will pay for judgment, because judgment IS the setting of price. And as you set it, you WILL pay it.

If paying is equated with GETTING, you will set the PRICE low, but demand a high RETURN. But you will have forgotten that to price is to VALUE, so that YOUR return is IN PROPORTION TO YOUR JUDGMENT OF WORTH. If paying is associated with giving, IT CANNOT BE PERCEIVED AS LOSS, and the RECIPROCAL relationship of giving and RECEIVING will be recognized. The price will then be set high, because of the value of the RETURN.

To price for GETTING is to LOSE SIGHT OF VALUE, making it inevitable that you will NOT value what you receive. Valuing it little, you will not appreciate it, and you will not WANT it. Never forget, then, that YOU have set the value on what you receive, and have priced it BY what you give. To believe that it is possible to get much FOR little, is to believe that you can bargain with God.

God's laws are ALWAYS fair, and PERFECTLY consistent. BY giving, you receive. But to receive is to ACCEPT, NOT to get. It is impossible not to HAVE, but it IS possible NOT TO KNOW YOU HAVE. The recognition of HAVING is the willingness for GIVING, and ONLY by this willingness, can you RECOGNIZE what you have. What you give is therefore the value you put on what you have, being the exact measure of the value you PUT upon it. And this, in turn, is the measure of HOW MUCH YOU WANT IT.

You can ASK of the Holy Spirit, then, ONLY by giving TO Him. And you can GIVE to Him only WHERE YOU SEE HIM. If you SEE Him in everyone, consider how much you will be asking OF Him, and HOW MUCH YOU WILL RECEIVE. He will deny you nothing, because you have denied Him nothing, and so you can SHARE EVERYTHING. This is the way, and the ONLY way, to have His answer, because His answer is all you can ask for and WANT. Say, then, to everyone,

"Because I will to know myself, I see you as God's Son and my brother."

Section 4 - Sin as an Adjustment

The belief in sin is an ADJUSTMENT. And an adjustment is a CHANGE, a shift in perception, or a belief that what was so before has been made DIFFERENT. Every adjustment is therefore a DISTORTION, and calls upon defenses to uphold it AGAINST reality. Knowledge requires NO adjustment, and, in fact, is lost if any shift or change is undertaken. For this reduces it at once to mere perception; a way of LOOKING in which CERTAINTY is lost, and DOUBT has entered. To this IMPAIRED condition are adjustments necessary. BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT TRUE. Who need adjust to truth, which calls upon only what he IS, to understand?

Adjustments of ANY kind are of the ego. For it is the ego's fixed belief that all relationships DEPEND upon adjustments, to make of them what it would have them be. DIRECT relationships, in which there are NO interferences, are ALWAYS seen as dangerous. The ego is the self-appointed mediator of ALL relationships, making whatever adjustments it deems necessary, and INTERPOSING them BETWEEN those who would meet, to keep them separate and PREVENT their union. It is this studied interference which makes it difficult to recognize your holy relationship for what it is.

The holy do not interfere with truth. They are NOT afraid of it, for it is WITHIN it that they RECOGNIZED their holiness, and rejoiced at what they saw. They looked on it directly, WITHOUT attempting to ADJUST themselves to it, or it to them. And so they saw that it was IN them, NOT deciding first where they would have it be. Their looking merely asked a question, and it was WHAT THEY SAW that answered . YOU make the world and THEN adjust to it. AND IT TO YOU. Nor is there any difference between yourself and it in your perception, WHICH MADE THEM BOTH.

A simple question yet remains, and NEEDS an answer. Do you LIKE what you have made? A world of murder and attack, through which you thread your timid way through constant dangers, alone and frightened, hoping at most that death will wait a little longer, before it overtakes you, and you disappear. YOU MADE THIS UP. It is a picture of what you think YOU are; of how you SEE yourself. A murderer IS frightened, and those who kill FEAR death. All these are but the fearful thoughts of those who would adjust themselves to a world MADE fearful by their adjustments. And they look out in sorrow from what is sad WITHIN, and see the sadness THERE.

Have you wondered what the world is REALLY like? How would it look through HAPPY eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on YOURSELF. IT is not there at all. But judgment lays a sentence on it, JUSTIFIES it, and MAKES IT REAL. Such is the world you see; a judgment on yourself, and made by YOU. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whose image it IS and which it loves, and placed OUTSIDE you, in the world. And TO this world must YOU adjust, as long as you believe this picture IS outside, and has you at its mercy.

This world IS merciless, and, were it outside you, you SHOULD indeed be fearful. But it is YOU who made it merciless. And now, if mercilessness SEEMS to look back at you, IT CAN BE CORRECTED. Who, in a holy relationship, can long remain unholy? The world the holy see is one with them, just as the world the ego looks upon is like itself. The world the holy see is beautiful, because they see their innocence in it. They did not TELL it what it was. They did not make adjustments to fit their orders. They gently questioned it, and whispered "what are you?" And He Who watches over all perception answered.

Take not the judgment of the world as answer to the question, "what am I?" The world BELIEVES in sin, but the belief that made it as you see it, is NOT outside you. Seek not to make the Son of God ADJUST to his insanity. There IS a stranger in him, who wandered carelessly into the home of Truth, and who will wander off. He came WITHOUT a purpose. But he will not remain before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered, and you accepted. For there the STRANGER is made homeless, and YOU are welcome. Ask not this transient stranger, "who am I?" He is the only thing in all the universe that does not know.

Yet it is he you asked, and it is to HIS answer you would adjust. This one wild thought, fierce in its arrogance and yet so tiny and so meaningless it slips unnoticed through the universe of truth, becomes your guide. To it you turn, to ask the MEANING of the universe. And of the one blind thing in all the seeing universe you ask, "how shall I look upon the Son of God?" Does one ask judgment of what is totally BEREFT of judgment? And if you HAVE, would you BELIEVE the answer? And ADJUST to it as if it were the truth? The world you look on IS the answer that it gave you. And YOU have given it power to ADJUST the world to MAKE its answer true.

You asked this puff of madness for the meaning of your unholy relationship, and adjusted it according to its insane answer. How happy did it make you? Did you meet with joy, to bless the Son of God, and give him thanks for all the happiness he held out to you? Did you RECOGNIZE each other as the eternal gift of God to you? Did you see the holiness that shone in both of you, to bless the other? That is the purpose of your HOLY relationship. Ask not the means of its attainment of the one thing that still would have it be unholy. Give it NO power to ADJUST the means and end.

Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are made free. It takes a while for them to understand what freedom IS. You groped but feebly in the dust and found each other's hand, uncertain whether to let it go, or to take hold on life so long forgotten. Strengthen your hold, and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies. He seemed to be crucified beside you. And yet his holiness remained untouched and perfect, and with him beside you shall you this day enter with him to Paradise, and know the peace of God.

There is no fear in perfect love, BECAUSE it knows no sin. And it MUST look on others as on itself. Looking with charity within, what can it fear WITHOUT? The innocent see safety, and the pure see God within His Son, and look unto the Son to lead them to the Father. And where else would they go, but where they will to be? Each of you now will lead the other to the Father, as surely as God created His Son holy, and kept him so. In your brother is the light of God's eternal promise of YOUR immortality. See HIM as sinless, and there can BE no fear in you.

Section 7 - Salvation from Fear

Before your brother's holiness the world is still, and peace descends on it in gentleness and blessing so complete, that not one trace of conflict still remains to haunt you in the darkness of the night. He is your Savior from the dreams of terror. He is the healing of your sense of sacrifice, and fear that what you have will scatter with the wind, and turn to dust. In him is your assurance God is here, and with you now. While he is what he is, you can be sure that God is knowable, and WILL be known to you. For He could never leave His own creation. And the sign that this is so lies in your brother, offered you that all your doubts about yourself may disappear before his holiness.

See in him God's creation. For in him his Father waits for your acknowledgment that He created YOU as part of Him. Without you, there would be a lack in God, a Heaven incomplete, a Son without a Father. There could be no universe, and no reality. For what God wills is whole, and part of Him BECAUSE His Will is One. Nothing alive that is not part of Him, and nothing is but IS alive in Him. Your brother's holiness shows you that God is One with him AND you; that what he has is yours BECAUSE you are not separate from him OR from his Father.

Nothing is lost to you in all the universe. Nothing that God created has He failed to lay before you lovingly, as yours forever. And no thought within His Mind is absent from your own. It is His Will you SHARE His love for you, and look upon yourself as lovingly as He conceived of you before the world began, and as He knows you still. God changes not His Mind about His Son with passing circumstance which has no meaning in eternity where He abides, and you with Him. Your brother IS as He created him. And it is this that saves YOU from a world that He created not.

Forget not that the healing of God's Son is all the world is for. That is the ONLY purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it, and thus the only one it HAS. Until you see the healing of the Son as all you wish to be accomplished by the world, by time, and ALL appearances, you will NOT know the Father OR yourself. For you will use the world for what is NOT its purpose, and will NOT escape its laws of violence and death. Yet it is GIVEN you to be BEYOND its laws in ALL respects, in EVERY way, and EVERY circumstance; in ALL temptation to perceive what is NOT there, and ALL belief God's Son can suffer pain because he sees himself as he is not.

Look on your brother, and behold in him the whole reversal of the laws that SEEM to rule this world. See in his freedom YOURS, for such it IS. Let not his specialness obscure the truth in him, for not one law of death you bind him to will YOU escape. And not one sin you see in him but keeps you BOTH in hell. Yet will his perfect sinlessness RELEASE you both, for holiness is quite impartial, with one judgment made for all it looks upon. And that is made, not of itself, but through the Voice that speaks for God in everything that lives, and shares His Being.

It is HIS sinlessness that eyes that see can look upon. It is HIS loveliness they see in everything. And it is HE they look for everywhere, and find no sight or place or time where He is NOT. Within your brother's holiness, the perfect frame for YOUR salvation and the world's, is set the shining memory of Him in Whom your brother lives, and you along with him. Let not your eyes be blinded by the veil of specialness that hides the face of Christ from him, and you as well. And let the fear of God no longer hold the vision you were MEANT to see from you. Your brother's BODY shows not Christ to you. He IS set forth within his holiness.

Choose, then, his body OR his holiness as what you WANT to see, and which you choose is yours to look upon. Yet will you choose in countless situations, and through time which seems to have no end, until the truth be your decision. For eternity is NOT regained by still one more denial of the Christ in him. And where is YOUR salvation, if he is but a body? Where is YOUR peace, but in his holiness? And where is God Himself but in that part of Him He set forever in your brother's holiness, that YOU might see the truth about yourself set forth at last in terms you recognized and understood?

Your brother's holiness is sacrament and benediction unto YOU. His errors can NOT withhold God's blessing from himself, nor you who see him truly. His mistakes can cause delay, which it is given YOU to take from him, that both may end a journey that has never been begun, and NEEDS no end. What never was is NOT a part of you. Yet will you think it is, until you realize that it is not a part of him who stands beside you. He is the mirror of yourself, wherein you see the judgment you have laid on BOTH of you. The Christ in you beholds his holiness. Your specialness looks on his body, and beholds him not.

See him as what he IS, that YOUR deliverance may not be long. A senseless wandering, without a purpose and without accomplishment of any kind, is all the other choice can offer you. Futility of function not fulfilled will haunt you while your brother lies asleep, 'til what has been assigned to you is done, and he is risen from the past. He who condemned himself, and you as well, is given you to save from condemnation, along with you. And both shall see God's glory in His Son, whom you mistook as flesh, and bound to laws that have NO power over him at all.

Would you not gladly realize these laws are not for YOU? Then see HIM not as prisoner to them. It CANNOT be what governs part of God holds not for all the rest. You place YOURSELF under the laws you see as ruling HIM. Think, then, how great the Love of God for YOU must be, that He has given you a part of Him, to save from pain and give YOU happiness. And never doubt but that your specialness will disappear before the Will of God Who loves each part of Him with equal love and care. The Christ in you CAN see your brother truly. And would you decide AGAINST the holiness He sees?

Now you are merely asked that you pursue another goal with far LESS vigilance, with little effort and with little time, and with the power of God maintaining it, and promising success. Yet, of the two, it is THIS one you find more difficult. The SACRIFICE of self you understand, nor do you deem THIS cost too heavy. But a tiny willingness, a nod to God, a greeting to the Christ in you, you find a burden wearisome and tedious, too heavy to be borne. Yet, to the dedication to the truth as GOD established it, NO sacrifice is asked, NO strain called forth, and all the power of Heaven and the might of truth itself is given to provide the means, and GUARANTEE the goal's accomplishment.

You who believe it easier to see your brother's body than his holiness, be sure you understand what made this judgment. Here is the voice of specialness heard clearly, judging AGAINST the Christ, and setting forth, for YOU, the purpose that you CAN attain, and what you can NOT do. Forget not that this judgment MUST apply to what you do with IT as your ally. For what you do through Christ it does not know. To Him, this judgment makes no sense at all, for ONLY what His Father wills is possible, and there IS no alternative for Him to see. Out of His LACK of conflict comes your peace. And from His purpose come the means for effortless accomplishment and rest.

Section 8 - Commuting the Sentence

And, if the Holy Spirit can commute each sentence that you laid upon yourself into a blessing, then it CANNOT be a sin. Sin is ONE thing in all this world that CANNOT change. It is immutable. And ON its changelessness the world depends. The magic of the world can SEEM to hide the pain of sin from sinners, and deceive with glitter and with guile. Yet each one knows the cost of sin is death. And so it IS. For sin is a REQUEST for death, a wish to make this world's foundation sure as love, dependable as Heaven, and as strong as God Himself. The world IS safe from love to everyone who thinks sin possible. Nor WILL it change.

Yet IS it possible what God created NOT should SHARE the attributes of His creation, when it OPPOSES it in every way? It CANNOT be the "sinner's" wish for death is just as strong as is His Will for Life. Nor CAN the basis of a world He did NOT make be firm and sure as Heaven. How COULD it be that hell and Heaven are the same? And is it possible that what He did NOT will can NOT be changed? What is immutable BESIDES His Will? And what can share Its attributes EXCEPT Itself? What wish can rise AGAINST His Will, and BE immutable?

If you could realize NOTHING is changeless BUT the Will of God, this course would not be difficult for you. For it is this that you do not believe. Yet there is nothing ELSE you COULD believe, if you but looked at what it really IS. Let us go back to what we said before, and think of it more carefully. It MUST be so that either God is mad, or is this world a place of madness. Not ONE Thought of His makes ANY sense at all within this world. And NOTHING that the world believes as true has ANY meaning in His Mind at all.

What makes no sense and has no meaning IS insanity. And what is madness CANNOT be the truth. If ONE belief so deeply valued here were true, then every Thought God ever had is an illusion. And if but ONE Thought of His is true, then ALL beliefs the world gives ANY meaning to are false, and make no sense at all. This IS the choice you make. Do not attempt to see it differently, nor twist it into something it is not. For only THIS decision CAN you make. The rest is up to God, and NOT to you.

Sin is not real BECAUSE the Father and the Son are NOT insane. This world is meaningless BECAUSE it rests on sin. Who could create the changeless, if it does NOT rest on truth? The Holy Spirit HAS the power to change the whole foundation of the world you see to something else; a basis NOT insane, on which a sane perception can be based, another world perceived. And one in which is nothing contradicted that would lead the Son of God to sanity and joy. Nothing attests to death and cruelty; to separation and to differences. For here is everything perceived as one, and no-one loses, that each one may gain.

Test EVERYTHING that you believe against this ONE requirement. And understand that everything that meets this ONE demand is worthy of your faith. But nothing else. What is not love is sin, and either one perceives the other as insane and meaningless. Love is the basis for a world perceived as wholly mad to sinners, who believe theirs is the way to sanity. But sin is equally insane within the sight of love, whose gentle eyes would look BEYOND the madness, and rest peacefully on truth. Each sees a world immutable, as each defines the changeless and eternal truth of what YOU are. And each reflects a view of what the Father and the Son MUST be, to make that viewpoint meaningful and sane.

Your special function is the special form in which the fact that God is NOT insane appears most sensible and meaningful to you. The CONTENT is the same. The FORM is suited to your special needs, and to the special time and place in which you think you find yourself, and where you can be free of place and time, and ALL that you believe must limit you. The Son of God can NOT be bound by time or place, or anything God did NOT will. Yet, if His Will is seen as madness, then the FORM of sanity which makes it most acceptable to those who ARE insane requires special choice. Nor CAN this choice be made BY the insane, whose problem IS their choices are NOT free, and made with reason in the light of sense.

It WOULD be madness to entrust salvation to the insane. BECAUSE He is not mad, has God appointed One as sane as He to raise a saner world to meet the sight of everyone who chose insanity as his salvation. To this One is given the choice of form most suitable to him; one which will NOT attack the world he sees, but enter into it in quietness, and SHOW him it is mad. This One but points to an ALTERNATIVE, ANOTHER way of looking at what he has seen before, and recognizes as the world in which he lives, and THOUGHT he understood before. Now MUST he question this, because the form of the alternative is one which he can NOT deny, nor overlook, nor fail completely to perceive and see at all.

To each his special function is designed to be perceived as possible, and more and more desired, as it PROVES to him that it is an alternative he WANTS. From this position does his sinfulness, and ALL the sin he sees within the world, offer him less and less. Until he comes to understand it COST him sanity, and stands BETWEEN him and whatever hope he has of BEING sane. Nor is he left without ESCAPE from madness, for he has a special part in EVERYONE's escape. He can no more be left outside, WITHOUT a special function in the hope of peace, than could the Father overlook His Son, and pass him by in careless thoughtlessness.

What is dependable EXCEPT His Love? And where does sanity abide EXCEPT in Him? The One Who speaks for Him can show you this, in the alternative He chose especially for you. It is God's Will that you remember this, and so emerge from deepest mourning into perfect joy. Accept the function that has been assigned to you in God's Own plan to show His Son that hell and Heaven are different; NOT the same. But that, in Heaven THEY are all the same, WITHOUT the differences that WOULD have made a hell of Heaven, and a heaven of hell, had such insanity been possible.

The whole belief that someone loses but reflects the underlying tenet God must be insane. For in this world it seems that one must gain BECAUSE another loses. If THIS were true, then God is mad indeed. But what IS this belief, except a form of the more basic tenet, "Sin is real, and rules the world?" For every little gain, must someone lose, and pay exact amount in blood and suffering. For otherwise would evil triumph, and destruction be the total cost of any gain at all. You who believe that God is mad, look carefully at this, and understand that it MUST be that EITHER God OR this must be insane, but hardly both.

Salvation is rebirth of the idea no-one CAN lose for ANYONE to gain. And everyone MUST gain, if anyone WOULD BE a gainer. Here is sanity restored. And on this single rock of truth can faith in God's eternal saneness rest, in perfect confidence and perfect peace. Reason is satisfied, for ALL insane beliefs can be corrected here. And sin MUST be impossible, if THIS is true. This is the rock on which salvation rests; the vantage point from which the Holy Spirit gives meaning and direction to the plan in which your special function has a part. For here your special function is made whole, because it shares the FUNCTION of the whole.

Remember ALL temptation is but this; a mad belief that God's insanity would make YOU sane, and GIVE you what you want. That either God OR you must LOSE to madness, because your aims can NOT be reconciled. Death demands life, but life is NOT maintained at ANY cost. No-one CAN suffer for the Will of God to be fulfilled. Salvation IS His Will BECAUSE you share it. NOT for you alone, but for the Self which IS the Son of God. He CANNOT lose, for if he could, the loss would be his Father's, and in Him NO loss is possible. And this is sane BECAUSE it is the truth.

Section 3 - Distortions of Miracle Impulses

Man must contribute to his readiness here as elsewhere. The readiness for faith, as for everything else that is true, entails the two steps necessary for the release from fear.

Denial of fear, in human terms, is a strong defense because it entails two levels of error:

1. That truth CAN be denied and

2. That absence of truth can be effective.

EXPERIENCING fear, which is more characteristic of Bill, involves only the second error. However, these differences do not affect the power of the miracle at all, since only truth and error are its concern.

YOU are both more miracle-minded, and less able to recognize fear because of your stronger, but split, identification. Bill, also characteristically, is less miracle-minded, but better able to recognize fear, because his identification is more consistently right but weaker.

Together, the conditions needed for consistent miracle-mindedness, the state in which fear has been abolished, can be particularly well worked out. In fact, it WAS already well worked out before.

Your idea about the real meaning of "possession" should be clarified. Your own denial of fear (this refers to a visionary experience of Helen Schucman) introduced some error variance, but not really a significant amount. However, there is always a chance that as the size of the sample increases, what was non-significant before may ATTAIN significance, so we had better get this out of the way now while you are still within the safety margin.

Fear of possession is a perverted expression of the fear of the irresistible attraction. (Aside. Yes, this DOES apply to homosexuality, among other errors, where the whole concept of possessing, or "entering" is a key fear. It is a symbolic statement of an inverted decision NOT to enter into, or possess, the Kingdom. In physical terms, which it emphasizes because of the inherent error of Soul avoidance, REAL physical creation is avoided, and fantasy gratification is substituted.)

The truth is still that the attraction of God is irresistible at ALL levels, and the acceptance of this totally unavoidable truth is only a matter of time. But you should consider whether you WANT to wait, because you CAN return now, if you choose. (Note to Helen Schucman: You are writing this with improper motivation, but we will try anyway. If you are to stop, do so immediately.)

Possession is a concept which has been subject to numerous distortions, some of which we will list below:

1. It (possession) can be associated with the body only. If this occurs, sex is particularly likely to be contaminated. Possession versus being possessed is apt to be seen as the male and female role. Since neither will be conceived of as satisfying alone, and both will be associated with fear, this interpretation is particularly vulnerable to psychosexual confusion.

2. From a rather similar misperceptual reference point, possession can also be associated with things. This is essentially a shift from 1), and is usually due to an underlying fear of associating possession with people. In this sense, it is an attempt to PROTECT people, like the superstition about "protecting the name", we mentioned before.

When these solutions have been invested with extreme belief, 1) leads to sex crimes, and 2) to stealing. The kleptomaniac is a good example of the latter.

Generally, two types of emotional disturbances result:

a. The tendency to maintain the illusion that only the physical is real. This produces depression.

b. The tendency to invest the physical with non-physical properties. This is essentially magic, and tends more toward anxiety-proneness.

c. The tendency to vacillate from one to the other, which produces a corresponding vacillation between depression AND anxiety.

Both result in self imposed starvation.

3. Another type of distortion is seen in the fear of or desire for "spirit" possession. The term "spirit" is profoundly debased in this context, but it DOES entail a recognition that the body is not enough, and investing it with magic will not work. This recognition ACCEPTS the fact that neither 1) nor 2) is sufficient, but, precisely BECAUSE it does not limit fear so narrowly, it is more likely to produce greater fear in its own right.

Endowing the Spirit with human possessiveness is a more INCLUSIVE error than 1) or 2), and a step somewhat further away from the "Right Mind." Projection is also more likely to occur, with vacillations between grandiosity and fear. "Religion" in a distorted sense, is also more likely to occur in this kind of error, because the idea of a "spirit" is introduced, though fallaciously, while it is excluded from 1) and 2).

Witchcraft is thus particularly apt to be associated with 3), because of the much greater investment in magic.

It should be noted that 1) involves only the body, and 2) involves an attempt to associate things with human attributes. Three, on the other hand, is a more serious level confusion, because it endows the Spirit with EVIL attributes. This accounts both for the religious zeal of its proponents, and the aversion (or fear) of its opponents. Both attitudes stem from the same false belief.

This is NOT what the Bible means by "possessed of the Holy Spirit." It is interesting to note that even those who DID understand that could nevertheless EXPRESS their understanding inappropriately. The concept of "speaking in many tongues" was originally an injunction to communicate to everyone in his own language, or his own level. It hardly meant to speak in a way that NOBODY can understand. This strange error occurs when people DO understand the need for Universal communication, but have contaminated it with possession fallacies. The fear engendered by this misperception leads to a conflicted state in which communication IS attempted, but the fear is allayed by making the communication incomprehensible.

It could also be said that the fear induced selfishness, or regression, because incomprehensible communication is hardly a worthy offering from one Son of God to another.

4. Knowledge can also be misinterpreted as a means of possession. Here, the content is not physical, and the underlying fallacy is more likely to be the confusion of mind and brain. The attempt to unite non-physical content with physical attributes is illustrated by statements like "the thirst for knowledge." (No Helen, this is NOT what the "thirst" in the Bible means. The term was used only because of man's limited comprehension, and is probably better dropped.)

The fallacious use of knowledge can result in several errors, including:

a. The idea that knowledge will make the individual more attractive to others. This is a possession-fallacy.

b. The idea that knowledge will make the individual invulnerable. This is the reaction formation against the underlying fear of vulnerability.

c. The idea that knowledge will make the individual worthy. This is largely pathetic.

Both you and Bill should consider type 4) VERY carefully. Like all these fallacies, it contains a denial mechanism, which swings into operation as the fear increases, thus canceling out the error temporarily, but seriously impairing efficiency.

Thus, you claim you can't read, and Bill claims that he can't speak. Note that depression is a real risk here, for a Child of God should never REDUCE his efficiency in ANY way. The depression comes from a peculiar pseudo-solution which reads:

A Child of God is efficient.

I am not efficient.

Therefore, I am not a Child of God.

This leads to neurotic resignation, and this is a state which merely INCREASES the depression.

The corresponding denial mechanism for 1) is the sense of PHYSICAL inability, or IMPOTENCE. The denial mechanism for 2) is often bankruptcy. Collectors of things often drive themselves well beyond their financial means, in an attempt to force discontinuance. If this idea of cessation cannot be tolerated, a strange compromise involving BOTH insatiable possessiveness and insatiable throwing-away (bankruptcy) may result. An example is the inveterate or compulsive gambler, particularly the horse-racing addict. Here, the conflicted drive is displaced both from people AND things, and is invested in animals. The implied DEROGATION of people is the cause of the underlying EXTREME superstition of the horse racing addict.

Section 4 - Release and Restoration

You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of displacement is to hide the REAL source of your guilt, and KEEP from your awareness the full perception THAT IT IS INSANE. Displacement ALWAYS is maintained by the illusion that the source, from which attention is diverted, MUST BE TRUE. And MUST BE FEARFUL, or you would not have displaced the guilt onto what you believed to be LESS fearful. You are therefore willing, with little opposition, to look upon all sorts of "sources" underneath awareness, provided that they are not the deeper source, to which they bear no real relationship at all. Insane ideas HAVE no real relationships, for that is why they ARE insane.

No real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it, to mar its purity. For all relationships which guilt has touched, are used but to avoid the person AND the guilt. What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by YOU at all. They are used ONLY by the Holy Spirit, and it is that that MAKES them pure. If you displace YOUR guilt upon them, the Holy Spirit cannot use them. For, by pre-empting FOR YOUR OWN ends what you should have given HIM, he cannot use them unto YOUR release. No-one who would unite in ANY way, with ANYONE, for his OWN salvation will find it in that strange relationship. It is not shared, and so it is not real.

In any union with a brother, in which you seek to lay YOUR guilt upon him, or share it WITH him, or perceive his own, YOU WILL FEEL GUILTY. Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him IS NOT REAL. You will see guilt in that relationship, BECAUSE YOU PUT IT THERE. It is inevitable that those who suffer guilt WILL attempt to displace it, because they DO believe in it. Yet, though they suffer, they will not look within, AND LET IT GO. They cannot know they love, and cannot understand WHAT LOVING IS. Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt OUTSIDE themselves, BEYOND their own control.

When you maintain that YOU are guilty, but the source LIES IN THE PAST, you are NOT looking inward. The past is NOT in you. Your weird associations to it HAVE no meaning in the present. Yet you let them stand BETWEEN you and your brothers, with whom you find no REAL relationships at all. Can you EXPECT to use your brothers as a means to solve the past, and still to see them as they really ARE? Salvation is not found by those who use their brothers to resolve problems WHICH ARE NOT THERE. You wanted not salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation NOW?

Determine, then, to be NOT as you were. Use no relationship to hold you to the past, but with each one, each day, be born again. A minute, even less, will be enough to free you from the past, and give your mind in peace over to the Atonement. When everyone is welcome to you as you would have YOURSELF be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. For you will have ACCEPTED the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and SEE it.

WHAT HE HAS SAVED YOU FROM IS GONE. Give NO reality to guilt, and see NO reason for it. The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has ALWAYS done so. He has SEEN separation, but KNOWS of union. He TEACHES healing, but He also KNOWS of creation. He would have you see and teach as He does, and through Him. But what He knows, you do NOT know, though it is yours. NOW it is given you to heal and teach, to make what WILL BE, now. As yet it is NOT now. The Son of God believes that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world, where pain is pressing everywhere upon him, FROM WITHOUT. When he has looked within, and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him. And it will seem incredible that he had ever thought his Father loved him not, and looked upon him as condemned.

The altar to your Father is as pure as He Who raised it to Himself. Nothing can keep FROM you what Christ would have you see. His will is like His Father's, and He offers mercy to every Child of God, as He would have YOU do. RELEASE from guilt, as you would BE released. There is no other way to look within, and see the light of love shining as steadily, and as surely, as God Himself has always loved His Son. AND AS HIS SON LOVES HIM. There is no fear in love, for love is guiltless. You who have ALWAYS loved your Father can have no fear, for ANY reason, to look within, and see your holiness.

You CANNOT be as you believed you WERE. Your guilt is without reason, because it is not in the Mind of God, where YOU are. And this IS reason, which the Holy Spirit would RESTORE to you. He would remove ONLY illusions. All else He would have you see. And in Christ's vision He would show you the perfect purity that is forever within God's Son. You cannot enter into REAL relationship with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY. Love is not special. If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and MAKING them unreal.

You can love ONLY as God loves. Seek not to love UNLIKE Him, for there IS no love apart from His. Until you recognize that this is true, you will have no idea WHAT LOVE IS LIKE. No-one who condemns a brother, can see HIMSELF as guiltless in the peace of God. If he IS guiltless and in peace, AND SEES IT NOT, he IS delusional, and has NOT looked upon himself. To him I say, "Behold the Son of God, and look upon his purity, and be still. In quiet, look upon his holiness, and offer thanks unto his Father, that no guilt has ever touched him."

No illusion that you have ever held against him, has touched his innocence in any way. His shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt, and wholly loving, is bright within you. Let us look upon him together, and love him. For in our love of him IS your guiltlessness. But look upon yourself, and gladness and appreciation for what you will see, will banish guilt forever. I thank You, Father, for the purity of Your most holy Son, whom Thou hast created guiltless forever.

Like you, my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure. The difference is that I love ONLY what God loves WITH me, and, because of this, I treasure you beyond the value that you set on yourselves, even unto the worth that God has placed upon you. I love all that He created. And all my faith and my belief I offer unto it. My faith in you is strong as all the love I give my Father. My trust in you is without limit, and without the fear that you will hear me not. I thank the Father for your loveliness, and for the many gifts that you will let me offer to the Kingdom, in honor of its wholeness that is of God.

Praise be unto you, who make the Father One with His Own Son. Alone we are all lowly, but together, we shine with brightness so intense, that none of us alone can even think on it. Before the glorious radiance of the Kingdom, guilt melts away, and, transformed into kindness, will never more be what it was. Every reaction that you experience will be so purified, that it is fitting as a hymn of praise unto your Father. See only praise of Him in what He has created, for He will never cease His praise of YOU. United in this praise, we stand before the gates of Heaven, where we will surely enter, in our blamelessness. God loves you. Could I, then, lack faith in you, and love Him perfectly?

Forgetfulness and sleep, and even death, become the ego's best advice for how to deal with the perceived and harsh intrusion of guilt on peace. Yet no-one sees himself in conflict, and ravaged by a cruel war, unless he believes that BOTH "opponents" in the war are real. Believing this, he must escape, for such a war would surely end his peace of mind, and so destroy him. But if he could but realize the war is between forces that are real and UNREAL powers, he could look upon himself, and SEE his freedom. No-one finds himself ravaged and torn in endless battles, which he HIMSELF perceives as wholly without meaning.

God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Son's imagined "enemy," which he made, is TOTALLY unreal. You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you HAVE escaped. The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom, rising unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release, because YOU made it not. But, as you made not freedom, so you made not a war that could ENDANGER freedom. Nothing destructive ever was, or will be. The war, the guilt, the past, are gone as one, into the unreality from whence they came.

Section 7 - From Vigilance to Peace

You can think of the Sonship ONLY as one. This is part of the law of Creation, and therefore governs ALL thought. You can PERCEIVE the Sonship as fragmented, but it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to see something in part of it that you will not attribute to ALL of it. That is why attack is NEVER discrete. And why attack MUST be relinquished entirely. If it is NOT relinquished entirely, it is not relinquished at all. Fear and love are equally reciprocal. They make or create depending on whether the ego or the Holy Spirit begets or inspires them, but they WILL return to the mind of the thinker, and they WILL affect his total perception. That includes his perception of God, of His Creations, and of his own. He will not appreciate ANY of these if he regards them fearfully. He will appreciate ALL of them if he regards them with love.

The mind that accepts attack CANNOT love. This is because it believes that it can DESTROY love, and therefore does not understand what love IS. If it does not understand what love IS, it CANNOT perceive itself as loving. This loses the awareness of being; induces feelings of unreality; and results in utter confusion. Your own thinking has done this, because of its power. But your own thinking can also save you FROM this, because its power is not of your making. Your ability to DIRECT your thinking as you will IS part of its power. If you do not believe you can do this, you have DENIED the power of your thought, and thus rendered it powerLESS in your belief.

The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it stems from the power of the mind WHICH THE EGO DENIES. This means that the ego attacks WHAT IS PRESERVING IT, and this MUST be a source of extreme anxiety. This is why it NEVER knows what it is doing. This is perfectly logical, though clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source which is totally inimitable to its existence FOR its existence. Fearful of perceiving the POWER of this source, it is forced to DEPRECIATE it. This threatens its OWN existence, a state which it finds intolerable.

Remaining logical but still insane, the ego resolves this completely insane dilemma in a completely insane way. It does not perceive ITS existence as threatened, by projecting the threat onto YOU, and perceiving your BEING as NONexistent. This ensures ITS continuance, if you side WITH it, by guaranteeing that you will NOT know your OWN safety. The ego CANNOT AFFORD TO KNOW ANYTHING. Knowledge is total, and the ego DOES NOT BELIEVE IN TOTALITY. This unbelief is its own origin, and while the ego does not love YOU, it IS faithful to its own antecedent, begetting as it was begotten.

Mind ALWAYS REproduces as it was produced. Produced by fear, the ego REproduces fear. This IS its allegiance, and this allegiance makes it treacherous to love BECAUSE you are love. Love IS your power, which the ego MUST deny. It must also deny everything which this power gives TO you, BECAUSE it gives you everything. No-one who has everything WANTS the ego. Its own maker, then, DOES NOT WANT IT. Rejection is therefore the only decision which the ego could POSSIBLY encounter if the mind which made it knew ITSELF. And if it recognized ANY part of the Sonship, it WOULD know itself.

The ego therefore opposes ALL appreciation, ALL recognition, ALL sane perception, and ALL knowledge. It perceives their threat as total because it senses the fact that all commitments which the mind makes ARE total. Forced therefore to detach itself from you who ARE mind, it is willing to attach itself to anything ELSE. But there IS nothing else. It does NOT follow, however, that the mind cannot make illusions. But it DOES follow that if it makes illusions it will BELIEVE in them, because THAT IS HOW IT MADE THEM.

The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them merely because He cannot perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He resolves the APPARENT conflict which they engender by perceiving CONFLICT as meaningless. We said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict EXACTLY AS IT IS, and it IS meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to UNDERSTAND conflict. He wants you to realize that BECAUSE conflict is meaningLESS it cannot BE understood. We have already said that understanding brings appreciation, and appreciation brings love. Nothing else CAN be understood because nothing else is real and therefore nothing else HAS meaning.

If you will keep in mind what the Holy Spirit offers you, you cannot be vigilant for anything BUT God and His Kingdom. The ONLY reason why you find this difficult is because you think there IS something else. Belief does not require vigilance UNLESS it is conflicted. If it IS, there ARE conflicting components within it which have engendered a state of war, and vigilance has therefore BECOME essential. Vigilance has no place at all in peace. It is necessary ONLY AGAINST beliefs which are NOT true, and would never have been called upon by the Holy Spirit if you had not believed the untrue yourselves.

But you CANNOT deny that when you BELIEVE something you HAVE made it true FOR YOU. When YOU believe what God DOES NOT KNOW, your thought seems to CONTRADICT His, and this makes it appear AS IF YOU ARE ATTACKING HIM. We have repeatedly emphasized that the ego DOES believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that YOU have done this. If the mind CANNOT attack, the ego proceeds perfectly logically to the position that YOU cannot be mind. By not seeing you as YOU are, it can see ITSELF as it WANTS to be. Aware of its weakness, the ego wants your allegiance, but NOT as you really are. The ego therefore wants to engage your mind in its OWN delusional system, because otherwise the light of YOUR understanding WILL dispel it.

The ego wants no part of truth, because the truth is that IT is not true. If truth is total, the UNtrue CANNOT exist. Commitment to either MUST be total, because they cannot co-exist in your minds WITHOUT splitting them. If they cannot coexist in peace, and if you WANT peace, you MUST give up the IDEA of conflict ENTIRELY, and for ALL TIME. This requires vigilance ONLY as long as YOU DO NOT RECOGNIZE WHAT IS TRUE. While you believe that two totally contradictory thought systems SHARE truth, your need for vigilance is apparent. Your minds ARE dividing their allegiance between two kingdoms, and YOU are totally committed to neither.

Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you WHEN YOU ARE THINKING INSANELY. What you are is NOT established by your perception, and is NOT influenced BY it at all. ALL perceived problems in identification at ANY level ARE NOT PROBLEMS OF FACT. But they ARE problems in UNDERSTANDING, because they MEAN that you perceive WHAT you can understand as UP TO YOU TO DECIDE. The ego believes THIS totally, being fully committed TO it. But it is NOT TRUE. The ego is therefore totally committed to UNtruth, perceiving in total contradiction to the Holy Spirit and to the knowledge of God.

You can be perceived with meaning ONLY by the Holy Spirit, because your being IS the knowledge of God. ANY belief that you accept which is APART from this WILL obscure God's voice in you, and will therefore obscure God TO you. Unless you perceive His Creation truly, you CANNOT know the Creator, because God and His Creation ARE NOT SEPARATE. The Oneness of the Creator and the Creation IS your wholeness, your sanity, and your limitless power. This limitless power is God's gift to you, because it is WHAT YOU ARE. If you dissociate your mind FROM it, you are perceiving the most powerful force in the universe of thought AS IF it were weak, because you do NOT believe YOU are part of it.

Allowing INsanity to enter your minds means that you have not judged sanity AS WHOLLY DESIRABLE. If you WANT something else, you WILL MAKE something else. But because it IS something else it WILL attack your thought system and divide your allegiance. You CANNOT create in this divided state, and you MUST be vigilant AGAINST this divided state because ONLY peace CAN BE extended. Your divided minds ARE blocking the extension of the Kingdom, and its extension IS your joy. If you do not extend the Kingdom, you are NOT thinking with your Creator and creating as He created.

In this depressing state, the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you are sad because you are not fulfilling your function as co-creators WITH God, and are therefore depriving YOURSELVES of joy. This is not God's will, but YOURS. If your will is out of accord with God's, YOU ARE WILLING WITHOUT MEANING. But because ONLY God's will is unchangeable, no REAL conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit's perfectly consistent teaching. Creation, not separation, IS your will BECAUSE it is God's. And nothing that opposes this means anything at all. Being a perfect Accomplishment, the Sonship can only accomplish perfectly, EXTENDING the joy in which it was created, and identifying itself with both its Creator and its creations, KNOWING they are One.

Section 7 - Freedom and the Holy Spirit

Do you want freedom of the body, or of the mind? For both you cannot have. Which do you value? Which is your goal? For one you see as means; the other, end. And one must serve the other, and LEAD to its predominance, increasing ITS importance by DIMINISHING its own. Means serve the end, and as the end is reached, the value of the means decreases, and is eclipsed entirely when they are recognized as functionless. No-one but yearns for freedom, and tries to find it, but he will seek for it where he believes it IS, and CAN be found. He will believe it possible of mind OR body, and he will make the other SERVE his choice, as means to find it.

Where freedom of the BODY has been chosen, the mind is used as MEANS, whose value lies in its ability to contrive ways to achieve the body's freedom. Yet freedom of the body HAS no meaning. And so the mind is DEDICATED to serve illusions. This is a situation SO contradictory and SO impossible that anyone who chooses this has NO idea of what is valuable. Yet even in this confusion, so profound it cannot BE described, the Holy Spirit waits in gentle patience, as certain of the outcome as He is sure of His Creator's love. He knows this mad decision was made by one as dear to His Creator as Love is to Itself.

Be not disturbed at all to think how He can change the role of means and end so easily in what God loves, and would have free forever. But be you, rather, grateful that YOU can be the means to serve His end. This is the ONLY service which leads to freedom. To serve THIS end, the body MUST be perceived as sinless, BECAUSE the goal is sinlessness. The LACK of contradiction makes the soft transition from means to end as easy as is the shift from hate to gratitude before forgiving eyes. You WILL be sanctified by one another, using your bodies ONLY to serve the sinless. And it will be IMPOSSIBLE for you to hate what serves what you would HEAL.

This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in strength, and blazing with a light far brighter than the sun which lights the sky YOU see, is chosen of your Father as a means for His Own plan. Be thankful that it serves yours not at all. Nothing entrusted to it can BE misused. And nothing given it but WILL be used. This holy relationship has the power to heal ALL pain, REGARDLESS of its form. Neither of you alone can serve at all. Only in your JOINT will does healing lie. For here YOUR healing is, and here will YOU accept Atonement. And in your healing IS the Sonship healed, BECAUSE your wills are joined.

Before a holy relationship, there IS no sin. The FORM of error is no longer seen. And reason, joined with love, looks quietly on ALL confusion, observing merely, "this was a mistake." And then the same Atonement YOU accepted in YOUR relationship, CORRECTS the error, and lays a part of Heaven in its place. How blessed are you, who let this gift be given! Each part of Heaven that you bring, is given YOU. And every empty place in Heaven that you fill again with the Eternal Light YOU bring, shines now on YOU. The means of sinlessness can know no fear, because they carry ONLY love with them.

Children of peace, the light HAS come to you. The light you bring you do NOT recognize, and yet you will remember. Who can deny HIMSELF the vision that he brings to others? And who would fail to recognize a gift he let be laid in Heaven through HIMSELF? The gentle service that you give the Holy Spirit IS service to yourself. You who are now HIS means must love all that He loves. And what you bring is YOUR remembrance of everything that is eternal. No trace of anything in time can long remain in minds that serve the timeless. And NO illusion can disturb the peace of a relationship which has become the MEANS of peace.

When you have looked upon each other with COMPLETE forgiveness, from which NO error is excluded and NOTHING kept hidden, what mistake can there be ANYWHERE you can NOT overlook? What form of suffering could BLOCK your sight, preventing you from seeing PAST it? And what illusion COULD there be you will NOT recognize as a mistake; a shadow through which you walk COMPLETELY undismayed? God would let NOTHING interfere with those whose wills are His. And they will RECOGNIZE their wills are His, BECAUSE they serve His Will. AND SERVE IT WILLINGLY. How can it NOT be theirs? And COULD remembrance of what they are be long delayed?

You will see your value through each other's eyes, and each one is released as he beholds his Savior IN PLACE of the attacker who he THOUGHT was there. Through this releasing is the world released. This is YOUR part in bringing peace. For you have asked what is your function here, and have been answered. Seek not to change it, nor to substitute ANOTHER goal. This one was GIVEN you, and ONLY this. Accept this one, and serve it willingly, for what the Holy Spirit does with the gifts you give each other, to whom He offers them, and where and when, is up to Him.

He will bestow them where they are received and welcomed. He will use every one of them for peace. Nor will one little smile, or willingness to overlook the tiniest mistake, be lost to anyone. What can it be but universal blessing to look on what your Father loves with charity? EXTENSION of forgiveness is the Holy Spirit's function. Leave this to Him. Let YOUR concern be only that you give TO Him that which can BE extended. Save no dark secrets that He cannot use. But offer Him the tiny gifts He can extend forever.

He will take every one, and make of it a potent force for peace. He will withhold no blessing from it, or limit it in any way. He will join to it ALL the power that God has given Him, to make each little gift of love a source of healing for everyone. Each little gift you offer to the other lights up the world. Be not concerned with darkness; look AWAY from it, and TOWARD each other. And let the darkness be dispelled by Him Who knows the light, and lays it gently in each gentle smile of faith and confidence with which you bless each other.

On your learning depends the welfare of the world. And it is only arrogance that would DENY the power of your will. Think you the Will of God is powerLESS? Is this HUMILITY? You do not see what this belief has done. You see yourself as vulnerable, frail, and easily destroyed. And at the mercy of countless attackers more powerful than you. Let us look straight at how this error came about, for here lies buried the heavy anchor that seems to keep the fear of God in place, unmovable and solid as a rock. While this remains, so will it seem to be.

Who can attack the Son of God, and NOT attack his Father? How can God's Son be weak and frail and easily destroyed, UNLESS HIS FATHER IS? You do NOT see that EVERY sin and EVERY condemnation which you perceive and justify IS an attack upon your Father. And that is WHY it has not happened, nor COULD be real. You do not see that this is your attempt, BECAUSE you think the Father and the Son are separate. And you MUST think that they are separate, BECAUSE OF FEAR. For it SEEMS safer to attack another or yourself, than to attack the great Creator of the universe, Whose power you KNOW.

And this belief, you WANT. Yet wherein lies its value, EXCEPT in the desire to attack in safety? Attack is neither safe nor dangerous. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. And this is so, BECAUSE the universe is one. You would not choose attack on its reality, if it were not ESSENTIAL to attack to see it SEPARATE FROM ITS CREATOR. And thus it seems as if love could attack, AND BECOME FEARFUL. Only the DIFFERENT can attack. So you conclude, BECAUSE you can attack, you must be DIFFERENT. Yet does the Holy Spirit explain this differently. BECAUSE you are NOT different, you CAN NOT ATTACK.

Either position is a logical conclusion, if only the different can attack. Either could be maintained, BUT NEVER BOTH. The ONLY question to be answered to decide which MUST be true, is WHETHER YOU ARE DIFFERENT. From the position of what YOU understand, you seem to BE. And THEREFORE can attack. Of the alternatives, this SEEMS more natural, and more in line with your experience. And therefore it is necessary that you have OTHER experiences, more in line with truth, to teach you what IS natural and true. This is the function of your holy relationship. For what ONE thinks, the OTHER will experience WITH him. What can this mean, EXCEPT your minds are one?

Look not with fear upon this happy fact, and think not that it lays a heavy burden on you. For, when you have ACCEPTED it with gladness, you will realize that your relationship is a reflection of the union of the Creator and His Son. From loving minds, there IS no separation. And every thought in one brings gladness to the other, BECAUSE they are the same. Joy is unlimited, BECAUSE each shining thought of Love EXTENDS its Being, and creates more of Itself. There is no difference ANYWHERE within it. For every thought is like Itself.

The light that joins you shines throughout the universe. And, BECAUSE it joins you, so it makes you one with your Creator. And, in HIM, is all creation joined. Would you REGRET you cannot fear alone, when your relationship can also teach the power of love is there, which makes ALL fear impossible? Do not attempt to keep a little of the ego with this gift. For it was given to be USED, and NOT obscured. What teaches you you CANNOT separate, DENIES the ego. Let TRUTH decide if you be different or the same, and TEACH you which is true.

Section 3 - The Fear of Healing

Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him. To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned.

The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the CONSEQUENCES of the guilt they overlook. Yet no-one CAN forgive a sin which he believes is real. And what has consequences MUST be real, because what it has DONE is there to see. Forgiveness is NOT pity, which but seeks to pardon what it knows to be the truth. Good cannot BE returned for evil, for forgiveness does not first ESTABLISH sin, and THEN forgive it. Who can say and MEAN, "My brother, you have injured me, and yet, because I am the BETTER of the two, I pardon you my hurt." HIS pardon and YOUR hurt can NOT exist together. One DENIES the other, and MUST make it false.

To witness sin, and yet forgive it, is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. He holds not the proof of sin, before his brother's eyes. And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own. Forgiveness CANNOT be for one, and not the other. Who forgives IS healed. And in his healing lies the PROOF that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing.

What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you.

Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.

How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys; That healing sees no specialness at all. It does NOT come from pity, but from love. And love would prove ALL suffering is but a vain imagining, a foolish wish with NO effects. Your health is a result of your desire to see your brother with no blood upon his hands, nor guilt upon his heart made heavy with the proof of sin. And what you wish is GIVEN you to see.

The "cost" of your serenity is his. This is the "price" the Holy Spirit and the world interpret differently. The world perceives in it a statement of the "fact" that your salvation SACRIFICES his. The Holy Spirit knows YOUR healing is the witness UNTO his, and CANNOT be apart from him at all. As long as he consents to suffer, YOU will be unhealed. But you can show him his suffering is purposeless and wholly without cause. Show him YOUR healing, and he will consent no more to suffer. For his innocence HAS BEEN established in your sight AND his. And laughter will REPLACE your sighs BECAUSE God's Son remembered that he IS God's Son.

Who, then, fears healing? Only those to whom their brother's sacrifice and pain is seen to represent their own serenity. Their helplessness and weakness represent grounds on which they justify his pain. The constant sting of guilt he suffers serves to prove that he is slave, and they are free. The constant pain THEY suffer demonstrates that they are free BECAUSE they hold him bound. And sickness is desired to prevent a shift of balance in the sacrifice. How could the Holy Spirit be deterred an instant, even less, to reason with an argument for sickness such as this? And need YOUR healing be delayed because you pause to listen to insanity?

Correction is NOT your function. It belongs to One Who knows of fairness, NOT of guilt. If you assume correction's role, you LOSE the function of forgiveness. No-one can forgive until he learns correction is BUT to forgive, and NEVER to accuse. Alone, you CANNOT see they are the same, and therefore is correction NOT of you. Identity and function are the same, and BY your function do you know yourself. And thus, if you confuse your function with the function of Another, you MUST be confused about yourself and who you are. What is the separation but a wish to take God's Function from Him and DENY that it is His? Yet if it is NOT His it is not YOURS, for YOU must lose what you would take away.

In a split mind, identity MUST seem to be divided. Nor can anyone perceive a function unified which has conflicting purposes and different ends. Correction, to a mind so split, MUST be a way to punish sins you think are YOURS in someone else. And thus does he become your victim, NOT your brother, DIFFERENT from you in that he is MORE GUILTY, thus in need of your correction, as the one MORE INNOCENT than he. This splits HIS function off from yours, and gives you both a DIFFERENT role. And so you CANNOT be perceived as one, and with a single function that would MEAN a shared identity with but ONE end.

Correction YOU would do MUST separate, because that is the function given it BY you. When you perceive correction is the SAME as pardon, then you also know the Holy Spirit's Mind and yours are One. And so your OWN identity is found. Yet must He work with what is GIVEN Him, and you allow Him only HALF your mind. And thus He represents the OTHER half, and seems to have a DIFFERENT purpose from the one you cherish, and you THINK is yours. Thus does your function seem DIVIDED, with a half IN OPPOSITION to a half. And these two halves appear to represent a split within a self perceived as two.

Consider how this self perception MUST extend, and do not overlook the fact that EVERY thought extends, because that is its purpose, being what it really IS. From an idea of self AS TWO, there comes a NECESSARY view of function split BETWEEN the two. And what you would correct is only HALF the error, which you think is ALL of it. Your BROTHER's sins become the central target for correction, lest your errors and his own be seen as one. YOURS are mistakes, but HIS are sins, and NOT the same as yours. HIS merit punishment, while yours, in fairness, should be overlooked.

In THIS interpretation of correction, your own mistakes you will not even SEE. The FOCUS of correction has been placed OUTSIDE yourself, on one who CANNOT be a part of you while this perception lasts. What is condemned can never be returned to its accuser, who has hated it, AND HATES IT STILL. This is your brother, focus of your hate, unworthy to be part of you, and thus OUTSIDE your self, the other half, which is denied. Only what is left, WITHOUT his presence, is perceived as ALL of you. To this remaining half the Holy Spirit must represent the OTHER half, until you recognize it IS the other half. And this He does by giving BOTH of you a function that is one, NOT different.

Correction IS the function given both, but neither one alone. And when it is fulfilled as SHARED, it MUST correct mistakes in both of you. It CANNOT leave mistakes in one unhealed, and make the other free. THAT is DIVIDED purpose, which cannot BE shared, and so it CANNOT be the function which the Holy Spirit sees as His. And you can rest assured that He will NOT fulfill a function that He cannot understand, and recognize as His. For only thus can He keep YOURS preserved intact, DESPITE your separated view of what your function IS. If He UPHELD divided function, you were lost indeed. His INABILITY to see His goal divided and distinct for each of you preserves your Self from being made aware of any function OTHER than Its Own.

And thus is healing given BOTH of you. Correction MUST be left to One Who knows correction and forgiveness ARE the same. With HALF a mind, this is NOT understood. Leave, then, correction to the Mind That IS united, functioning as One BECAUSE It is not split in purpose, and conceives a single function as Its ONLY one. Here is the function GIVEN It conceived to be Its Own, and NOT apart from that Its Giver keeps BECAUSE it has been shared. In His ACCEPTANCE of this function lies the means whereby your mind is unified. His SINGLE purpose unifies the halves of you that you perceive as separate. And each forgives the other, that he may accept his OTHER half as PART of him.

Lesson 135 "If I defend myself I am attacked."

Who would defend himself unless he thought he was attacked, that the attack is real, and that his own defense can save himself? And herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult. And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish.

You operate from the belief you must protect yourself from what is happening, because it must contain what threatens you. A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense.

The world is based on this insane belief. And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart.

Let us consider first what you defend. It must be something that is very weak and easily assaulted. It must be something made easy prey, unable to protect itself, and needing your defense. What but the body has such frailty that constant care and watchful, deep concern are needful to protect its little life? What but the body falters and must fail to serve the Son of God as worthy host?

Yet it is not the body that can fear, nor be a thing to fear. It has no needs but those which you assign to it. It needs no complicated structures of defense, no health-inducing medicine, no care and no concern at all. Defend its life, or give it gifts to make it beautiful or walls to make it safe, and you but say your home is open to the thief of time, corruptible and crumbling, so unsafe it must be guarded with your very life.

Is not this picture fearful? Can you be at peace with such a concept of your home? Yet what endowed the body with the right to serve you thus except your own belief? It is your mind which gave the body all the functions that you see in it, and set its value far beyond a little pile of dust and water. Who would make defense of something that he recognized as this?

The body is in need of no defense. This cannot be too often emphasized. It will be strong and healthy if the mind does not abuse it by assigning it to roles it cannot fill, to purposes beyond its scope, and to exalted aims which it cannot accomplish. Such attempts, ridiculous yet deeply cherished, are the sources for the many mad attacks you make upon it. For it seems to fail your hopes, your needs, your values and your dreams.

The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?

Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source.

These are the thoughts in need of healing, and the body will respond with health when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. This is the body's only real defense. Yet is this where you look for its defense? You offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no benefit at all, but merely adds to your distress of mind. You do not heal, but merely take away the hope of healing, for you fail to see where hope must lie if it be meaningful.

A healed mind does not plan. It carries out the plans which it receives through listening to Wisdom that is not its own. It waits until it has been taught what should be done, and then proceeds to do it. It does not depend upon itself for anything except its adequacy to fulfill the plans assigned to it. It is secure in certainty that obstacles can not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal which serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone.

A healed mind is relieved from the belief that it must plan, although it cannot know the outcome which is best, the means by which it is achieved, nor how to recognize the problem that the plan is made to solve. It must misuse the body in its plans until it recognizes this is so. But when it has accepted this as true, then is it healed, and lets the body go.

Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body sick. It is not free to be a means of helping in a plan which far exceeds its own protection and which needs its service for a little while. In this capacity is health assured. For everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly, and with the strength that has been given it and cannot fail.

It is, perhaps, not easy to perceive that self-initiated plans are but defenses, with the purpose all of them were made to realize. They are the means by which a frightened mind would undertake its own protection at the cost of truth. This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, for the denial of reality is very obvious. Yet planning is not often recognized as a defense.

The mind engaged in planning for itself is occupied in setting up control of future happenings. It does not think that it will be provided for unless it makes its own provisions. Time becomes a future emphasis, to be controlled by learning and experience obtained from past events and previous beliefs. It overlooks the present, for it rests on the idea the past has taught enough to let the mind direct its future course.

The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. Its past experience directs its choice of what will happen. And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all, for present confidence directs the way.

Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. Their aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is meaningless indeed. For it is your reality which is the "threat" that your defenses would attack, obscure, and take apart and crucify.

What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life.

Your present trust in Him is the defense which promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy which constantly increases as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding only immortality. Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal.

Without defenses, you become a light which Heaven gratefully acknowledges to be its own. And it will lead you on in ways appointed for your happiness according to the ancient plan, begun when time was born. Your followers will join their light with yours, and it will be increased until the world is lighted up with joy. And gladly will our brothers lay aside their cumbersome defenses which availed them nothing, and could only terrify.

We will anticipate that time today with present confidence, for this is part of what was planned for us. We will be sure that everything we need is given us for our accomplishment of this today. We make no plans for how it will be done, but realize that our defenselessness is all that is required for the truth to dawn upon our minds with certainty.

For fifteen minutes twice today we rest from senseless planning, and from every thought which blocks the truth from entering our minds. Today we will receive instead of plan, that we may give instead of organize. And we are given truly, as we say:

"If I defend myself I am attacked.

But in defenselessness I will be strong,

And I will learn what my defenses hide."

Nothing but that. If there are plans to make, you will be told of them. They may not be the plans you thought were needed, nor indeed the answers to the problems which you thought confronted you. But they are answers to another kind of question, which remains unanswered, yet in need of answering until the Answer comes to you at last.

All your defenses have been aimed at not receiving what you will receive today. And in the light and joy of simple truth, you will but wonder why you ever thought that you must be defended from release. Heaven asks nothing. It is hell that makes extravagant demands for sacrifice. You give up nothing in these times today when, undefended you present yourself to your Creator as you really are.

He has remembered you. Today we will remember Him. For this is Easter time in your salvation. And you rise again from what was seeming death and hopelessness. Now is the light of hope reborn in you, for now you come without defense to learn the part for you within the plan of God. What little plans or magical beliefs can still have value, when you have received your function from the Voice of God Himself?

Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most. For you can not conceive of all the happiness that comes to you without your planning. Learn today. And all the world will take this giant stride, and celebrate your Easter time with you. Throughout the day, as foolish little things appear to raise defensiveness in you and tempt you to engage in weaving plans, remind yourself this is a special day for learning, and acknowledge it with this:

"This is Easter time. And I would keep

It holy. I will not defend myself,

Because the Son of God needs no defense

Against the truth of his Reality."

Chapter 3 - Retraining the Mind

Section 1 - Introduction

All learning involves attention and study at some level. This course is a MIND-TRAINING course. Good students assign study periods for themselves. However, since this obvious step has not occurred to you, and since we are cooperating in this, I will make the obvious assignment now.

B is better at understanding the need to study the notes than you are, but neither of you realizes that many of the problems you keep being faced with may ALREADY have been solved there. YOU do not think of the notes in this way at all. B DOES from time to time, but he generally says, "It's probably in the notes," and DOESN'T look it up. He believes that, although he reads them over, they cannot REALLY help him until they are complete.

First of all, he cannot be sure of this unless he tries. Second, they would BE completed if both of you so willed.

You vaguely know that the course is intended for some sort of preparation. I can only say that you are not prepared.

I was amused when you reminded Bill that he, too, was being prepared for something quite unexpected, and he said, he was not at all curious about what it was. This disinterest is very characteristic of him when he is afraid. Interest and fear do NOT go together, as your respective behavior clearly shows.

Mental retardation is a defense which, like the others EXCEPT the Atonement, can be used on behalf of error or truth, as elected. When it occurs in REALITY, it is a temporary device, agreed on beforehand, to check the miscreative abilities of strong but misdirected wills.

It is necessary that this appropriate use of the defense BE considered real, because otherwise it cannot serve. The lesson involves not only the individual himself, but also his parents, siblings, and all of those who come in close relation with him. The VALUE of the experience depends on the need of each particular learner. The person himself is a POOR learner, by definition, only as a step toward changing from a bad to a good one.

Mental retardation can also be used as a maladaptive defense, if the wrong (or attack) side is employed. This produces the "pseudo-retardation syndrome" which is justly classified as a psychiatric (or disturbed-level) symptom. Both of you do this all the time. Bill acts as if he does not understand even his OWN special language, let alone mine, and you cannot read at all.

This represents a joint attack on both yourselves AND me, because it renders YOUR mind weak, and mine incompetent. Remember, this puts you in a truly fearful position. If you cannot understand either your own mind OR mine, you do not KNOW what is really willed. It is thus IMPOSSIBLE to avoid conflict, as defined before, because even if you act ACCORDING TO will, you wouldn't know it.

The next part of this course rests too heavily on the earlier part not to REQUIRE its study. Without this, you will become much too fearful when the unexpected DOES occur to make constructive use of it. However, as you study the notes, you will see some of the obvious implications, unless you still persist in misusing the defense of mental retardation. Please remember that its constructive use, described above, is hardly a REAL part of your own REAL proper equipment. It is a PARTICULARLY inappropriate defense as you use it, and I can only urge you to avoid it.

The reason why a solid foundation is necessary at this point is because of the highly likely confusion of "fearful" and "awesome," which most people do make. You will remember that we said once before that awe is inappropriate in connection with the Sons of God, because you should not experience awe in the presence of your own equals. But it WAS emphasized that awe IS a proper reaction of the Soul in the presence of its Creator.

So far, this course has had only indirect recourse to God, and rarely even refers to Him directly. I have repeatedly emphasized that awe is not appropriate in connection with me, BECAUSE of our inherent equality. I have been careful to clarify my own role in the Atonement, without either over or understating it. I have tried to do exactly the same things in connection with yours.

The next step, however, DOES involve the direct approach to God Himself. It would be most unwise to start on this step at all without very careful preparation, or awe will surely be confused with fear, and the experience will be more traumatic than beatific.

Healing is of God in the end. The means are carefully explained in the notes. Revelation has occasionally SHOWN you the end, but to reach it the means are needed.

(The following Introduction dictated by Helen Schucman without notes.) The following is the only detailed description which need be written down as to how error interferes with preparation. The events specifically referred to here could be any events, nor does their particular influence matter. It is the process which is to be noted here, and not its results. The kind of beliefs, and the fallacious premises involved in misthought are as well exemplified here as elsewhere. There is nothing of special interest about the events described below, EXCEPT their typical nature. If this is a true course in mind-training, then the whole value of this section rests ONLY in showing you what NOT to do. The more constructive emphasis is, of course, on the positive approach. Mind-watching would have prevented any of this from occurring, and will do so any time you permit it to.

(Following is from notes) Tell Bill that the reason why he was so strained yesterday is because he allowed himself a number of fear-producing attitudes. They were fleeting enough to be more will-of-the-wisps than serious will-errors, but unless he watches this kind of thing, he WILL find the notes fearful, and, knowing him well, will mis-distantiate. His unprovoked irritation was unpardonable EXCEPT by himself, and he did not choose to pardon it. YOU did, but I am afraid you were under some strain in doing so. This was unfortunate, and weakened your own ability to behave healingly toward Bill at the time, and later also toward Louis, both of whom DID act stupidly. But one stupidity at a time is usually enough. You are getting too close to the misuse of mental retardation when stupidity sets in all around.

Bill, having already weakened himself, was very un-miracle-minded, first by not asking Dora if she wanted a lift in the cab, which was going her way. Even if she didn't want it, she would have been able to use the thought well. There is probably no human error that is more fear-provoking (in the will/behavior conflict sense) than countering any form of error with error. The result can be highly inflammable. By reacting to Dora's stupidity with his own, all of the elements which are virtually certain to engender fear have been provided.

B should note that this is one of the few times that he had to wait for a cab. He thought he took care of it by holding the door of a cab which did come for that lady, but he was misguided in this belief. Beliefs are THOUGHTS, and thus come under Christ-guidance, NOT control. Actually, by giving this cab to her, he was very unkind to you. It was quite apparent that you were extremely cold, and also very late. The idea that giving her the cab would atone for his previous errors was singularly out of place, and well calculated to lead to further error. If, instead of attempting to atone on his own, he had asked for guidance, there would have been no difficulty whatever in the cab situation. It was not necessary that anyone wait at all.

B's original slight to Dora, because of his own need to get home as he perceived it, stopped him from benefiting from the time-saving device of the miracle. He would have gotten home MUCH quicker if he had taken time to use time properly.

YOU were still suffering from strain (see above), and got quite irritated at the girl who stood next to the door on the side which blocked its opening. Her presence there made it necessary each time the door was opened to hold it for a much longer time than was necessary, and you were angry because this made you cold. Actually, the girl was taking care of the younger child who was standing outside, and both of them were really mentally retarded. If you will remember, the older girl asked you very uncertainly about the bus, and you were well aware at the time of her extreme uncertainty.

B thus placed himself in a condition to experience a fear rather than a love reaction. (Helen Schucman notes that she was going to write "an excellent position," but did not do so. Answer: You were right about the misuse of "excellent" here, and please do cross it out. You are STILL angry. An excellent position for miscreation is not a meaningful approach to the problem.)

It was indeed discourteous ("indeed" is not necessary; it was your OWN error here; I am NOT saying this with any harsh overtones at all. I am just trying to create better learning conditions for the study periods. We want as little interference as possible, for VERY good reasons.)

Now, go back to B; he WAS discourteous when he told you that HE wanted to keep the original copy of the notes, having decided to have them Xeroxed on his OWN will, and then justifying it by a very slight misinterpretation of what I said about "useful for others." In fact, if he will re-read the actual quote, he will see that it REALLY means "useful for HIM." YOU had interpreted it that way, and frankly this was pretty clear to me at the time. But this sort of thing happens all the time. It should, be noted, however, that the result was not only considerable and totally unnecessary planning on B's part, but also a failure to utilize what WAS intended for him as a help for HIMSELF. And before YOU get too self-satisfied, I would remind you that you do it all the time, too.

Bill acted inappropriately toward YOU, by saying that he wanted to be SURE that the original was not lost or dirty. It is noticeable that, having already decided what HE wanted to do, it never occurred to him that it IS possible that HE might lose or dirty them himself, especially as he had not entrusted them to me. This is a form of arrogance that he would be much happier without. He should also note that this would probably not have occurred had he not been ALREADY literally "off the beam." Be SURE to tell him that this pun is to reassure him that I am not angry. If he does not get it, or does not like it, I KNOW it is not very good. The reason is that HE put me in a position where I can really give him very little at the moment.

But I want him to know that I am VERY well aware of the exceedingly few times he now makes errors of this kind. He has come a VERY long way in this respect. It seems a shame that he should allow himself even this much discomfort from it.

I suggest to YOU that we pray for him, and I pray for your full cooperation in this. This will correct YOUR errors, and help him react better to the work on the bookcase, which may otherwise lend itself for misuse by misprojection. There would have been no problem at all about the bookcase, and perhaps even no bookcase, if the solution of the storage problem had been left to me. I have promised to guide you OUT of problems, and will certainly not create them for you. But this means that you do not undertake to solve them yourselves. A storage problem is hardly more difficult for me to solve that a space problem, (see comments under special principles for miracle workers.)

You started well in your attempt to pray with me for Bill, but ended badly. This is because you had already made a number of earlier errors. You were wrong to be pleased with Bill F's criticism of Rose, and should not have enjoyed Bill F's description of Zanvil's caricaturing of her. You could have laughed WITH Bill, but NOT AT Rose. Real courtesy NEVER does this. You should know that all God's children are fully worthy of COMPLETE courtesy. You should NEVER join with one at the EXPENSE of another.

When you called B about joining you, Gene, and Anne at lunch, YOU should have waited to ask ME. In fact, you should not even have told Anne that you would call. Then you could have asked Bill FIRST if HE would want to come, and called ANNE back. It is true that it was better that he came, but this has nothing to do with the real issue. There are ways of treating others in which ONLY consistent courtesy, even in very little things, is offered. This is a VERY HEALING habit to acquire.

B's answer to your call was a clear statement of his own sadly conflicted state. He said, "I don't want to join you, but that's ungracious, so I'll go." Whenever ANY invitation to join others in a gracious way is offered, it should ALWAYS be met with respect, although it need not always be accepted. However, if it is MET ungraciously the resulting feeling may well be one of coercion. This is ALWAYS a split-will reaction.

Bill did not solve this by ACTING graciously. The lunch need not have entailed either mental or physical strain for him, and no "need to escape" should have arisen. This was a regression of the unprofitable kind. Bill will continue to experience this need from time to time, until he is willing to realize that there is nothing he needs or wants to escape from.

It is very hard to get out of the chain of miscreation which can arise out of even the simplest mis-thought. To borrow one of your own phrases, "This kind of human tragedy is far easier to avert than to undo."

You must both learn not to let this kind of chain reaction START. You will NOT be able to control it once it has started, because everything and everyone will be pulled into the misprojection, and misinterpreted accordingly. NOTHING is lovely to the unloving. This is because they are CREATING ugliness.

You, Helen, were definitely not acting right-mindedly by writing these notes right in front of Jonathan. (Note that you wrote his name as "Jonathan" this time, although previously in these same notes you referred to him as "Louis," intentionally using his real name. Actually, of course, it does not matter what you call him, but NOTE that you FELT FREE at that time to CHOOSE the name YOU preferred to use. This time, you were FORCED to call him "Jonathan" because you were ATTACKING him when you took the notes in front of him, and are now falling back on the magical device of "protecting his name."

(I had been considering calling B rather ambivalently, and had gotten up to do so, but remembered to ask. The answer was to call him at 8:30. It would be better if HE called, but he may not decide to do so. If he does not, you should try to get through, and if he has decided NOT to be there, just leave a message that it is not important. This is still a kindly gesture, and the message should be put in a gentle way.) (Bill did call Helen Schucman)

Without going into further elaboration, and we could devote many hours to this, lets consider all the time that we had to waste today. AND all the notes that could have been devoted to a better purpose than undoing the waste, and thus creating further waste. There IS a better use for time, too. I would have liked to have spent some time on corrections of the past notes, as an important step before reviewing them. A major point of clarification is necessary in connection with the phrase "replacing hatred (or fear) with love."

(No, Helen, do NOT check this against the prayer that Bill very kindly typed for you on the card. That WAS a gracious offering on his part, and YOU also accepted it with grace at the time. Why should you deprive yourself of the value of the offering by referring this correction first to HIM?)

(These notes did not continue at this time, due to the obvious fact that Helen Schucman was still clearly not in her right mind. However, B later suggested that "correct" or "correct for" should be used instead of "replace." At the time, he was quite sure about this, and he was perfectly right. The reason why it was essential that HE make this correction was that the word "replace" was his choice originally, and reflected a temporary misunderstanding of his own. It was, however, both courteous and necessary that he change this himself, both as a sign of his own better understanding, and of an avoidance of correction by someone else, which would have been discourteous.)

Miracle Principle 51

The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. The sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception which the miracle entails introduces an interval from which the doer and the receiver both emerge much farther along in time than they would otherwise have been.

A miracle has thus the unique property of abolishing time by rendering the space of time it occupies unnecessary. There is NO relation between the time a miracle TAKES and the time it COVERS. It substitutes FOR learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does this by the underlying recognition of perfect equality and holiness between doer and receiver on which the miracle rests.It is unstable, but perfectly consistent, i.e., it does not occur predictably across time, and it rarely occurs in comparable forms. But within ITSELF it is perfectly consistent. Since it contains NOTHING BUT an acknowledgment of equality and worth, all parts ARE equal. This establishes the prerequisite for validity.

We said before that the miracle abolishes time. It does this by a process of COLLAPSING it. It thus abolishes certain INTERVALS within it. It does this, however, WITHIN the larger temporal sequence.

The validity of the miracle, then, is PREDICTIVE, not logical, within the temporal schema. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval, which is NOT under the usual laws of time. Only in this sense is it timeless. By collapsing time, it literally saves time, much the way "daylight saving time" does. It rearranges the distribution of light.

Miracle Principle 52

The miracle is the only device which man has at his immediate disposal for controlling time. Only the Revelation TRANSCENDS it, having nothing to do with time at all. The miracle is much like the body, in that both are learning aids which aim at facilitating a state in which they are unnecessary. When the Soul is finally in the original state of direct communication, neither the body nor the miracle serves any purpose.

While he is IN the body, however, man can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of creativity. He can create an empty shell (see previous reference), but he DOES NOT create nothing at all. He can wait, delay, paralyze himself, reduce his creativity almost to nothing, and even introduce a real developmental arrest or regression. But he CANNOT abolish his creativity. He CAN destroy his medium of communication, but NOT his potential.

He was NOT created by his own free will. Only what HE creates is his to decide. The basic decision of the miracle-minded is NOT to wait on time any longer than is necessary. Time can waste, as well as be wasted. The miracle-worker, therefore, accepts the time-control factor of the miracle gladly, because he knows that every collapse of time brings all men closer to the ultimate RELEASE from time, in which the Son and the Father ARE one.

The real meaning of "are of one kind" is "of one mind or will." When the will of the Sonship and the Father are one, their perfect accord IS Heaven.

ASIDE Tell Bill he is right in providing you with the consistent strength you need to get, and he needs to offer. Your instability and his weakness have resulted from bad karmic choices, and your relationship NOW is crucial for the future. You must both exert every effort to restore it to what it once was. Both of you are correcting where you have failed before. This has already enabled you to fulfill a very unexpected role in your own joint salvation, and the salvation of many other children I will entrust increasingly to you. These are by no means chosen at random. Bill should know that his preparation is not only in terms of sharing in the results of your better application of some rather unusual talents. His own role, which he will understand after his preparation is complete, will be equally surprising. He will need your help then, as you need his strength now.

Note that you DO NOT need his help as a scribe, because you developed this ability by your own efforts, and finally placed them at MY disposal. By lending you his strength, he strengthens himself. When he gains this through his own efforts, he will need your help in a very unexpected way. But this is just another example of the reciprocal nature of miracles.

Equality does not imply homogeneity NOW. When EVERYONE has EVERYTHING, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary. When the Atonement has been completed, ALL talents will be shared by ALL of the Sons of God. God is NOT partial. All of His children have His total love, and all of his gifts are given freely to everyone alike.

"Except you become as little children" means unless you fully recognize your complete dependence on God, you cannot know the real power of the Son in his true relationship with the Father.

You and Bill DO have special talents which are needed for the Celestial speedup at this time. But note that the term speed-up is not one which relates to the TRANSCENDING of time.

When time is abolished, and all of the Sons of God have come home, no special agents will be necessary. But do not underestimate the power of special agents now, or the great need there is for them. I do not claim to be more than that myself. No one in his Right Mind, (a term which should be specially noted) ever wants either more or less than that. Those who are called on to witness for me NOW are witnessing for all men, as I am.

The role of the Priestess was once to experience Revelations and to work miracles. The purpose was to bring those not yet available for direct Revelations into proper focus for them. Heightened perception was always the essential Priestess attribute.

(This is the first time that Helen Schucman ever said that she would be honored if there were any notes.)

(Neither Bill nor I is really clear about how sexual-impulses can be directly translated into miracle-impulses.) The fantasies that I mentioned yesterday (refers to discussion Helen Schucman and Bill had) provide an excellent example of how you switch. (Now switch the pronoun references, or it will be too confusing.)

Fantasies are distorted forms of thinking, because they always involve twisting perception into unreality. Fantasy is a debased form of vision. Visions and Revelations are closely related. Fantasies and projection are more closely associated, because both attempt to control external reality according to false internal needs. "Live and let live" happens to be a very meaningful injunction. Twist reality in any way, and you are perceiving destructively. Reality was lost through usurpation, which in turn produced tyranny. I told you you were now restored to your former role in the Plan of Atonement. But you must still choose freely to devote your heritage to the greater Restoration. As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete. Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded.

Sexual fantasies are distortions of perception by definition. They are a means of making false associations, and obtaining pleasure from them. Man can do this only because he IS creative. But although he can perceive false associations, he can never make them real except to himself. As was said before, man believes in what he creates. If he creates a miracle, he will be equally strong in his belief in that. The strength of his conviction will then sustain the belief of the miracle receiver.

NO fantasies, sexual or otherwise, are true. Fantasies become totally unnecessary as the Wholly satisfying nature of reality becomes apparent. The sex impulse IS a miracle impulse when it is in proper focus. One individual sees in another the right partner for "procreating the stock" (Wolff was not too far off here), and also for their joint establishment of a creative home. This does not involve fantasy at all. If I am asked to participate in the decision, the decision will be a Right one, too.

In a situation where you or another person, or both, experience inappropriate sex impulses, KNOW FIRST that this is an expression of fear. Your love toward each other is NOT perfect, and this is why the fear arose. Turn immediately to me by denying the power of the fear, and ask me to help you to replace it with love. This shifts the sexual impulse immediately to the miracle-impulse, and places it at MY disposal.

Then acknowledge the true creative worth of both yourself AND the other one. This places strength where it belongs. Note that sexual fantasies are ALWAYS destructive (or depleting), in that they perceive another in an inappropriate creative role. Both people are perceived essentially as "objects" fulfilling THEIR OWN pleasure drives. This dehumanized view is the source of the DEPLETING use of sex. Freud's description is purely NEGATIVE, i.e., as a release from the UNPLEASANT. He also observed that the tension from id impulses never completely abates.

What he should have said is that the shift from miracle-impulses to sexual impulses was debilitating in the first place, because of the level-confusion involved. This set up a state in which real release was impossible. Note also that Freud's notion of sex was as a device for inducing RELAXATION, which he confused with PEACE.

Inappropriate sex relaxes only in the sense that it may induce physical sleep. The miracle, on the other hand, is an ENERGIZER. It always strengthens, and never depletes. It DOES induce peace, and by establishing tranquility (not relaxation) it enables both giver and receiver to enter into a state of Grace. Here his miracle-mindedness, (not release from tension) is restored.

Tension is the result of a building-up of unexpressed miracle-impulses. This can be truly abated only by releasing the miracle-drive, which has been blocked. Converting it to sexual libido merely produces further blocking. Never foster this illusion in yourself, or encourage it in others. An "object" is incapable of release, because it is a concept which is deprived of creative power. The recognition of the real creative power in yourself AND others brings release because it brings peace.

The peace of God which passeth understanding CAN keep your hearts now and forever.

There are only two short additions needed here:

1. Your earlier acute problem in writing things down came from a MUCH earlier misuse of very great scribal abilities. These were turned to secret rather than shared advantage, depriving it (?) of its miraculous potential, and diverting it into possession. This is much like the confusion of sex impulses with possession-impulses. Some of the original material is still in the Temple. This is why you became so afraid about Atlantis. Bill has his own reasons.

2. Retain your miracle-minded attitude toward Rosie VERY carefully. She once hurt both of you, which is why she is now your servant. But she is blessed in that she sees service as a source of joy. Help her straighten out her past errors by contributing to your welfare now.

(special Revelation re Helen Schucman -OMISSION 1.)

Helen Schucman question re: past memories. ANSWER: As long as you remember ALWAYS that you never suffered anything because of anything that anyone ELSE did, this is not dangerous.

Remember that you who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. You never really WANTED peace before, so there was no point in knowing how to get it. This is an example of the "need to know" principle, which was established by the Plan of Atonement long before CIA.

No kind of knowledge is acquired by anyone unless he wants it, or believes in some way he NEEDS it. A psychologist does NOT need a lesson on the hierarchy of needs as such, but like everyone else, he DOES need to understand his own.

This particular set of notes will be the only one which deals with the concept of "lack", because while the concept does not exist in the Creation of God, it is VERY apparent in the creations of man. It is, in fact, the essential difference.

A need implies lack, by definition. It involves the recognition, conscious or unconscious, (and at times, fortunately, superconscious) that you would be better off in a state which is somehow different from the one you are in.

Until the Separation, which is a better term than the Fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them.

After the Separation, needs became the most powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not a Divine attribute. The body is the mechanism for behavior. (Ask any behaviorist, and he's RIGHT, too.)

You tell your own classes that nobody would bother even to get up and go from one place to another if he did not think he would somehow be better off. This is very true.

Believing that he COULD be "better off" is the reason why man has the mechanism for behavior at his disposal. This is why the Bible says "By their DEEDS ye shall know them."

A man acts according to the particular hierarchy of needs he establishes for himself. His hierarchy, in turn, depends on his perception of what he IS, i.e., what he LACKS. This establishes his own rules for what he needs to know.

Separation from God is the only lack he really needs to correct. But his Separation would never have occurred if he had not distorted his perception of truth, and thus perceived himself as lacking.

The concept of ANY sort of need HIERARCHY arose because, having made this fundamental error, he had already fragmented himself into levels with DIFFERENT needs. As he integrates, HE becomes one, and his ONE need becomes one accordingly. Only the fragmented can be confused about this.

Internal integration within the self will not (suffice to?) correct the lack fallacy, but it WILL correct the NEED fallacy. (Thank you for writing this as given.) Unified need produces unified action, because it produces lack of ambivalence.

The concept of need hierarchy, a corollary to the original error, requires correction at its OWN level, before the error of levels itself can be corrected. Man cannot operate (or behave) effectively while he operates at split levels. But as long as he does so, he must introduce correction from the bottom UP.

This is because he now operates in space, where "up" and "down" are meaningful terms. Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary.

The need to know is not safely under man's control at this time. It is MUCH better off under mine. Let's just leave it at that.

(Specific question raised by WT re sex under existing conditions) (Helen Schucman raised previous question about the past, which has just been answered.)

The other question, however, I am more than willing to answer, because it is appropriate for NOW. You and Bill both chose your present sex partners shamefully, and would have to atone for the lack of love which was involved in any case.

You selected them precisely BECAUSE they were NOT suited to gratify your fantasies. This was not because you wanted to abandon or give up the fantasies, but because you were AFRAID of them. You saw in your partners a means of protecting against the fear, but both of you continued to "look around" for chances to indulge the fantasies.

The dream of the "perfect partner" is an attempt to find EXTERNAL integration, while retaining conflicting needs in the self.

As was said before, homosexuality is INHERENTLY more risky (or error prone) than heterosexuality, but both can be undertaken on an equally false basis. The falseness of the basis is clear in the accompanying fantasies. Homosexuality ALWAYS involves misperception of the self OR the partner, and generally both.

Penetration DOES NOT involve magic, nor DOES ANY form of sexual behavior. It IS a magic belief to engage in ANY form of body image activity at all. You neither created yourselves, nor controlled your creation. By introducing levels into your own perception, you opened the way for body-image distortions.

The lack of love (or faulty need-orientation) which led to your particular person (not OBJECT) choices CAN BE corrected within the existent framework, and would HAVE to be in the larger interest of overall progress. The situation is questionable largely because of its inherent vulnerability to fantasy-gratification. Doing the best you can WITHIN this limitation is probably the best corrective measure at present. Any relationship you have undertaken for whatever reasons becomes a responsibility.

If you shift your own needs, some amount of corresponding shift in the need-orientation of the other person MUST result, This will be beneficial, even if the partner was originally attracted to you BECAUSE of your disrespect. Teaching devices which are totally alien to a learner's perceptual system are usually merely disruptive. Transfer depends on SOME common elements in the new situation which are understandable in terms of the old.

Man can never control the effects of fear himself, because he has CREATED fear and believes in what he creates. In attitude, then, though not in content, he resembles his own Creator, who has perfect faith in His Creations because he Created them. All creation rests on belief, and the belief in the creation produces its existence. This is why it is possible for a man to believe what is not true for anyone else. It is true for him because it is made BY him.

Every aspect of fear proceeds from upside down perception. The TRULY creative devote their efforts to correcting this. The neurotic devotes his to compromise. The psychotic tries to escape by establishing the truth of his own errors. It is most difficult to free him by ordinary means, only because he is more stable in his denial of truth.

Miracle Principle 53

The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception. It is a device for perception-correction which is effective quite apart from either the degree or the direction of the error. This is its TRUE indiscriminateness.

Christ-controlled miracles are selective only in that they are directed toward those who can use them for THEMSELVES. Since this makes it inevitable that they will extend them to others, a very strong chain of Atonement is welded. But Christ-control takes no account at all of the MAGNITUDE of the miracle itself, because the concept of size exists only in a plane that is itself unreal. Since the miracle aims at RESTORING reality, it would hardly be useful if it were bound by the laws of the same error it aims to correct. Only man makes that kind of error. It is an example of the "foolish consistency" his own false beliefs have engendered.

Both the power and the strength of man's creative will must be understood, before the real meaning of denial can be appreciated and abolished. Denial is NOT mere negation. It is a positive miscreation. While the miscreation is NECESSARILY believed in by its own creator, it does not exist at all at the level of true Creation.

Miracle Principle 54

The miracle compares the creations of man with the higher level of creation, accepting what is in ACCORD as true, and rejecting the DISCORDANT as false. This is why it is so closely associated with validity. Real validity is both true AND useful, or better, it is useful BECAUSE it is true.

All aspects of fear are untrue, because they DO NOT exist at the higher creative levels, and therefore do not exist at all. To whatever extent a man is willing to submit his beliefs to the real test of validity, to that extent are his perceptions healed (or corrected.)

In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds much along the lines suggested very correctly by Bill, i.e.:

If perfect love casts out fear,

And if fear exists,

Then there is NOT perfect love.

But

Only perfect love really exists.

Therefore, if there is fear, it creates a state which does not exist. Believe THIS and you WILL be free. Only God can establish this solution, for THIS faith IS His gift.

Section 7 - The Loss of Certainty

Dictated without notes.

We said before that the abilities which man possesses are only shadows of his true abilities. The Soul's true functions are knowing, loving, and creating. The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then. You will also remember that I made it very clear that the Resurrection was the return to knowledge, which was accomplished by the union of my will with the Father's.

Since the Separation, the words "create" and "make" are inevitably confused. When you make something, you make it first out of a sense of lack or need, and second, out of a something that already exists. Anything that is made is made for a specific purpose. It has no true generalizability. When you make something to fill a perceived lack, which is obviously why you would make anything, you are tacitly implying that you believe in the Separation. Knowing does not lead to doing, as we have frequently observed already.

What appears to be contradictory about the difference between knowing and perceiving, and Revelation and miracles, is again the fallacy that is the root cause of all subsequent errors. The miracle was associated with perception, and not with knowing. However, we also noted that prayer is the medium of miracles, and also the natural communication of the Creator and the Created. Prayer is always an affirmation of knowledge, not of accurate perception. That is why unless perception has entered into it, it calls on Revelation.

The confusion between your own creation and what you create is so profound that it has literally become impossible to know anything, because knowledge is always stable. It is quite evident that human beings are not. Nevertheless, they are perfectly stable as God created them. In this sense, when their behavior is unstable, they are obviously disagreeing with God's idea of the Creation. This is a fundamental right of man, although not one he would care to exercise if he were in his Right Mind.

The problem that is bothering you most is the fundamental question which man continually asks of himself, but which cannot properly be directed to himself at all. He keeps on asking "himself" what he is. This implies that the answer is not only one which he knows, but one which is up to him. The first part of this statement is perfectly true, but the second part is not. We have frequently commented on the absolute necessity of correcting all fallacious thinking which associates man in any way with his own Creation. Man CANNOT perceive himself correctly. He has no image at all. The word "image" is always perception related, and is not a product of knowing. Images are symbolic, and stand for something else. The current emphasis on "changing your image" is a good description of the power of perception, but it implies that there is nothing to KNOW.

Prayer is the medium of miracles, not because God created perceptions, but because God created YOU. At the beginning of this course, we said that YOU are a miracle. Therefore, the miracle worker is a miracle NOT of his own creation. Unless perception rests on some knowing basis, it is so unstable that it doesn't mean anything. Knowing is not open to interpretation, because its meaning is its own. It is possible to interpret meaning, but this is always open to error because it involves the perception of meaning. All of these wholly needless complexities are the result of man's attempt to regard himself both as separated and unseparated at the same time. It is impossible to undertake a confusion as fundamental as this without engaging in further confusion.

Methodologically, man's mind has been very creative. But, as always occurs when method and content are separated, it has not been utilized for anything but an attempt to escape a fundamental and entirely inescapable impasse. This kind of thinking cannot result in a creative outcome, though it has resulted in considerable ingenuity. It is noteworthy, however, that this ingenuity has almost totally divorced him from knowledge.

Knowledge does not require ingenuity at all. When we say "the truth shall set you free," we mean that all this kind of thinking is a waste of time, but that you are free of the need of engaging in it.

Note again that the functions of the Soul were not referred to as abilities. This point requires clarification, because abilities are beliefs which are BASED on the scarcity fallacy, since they do not mean anything apart from within-group comparisons. As you yourself never fail to point out, "nobody has none of an ability, and nobody has all of it." That is, of course, why the curve never rests on the line. The clearest implications of relativity, which properly inheres in this statement, DEMONSTRATE that abilities are not functions of the Soul. The Soul's functions are NOT relative. They are ABSOLUTE. They are OF God and FROM God, and therefore God-like.

Prayer is a way of asking for something. When we said that prayer is the medium of miracles, we also said that the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven HAVE everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer in the usual sense becomes utterly without meaning. Essentially, a prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that we may be able to recognize something we already have.

In electing the ability to perceive instead of the will to know, man placed himself in a position where he could resemble his Father ONLY by perceiving miraculously. But he lost the knowledge that he HIMSELF is a miracle. MIRACULOUS CREATION was his own Source, and also his own real function. "God created man in his own image and likeness" is correct in meaning, but the words are open to considerable misinterpretation. This is avoided, however, if "image" is understood to mean "thought," and "likeness" is taken as "of a like quality." God DID create the Son in His own Thought, and of a quality like to His own. There IS nothing else.

Perception is impossible WITHOUT a belief in "more" and "less." Unless perception, at every level, involves selectivity, it is incapable of organization. In all types of perception, there is a continual process of accepting and rejecting, of organizing and reorganizing, and of shifting and changing focus. Evaluation is an essential aspect of perception, because judgment MUST be made for selection. "Lack of lack" is a concept which is meaningless to a perceiver, because the ability to perceive at all RESTS ON lack.

What happens to perceptions if there ARE no judgments, and there is nothing BUT perfect equality? Perception is automatically useless. Truth can only be KNOWN. All of it is equally true, and knowing any part of it IS to know all of it.

Only perception involves partial awareness. Knowledge transcends ALL of the laws which govern perception. Partial KNOWLEDGE is impossible. It is all One, and has no separate parts. (i.e. the parts have NOT separated.) This IS the real knowledge. You who are really one with it need but know YOURSELF and your knowledge is complete. To know God's miracle is to know Him.

Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct perception of EACH OTHER is necessary ONLY because minds have willed to see themselves AS separate beings. Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT.

God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light. If they recognize this light anywhere, they know it universally. Revelation cannot be explained, because it IS knowledge. Revelation HAPPENS. It is the only REALLY natural happening, because it reflects the nature of God.

As long as perception lasts, prayer has a place. Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know. God and HIS miracles are inseparable.

All words, at best, are preparatory. THE word is really a thought. No one WORD is universally meaningful, because a word is a symbol, but thought is not divisible by creation. The original name for "thought" and "word" was the same. The quotation should read "In the beginning was the thought, and the thought was with God, and the thought WAS God." How beautiful indeed are the thoughts of God, who live in His light. Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt.

Do not perceive yourself in different lights. KNOW yourself in the One Light, where the miracle which is you is perfectly clear.

The prerequisites for therapy must include the following conditions:

1. The procedure must involve the recognition rather than the denial of the importance of thought.

2. The exact equality of everyone who is involved. This must include Me.

3. No one is either therapist or patient. (Bill should add "teacher or pupil.")

4. Above all EVERYONE involved must want to give up everything that is NOT true. The reason for the negative emphasis here is that therapy implies something HAS gone wrong. Even though the purpose is to correct, those who are ill ARE negative.

5. Therapy is EXACTLY the same as all other forms of miracle-working. It has no separate laws of its own. All of the points that were given for miracles apply to therapy because, UNLESS therapy proceeds from miracle-mindedness, it CANNOT heal.

6. The therapist (hopefully) does have the role of being the better perceiver. (This is also, again hopefully, true of the teacher.) It does not follow that he is the better knower. Temporarily, the therapist or teacher can help in straightening out twisted perceptions, which is also the only role that I would ever contribute myself. All therapy should do is try to place EVERYONE involved in the right frame of mind to help one another. It is essentially a process of true courtesy, including courtesy to Me.

Any form of mental illness can truthfully be described as an expression of viciousness. We said before that those who are afraid are apt to be vicious. If we were willing to forgive other people's misperceptions of us, they could not possibly affect us at all. There is little doubt that you can explain your present attitudes in terms of how people used to look at you, but there is no wisdom in doing so. In fact, the whole historical approach can justifiably be called doubtful.

As you have so often said, no one has adopted ALL of his parents' attitudes as his own. In every case, there has been a long process of choice, in which the individual has escaped from those he himself vetoed, while retaining those he voted FOR. Bill has not retained his parents political beliefs, in spite of the particular kind of newspapers that constituted their own reading matter in this area. The reason why he could do this was because he believed he was free in this area.

When B's father came to his new office and "destroyed" it, it is quite apparent that Bill MUST have been willing to let it be destroyed. The many times that he has commented on this event alone would suggest that the extreme importance of this misperception in his own distorted thinking. Why should anyone accord an obvious misperception so much power? There cannot be any real justification for it, because even Bill himself recognized the real problem by saying "How could he do this to me?" The answer is HE didn't.

Bill has a very serious question to ask himself in this connection. We said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to "demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God." This demonstration EXONERATES those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have NOT hurt anyone. B's question, which he must ask himself very honestly, is whether he is willing to demonstrate that his parents have NOT hurt him. Unless he is willing to do this, he has not forgiven them.

The essential goal of therapy is the same as that of knowledge. No one can survive independently as long as he is willing to see himself through the eyes of others. This will always put him in a position where he MUST see himself in different lights. Parents do not create the image of their children, though they may perceive images which they do create. However, as we have already said, you are not an image. If you SIDE WITH image-makers, you are merely being idolatrous.

Bill has no justification whatever for perpetuating ANY image of himself at all. He is NOT an image. Whatever is true of him is wholly benign. It is essential that he KNOW this about himself, but he cannot know it while he chooses to interpret himself as vulnerable enough to BE hurt. This is a peculiar kind of arrogance, whose narcissistic component is perfectly obvious. It endows the perceiver with sufficient unreal strength to make him over, and then acknowledges the perceiver's miscreation. There are times when this strange lack of real courtesy appears to be a form of humility. Actually, it is never more than simple spite.

Bill, your parents did misperceive you in many ways, but their ability to perceive was quite warped, and their misperceptions stood in the way of their own knowledge. There is no reason why it should stand in the way of yours. It is still true that you believe they DID something to you. This belief is extremely dangerous to your perception, and wholly destructive of your knowledge. This is not only true of your attitudes toward your parents, but also of your misuse of your friends. You still think that you MUST respond to their errors AS IF they were true. By reacting self-destructively, you are GIVING them approval for their misperceptions.

No one has the right to change himself according to different circumstances. Only his actions are capable of appropriate variation. His belief in himself is a constant, unless it rests on perceptual acuity rather than knowledge of what he is.

It is your DUTY to establish beyond doubt that you are totally unwilling to side with (identify with) anyone's misperceptions of you, including your own. If you become concerned with totally irrelevant factors, such as the physical condition of a classroom, the number of students, the hour of the course, and the many elements which you may choose to select for emphasis as a basis for misperception, you have lost the knowledge of what ANY interpersonal relationship is for. It is NOT true that the difference between pupil and teacher is lasting. They meet IN ORDER to abolish the difference. At the beginning, since we are still in time, they come together on the basis of inequality of ability and experience. The aim of the teacher is to give them more of what is temporarily his. This process has all of the miracle conditions we referred to at the beginning. The teacher (or miracle worker) gives more to those who have less, bringing them closer to equality with him, at the same time gaining for himself.

The confusion here is only because they do not gain the same things, because they do not NEED the same things. If they did, their respective, though temporary roles would not be conducive to mutual profit. Freedom from fear can be achieved by BOTH teacher and pupil ONLY if they do not compare either their needs or their positions in regard to each other in terms of higher and lower.

Presumably, children must learn from parents. What parents learn from children is merely of a different order. Ultimately, there is no difference in order, but this involves only knowledge. Neither parents nor children can be said to HAVE knowledge, or their relationships would not exist AS IF they were on different levels. The same is true of the teacher and the pupil. Children have an authority problem ONLY if they believe that their image is influenced BY the authority. This is an act of will on their part, because they are electing to misperceive the authority and GIVE him this power.

A TEACHER with an authority problem is merely a pupil who refuses to teach others. He wants to maintain HIMSELF in a position where he can be misused and misperceived. This makes him resentful of teaching, because of what he insists it has done to him.

The ONLY way out of this particular aspect of the desert is still to leave. The way this is left is to release EVERYONE involved, by ABSOLUTELY REFUSING to engage in any form of honoring error. Neither teacher nor pupil is imprisoned by learning unless he uses it as an attack. If he does this, he will be imprisoned whether he actually teaches or learns, or refuses to be engaged in the process at all.

The role of a teacher, properly conceived, is one of leading himself and others out of the desert. The value of this role can hardly be underestimated, if only because it was one to which I very gladly dedicated my own life. I have repeatedly asked MY pupils to follow me. This means that, to be effective teachers, they MUST interpret teaching as I do. I have made EVERY effort to teach you ENTIRELY without fear. If you do not listen, you will be unable to avoid the VERY obvious error of perceiving teaching as a threat.

It is hardly necessary to say that teaching is a process whose purpose is to produce learning. The ultimate purpose of ALL learning is to abolish fear. This is necessary so that knowledge can happen. The role of the teacher is NOT the role of God. This confusion is all too frequently made, by parents, teachers, therapists, and the clergy. It is a real misunderstanding of both God and His miracles. Any teacher who believes that teaching is fearful CANNOT learn because he is paralyzed. He also cannot really teach.

Bill was quite right in maintaining that this course is a prerequisite for his. However, he was really saying much more than that. The purpose of this course IS to prepare you for knowledge. So is the only real purpose of ANY legitimate course. All that is required of you as a teacher is to follow Me.

Whenever anyone decides that he can function only in SOME roles but not in others, he cannot BUT be attempting to make a compromise which will not work. If Bill is under the misbelief that he is coping with the fear problem by functioning as an administrator and as a teacher of interns, but NOT as a teacher of students, he is merely deceiving himself. He owes himself greater respect. There is nothing as tragic as the attempt to deceive one's self, because it implies that you perceive yourself as so unworthy that deception is more fitting for you than truth. Either you can function in all of the roles you have properly undertaken to fill, or you cannot function effectively in any of them. This IS an all or none decision. You CANNOT make inappropriate level distinctions within this choice. You are either capable or not. This does not mean that you can DO everything, but it DOES mean that you are either totally miracle-minded or not. This decision is open to NO compromise whatever. When Bill says that he cannot teach, he is making the same mistake that we spoke of before, when he acted as if universal laws applied to everyone except him. This is not only arrogant, but patently untrue. Universal laws MUST apply to him, unless he does not exist. We will not bother to argue about this.

Descartes engaged in a very interesting teaching procedure, and one from which he himself learned a great deal. He began with doubting the existence of everything, except himself. He insisted that his own existence was not open to doubt, and rebuilt his entire thought system on the one premise "I think, therefore I am." It is noteworthy that he arrived at accepting the entire system he originally doubted, solely on the basis of this ONE piece of knowledge. There was, however, a distinct shift in his own perception. He no longer really questioned the reality of what he perceived, because he KNEW he was there.

We mentioned before that Bill is not too sure of this, and that is why we suggested that he concentrate on "Lord, here I am." A teacher is unlikely to be effective unless he begins with BEING THERE. B, this is not really open to question. You will lose all your fear of teaching and relating in any form once you know who you are. There is no point whatever in remaining in the prison of believing that this is up to you. You do NOT exist in different lights. It is this belief which has confused you about your own reality. Why would you want to remain so obscure to yourself?