Miracles and Immortality is a direct, uncompromising spiritual journey from suffering, conflict and death back to God, eternal life and the truth of what we are.
Written by Paul West, a student and practitioner of the teachings of A Course in Miracles for over 25 years, this book offers a clear and independent presentation of deep spiritual ideas in simpler, more linear language. It is designed as an easier-to-understand bridge for beginner and intermediate readers who want to grasp the larger patterns behind forgiveness, miracles, the ego, the world, the body, sickness, death, resurrection, awakening and the return to God.
At around 260,000 words, with over 60 unique diagrams, spanning 823 pages, this is a substantial spiritual work for serious readers who want more than a watered-down version of the truth. It is thorough, deep, honest and uncompromising, covering a wide range of topics. It carefully builds one idea upon another, helping the reader follow the whole journey from the condition of the world, through the nature of God and Heaven, into the undoing of fear, guilt, sickness and death, and the return to immortality through forgiveness, miracles, holy relationships and resurrection.
The book is divided into three major parts:
Part 1 — Life
This section lays the foundation. It explores absolute truth, the nature of God, Heaven, oneness, the sons of God, eternal life, innocence, holiness, free will and the Kingdom of God. It presents the reality of an immortal life as God created it: changeless, perfect, whole, loving and eternal, and acts as the light of truth as we explore the nature of life in the world and how to rise above it.
Part 2 — Death
This section looks honestly at the world of separation: spacetime, ego, sin guilt and fear, suffering, special relationships, bodies, sickness, murder and death. It examines why the world does not work, why suffering seems so convincing, and why death cannot be the truth of what we are.
Part 3 — Resurrection
This section turns toward the way out. It becomes more practical, focusing on the Holy Spirit, forgiveness, Atonement, guidance, healing, miracles, holy relationships, identity, the forgiven world and awakening to reality. It offers tools, ideas and ways of seeing that help the mind move out of hell and back toward God.
The diagrams throughout the book help clarify difficult metaphysical ideas visually, including absolute reality, the nature of God and creation, the separation, ego, projection and perception, relationships, the Holy Spirit, miracles, forgiveness and the forgiven world, healing, and reunion with God as we reclaim our immortality.
This is not a light or casual book. It is a deep and sincere spiritual rescue manual for those who have experienced the world's suffering and death and felt: there must be a better way.
Its central message is simple but profound:
Death is not the truth.
Hell is not your home.
You are not a body.
The world isn't reality.
God created you immortal.
And the way home to God is always open.
The book is available in paperback printed format, digital kindle ebook format, and also in downloadable audiobook format.
The paperback and ebook are distributed through all Amazon websites. The audiobook is only available specifically from amazon.com or audible.com - it is not available in other country-specific versions of the sites at this time. The ebook can be viewed on an Amazon kindle device or with the desktop Kindle app which is available for Mac and Windows and possibly other devices also.
For the audiobook, Amazon may be working to expand their production capabilities eventually. Currently you can create an account at amazon.com and order the audiobook from anywhere in the world (it's digital, so no shipping), and it will then show up in your account at audible.com - which can be logged into with your amazon.com account.
You can find the book on the Amazon.com site here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H7L2SKN6
You can look inside the book and read about 20% of the front of the book on the amazon page.
You can also find it on any Amazon.com site by searching for the book title. You can find the audiobook also by a direct search at audible.com
Currently the pricing (in US dollars) is $24.95 for the paperback, 7.95 for the ebook, and $11.95 for the audiobook.
Each of the books has an overhead or printing fee which I have to pay out of my profit margin. For example the paperback costs about $11 to print. Amazon also takes a hefty cut from the remaining profit The pricing is set so that I receive about $5 from each sale.
The journey that we undertake together is the change of dark for light, of ignorance for understanding. NOTHING YOU UNDERSTAND IS FEARFUL. It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and you shrink away from it to further darkness. And yet, it is only the hidden that CAN terrify, NOT for what it IS, but FOR its hiddenness. The obscure is frightening, BECAUSE you do not understand its meaning. If you did, IT would be clear, and you would be no longer in the dark. Nothing has HIDDEN value, for what is hidden CANNOT be shared, and so its value is unknown. The hidden is KEPT APART, but value ALWAYS lies in joint appreciation. What is concealed CANNOT be loved, and so it MUST be feared.
The quiet light in which the Holy Spirit dwells within you, is merely perfect openness, in which nothing is hidden, and therefore nothing is feared. Attack will ALWAYS yield to love, if it is brought TO love, not hidden FROM it. There is no darkness that the light of love will not dispel, unless it is concealed from love's beneficence. What is KEPT APART from love CANNOT share its healing power, because it has been separated off, and KEPT IN DARKNESS. The sentinels of darkness watch over it carefully, and you who made these guardians of illusion out of nothing, are now AFRAID of them.
Would you continue to give imagined power to these strange ideas of safety? They are neither safe nor unsafe. They do not protect, NEITHER DO THEY ATTACK. They DO nothing at all, BEING nothing at all. As guardians of darkness and of ignorance, look to them ONLY for fear, for what they keep obscure IS fearful. But let them go, and what WAS fearful, will be so no longer. Without protection of obscurity, ONLY the light of love remains, for only this HAS meaning, and CAN live in light. Everything else MUST disappear.
Death yields to life, simply because destruction IS NOT TRUE. The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are BROUGHT TOGETHER, the truth of one MUST make the falsity of its OPPOSITE perfectly clear. Keep not guilt and guiltlessness APART, for your belief that you can HAVE THEM BOTH, is meaningless. All you have done by keeping them apart is LOSE THEIR MEANING, by confusing them with each other. And so you do not realize that only one means ANYTHING, and the other is wholly without sense of ANY kind.
You have interpreted the separation as a means which you have made for BREAKING your communication with your Father. The Holy Spirit re-interprets it as a means of re-establishing what has NOT been broken, but HAS been made obscure. All things you made have use to Him, for His most holy purpose. He KNOWS you are not separate from God, but He perceives much in your mind that lets you THINK you are. All this, and nothing else, would He separate FROM you. The power of decision, which you made IN PLACE of power of creation, He would teach you how to use ON YOUR BEHALF. You who made it to crucify yourselves, must learn of Him how to apply it to the holy cause of restoration.
You who speak in dark and devious symbols, do not understand the language you have made. It HAS no meaning, for its purpose is NOT communication, but rather, the DISRUPTION of communication. If the purpose of language IS communication, how can this tongue mean ANYTHING? Yet even this strange and twisted effort to communicate through NOT communicating, holds enough of love to MAKE IT MEANINGFUL, IF ITS INTERPRETER IS NOT ITS MAKER. You who made it are but expressing CONFLICT, from which the Holy Spirit would RELEASE you. Leave what you would communicate to Him. He will interpret it to you with perfect clarity, for He knows with Whom you ARE in perfect communication.
You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said to you. But your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your alien language. He will not attempt to communicate the meaningless. But He WILL separate out all that HAS meaning, dropping off all the rest, and offering your true communication to those who would communicate as truly WITH you. YOU SPEAK TWO LANGUAGES AT ONCE, and this MUST lead to unintelligibility. But if one means nothing, and the other EVERYTHING, only that one is possible for purposes of communication. The other but INTERFERES with it.
The Holy Spirit's function is ENTIRELY communication. He therefore MUST remove whatever INTERFERES with it, in order to RESTORE it. Therefore, keep no source of interference from His sight, for He will NOT attack your sentinels. But bring them TO Him, and let His gentleness teach you that, in the light, they are not fearful, and CANNOT serve to guard the dark doors behind which nothing at all is carefully concealed. We must open all doors, and let the light come streaming through. There are no hidden chambers in God's Temple. Its gates are open wide, to greet His Son. No-one can fail to come where God has called him, if he close not the door himself upon His Father's welcome.
While ACIM, as a book, is a collection fo words, these words are twice removed from reality. They are symbols of symbols.
Jesus, who wrote the material, was not operating on a level of symbols upon symbols, or even a level of symbols. He is operating from a level of total awareness and experience of truth. He is in heaven, and wrote the course material from that perspective.
What you have to realize then is that the words in the book are just expressions from a higher state. They are a sort of translation. So if there is some kind of truth or principle and it's talked about in the book, it may be presented in several different ways, using various words. Because the words aren't the starting point of the truth.
For example Jesus touches on the topic of forgiveness hundreds of times, and many of those statements say practically the same thing. There are even some sentences which are worded almost identically. Yet they appear different in form just because they use different words.
It's important to realize that the words in the book are NOT the highest level of truth, or the origin of that truth. They are expressions OF truth, turned into symbolic form.
For example if Jesus is expert on the topic of forgiveness, he could write literally 1 million books solely on that topic, all using a plethora of words and coming at the same teaching from a variety of angles.
Although he might choose certain words to try to represent the subject matter, that doesn't mean the words chosen are doctrine or some kind of perfect representation. Because you have to remember that they are not only removed from reality, they are part of a strange ego-generated language and is trying to work within their confines so that the people who speak that language will be able to get some measure of coherent meaning from it.
Many of us begin learning the course from the bottom up, starting in the darkness and trying to find our way to the light. We have some pieces of the puzzle but not all, and based on various clues and consistencies we gradually piece together a clearer picture of what it's saying or means. And that can take a long time to sort out what it means without any contradictions or confusion.
Just because the course says something in one passage that doesn't mean that's the whole truth either. Because Jesus may say something in another passage which either clarifies it or seems to contradict it. This is because each set of words are jut one form or expression, and each expression may have nuances or implications or suggestions of meaning which, if taken too out of context or in isolation, may lead to false conclusions.
You can try to think that the words are the meaning, but this isn't always true, and quite often you'll see people quoting isolated passages as if they are the whole story. Since Jesus is coming from a singular whole truth, the course should be considered a kind of holographic projection of that, and that means there is fragmentation and differences and in some cases there may appear to be things which don't seem to add up.
Jesus has gone to great lengths to try to ensure that the course words are as unambiguous and consistent as possible, but the nature of the beast is that words are limiting and sometimes this adds some confusion.
It's important to gradually realize that beyond the words, and prior to the words, there is a state of truth and an entire logical system of metaphysics. For example the idea that the world was made as an opposite to reality. That's a simple metaphysical concept and you could put that into a million words to express it.
As you "see through" the words, read between the lines, and look to the deeper meaning, you're gradually going to find yourself moving beyond the words of the course entirely. Once you SEE the underlying metaphysical basis for what he's saying and why he's saying it, and therefore what his statement MUST mean regardless of their words, then you are really starting to see the "course beyond the course". The higher form of it.
In a way, this means that you have to "forgive the course", you have to overlook its forms and not be deceived by the appearance of its words. Just as much as anything else. It's easy to get hung up on trying to preserve the perfect words or read the earliest edition or whatever but that's all surface fluff. The real meaning behind it is way deeper than any of the words and any of the editions.
This is also why it's important to foster a personal relationship with Jesus and Holy Spirit and to get truth from the horse's mouth rather than getting lost in the book. Logically it makes more sense to speak to the author who is an expert, than to get lot in confusion based solely on some words on a page.
Once you grasp the logical concepts, they transcend the words. And then you can look at the words and you can see where Jesus is expressing FROM and what he's getting at and therefore, logically, what the words must mean. And this can be quite eye opening because then you'll start to compare and contrast the clearly logical meaning of the metaphysics against the English-languge expression or discussion "about" that metaphysics. And this begins to highlight the ways that they can at time be a little different in form. But the higher metaphysics is more accurate than the language-form of it.
One of the problems people have with the course is the sheer mass of words, the holographic scattering of subject matter, the seeming visiting and revisiting of topics, and the difficulty getting through the density of all that language to try to really get a clear view of what's behind it all. And what's behind it is actually very simple and organized and clean. What began as seemingly a huge collection of cryptic statements, few of which were believed or made sense, you end up with a massively stripped down and very simple foundation.
It takes a lot of sifting through the sheer weight of the course material to come to realize just how simple and logical the underlying metaphysics is. It's kind of like a sculpture where you have to continually chisel away at the rough details and the seeming differences until gradually a clear picture forms. And what them emerges is simple and beautiful and clear and well formed.
This is why it's important to learn not to get too hung up on what is written in the book. The form of the words can become a distraction away from the meaning. Some people get really hung up on what it says, taking words and phrases in isolation and thinking that they represent the whole meaning. This is because the ego believes that form IS meaning. The form of the course is not its meaning, however. Its meaning comes from where it CAME FROM, and the form it took in it expression is just a symbolic version of that.
There is a truth beyond words. There are structures and relationships between things that underly their English-language expressions. There is a metaphysics deeper than any page of the text. And as you move closer toward the deeper meaning you also more closer toward experiencing it. This is all part of the purification process. All part of undoing the seemingly elaborate complexities of the ego and replacing them with the sheer simplicity of God's truth.