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.
This is a day of silence and of trust. It is a special time of promise in your calendar of days. It is a time Heaven has set apart to shine upon, and cast a timeless light upon this day when echoes of eternity are heard. This day is holy, for it ushers in a new experience, a different kind of feeling and awareness. You have spent long days and nights in celebrating death. Today you learn to feel the joy of life.
This is another crucial turning point in the curriculum. We add a new dimension now; a fresh experience which sheds a light on all that we have learned already, and prepares us for what we have yet to learn. It brings us to the door where learning ceases, and we catch a glimpse of what lies past the highest reaches it can possibly attain. It leaves us there an instant and we go beyond it, sure of our direction and our only goal.
Today it will be given you to feel a touch of Heaven, though you will return to paths of learning, yet you have come far enough along the way to alter time sufficiently to rise above its laws, and walk into eternity a while. This you will learn to do increasingly, as every lesson, faithfully rehearsed, brings you more swiftly to this holy place and leaves you, for a moment, to your Self.
He will direct your practicing today, for what you ask for now is what He wills. And having joined your will with His this day, what you are asking must be given you. Nothing is needed but today's idea to light your mind, and let it rest in still anticipation and in quiet joy wherein you quickly leave the world behind.
From this day forth your ministry takes on a genuine devotion, and a glow that travels from your fingertips to those you touch, and blesses those you look upon. A vision reaches everyone you meet, and everyone you think of, or who thinks of you. For your experience today will so transform your mind that it becomes the touchstone for the holy Thoughts of God.
Your body will be sanctified today, its only purpose being now to bring the vision of what you experience this day to light the world. We cannot give experience like this directly. Yet it leaves a vision in our eyes which we can offer everyone, that he may come the sooner to the same experience in which the world is quietly forgot, and Heaven is remembered for a while.
As this experience increases and all goals but this become of little worth, the world to which you will return becomes a little closer to the end of time; a little more like Heaven in its ways; a little nearer its deliverance. And you who bring it light will come to see the light more sure; the vision more distinct. The time will come when you will not return in the same form in which you now appear, for you will have no need of it. Yet now it has a purpose, and will serve it well.
Today we will embark upon a course you have not dreamed of. But the Holy One, the Giver of the happy dreams of life, Translator of perception into truth, the holy Guide to Heaven given you, has dreamed for you this journey, which you make and start today, with the experience, this day holds out to you to be your own.
Into Christ's Presence will we enter now serenely unaware of everything except His shining Face and perfect Love. The vision of His Face will stay with you, but there will be an instant which transcends all vision, even this, the holiest. This you will never teach, for you attained it not through learning. Yet the vision speaks of your remembrance of what you knew that instant, and will surely know again.
When you contrast what is true in God's reality, versus what seems to be true or possible in this world, you will find a great discrepancy. A HUGE contradiction.
In God's truth, nothing real can be threatened. God is permanence. He is absolute factual reality. He is changeless and can never be destroyed. He is purely creative and constructive and totally devoid of suffering. And he can never die. Anything he creates MUST share all of these attributes, because they are extensions of his own nature and kind.
Then look to the physical world you are familiar with. Look at the fact that there is death happening. There are leaves falling from the trees and rotting. Someone's dog just got run over by a car. People are being shot. There are graveyards filled with decaying bodies. You can go there and look at the graves for yourself. You can go visit a morgue perhaps and see death in the flesh.
However, if God's reality is TRUE, and always true, as it must be to BE true, how is it POSSIBLE that there is death or attack of any kind? Can it BE true, that there is attack and death and murder in any form at all, if God's reality is that REAL THINGS are unattackable? How is it possible that you can look at a dead body? How is it possible that you can see leaves falling from trees? How is it possible that you can attack someone's body or be attacked by another?
It cannot both be true, that attack is impossible, and that attack is possible. There is no sense or sanity in that. ONLY ONE of them can be true. When it is blatantly obvious that everything in heaven is utterly immortal, invulnerable, eternal, permanent, and completely incapable of being changed by anyone against God's will. .... what then are the implications of that for the things which appear to COMPLETELY CONTRADICT that truth?
If you hold in your mind the FACT that in reality nothing real can ever be threatened or harmed or made to suffer or die, and then you quickly look at this world and see all of that happening ALL AROUND YOU, HOW "on earth" can you justify that IT IS POSSIBLE AT ALL? How can there be ANY TRUTH to this world at all?
Now we're not merely talking here about states of perception. You can be in false perception and believe very strongly that DEATH IS POSSIBLE. Even though this is obviously in TOTAL VIOLATION of God's reality. Death is UTTERLY impossible to God and his Kingdom.
"Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's."
"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father."
"Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. 12 The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it."
You can perceive for example that leaves are falling from trees right now. That IS DEATH. The leaves are going through a process of change. They are affected by the weather. They are under attack by the cold. They are PROVING that death is possible.
Then, you can move into what we call true perception. Supposedly this true perception is going to lift away the BELIEF or MEANING that leaves falling from trees "is real death". It's going to lift away the "proof" that falling leaves succeed in violating God's reality. But even if this is so, even if you interpret them to "not mean death", to see THROUGH their illusion of death, to not BUY INTO their death, you should really NOT SEE THEM AT ALL.
Leaves falling from trees IS STILL a process of dying, no matter how you interpret it or what meaning you give to it. A body laying in the ground ROTTING, is still actually "proof of sin". Why isn't the body upright and moving around, symbolizing life? Why does it not have vitality and strength and health? Why does it SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and decay? No matter HOW you look at it, the body is still in a FORM which represents the idea "attack is possible." EVEN IF you see it from a healed perspective.
"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."
True perception merely shows you a reinterpretation of the PROOF OF DEATH, in which the proof is disregarded. You RECOGNIZE that it is NOT REAL. That there CANNOT BE death because of God's truth that death is impossible. You OVERLOOK the death and do not buy into it. You do not BELIEVE in it or give it the meaning of fact, truth, or reality. You WITHDRAW reality from it and take back its seeming power to do anything. And this renders it nothing more than an ILLUSION OF A LIE OF A WORLD. It is the recognition that TRULY, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE.
What is impossible, in truth, simply CANNOT EXIST. It CANNOT HAPPEN. It CANNOT BE THERE TO SEE. If you see it, if you perceive it, in ANY way, you are seeing somethign which violates God's reality. This is why "you cannot behold the world and know God."
"The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it."
If you behold the world, if it seems to be THERE AT ALL, you are blinded to God. Because in God, the things of this world are NOT POSSIBLE. There are no falling leaves in God. There are no burial sites. There are no mass graves from war. There is no decay or loss or famine or disease. There is no attack or murder or guns or violence. These are NOT POSSIBLE.
So you have to really deeply ask yourself. When it boils down to it, IF IT IS TRUE that in God's truth all forms of attack and death ARE UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE, that they cannot even show up in ANY WAY, with any interpretation ..... CAN IT BE POSSIBLE that the things you're seeing as "a world", as earth, is even POSSIBLE AT ALL? Can it exist? Can it BE there to be seen? Can it even SEEM to exist? Should it even be HAPPENING?
The honest and sane answer to this is NO. The world CANNOT EXIST if God's reality is true. IMPOSSIBLE THINGS cannot be existing, or happening, or showing up, or being perceived in any manner, if God's reality is true. There cannot be graves or guns or gangs or guilt or regurgitation or garages or gargoyles. There cannot be forms. There cannot be objects. There cannot even be planets. There cannot even be EVENTS of any kind. Because there is no time in God.
"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. ****It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. ****When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."
1) What seems to happen has NOT OCCURRED. ("Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did has NOT OCCURRED."
2) The changes wrought are substanceless. ANY KIND OF CHANGE is an illusion. "They can be easily be changed BECAUSE they are illusions." All illusions are changeable, reality is not. Anything which changes IS NOT REAL. They have no real substance or meaning.
3) All events are nowhere. There is no history. There is no time. There is no past and no future. There are no elections, no wars, no celebrations, no tv shows being watched, no food being eaten, no forests burning, no snow melting, no fish swimming in oceans, no people arguing other meaningless piffle, no clouds parting, no sunsets, no puppies and kittens, no icea cream falling on the ground, nothing. NO EVENTS ANYWHERE.
This is because there is no world. That there is no world is the ONLY SANE CONCLUSION you can come to, when you examine that this world is utterly IMPOSSIBLE. Nothing in it can POSSIBLY be happening if God's reality is true. And if you are seeing it happen, if you are believing your eyes, YOU ARE INSANE.
So long as there are graveyards, there is the illusion of something impossible seeming to be possible. Something not true seeming to be true. There CANNOT BE graveyards. Nothing in God can ever die, so what are graveyards for but to try to PROVE that something IMPOSSIBLE is happening? Death is a lie. "There is no death, the son of God is free."
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
What do you WANT to be true? That dying is possible, or that it is not? Your choice. And I am under no laws but God's.
"***Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already*** (earth is not objective reality), hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish (you wished it into being with wishful thinking), and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly.
Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind. But ***it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself*** (the idea that earth exists objectively and independently from your mode of perception), impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is.
***There is no world!*** (earth does not exist because IT IS IMPOSSIBLE!) This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.
But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn ***there is no world***, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in ***experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.*** And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today."
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in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.
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