¹ Words will mean little now. We use them but as guides on which we do not now depend. For now we seek direct experience of truth alone. The lessons which remain are merely introductions to the times in which we leave the world of pain and go to enter peace. Now we begin to reach the goal this course has set and find the end toward which our practicing was geared.

¹ The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness will the world be seen in quite another light, and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well.

² The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone.

³ The mechanisms of illusion have been born instead. And now they go to find what has been given them to seek. Their aim is to fulfil the purpose which the world was made to witness and make real. They see in its illusions but a solid base where truth exists, upheld apart from lies. Yet everything that they report is but illusion, which is kept apart from truth.

⁴ As sight was made to lead away from truth, it can be redirected. Sounds become the call of God. And all perception can be given a new purpose by the one Whom God appointed savior to the world. Follow His light and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.

⁵ Let us not rest content until the world has joined our changed perception. Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete. And let us not attempt to change our function. We must save the world. For we who made it must behold it through the eyes of Christ, that what was made to die can be restored to Everlasting Life.

¹ Let me behold the Son of God today and witness to his glory. Let me not try to obscure the holy light in him and see his strength diminished and reduced to frailty nor perceive the lacks in him with which I would attack his sovereignty.

² He is Your Son, my Father. And today I would behold his gentleness instead of my illusions. He is what I am, and as I see him, so I see myself. Today I would see truly that this day I may at last identify with him.

V. The Branching of the Road

³⁸ When you come to the place where the branch in the road is quite apparent, you cannot go ahead. You must go either one way or the other. For now if you go straight ahead, the way you went before you reached the branch, you will go nowhere. The whole purpose of coming this far was to decide which branch you will take now. The way you came no longer matters. It can no longer serve. No one who reaches this far can make the wrong decision, but he can delay. And there is no part of the journey that seems more hopeless and futile than standing where the road branches and not deciding on which way to go.

³⁹ It is but the first few steps along the right way that seem hard, for you have chosen, although you still may think you can go back and make the other choice. This is not so. A choice made with the power of Heaven to uphold it cannot be undone. Your way is decided. There will be nothing you will not be told if you acknowledge this.

⁴⁰ And so you stand, here in this holy place, before the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ. Let it be lifted! Raise it together, for it is but a veil that stands between you. Either alone will see it as a solid block, nor realize how thin the drapery that separates you now. Yet it is almost over in your awareness, and peace has reached you even here before the veil. Think what will happen after! The love of Christ will light your faces and shine from them into a darkened world that needs the light. And from this holy place He will return with you, not leaving it nor you. You will become His messengers, returning Him unto Himself.

⁴¹ Think of the loveliness that you will see who walk with Him! And think how beautiful will each of you look to the other! How happy you will be to be together after such a long and lonely journey where you walked alone. The gates of Heaven, open now for you, will you now open to the sorrowful. And none who looks upon the Christ in you but will rejoice. How beautiful the sight you saw beyond the veil which you will bring to light the tired eyes of those as weary now as once you were. How thankful will they be to see you come among them, offering Christ's forgiveness to dispel their faith in sin.

⁴² Every mistake you make the other will gently have corrected for you, for in his sight your loveliness is his salvation which he would protect from harm. And each will be the other's strong protector from everything that seems to rise between you. So shall you walk the world with me, whose message has not yet been given to everyone. For you are here to let it be received. God's offer still is open, yet it waits acceptance. From you who have accepted it is it received. Into your joined hands is it safely given, for you who share it have become its willing guardians and protectors.

⁴³ To all who share the love of God, the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that it is theirs forever. All barriers disappear before their coming, as every obstacle was finally surmounted which seemed to rise and block their way before. This veil you lift together opens the way to truth to more than you. Those who would let illusions be lifted from their minds are this world's saviors, walking the world with their Redeemer and carrying His message of hope and freedom and release from suffering to everyone who needs a miracle to save him.

⁴⁴ How easy is it to offer this miracle to everyone! No one who has received it for himself could find it difficult. For by receiving it, he learned it was not given him alone. Such is the function of a holy relationship—to receive together and give as you received. Standing before the veil, it still seems difficult. But hold out your joined hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you share.

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VI. Weakness and Defensiveness

⁴⁵ 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.

⁴⁶ Consider what the ego wants defenses for—always to justify what goes against the truth, flies in the face of reason, and makes no sense. Can this be justified? What can this be except an invitation to insanity to save you from the truth? And what would you be saved from but what you fear? Belief in sin needs great defense and at enormous cost. All that the Holy Spirit offers must be defended against and sacrificed. For sin is carved into a block out of your peace and laid between you and its return. Yet how can peace be so fragmented? It is still whole, and nothing has been taken from it.

⁴⁷ 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.

⁴⁸ 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 that 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 which 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?

⁴⁹ 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 from what is quietly passed through and gone beyond?

⁵⁰ Forget not, when you feel the need arise to be defensive about anything, you have identified yourself 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 immovable, between you and your brother. And not one that truth cannot pass over lightly and so easily that you must be convinced, in spite of what you thought it was, that it is 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.

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