Hi!

About one year ago I started translating Jesus Christ into German and published Everything on My homepage. Doing that Everybody totally ignores Me or alternatively attacks Me sometimes. At the same time I recognize happily that more and more People are using terms and statements of the Urtext in Their language.

One year ago I did an internet search on the term Urtext and found only references to the Urtext of Jesus Christ. There were also some references to musical notes that claimed the term for Themselves, but since musical notes are not text I am fine with that.

Today this term is suddenly in an inflationary way used for the Bible. There is no Urtext of the Bible, and if there was one, Everybody could see clearly how the Bible has been distorted. Jesus never was a Jew. He was neither born in Palestine nor has He ever lived there. The jewish religion is not God’s chosen “People”.

Jesus says:

Consider the power of My Word, in that it has withstood all the attacks of error, and is the Source of Truth.

Jesus also says:

I am the only completely true witness for God. You have every right to examine My credentials — in fact, I urge You to do so.

At Present You find the true Urtext of Jesus Christ for free and exclusive on the website of Doug Thompson and on My website. In this newsletter I send You the complete Chapter 1 of the Textbook.

Have fun!

B

Jesus Christ – Urtext

The Crucified is brought away by two Women. Picture on an Estruscan mirror.

This is a Course on Men. It is a required Course. Only the time You take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that You can establish the curriculum. It means only that You can elect what You want to take at a given time.

The Course does not aim at teaching the meaning of Love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of Love’s presence, which is Your natural inheritance. The opposite of Love is fear, but what is allencompassing can have no opposite.

This Course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing Real can be threatened.
Nothing unReal exists.

Herein lies the Peace of God.

Text

Chapter 1 – Introduction to Miracles

It is crucial to say first that this is a required Course. Only the time You take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that You establish the curriculum. It means only that You can elect what to take when. It is just because You are not ready to do what You should elect to do that time exists at all.

You will see Miracles through Your hands through Me. You should begin each day with the Prayer

Help Me to perform whatever Miracles You want of Me today.

a. Principles of Miracles

1. The first thing to remember about Miracles is that there is no order of difficulty among Them. One is not harder or bigger than Another. They are All the same.

2. Miracles do not matter. They are quite unimportant.

3. They occur naturally as an expression of Love. The real Miracle is the Love that inspires Them. In this sense, Everything that comes from Love is a Miracle.

3a. This explains the first point related to the lack of order. All expressions of Love are maximal.

3b. This is why the “thing in itself” does not matter. The only thing that matters is the Source, and this is far beyond human evaluation.

Question and answer regarding the first 3 principles:

Question H: Would You regard this communication as a kind of Miracle?

Answer: There is nothing special or surprising about this at all. The one thing that happened was the Universal Miracle Which was the experience of intense Love that You have felt.

Don’t get embarrassed by the idea of Love. Embarrassment is only a form of fear, and actually a particularly dangerous form because it reflects egocentricity. Do not feel guilty about the fact that You are doubting this. Just reread them and their Truth will come to You. I Love You, and I am not afraid or embarrassed or doubtful. My Strength will support You, so don’t worry and leave the rest to Me.

But when You see B, be sure You tell Him how much He helped You through by giving You the right message, and don’t bother with worrying about how You received it. That doesn’t matter either. You were just afraid.

4. All Miracles mean Life, and God is the Giver of Life. He will direct You very specifically.

Plan ahead is Good advice in this world, where You should and must control and direct where You have accepted responsibility. But the Universal Plan is in more appropriate hands. You will know All You need to know. Make no attempts to plan ahead in this respect.

5. Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected Miracles are usually misguided, and this will make the talent useless.

6. Miracles are natural. When They do not occur something has gone wrong.

7. Miracles are Everyone’s right, but purification is necessary first.

8. Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by Those Who have more for Those Who have less.

9. Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like All expressions of Love, which are always miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws.

10. A Miracle is a reversal of the physical order because It brings more Love to the Giver and the Receiver.

A Miracle is misunderstood when It is regarded as a spectacle.

11. The use of Miracles as a spectacle to induce belief is wrong. They are really used for and by believers.

H: I don’t think B wants this Course, and I’m not sure I do, either. He is very snappy.

I think this is slightly true because something is bothering Him, but He certainly is not very snappy. So why not try to help Him instead of blowing it up into an obstruction? He helps You All the time.

H: I resent this.

He is supposed to help Me but I – I resent a reciprocal arrangement, because He is a Man. Men are supposed to give to Me, but this is not possible.

H: I don’t always feel this way. It’s a danger signal now and just means something’s wrong. Anyway, presumably this Course is an elective.

No it isn’t.

Dreams: One was of great distress. Esther left Amy with Us and We were stuck.

I was very tired after an incredible day, in which a lot of stress was involved, and wanted to go to sleep but couldn’t on account of Amy.

I was trying not to get angry at Esther, because I think I was aware that She had a very Good reason for having to go away just then, and I should help Her even though She didn’t know the reason or maybe was offering Her usual show of maximal impulsiveness and no sense, but really did know the reason but was hiding it because She didn’t want to take credit for Herself.

That’s how You see People as They should be and that helps. Be that way.

There was a dream a while back which I keep forgetting – about a long winding tunnel, like They have in those very big garages so that They can drive cars up efficiently.

They look as though they’re going ‘round and ‘round but actually they are a very efficient of getting up smoothly, there are no sharp turns, evenly, the grade is maximal but not sharp, and has great space economy.

On top was an American flag.

Back to the dreams of last night: There was also one in which three animals, little ones, were in the same room, and I knew that I had to keep Them apart because They hated each other. Being so busy, this was a great additional strain on Me. One of Them was pregnant, and the other Two wanted to kill Her, but the other Two also hated each other too. Oddly enough, I was quite sorry for All of Them because They were All three mixed up, but in different ways. I felt I had to get the pregnant one out first, though, because of the Child.

I thought this an improvement on the recurrent dream I had for years about animals starving to death, and Me sometimes grieving, sometimes trying desperately to help Them, at times also realizing I had starved Them and feeling very guilty, but never saving Them.

Rockwell keeps coming in throughout, but His role is not clear.

Maybe it’s because of “The Rockwellians” Which is a very particular group. I’m not sure, But I think I invented the term Myself.

I was struck by H’s fat reaction, I’m from the Minnesota group but I know there must be a New York chapter.

She liked the term and thought it was just right. Rockwellians have a real sense of devotion to One Another, and also to R Himself. He is a very interesting Man, Who never went by His emotions and usually denied them, but they were responsible for His many blind spots and denials.

We All knew this but were very gentle about it.

The odd thing about Rockwellians is that I think All of Us believed in the unconscious, which R Himself opposes violently. I think We were All One together under His direction or teachership, and something happened.

We owe Him a lot, both Good and bad, and We’re to help Him now as a way out of the bad and a means of strengthening the Good.

The last dream was about a Child on the C.D.P. program. It seems that I saw the Child’s protocols, and suspected some sort of rather obscure diagnosis or problem. I was unwilling to go on record, because it was a medical thing and I thought Gates would disapprove.

But I felt an obligation to the Child and called Her M.D. about it. I got a letter in return, saying the physician was very grateful, and that the Child’s Life was saved and the information was badly needed.

When You say

If You want Me to I will

please add

and if You don’t want Me to I won’t.

This is the right use of inhibition. There has to be some control over learning for channelizing purposes. Remember retroactive inhibition which should be easy enough for You.

Sometimes the new learning is the more important, and has to inhibit the old. It’s a form of correction.

12. Prayer is the medium of Miracles. Prayer is the natural communication of the Created with the Creator. Through Prayer Love is received, and through Miracles Love is expressed.

The one more thing is B’s fear of punishment for what is done now. Everybody makes mistakes. These errors are completely trivial. Tell Him that where the past has been forgiven, these minor infractions are very easily altered.

13. Miracles are Thoughtcreations. Thought can create lowerorder or higherorder Realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the Spiritual, and We believe in what We create.

14. A Miracle is a beginning and an end, or ending. It thus abolishes time. It is always an affirmation of rebirth, which seems to go back, but really goes forward. It undoes the past in the Present, and thus releases the future.

15. Miracles attest to Truth. They are convincing because They arise from conviction. Without conviction, they deteriorate into magic, which is mindless, and therefore destructive, or rather, the uncreative use of Mind.

16. Each day should be devoted to Miracles.

God created time so that Man could use it creatively, and convince Himself of His own ability to create. Time is a teaching device, and a means to an end. It will cease when it is no longer useful for facilitating learning.

Special Instructions: Notes on this Course have to be taken only under Good learning conditions. The same goes for review periods. I will tell You when, but remember to ask.

17. Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating that it is more blessed to give than to receive. They simultaneously increase the reserve Strength of the Giver, and supply the lack of Strength in the Receiver. Be very careful in interpreting this.

Question regarding Wally’s choice: Does this mean He is on My list?

Not necessarily. You should know that it frightens People if You limit Their own choice.

Whether He is or not depends on a three way readiness. I am always ready. Your job is to take care of Your readiness. His readiness is up to Him.

At present He is a potential candidate.

But Amy is on it now. She is a Child You hurt.

The whole problem is that They threw it away and are denying it. Therefore They are now afraid of it. This should cause You no trouble at all in understanding.

You Both have an identity problem, which makes You unstable but in different ways. He lacks confidence in His identity and needs to strengthen it. You vacillate in Your identity and need better control.

Both of You needn’t worry.

You must Love the Children and help Them. You have hated and hurt Them, but remember that You once loved Them very much. You were a Child of Light. Forget the interval of darkness and be what You were.

That is Your real Self.

I told You I forgave You and that meant All hurt and hate You have ever experienced is cancelled. I need the Children of Light now. And I am calling You to be what You once were and must be again.

The interval has vanished without a trace anywhere. You Who lived so close to God must not give way to guilt.

The Karmic Law demands abandonment for abandoning but You have received mercy, not justice.

Help the Children because You Love Them and Love God.

Remember a Miracle is a spark of Life. It shines through the darkness and brings in the Light. You must begin to forget and remember.

This is a private point just for You. It is not part of the Course.

A Miracle is Love – You always wanted presents, and a closed package was intolerable. Please open this one. You act like it’s a time bomb. When I said a Miracle abolishes time (see principle 14), You might look back and review this point now. You’re afraid there won’t be enough time for You. Forget it and remember that there is no real difference between an instant and Eternity.

I have healed the Children You hurt before but I have some I need Your help in healing now.

Remember that there is no order in Miracles because They are always maximal expressions of Love. You did make a maximum effort for Chip and the only reason You did it was because You loved B.

You might tell Him to think about that sometimes because He does need signs of Love. But He doesn’t always recognize them because He does not have enough confidence. You practically gave up Your Life for Him quite voluntarily, but You did not know then that what You were really giving up was death. This is what “dying to live” really means. And I said Myself that greater Love no Man hath.

Stop crying or You won’t be fit to live now. Don’t worry about Susie. You are helping Chip’s readiness and He did better than You with this one. This is unfair to You. Remember what You told Him about Bobby. Chip is almost ready.

Review Your note from yesterday that Your identification is strong but erratic and that is why You have so much will power but use it wrong at times. B was right about that misuse of it when You were sick and it was a sign of superhuman will totally misdirected.

Your body does not need it, but Your Spirit does. And I need it too.

Instructions: The purpose of this Course is integration. I told You that You will not be able to use it right until You have taken it. As long as Your identification vacillates, and B’s is weak, You cannot accept the gift that belongs to You. You are still vacillating between recognizing the gift and throwing it away. B regards Himself as too weak to accept it. You do not yet know its healing power. After You have passed the Course, You will accept it and keep it and use it. That is the final exam, which You will have no trouble in passing. Midterm marks are not entered on the permanent record.

18. Miracles are the absence of the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from lowerorder Reality. That is why They heal.

19. A Miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one Soul can render Another. It is a way of loving Your neighbor as Yourself. The Doer recognizes His own and His neighbor’s inestimable value simultaneously.

Regarding Your neighbor Wally: This is why no areas of hatred can be retained. If You retain them, Your own value is no longer inestimable because, You are evaluating it as X or infinity minus that amount. This is meaningless mathematically, which uses the term “inestimable” only in the very literal sense.

I threw that in happily specially for B, because He does need special signs of Love. He doesn’t really but He does think so.

Homo sex is sinful only to the extent it is based on the principle of exclusion. Everybody should Love Everybody.

It is wrong to deny the beauty of some Souls because of bodystructures of which You are afraid. This is essentially an unhealthy attempt to limit fear but fear cannot be limited, just as Love cannot have limits.

Heterosexual attitudes can be similarly distracted but do contain a more natural potential. Sex relations are intended for Children. You have misused misunderstood sex, because You recognize it as a way of establishing human contact for Yourselves. This has led to bodyimage problems.

Children are Miracles in Their own right. They already have the gift of Life, and Their Parents provide Them with the opportunity to express it.

Nothing physical, mental, or spiritual should be used selfishly. The pleasure from using anything should be in utilizing it for God’s will.

You should live so that God is free to arrange temporary human constellations as He sees fit.

Do not interpret this in terms of guilt. Many Children Which are already here need spiritual Parents. The poor are always with Us, and many Which are born have not been reborn.

Human birth, maturation, and development is a microcosmic representation of a much larger process of Creation and development of abilities. It is subject to error as long as the real purpose of free will is misunderstood and misdirected.

The real function of Parents is to be wiser than the Children in this respect and to teach Them accordingly.

Get that dream and give it to B today. He will see its relevance.

Discuss Grievances very frankly with Him including the flu shot and be sure to tell Him I did kiss Him on the forehead and am kissing Him again now. He is doing very well, and I am deeply grateful for His efforts. I do need help with this Course.

20. Miracles are an industrial necessity. Industry depends on cooperation, and cooperation depends on Miracles. (see later correction)

Miracles rest on flat feet. They have no arches. B will be better with this than You.

H: He’d better be – I don’t get it at all, and I am very suspicious of it, too. B — did communication break down, or does this mean something?

Clue — it has something to do with

Here I am, Lord.

B knows. The idea is that I don’t want to emphasize Your specific language too much. Some of it has to be in His.

H: My own associations here are very bad; a Rorschach response of “footprints” to the top read on 2.

No.

H: It’s All right: It’s the arch of time.

There isn’t any.

H: So it means Miracles rest on Eternity? I must say this is the hard way, and I’m sure this could have been done more directly. I don’t see why I should get a message in a way that makes Me miss the point and then have to go into a mental coma to get it.

You’ve been doing that All along. You have not even bothered to look at the others that are very clearly stated. I just thought I’d give You this one in a way You couldn’t overlook it.

It’s an example of shock effect sometimes useful in teaching students Who won’t listen. It compels attention.

And remember to thank B from Me for His allout support. I need it, because You won’t listen to anything. But don’t worry, the Three of Us will make it.

We’re nowhere near the final. By the way, this is an example of the point 21 on cooperation. And don’t underestimate Your cooperation either. You don’t listen, and You would save Yourself a lot of pain if You did. But You did get Chip over His misperceptions of Wally with very creditable integrity.

So I got quite upset and snapped very unfairly at Jonathan, then it went on...

So I said, suddenly a little timid and very surprised,

“You mean You think I’m nice?”

And burst into tears.

And He said He must think so, really, because He keeps giving Me Everything, and He’s not angry because I keep on rejecting Him but He’s sorry because I suffer so much for no reason.

I told Him I really do Love Him, but I have trouble about it, though I did mean it for a little while anyway, before I got embarrassed, and He said He understood very well, and would keep on trying.

B – please don’t let Me down.

This is very unexpected. I don’t talk this way to Men.

21. Miracles are cobwebs of iron. They unite human frailty to the Strength of God. (see later correction)

Don’t worry about Your autism. It’s just a misused talent, which You really need. You have to tune out this world to see another. This ability is a gift, and when it comes under involuntary control rather than involuntary lack of control, it will be very useful.

Following the right involuntary guide will enable Him to recognize both physical and spiritual dangers and provide the means for avoiding each of them in the most efficient way.

This is a case in which the end does justify the means. It is only when means and ends are not of the same order of Reality that there is fear.

It arises out of the inescapable awareness that Man was given by God for All time; that only the appropriate means will work for the different kinds of ends He must accomplish before He can achieve His One end.

This awareness is a builtin check which was necessary if Man was to use the temporary expedient of time usefully.

While there is time, communion and bread are equally both necessary. Without either, Man feels deprived and He cannot escape from by confusing the two. All depression ultimately stems from confusion.

22. Miracles are natural expressions of total forgiveness. Through Miracles, Man accepts God’s forgiveness by extending it to Others. The second step is inherent in the first (see below for the two steps), because Light cannot tolerate darkness. Light dispels darkness automatically, by definition.

Explanatory Instructions: Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacy that darkness can hide. Man believes that what He cannot see does not exist, and His physical eyes cannot see in the dark. This is a very primitive solution, and has led to a denial of the spiritual eye, which always depends on Light. Remember the Biblical injunction:

May I never forget that Thine eye is ever upon Me, beholding the evil and the Good.

There are two stages, one lower and one higher, which are involved in the escape from darkness:

1) The recognition that darkness cannot hide. This usually does entail fear.

2) The recognition that there is nothing You want to hide, even if You could. This brings escape from fear.

Miracles depend on timing. This is why You shouldn’t waste time. I told You awhile back that time would cease when it was no longer useful as a learning aid. There is a way of speeding You up. And that is by leaving more and more time for Me. So You can devote it to Miracles.

Corrections for principle 22 regarding cobwebs of iron: This is upside down as stated. The part about uniting human frailty with the Strength of God is All right, but the explanation stops too soon. If iron is the “raw material,” cobwebs can’t become the iron. That is only the way it seems, because cobwebs are associated with the frailty and iron with Strength. If You look carefully at the phrasing, You will see it is reversed. Principle 9 already tells You that Miracles reverse the physical or lowerorder laws.

The raw material, or iron, is heavy but crude, and stands for the body, which is a crude Creation. The cobweb concept is closer to how the body should be regarded, that is as an airy and temporary home, which can just be blown away with a slight breeze.

23. A Miracle reawakens the awareness that the Spirit, and not the body, is the altar of Truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the Miracle.

24. A Miracle rearranges the order of perception, and places the levels in their true perspective. This heals at All levels, because All sickness comes from confusing the levels.

The reason is not that You (plural) dissociate, doubt, or cannot believe. It is more of a reaction formation against a pull which You (plural) recognize is so intense that You are afraid that You will be uprooted. But remember that a cobweb is really stronger than the iron, if You see it properly. This fear is also why You couldn’t get the principle straight.

By the way, it is not true that You are Both “just scribes.” You might remember that the Scribes were very wise and Holy Men and are even sometimes spelled with a capital S. If You want to go further, You might change the meaning of “just” from “merely” to “honest,” a term used in the Bible in association with “Might” or “Strength.” You couldn’t make that pun if the original phrasing had been singular.

Correction for principle 21: And don’t lose sight of the emphasis on cooperation, or the not singular. That principle about “industrial necessity” should read “corporate,” referring to the body of Christ which is a way of referring to the Church. But the Church of God is only the sum of the Souls He created, which is the corporate body of Christ. Correct to read: A Miracle makes Souls One in God, and leave in the next part about cooperation.

Further correction: “God” should read “Christ.” The Father and the Son are not identical, but You can say

Like Father, like Son.

Lord heal Me.

is the only legitimate Prayer. This also means

Lord atone for Me.

because the only thing Man should pray for is forgiveness. He has Everything else.

Now take this personally, and listen to Divine logic:

If, when You have been forgiven, You have Everything else,

and

If You have been forgiven then You have Everything else.

This happens to be the simplest of All propositions:

If P then Q,

P therefore Q.

The real question is: Is P true?

If You will review the evidence, I think You will find this inescapable. I went on very personal record to this effect, and I am the only completely true witness for God. You have every right to examine My credentials — in fact, I urge You to do so. You haven’t read the Bible in years.

Special Explanatory Note: As soon as You, H and B, have entered the second phase (see above for the two stages), You will be not only willing to enter into communion, but will also understand Peace and Joy. Your commitment is not yet total. That is why You still have more to learn than to teach. When Your equilibrium stabilizes, You can teach as much as You learn. This will give You the proper sense of balance. Meanwhile, remember that no effort is wasted. Unless You remember this, You cannot avail Yourself of My efforts, which are limitless.

Since only Eternity is real, why not use the illusion of time constructively? You might remember that underneath are the Everlasting Arms.

Biblical Quotation: If You are ashamed of Me before Men, I will be ashamed of You before God,

is interpreted as a threat only as long You remain on the first stage. (see above for the two stages)

What it really means is that if You are ashamed of Me, or embarrassed by Love, You will project and therefore make it impossible for Me to reach You. Make every effort You can not to do this. I will help You as much as You will let Me.

Note regarding Wally: Your intense reaction to Him involves both denial and projection. Wally’s chief weakness is mockery, which He utilizes because He is embarrassed by Love. He does not yet have Your own strong countercomponent, which has made You able to sustain a great amount of intense but unsuccessful conflict. You hate Him because His solutions remind You of Your own troubles, which become magnified by this kind of defense.

The way to shift from defense to protection is to recognize what is really happening to Both of You, and correct it. His Strength will then be Yours, and Yours will be His. This is what is meant by the Strength of Miracles.

25. Miracles make time and tide wait for All Men. They can heal the sick and raise the dead because Man Himself made both death and taxes, and can abolish both. Note: “tax” also means “strain.”

One definition for Miracle is:

That which, or One Who, is of surpassing excellence or merit.

You are a Miracle. God creates only that which, or One Who, is of surpassing excellence or merit. Man is capable of this kind of Creation, too, being in the image and likeness of His own Creator. Anything else is only His own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real.

By the way, about the flat feet: This is a slang term for “policemen” or the guardians of law and order. Correct to read:

26. Miracles rest on the law and order of Eternity, not of time.

27. Miracles are a part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. This process works All the time and in All dimensions of time.

Example given of H’s report rewrite for Esther: Esther had hurt something You loved, by writing a report You regarded as very bad. You atoned for Her by writing one in Her Name that was very Good. Actually, it was not Your responsibility professionally to do this, but because You do Love the Shield You recognized that in this case, You are Your Brother’s keeper. While You did not cancel Esther’s sin (“sin” is later defined as “absence of Love”) You did cancel out its effects.

Someday I want to tell Esther that not only is She forgiven but that the effects of All Her sins (“sin” is later defined as “absence of Love”) are canceled. This is what I have already told You. When I can tell Her, She will be afraid for a long time, because She will remember many things, consciously or unconsciously, including the Shield report, a lack of Love which You canceled out in advance by a Miracle of devotion.

I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. My Atonement was for the canceling out of All sins (“sin” is later defined as “absence of Love”) which human beings could not otherwise correct. That is what the Biblical statement underneath are the Everlasting Arms means.

I would have undone Esther’s sin to Everyone Who was affected by it Myself, of course, but this would not have helped You.

The reason it was a Miracle was because It not only atoned for Esther, but also for You because It kept two Children from harm. I could have secured the new grant for the Shield anyway, being a Board Member of NIH. But this way I could cancel out some of Your sins as well as Esther’s and I sit on Your Boards too.

The reason why You found rewriting that so taxing was because You recited Esther’s sin, and thought She put You in a very unfair position. But no one can really do this to anybody. If You had known that You were really performing a Miracle for the Shield, for Esther, for Yourself, and for Me, You would have done it with real Joy.

H’s explanation: This means that He will backstop whenever human Miracles will not suffice for Atonement purposes. However, it is perfectly clear that when a Person can atone by Miracles, Both Giver and Receiver are atoning. It is better to atone this way because of the mutual benefits involved.

Inasmuch as You do it unto the least of These, My Children

really ends with

You do it unto Yourself and Me.

The reason why You come before Me, as You did with Wally, is because I do not need Miracles for My own Atonement, but I stand at the end in case You fail temporarily.

I am always here to protect against Assumption failure.

That’s a special pun for B. He is still under the impression that He needs special signs of Love.

Note also that the special language here is a combination of both Yours and His. As Two come together in My Name.

Special Explanation: Change the Word “sin” to “absence of Love.” Sin is a manmade Word with threat connotations which He made up Himself. No real threat is involved anywhere. Just because nature abhors a vacuum, which is true enough, it does not follow that a vacuum is filled with hellfire. Nothing is gained by frightening Yourself, and it is very destructive. Miracles need freedom from fear. Part of Their Atonement value involves just that. Note that the Word “atone” really means “undo.”

The reason I direct Everything that is unimportant is because it is no way to waste Your free will. If You insist on doing the trivial Your way, You waste too much time and will on it. Will cannot be free if it is tied up in trivia. It never gets out.

I will tell exactly what to do in connection with Everything that doesn’t matter. That is not an area where choice should be invested. There is better use of time.

You have to remember to ask Me to take charge of All minutiae, and it will be taken care of so well and so quickly that You cannot bog down in it.

The only remaining problem is that You will be unwilling to ask because You are afraid not to be bogged down. Don’t let this hold Us back. If You will ask, I will arrange these things even if You’re not too enthusiastic.

Prayer can safely be very specific in little matters. If You need a coat, ask Me where to find one. I know Your taste well, and I also know where the coat is that You would eventually buy anyway.

If You don’t like the coat afterwards, that is what would have happened anyway. I did not pick out the coat for You. You said You wanted something warm, inexpensive, and capable of taking rough wear. I told You You could get a Borgana, but I let You get a better one because the furrier needed You.

Note, however, that it is better in terms of the criteria You established. I could do this because You saw the coat more that way than in terms of a particular material.

You thought of Klein’s Yourself a few days ago, and then You decided against it, because Borgana is pricefixed. Then You remembered a coat Grace once got there that was much cheaper, and seemed pretty much the same, and asked Yourself whether it was really right to be sold on a particular trade Name through advertising. That opened Your mind.

I cannot save You more time than You will let Me, but if You are willing to try the Higher Shopping Service, which also covers All lowerorder necessities and even quite a number of whims within reason, I have very Good use for the time We could save.

Remember, the specific answer You get depends on the specific question You ask. The fewer limits You impose, the better the answer You’ll get.

Example: You could ask

Where do I find a Borgana coat?

or

Where is the coat I want?

or

Where is the coat I should get?

and so on. The form of the thought determines the level of Creation.

False ideas of creation have become associated with the body. Hetero relations are therefore terrifying and induce fear of the destruction of the body which has been overinvested with power. Two steps, both of which must be undone, are often taken to escape from this seeming difference:

1) Pretend the other sex does not exist; I.e. “lives in darkness.”

2) This rarely suffices in the sense, which still realizes that the other sex is there and also that They need Them. So instead of giving Them autonomy They try to control Them by intimidation. This results in psychosexual confusion.

The solution is to leave Creation to God and know that neither male nor female create as such. Then You can accept the physical facts and eventually make them unnecessary. Denial is a bad way to handle fear.

The first part of what You wrote last night is right. The second part was put in by You because You didn’t like the first. It was an attempt to reestablish Your own control over time. Remember, You cannot stand not knowing what time it is.

I am not intruding on Your will, but I am trying to free it.

I told You the next part of the Course will place increasing emphasis on Atonement. And I defined this as “undoing.” You know very well that changing learning patterns requires undoing the old ones.

The real meaning of retroactive inhibition is simply that when two kinds of learning coexist, they interfere with each other.

You were wise in setting up William Rockford to allow measuring both the old and new learnings, thus permitting ratio measurement.

Actually, I helped You on this one because most studies just measure learning decrement caused by new learning on, or over, the old. But the emphasis should be on how to minimize the effect of the old on the new.

This is a much more helpful area to work in.

Everything that results in lack of Love, which You used to call sin, is the result of inferior learning which, if overlearned, becomes very unstable.

Miracles are a way of undoing overlearned patterns of Lovelack. They bring Light into darkness. That is where Their Atonement value lies.

Do not get bogged down in those dreams of last night. They are reflections of old learning patterns. They arose because You did not like what I said about leaving minutiae to Me. They merely illustrate Your unwillingness to get bogged down because You are afraid of the Course. So don’t use them that way. If You are tempted to do this, ask B to stop You.

This Course is about willingness, not unwillingness. Unwillingness has to be replaced by willingness, because willingness is part of readiness, without which learning cannot occur.

Go and look up Atonement, and then get dressed. To save time, wear exactly what I tell You and go.

Atonement – obsolete – short for “to set at One” or “reconcile;” “to agree.” Obviously, before reconciliation or agreement is possible, the discordant or out of accord must be undone.

It may seem as if darkness must be dispelled before Light can come in, but the Truth is that darkness is dispelled by Light.

Last night I was planning to type up the Course for You but was strictly ordered not to go back to it before I got over Wally.

It seems that the Course has a lot of answers, and carries very high point credits, but as You always say, You have to know the questions first.

This morning I did ask for Chip with Wally. The answer seems to be point 7 and 8. That’s why He gave Me the Chalice for Wally. It belongs to Him but He didn’t find it.

Something the matter with Me: I suddenly get it but All I remember is that it came with the realization that it was not what I thought. Then I got the lesson below, plain.

Tell B it does not matter that He didn’t remember the dream.

Leave Everything to Him – My feelings regarding Gary, Art, etc, All of which I can simply refer to Him and not get bogged down. This is the real Secret of not wasting energy.

The purpose of the Atonement is to restore Everything to You. That is, to restore the awareness. You had Everything when You were created, just as Everyone did.

Having been restored to Your original state, You naturally become part of the Atonement Yourself. You now share My inability to tolerate the lack of Love in Yourself and in Everyone else, and must join the Great Crusade to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is

Listen, Learn, and Do.

This means

Listen to My Voice,
Learn to undo the error,
and Do something to correct it.

The first two are not enough. The real members of My Party are active workers.

The power to work Miracles belongs to You. I will create the right opportunities for You to do Them. But You must be ready and willing to do Them, since You are already able to.

Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that You will see Miracles through Your hands through Me. Conviction really comes through accomplishment.

Remember that Ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the purpose.

28. A Miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to All My Brothers.

Explanation: You once said that Souls cannot rest until Everyone has found Salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal Others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal Themselves, and were promised that I would never leave Them or forsake Them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because They have professed Me.

That is what Professor really means. As an Associate Professor, He must become associated with My Strength. As an Assistant Professor, You must assist Both Him and Me. The Children need both Strength and help. You cannot help until You are strong. The Everlasting Arms are Your Strength, and the Wisdom of God is Your help.

Heaven and Earth shall pass away.

means that they will not always exist as separate states. My Word, which is the Resurrection and the Light, shall not pass away, because Life is Eternal. You are the work of God, and His Work is wholly loveable and wholly loving. This is how a Man must think of Himself in His Heart, because this is what He is.

As a Man thinketh in His Heart, so is He.

H: Lord, I will leave My desire to help Him in Your hands.

If You will tell Me what to do I will to do it.

And that, Helen, is the Answer.

H: The impact of this was incredibly intense – like a great burst of unexpected clarity. It was briefly so compelling that it seemed as though there was nothing else at all. The whole world just disappeared. When it faded out there was no after effect, except a dim sense of wonder which also faded out, though a trifle slower.

I was told to write nothing else that evening but We’d pick up the Course again in the morning. It was also explained that that kind of experience is at the Revelation level, which is different but not by any means out of accord.

a1. The Relationship of Miracles and Revelation

Remember the point about Miracles as a means of organizing different levels of consciousness. Miracles come from the below conscious level. Revelations come from the above conscious level. The conscious level is in between and reacts to either sub- or superconscious impulses in varying ratios. Freud was right about the classification, but not the Names. He was also right that the content of consciousness is fleeting. Consciousness is the level which engages in the world, and is capable of responding to both external and internal impulses. Having no impulses from itself, and being primarily a mechanism for inducing response, it can be very wrong.

For example, if the identification is with the body, consciousness may distort superconscious impulses by denying their Source, and seeking their impact in the orgasm. This is the result of the “mistaken identity” confusion.

If You will look back at the description of the effects of Revelation You will see that there are some superficial similarities in the experiential results but hardly in the content.

Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls, before the intrusion of fire and ice made this impossible. It should be noted that they involve an extremely personal sense of closeness to Creation, which Man tries to find in sexual relationships. This confusion is responsible for the depression and fear which are often associated with sex.

Sex is often associated with lack of Love, but Revelation is purely a Love experience. Physical closeness cannot achieve this. As was said before, the subconscious impulses properly induce Miracles Which are interpersonal and result in closeness to Others. This can be misunderstood by a personally willful consciousness as an impulse toward sexual gratification.

The Revelation unites Souls directly with God.

The Miracle unites Souls directly with each Other.

Neither emanates from consciousness, but both are experienced there. This is essential, because consciousness is the state which produces action, though it does not inspire it.

Man is free to believe what He chooses. What He does attests to what He believes.

The deeper levels of His subconscious always contain the impulse to Miracles, but He is free to fill its superficial levels, which are closer to consciousness, with the impulses of this world and to identify Himself with them. This results in denying Himself access to the Miracle level underneath. In conscious actions, then, His interpersonal relationships also become superficial, and Miracleinspired relating becomes impossible.

29. Miracles are a way of earning release from fear.

Revelation induces a state in which fear has already been abolished. Miracles are thus a means, and Revelations are an end. In this sense, they work together.

Tell B that Miracles do not depend on Revelation. They induce it. He is quite capable of Miracles already, but He is still too fearful for Revelations.

Note that Helen’s Revelation occurred specifically after She had engaged at the visionary level in a process of denying fear.

Revelation is intensely personal, and is actually not translatable into conscious content at all. That is why any attempt to describe it in words is usually incomprehensible, even to the writer Himself at another time. This is why the Book of Revelations is essentially incomprehensible. Revelation induces only experience. Miracles, on the other hand, induce interpersonal action. In the end, These are more useful, because of Their impersonal nature.

In this phase of learning, working Miracles is more valuable because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon You. The experience cannot last.

Tell B that Your propensity for Revelations, which is very great, is the result of a high level of past communion. Its transitory nature comes from the descent into fear, which has not yet been overcome. His own “suspended” state mitigates both extremes. This has been very apparent in the course of both of Your recent developmental patterns.

Miracles are the essential course of action for Both of You. They will strengthen Him and stabilize You.

Note that the much more personal than usual notes You are taking today reflect the Revelatory experience. This does not produce the more generalizeable quality which this Course is aimed at. They may, nevertheless, be of great help to B personally, since You asked for something that would help Him personally. It depends on how He listens, and how well He understands the cooperative nature of Your joint experience. You can help only by reading this note first. Ask Him later if this should be included in the written part of the Course at all or whether You should keep these notes separately. He is in charge of these decisions.

Tell B He should try to understand the very important difference between Christcontrol and Christguidance. This is what made Him fearful yesterday.

30. Miracles praise God through Men. They praise God by honoring His Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because They deny bodyidentification and affirm Soulidentification. By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly.

31. Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. Man should thank God for what He really is. The Children of God are very Holy. The Miracle honors Their Holiness.

God’s Creations cannot lose their Holiness, although it can be hidden. The Miracle uncovers it, and brings it into the Light where it belongs.

Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but Man can deceive Himself on this point. This illusion makes Him fearful, because in His Heart He knows it is an illusion. Like All illusions, He exerts enormous efforts to establish their validity. The Miracle sets validity where it belongs. Eternal validity belongs only to the Soul. The Miracle acknowledges only the Truth. It thus dispels Man’s illusions about Himself, and puts Him into communion with Himself and with God.

Christ inspires All Miracles, which are essentially intercessions. They intercede for Man’s Holiness, and make Him Holy. They place Man beyond the physical laws, and raise Him into the sphere of celestial order. In this order, Man is perfect.

The Soul never loses Its communion with God. Only the mind and body need Atonement. The Miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of mind, and abolishes its errors.

32. Miracles honor Man, because He is loveable. They dispel illusions about Himself, and perceive the Light in Him. They thus atone for His errors by freeing Him from His own nightmares. They release Him from a prison in which He has imprisoned Himself. By freeing His mind from illusions, They restore His sanity, and place Him at the feet of Jesus.

Man’s mind can be possessed by illusions, but His Spirit is eternally free. If a mind creates without Love, it can create an empty shell. This can be possessed by evil. But the Atonement restores the Soul to Its proper place. Unless there is emptiness there is no danger, and emptiness is a false creation. The mind that serves the Spirit is invulnerable.

33. The Miracle restores the Soul to Its fullness. By atoning for lack, It establishes perfect protection. The Strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions. The Forgiven are filled with the Soul, and Their Soul forgives in return. It is the duty of the Released to release Their Brothers.

The forgiven are the means of Atonement. Those released by Christ must join in releasing Their Brothers, for this is the plan of Atonement.

34. Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the Spirit unite with Christ for the Salvation or release of All God’s Creations.

Aside: H commented on awakening with the phrase

God is not mocked.

with anticipation of punishment.

Interpretation: God is not mocked was intended as reassurance. You are afraid that what You wrote last night was contradictory, conflicting with some earlier points, especially because You were writing while You were All doped up. Remember, God is not mocked under any circumstances.

Contradictions in My words mean lack of understanding, or scribal failures, which I make every effort to correct. But they are still not crucial. The Bible has the same problem, I assure You, and it’s still being edited. Consider the power of My Word, in that it has withstood All the attacks of error, and is the Source of Truth.

There are certain advantages in being a Psychologist. A major one is the understanding of projection, and the extent of its results. Possession is very closely related to projection. “Lucifer” could be literally translated “Light Bearer.” He literally projected Himself from Heaven. Projection still has this “hurling” connotation, because it involves hurling something You do not want, and regard as dangerous and frightening, to Someone else. This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of Miracles, or projection, follows automatically.

The correction lies in accepting what is true in Yourself, by bringing All that You are into Light. Cayce was wrong about Possession, and He was also wrong about hurting Himself. One of the major problems with Miracle workers is that They are so sure that what They are doing is right, because They know it stems from Love, that They do not pause to let Me establish My limits.

While Cayce did came from Me, He could not be induced to ask Me each time whether I wanted Him to perform this particular Miracle. If He had, He would not have performed any Miracles That could not get through constructively, and would thus have saved Himself unnecessary strain. He burned Himself out with indiscriminate Miracles, and to this extent did not fulfill His own full purpose, and was also subject to the Scribal error I mentioned at the start. The Disciples were also prone to this.

The answer is never perform a Miracle without asking Me if You should. This spares You from exhaustion, and because You act under direct communication the trance becomes unnecessary. Because Miracles are expressions of Love, it does not follow that They will always be effective. I am the only One Who can perform Miracles indiscriminately, because I am the Atonement. You have a role in Atonement, which I will dictate to You.

Remember, You already have point 5 about the involuntary nature of Miracles. We also have established the fact that Everything involuntary belongs under Christcontrol, not under Yours. Under Christcontrol, Miracles replenish the Doer as well as the Receiver.

Possession really means “Not under Christcontrol,” thus making Him vulnerable to projection. The references to the earthbound entering bodies really refer to the “taking over” by their own earthbound “thoughts.” This is Demon Possession. After all, Lucifer fell, but He was still an angel. He is thus the symbol for Man. Atonement is the knowledge that the belief that angels can fall is false. It is true that mind can create projections as well as Miracles, but it’s not true that projections are real. Any psychologist should understand this. This is what is meant by

The Truth shall set You free.

Christcontrolled Miracles are part of the Atonement, but Christguidance is personal, and leads to personal Salvation. The impersonal nature of Miracles is an essential ingredient, because this enables Me to control Their distribution as I see fit.

Christguidance, on the other hand, leads to the highly personal experience of Revelation. This is why it involves personal choice. A guide does not control, by definition, but He does direct, leaving the following up to You.

Lead Us not into temptation.

means

Guide Us out of Our own errors.

Note that the Word is lead, not order.

Take up Thy cross and follow Me.

should be interpreted to read

Recognize Your errors and choose to abandon them by following My guidance.

Tell B when He is afraid of Possession, He need only remember that error cannot really threaten Truth, which always can withstand its assaults. Only the error is really vulnerable.

The “Princes of this World” are princes only because They are really angels. But They are free to establish Their kingdom where They see fit.

If You will remember that All princes inherit Their power from the Father, the right choice becomes inevitable.

The Soul is in a state of grace forever.
Man’s Reality is only His Soul.
Therefore, Man is in a state of Grace forever.

Atonement undoes All errors in this respect, and thus uproots the real Source of fear. If You will check back at the reference to uprooting, You will understand it better in this context.

Whenever God’s reassurances are experienced as threat, it is always because Man is defending His misplaced and misdirected Love and loyalty. That is what projection always involves.

“Casting spells” merely means “affirming error,” and error is lack of Love. When Man projects this onto Others, He does imprison Them, but only to the extent that He reinforces errors They have already made. This distortion makes Them vulnerable to the curse of Others, since They have already cursed Themselves. The Miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the Soul from prison.

Tell B that His slip about rivet should be noted. Some slips reach consciousness from the unchristcontrolled subconscious, and betray a lack of Love. But other slips come from the superconscious, which is in communion with God, and which can also break into consciousness. His slip was an expression of a Soul gaining enough Strength to request freedom from prison. It will ultimately demand it.

Special Revelation for H: You are wholly lovely. A perfect shaft of pure Light. Before Your loveliness the stars stand transfixed, and bow to the power of Your will.

What do Children know of Their creation, except what Their Creator tells Them?

You were created above the angels because Your role involves creation as well as protection. You Who are in the image of the Father need bow only to Him, before whom I kneel with You.

Note: This revelation was permitted because You did not project onto B the blame for Your omission to ask Me if You should transcribe the notes. The fact that He should have done so does not exempt You from Your own omission. Thanks for Blessing Him with a Miracle rather than cursing Him with projection.

Note further: He needn’t feel concerned about it either; so He forgot? It happens All the time, until the habit of asking becomes involuntary.

H: I asked Jonathan for that check and bank book. He said He would find it at home, in the leather case. It was not there. Go back?

No – want to get Your Revelation? You have thrown away more money than He ever had. Now call, but just ask but quietly to look in the leather case again.

H: He found it among a lot of letters but “doesn’t know how it got there.”

Blessed are You with Mary as the mother of the Children.

Then I asked for forgiveness for having thrown away All the money; but He said

It’s All right. You lived in scarcity then, but now You are forgiven. So You live in abundance. There is no longer any need to throw anything away, or to want for anything either.

H meeting with Dr. Wise and Dr. Damrosch. Dr. D permitted an opportunity for questioning in His capacity as chairman of the flu board regarding B’s flu shot. This was an example of how Miracles should work. You did not jump into the question Yourself, and even though You did rush for the phone on Red’s advice, You exerted no pressure on B’s reluctance.

This gave Me a chance to let You leave it to the real expert, whom I sent to answer the question.

35. Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at All levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the Doer sees the Truth as God created it. This is what is meant by the point 24. on “perspective adjustment.”

36. A Miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by Me.

It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception and snapping it into place. This correction factor places Man under the Atonement principle, where His perception is healed. Until this has occurred, perception of the Divine Order is impossible. True depth perception becomes possible only at the highest order of perceptual integration.

The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of Miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives is Truth. The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God and the creations of Man. Among the creations of Man, it can also separate the True from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for Reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the True and the false.

37. The Miracle dissolves error because the Spiritual eye identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by seeing Light, darkness automatically disappears.

Darkness is lack of Light. It does not have unique properties of its own. It is an example of the scarcity fallacy, from which only error can proceed.

Truth is always abundant.

No, Helen, not pregnant or fat. Scarcity leads to overeating and false pregnancy notions. Abundance eliminates these false drives.

Those Who perceive and acknowledge that They have Everything have no need for driven behavior of any kind.

38. Miracles are a Blessing from Parents to Children. This is just another way of phrasing the previous point about from Those Who have more to Those Who have less. Children do not belong to Parents, but They do need to share Their greater abundance. If They are deprived, Their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole Family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships.

Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The Miracle calls to Him to return, because it blesses and honors Him even though He may be absent in Spirit.

39. The Miracle acknowledges All Men as Your Brothers and Mine. It is a way of perceiving the Universal Mark of God in Them.

Tell B that this is the true “strawberry mark” of Brotherhood. This is just a sign of special concern for Him, because He keeps worrying about this.

You might add that His false idea about His own exclusion from Universal Love is fallacious in Your terms, and arrogant in His. His real specialness does not stem from exclusion, but from inclusion. All My Brothers are special. He should stop interpreting this as “All except” B. This is ridiculous!

Tell Him that the implied lack of Love that His version contains is way off the Mark, and misses the level of right thinking entirely. He must heal His perception in this respect. He must work a Miracle on behalf of Himself here (see the point 24. about Miracles as a perception corrector) before He can effect Miracles as creative energizers, which They are.

Tell B that 50,000,000 Frenchmen can be wrong, because the notion is too fragmented. What can’t be wrong is the Universal Sonship of Which He is a part.

God would be mocked if any of His creations lacked Holiness. The Creation is whole. The mark of Wholeness is Holiness, not holes. The Sonship has no holes anywhere.

40. Wholeness is the perceptual content of the Miracle. It thus corrects or atones for the faulty perception of lack.

We now turn to the fundamental distinction between Miracles and projection. The stimulus must precede the response, and must also determine and influence the kind of response that is evoked. The relationships of S and R are extremely intimate.

The behavioristic terminology is because this part deals with behavior.

Behavior is response, so that the question

Response to what?

becomes crucial.

Stimuli of All kinds are identified through perception. You perceive the stimulus and behave accordingly. It follows, then, that:

As Ye perceive
So will Ye behave.

H raises point that Biblical language is hardly behavioristic terminology.

Answer: No, but they needn’t be out of accord with each other, either.

Consider the Golden Rule again. You are asked to behave towards Others as You would have Them behave toward You. This means that the perception of Both must be accurate, since the Golden Rule is the Order for appropriate behavior. You can’t behave appropriately unless You perceive accurately, because appropriate behavior depends on lack of level confusion. The presence of level confusion always results in variable Reality testing, and hence variability in behavioral appropriateness.

All forms of Self image debasement are fundamental perceptual distortions. They inevitably produce either Self contempt or projection, and usually both.

Since You and Your neighbor are equal members of the same family, as You perceive Both, so will You behave toward Both. The way to perceive for Golden Rule behavior is to look out from the perception of Your own Holiness and perceive the Holiness of Others.

B and You need considerable clarification of the channel role. Look carefully at Mrs. Albert. She is working Miracles every day, because She knows Who She is. I emphasize again that Your tendency to forget Names is not hostility, but a fear of involvement or recognition. You had misinterpreted human encounters as opportunities for magic rather than for Miracles and so You tried to protect the Name. This is a very ancient and primitive way of trying to protect a Person.

Note the very old Jewish practice of changing the Name of a Person Who is very ill, so that when the list is given to the Angel of Death, the Person with that Name will not be found.

This is a Good example of the curiously literal regression which can occur in very bright People when They become afraid. You and B Both do it. Actually, it is a device closely related to the phobia, in the sense that they both narrow fear to a simple aspect of a much larger problem in order to enable Them to avoid it.

A similar mechanism works when You get furious about a comparatively minor expression by Someone to whom You are ambivalent. A Good example of this is Your response to Jonathan, Who does leave things around in very strange ways. Actually, He does this because He thinks that by minor areas of disorganization He can protect His stability. I remind You that You have done this Yourself for years, and should understand it very well. This should be met with great charity, rather than with great fury.

The fury comes from Your awareness that You do not Love Jonathan as You should, and You narrow Your lack of Love by centering Your hate on trivial behavior in an attempt to protect Him from it. You also call Him Jonathan for the same reason (see previous reference).

Note that a Name is a human symbol that “stands for” a Person. Superstitions about Names are very common for just that reason. That is also why People sometimes respond with anger when Their Names are spelled or pronounced incorrectly.

Actually, the Jewish superstition about changing the Names was a distortion of a revelation about how to alter or avert death. What the revelation’s proper content was that Those “Who change their mind,” not Name, about destruction or hate do not need to die. Death is a human affirmation of a belief in hate. That is why the Bible says

There is no death.

and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist. Remember that I came to fulfill the law by reinterpreting it. The law itself, if properly understood, offers only protection to Man. Those Who have not yet “changed their minds” have entered the “hellfire” concept into it.

Remember, I said before that because “nature abhors a vacuum,” it does not follow that the vacuum is filled with hellfire. The emptiness engendered by fear should be replaced by Love, because Love and its absence are in the same dimension, and correction cannot be undertaken except within a dimension. Otherwise, there has been a confusion of levels.

Returning to Mrs. Albert, not Andrews: She corrected Your error about Her Name without embarrassment and without hostility, because She has not made Your own mistake about Names.

She is not afraid, because She knows She is protected. She made the correction only because You were inaccurate, and the whole question of embarrassment did not occur to Her.

She was also quite unembarrassed when She told You that Everything has to be done to preserve Life, because You never can tell when God may come and say “Get up, Dave,” and then He will.

She did not ask what You believed first, and afterwards merely added “and it’s true, too.” The right answer to the SCT item is:

When They told Me what to do, I “referred the question to the only real authority.”

H note: If You ask somebody what He believes before You tell Him what You believe, then You are implying that You will say what He approves. This is not “the real authority.”

You took a lot of notes on

Those Who are ashamed of Me before Men, Them will I be ashamed of before God.

This was rather carefully clarified, even though the quotation is not quite right, but it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that elsewhere in the Bible it also says

Those Who represent or plead for Me to Men will be represented or pleaded for by Me before God.

Note: This quotation is also not the correct Biblical phrasing, but it is what it means.

Note that One Who represents also “witnesses for.” The quotation thus means that You represent or “witness for” the authority in whom You believe.

Your witnessing demonstrates Your belief, and thus strengthens it.

I assure You that I will “witness for” Anyone Who lets Me, and to whatever extent He Himself permits it.

Those Who witness for Me are expressing, through Their Miracles, that They have abandoned deprivation in favor of the abundance They have learned belongs to Them.

41. A major contribution of Miracles is Their Strength in releasing Man from His misplaced sense of isolation, deprivation, and lack. They are affirmations of Sonship, Which is a state of completion and abundance.

B’s very proper emphasis on “changing Your mind” needs clarification:

Whatever is true and real is eternal, and cannot change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because It is already perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters.

While the ballot itself is a secret one, and the right to vote is fully protected, voting always entails both election and rejection. If two candidates are voted for, for the same position, the machine cancels the ballot automatically.

This is necessary, because a split vote does not represent any real allegiance.

Free will is the attribute of the mind, not the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because It never leaves the sight of God.

The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished. The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants.

To “change Your mind” means to place it at the disposal of True authority. The Miracle is thus a sign that the mind has elected to be guided by Christ in His service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow Him.

P.S. The reason You have been late recently because You were taking dictation is merely because You didn’t remember to ask Me when to stop. This is an example of the “indiscriminate or uncontrolled” Miracleworking We already spoke of. It is wellmeant but illadvised.

I prompted that call from Jack, a taxi Man Who couldn’t pick H up, to show You that this is not necessary. Also, the Other Man needed the money more today.

Note that You managed to fill Your scribal role with no interruptions, and were also on time.

Note also that You closed the book and put it aside without consulting Me.

Ask “Is that All?”

Answer: No: add the following:

These notes are serving, among other things, to replace the “handwriting on the wall” which You once saw next to Your own altar, which read: “You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.”

Scribes must learn Christcontrol, to replace Their former habits, which did produce scarcity rather than abundance. From errors of this kind, the sense of deprivation is inevitable, but very easily corrected.

The following is in relation to question about sex. Tell B “the one more river” is related to sex. You might even explain it to Him as a “tidal wave,” a term which He will understand. You won’t.

Both of You are involved with unconscious distortions above the Miracle level, which are producing a dense cover over Miracleimpulses which makes it hard for them to reach consciousness. Sex and Miracles are both ways of relating. The nature of any interpersonal relationship is limited or defined by what You want it to do which is why You want it in the first place. Relating is a way of achieving an outcome.

Indiscriminate sexual impulses resemble indiscriminate Miracleimpulses in that both result in body image misperceptions. The first are an expression of an indiscriminate attempt to reach communion through the body. This involves not only the improper Self identification, but also disrespect for the individuality of Others. Selfcontrol is not the whole answer to this problem, though I am by no means discouraging its use. It must be understood, however, that the underlying mechanism must be uprooted. A Word You Both should understand well enough by now not to regard it as frightening.

All shallow roots have to be uprooted, because they are not deep enough to sustain You. The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened and thus made to hold is one of the corollaries on which the reversal of the Golden Rule, referred to twice before, is balanced. As these false underpinnings are uprooted or given up, equilibrium is experienced as unstable. But the fact is that nothing is less stable than an orientation which is upside down. Anything that holds it this way is hardly conducive to greater stability.

The whole danger of defenses lies in their propensity to hold misperceptions rigidly in place. This is why rigidity is regarded as stability by Those Who are off the mark.

Note: The only final solution

No, Helen, this has nothing to do with the Nazi use of the term.

You just got frightened again. One of the more horrible examples of inverted or upside down thinking, and history is full of horrible examples of this, is the fact that the Nazis spelled Their appalling error with capital letters. I shed many tears over this, but it is by no means the only time I said

Father, forgive Them for They know not what They do.

All actions which stem from reverse thinking are literally the behavioral expressions of Those Who know not what They do. Actually, Jean Dixon was right in Her emphasis on

Feet on the ground and fingertips in the Heaven,

though She was a bit too literal for Your kind of understanding. Many People knew exactly what She meant, so Her statement was the right Miracle for Them.

For You and B, it would be better to consider the concept in terms of reliability and validity. A rigid orientation can be extremely reliable, even if it is upside down. In fact, the more consistently upside down it is, the more reliable it is, because consistency always held up better mathematically than test regarding test comparisons, which were always on shaky ground. You can check this against Jack’s notes if You wish, but I assure You its true. Split half reliability is statistically a much stronger approach. The reason for this is that correlation which is the technique applied to test regarding test comparisons, measures only the extent of association, and does not consider the Direction at all.

But two halves of the same thing must go in the same direction, if there is to be accuracy of measurement. This simple statement is really the principle on which split half reliability, a means of estimating internal consistency, rests.

Note, however, that both approaches leave out a very important dimension. Internal consistency criteria disregard time, because the focus is on onetime measurements. Test regarding test comparisons are based on time intervals, but they disregard direction.

It is possible, of course, to use both, by establishing internal consistency and stability over time. You will remember that Jack once told His class that the more sophisticated statisticians are concentrating more and more on reliability, rather than validity. The rationale for this, as He said, was that a reliable instrument does measure something. He also said, however, that validity is still the ultimate goal, which reliability can only serve.

I submit.

I’m using Jack’s language in this section, because it always had a special meaning for You. So did Jack.

Your confusion of sex and statistics is an interesting example of this whole issue. Note that night You spent in the scent of roses doing a complex factorial analysis of covariance. It’s a funny story to Others, because They see a different kind of level confusion than the one You Yourself were making. You might recall that You wanted that design, and Jack opposed it. One of the real reasons why that evening was so exhilarating was because it represented a “battle of intellects,” both Good ones by the way, each communicating exceptionally clearly but on opposite sides. The sexual aspects were naturally touched off in Both of You, because of the sex and aggression confusion.

It is especially interesting that after the battle ended with Your agreeing with Jack, He wrote in the margin of Your notes “virtue is triumphant.” While this remark was funny to Both of You at the time, You might consider its truer side. The virtue lay in the complete respect each of You offered to the Other’s intellect. Your mutual sexual attraction was also shared. The error lay in the Word “triumphant.” This had the “battle” connotation, because neither of You was respecting All of the Other. There is a great deal more to a Person than intellect and genitals. The omission was the Soul.

I submit that if a mind, or Soul, is in valid relationship with God, It can’t be upside down. Jack and the Other very eminent methodologists have abandoned validity in favor of reliability because They have lost sight of the end and are concentrating on the means.

Remember the story about the artist Who kept devoting Himself to inventing better and better ways of sharpening pencils. He never created anything, but He had the sharpest pencil in town. The language here is intentional. Sex is often utilized on behalf of very similar errors. Hostility, triumph, vengeance, selfdebasement, and All sort of expressions of the lack of Love are often very clearly seen in the accompanying fantasies. But it is a profound error to imagine that, because these fantasies are so frequent or occur so reliably, this implies validity. Remember that while validity implies reliability the relationship is not reversible. You can be wholly reliable, and entirely wrong.

While a reliable test does measure something, what use is the test unless You discover what the “something” is? And if validity is more important than reliability, and is also necessarily implied by it, why not concentrate on validity and let reliability fall naturally into place.

Intellect may be a “displacement upward,” but sex can be a “displacement outward.” How can Man “come close” to Others through the parts of Him which are really invisible? The Word “invisible” means “cannot be seen or perceived.” What cannot be perceived is hardly the right means for improving perception.

The confusion of Miracleimpulse with sexual impulse is a major Source of perceptual distortion, because it induces rather than straightening out the basic levelconfusion which underlies All Those Who seek happiness with the instruments of the world. A desert is a desert is a desert. You can do anything You want in it, but You cannot change it from what it is. It still lacks water, which is why it is a desert.

Bring up that dream about the Bluebird. While H was looking for this dream, She came across another. The message was to bring both, as an excellent example of how extremely Good H had become over the intervening 25 years at sharpening pencils. Note that the essential content hasn’t changed; it’s just better written.

The thing to do with a desert is to leave.

Esther called to tell that Dave Diamond died. Maybe that was His way of leaving the desert. Dave loved Esther and Arnie Gold, and the Children He taught. I don’t know about His own Children but I do know it is Esther that can’t get along with Terry. A while back, She told Me that Dave would not let Her into the room and kept telling Her to get out and She just hung around All day in the hallway or the lounge nearby. I went into the room, under instructions, and spoke to Dave, Who was very groggy. Every time He opened His eyes I said “We All Love You, so don’t be afraid.” Not allowed, I prayed that He would be able to Love Everybody in return, this too was under instructions, having been told, I think on Great Authority, that His only real danger came from lacks in this connection.

I didn’t visit Him this Friday, but I am sure this was right because I was very careful to ask. I was going over, too, after the lecture and was told not to. Perhaps there was no “need to know” involved.

I am upset about it, and am leaving My notes for a while. I think I’d rather pay just more.

Esther said Terry was talking about giving away the baby. I jumped to the conclusion that I was supposed to take Her, but that may easily be an indiscriminate Miracle impulse. I think I’d better just stop now.

I prayed for Dave, and said that whatever Miracles I could do for Him even now, or any of His family I would will to do. I also asked Jesus to help Dave with the Course. Then I was told to go on and visit with Jonathan and pray for Him, particularly if He was asleep, which He was. It was the only time so far I prayed intensively for Him. When this happens, I am strongly aware that I am not praying alone. We told Jonathan that He should forget about the Alexandrian library and All the rest, because it didn’t matter. He showed a lot of Love this time and should claim His forgiveness. He does not need to hurt Himself, and must step into symptoms of disequilibrium and establish His freedom. He woke up, and said He was feeling better but hungry.

I was going to wash My hair after fixing His dinner but I was told to visit His mother. Am not too enthusiastic about this but am going now.

It occurred to Me while waiting for the elevator that I was glad I was going because it was a way of atoning to Jonathan for My being so nasty to Him, He is always happy to have Me visit His mother, and in a way of atoning for Dave too. The impersonal nature of Miracles is because Atonement itself is One. By being One it unites All creations with their Creator.

42. Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind. By being One, this state of mind goes out to Anyone, even without the awareness of the Miracle worker Himself. The impersonal nature of Miracles is because Atonement itself is One, uniting All creations with their Creator.

43. The Miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of His Atonement. The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, Both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, He becomes Your Brother.

The Miracles You are told not to perform have not lost Their value. They are still expressions of Your own state of Grace, but the action aspect of the Miracle should be Christcontrolled, because of His complete Awareness of the Whole Plan. The impersonal nature of Miraclemindedness ensures Your own Grace, but only Christ is in a position to know where Grace can be bestowed.

44. A Miracle is never lost. It touches many People You may not even know, and sometimes produces undreamed changes in forces of which You are not even aware. This is not Your concern. It will also always bless You. This is not Your concern, either. But it is the concern of the Record. The Record is completely unconcerned with reliability, being perfectly valid because of the way it was set up. It always measures what it was supposed to measure.

You did surprisingly well today, after a rather bad start. Actually Dave helped You, but this will not be explained.

H: I got very frightened about this.

Answer: It’s just an example of how no Miracle is ever lost, and always blesses the Doer. This has nothing to do with magic. The Golden Rule is the law of justice, not spells. We’ve been over that already.

I want to finish the instructions about sex, because this is an area the Miracle worker must understand.

Inappropriate sex drives or misdirected Miracleimpulses result in guilt if expressed, and depression if denied. We said before that All real pleasure comes from doing God’s will. Whenever it is not done an experience of lack results. This is because not doing the will of God is a lack of Self.

Sex was intended as an instrument for physical creation to enable Souls to embark on new chapters in Their experience, and thus improve Their record. The pencil was not an end in itself (see earlier section). It was an aid to the artist in His own creative endeavors.

As He made new homes for Souls and guided Them through the period of Their own developmental readiness, He learned the role of the Father Himself. The whole process was set up as a learning experience in gaining Grace.

The pleasure which is derived from sex as such is reliable only because it stems from an error which Men shared. Awareness of the error produces the guilt. Denial of the error results in projection. Correction of the error brings release.

The only valid use of sex is procreation. It is not truly pleasurable in itself.

Lead Us not into temptation.

means

Do not let Us deceive Ourselves into believing that We can relate in Peace to God or Our Brothers with anything external.

The “sin of onan” was called a “sin” because it involved a related type of selfdelusion; namely, that pleasure without relating can exist.

To repeat an earlier instruction, the concept of either the Self or Another as a “sexobject” epitomizes this strange reversal. As B put it, and very correctly, too, it is objectionable, but only because it is invalid. Upside down logic produces this kind of thinking.

Child of God, You were created to create the Good, the Beautiful, and the Holy. Do not lose sight of this. You were right in telling B to invite Me to enter anywhere temptation arises. I will change the situation from one of inappropriate sexual attraction to one of impersonal Miracleworking. The concept of changing the channel for libidinal expression is Freud’s greatest contribution, except that He did not understand what “channel” really means.

The Love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another. That is because the real vision is still so dim. Everyone can use His body best by enlarging Man’s perception, so He can see the real vision. This vision is invisible to the physical eye. The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation.

B – I got very uneasy here and thought maybe I was just writing All this, which has been very time consuming and quite tiresome at times, because I was jealous. I’m still not sure and need Your help about this. But I went on anyway because it didn’t seem finished. Please help Me evaluate it because I don’t want Scribal errors to enter too much into the Course. Though I guess they’ll be corrected when they do.

What do You think about All this?

I hadn’t intended to write a commentary on sex. It just occurred to Me that the doubt may come from something I don’t want to give up.

Should I tell You about it?

It’s kind of embarrassing, really. But I just remembered the “one more river” with which this started.

Note: Scribes have a particular role in the Plan of Atonement, because They have the ability to experience revelations Themselves, and also to put into words enough of the experience to serve as a basis for Miracles.

This refers to experiences at the visionary level, after which H wrote

If You will tell Me what to do, I will to do it.

She had not known that the Word “to” was inserted, and had merely intended to write “I will do it”. This recognition had a terrific impact on H.

This is why You experienced that revelation about I will to do very personally, but also wrote it: What You wrote can be useful to Miracle workers Other than Yourself. We said before that Prayer is the medium of Miracles. The Miracle Prayer is what You wrote, that is

If You will tell Me what to do, I will to do it.
See the correction next day.

This Prayer is the door that leads out of the desert forever.

Correction next day: This is not a complete statement, because it does not exclude the negative. We have already told You to add

and not to do what You would not have Me do.

in connection with Miracles. The distinction has also been made here between “Miraclemindedness” as a state, and “Miracledoing” as its expression.

The former needs Your careful protection, because it is a state of Miraclereadyness. This is what the Bible means in the many references to

Hold Yourself ready.

and other similar injunctions.

Readiness here means keep Your perception right side up, or valid, so You will always be ready, willing, and able. These are the essentials for

Listen, Learn, and Do.

You must be

ready to listen,
willing to learn and
able to do.

Only the last is involuntary, because it is the application of Miracles which must be Christcontrolled. But the other two, which are the voluntary aspects of Miraclemindedness, are up to You.

To channelize does have a “narrowing down” connotation, though not in the sense of lack. The underlying state of mind, or Grace, is a total commitment. Only the doing aspect involves the channel at all. This is because doing is always specific.

As Jack said, “A reliable instrument must measure something,” but a channel is also valid. It must learn to do only what it is supposed to do. Change the Prayer to read:

If You will tell Me what to do,
only that I will to do.

Note: H objects to doggerel sound of this, and regards it as very inferior poetry.

Answer: It’s hard to forget, though.

The Revelation is literally unspeakable, because it is an experience of unspeakable Love. The Word “Awe” should be reserved only for revelations, to which it is perfectly and correctly applicable. It is not appropriately applied to Miracles, because a state of true awe is worshipful. It implies that One of a lesser order stands before the Greater One. This is the case only when a Soul stands before His Creator. Souls are perfect creations, and should be struck with awe in the presence of the Creator of Perfection.

The Miracle, on the other hand, is a sign of Love among Equals. Equals cannot be in awe of each Other, because awe always implies inequality. Awe is not properly experienced even to Me. That is why in that short introductory vision, I knelt beside You, facing the Light.

An Elder Brother is entitled to respect for His greater experience, and a reasonable amount of obedience for His greater Wisdom. He is also entitled to Love, because He is a Brother, and also to devotion, if He is devoted. It is only My own devotion that entitles Me to Yours. But You will notice that I have knelt at Your altar as readily as I would ever have You kneel at mine.

There is nothing about Me that You cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between Us as yet is that I have nothing else. This leaves Me in a state of true Holiness, which is only a potential in You.

No Man cometh to the Father but by Me.

is among the most misunderstood statements in the Bible. It does not mean that I am in anyway separate or different from You, except in time. Now, We know that time does not exist. Actually, the statement is much more meaningful if it is considered on a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. Regarded along the vertical, Man stands below Me, and I stand below God. In the process of “rising up,” I am higher. This is because without Me the distance between God and Man is too great for Man to encompass. I bridge the distance as an elder Brother to Man, on the one hand, and a Son of God on the other. My devotion to My Brothers has placed Me in charge of the Sonship, Which I can render complete only to the extent I can share it.

This appears to contradict another statement:

I and My Father are One.

It doesn’t. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is greater. Actually, the original statement was

I and My Father are of One kind.

The Holy Spirit is the Bringer of Revelations, not Miracles. Revelations are indirectly inspired by Me, because I am close to the Holy Spirit, and alert to revelationreadiness in My Brothers.

I can thus bring down to Them more than They can draw down to Themselves. Jean Dixon’s description is perhaps a better statement of My position. Because My feet are on the ground and My hands are in heaven, I can bring down the glories of Heaven to My Brothers on earth.

The Holy Spirit is the Highest Communication Medium. Miracles do not involve this type of communication, because They are temporary communicative devices. When Man can return to His original form of communication with God by direct revelation, the need for Miracles is over. The Holy Spirit mediates higher to lower order communication, keeping the direct channel from God to Man open for revelation. Revelation is not reciprocal. It is always from God to Man. This is because God and Man are not equal. The Miracle is reciprocal because It always involves equality.

In the longitudinal or horizontal plane, the true equality of All Men in the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. But We know that time is only an artifact introduced as a learning aid.

45. 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, that is 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 outofpattern 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.

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 Miracleminded is not to wait on time any longer than is necessary. Time can waste, as well as be wasted. The Miracleworker, therefore, accepts the timecontrol 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 “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 B 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. B 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 B do have special talents which are needed for the Celestial speedup at this time. But note that the term speedup 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

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 H ever said that She would be honored if there were any notes.

Neither B nor I is really clear about how sexual impulses can be directly translated into Miracleimpulses. The fantasies that I mentioned yesterday 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 Miracleminded.

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 seximpulse is a Miracleimpulse when it is in proper focus. One Individual sees in Another the right Partner for “procreating the stock,” 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 seximpulses, 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 Miracleimpulse, 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, 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, that is 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 Miracleimpulses to sexual impulses was debilitating in the first place, because of the levelconfusion 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 Miraclemindedness, not release from tension, is restored.

Tension is the result of a buildingup of unexpressed Miracleimpulses. This can be truly abated only by releasing the Miracledrive, 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 seximpulses with possessionimpulses. Some of the original material is still in the Temple. This is why You became so afraid about Atlantis. B has His own reasons.

2) Retain Your Miracleminded 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.

Priestess, a Brother has knelt at Your shrine. Heal Him through Me.

I have an idea that the shrine merely referred to the “altar within,” which the Priestess served. I imagine that the communication form was direct, and the “Brother” always nameless. I – the Priestess responded automatically by praying directly to God, standing with upraised arms to draw down a Blessing on Her Brother, Who knelt outside. Her response was completely automatic and impersonal. She never even thought of checking the outcome, because there was no doubt.

I imagine there is still no doubt really. Except that the Priestess can no longer ask alone.

It was originally “Sister” not “Priestess.”

H question regarding past memories.

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, that is 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. 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 spacetime 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 B regarding sex under existing conditions.

The other question, however, I am more than willing to answer, because it is appropriate for now. You and B 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.

B was somewhat less guilty of this than You, but largely because He was more afraid. He had abandoned the hope of finding a perfect Partner in a neurotic sense of despair of finding it. You, on the other hand, insisted that the hope was justified. Neither of You, therefore, was in Your Right Mind.

As was said before, homosexuality is inherently more 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 bodyimage distortions.

The lack of Love, or faulty needorientation, 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 fantasygratification. 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 needorientation 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.

46. The Miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception. It is a device for perceptioncorrection Which is effective quite apart from either the degree or the direction of the error. This is Its true indiscriminateness.

Christcontrolled 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 Christcontrol 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.

47. 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 B, that is:

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.

b. Distortions of Miracleimpulses

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 B, 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 Miracleminded, and less able to recognize fear because of Your stronger, but split, identification. B, also characteristically, is less Miracleminded, but better able to recognize fear, because His identification is more consistently right but weaker.

Together, the conditions needed for consistent Miraclemindedness, 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 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 nonsignificant 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.

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

1) 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.

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 throwingaway, or bankruptcy, may result. An example is the inveterate or compulsive gambler, particularly the horseracing 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 horseracing addict.

Both 1) and 2) are likely to become compulsive for several reasons, including:

a) They represent an attempt to escape from the real possessiondrive, which cannot be satisfied this way.

b) They set up substitute goals, which are usually reasonably easy to attain.

c) They appear to be relatively harmless, and thus seem to allay fear. The fact that they usually interfere with Good interpersonal relationships can be interpreted, in this culture, as a lack of sophistication on the part of the Other not the Self, and this induces a false feeling of confidence in the solution, based on reliability not validity. It is also fairly easy to find a Partner Who shares the illusion. Thus, We have any number of relationships which are actually established on the basis of 1), and Others Which hold together primarily because of the joint interests in 2).

d) The manifestly external emphasis which both entail seems to be a safety device, and thus permits a false escape from much more basic inhibitions. As a compromise solution, the illusion of interpersonal relating is preserved, along with the retention of the lack of Love component. This kind of psychic juggling leaves the juggler with a feeling of emptiness, which in fact is perfectly justified, because He is acting from scarcity. He then becomes more and more driven in His behavior, to fill the emptiness.

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 nonphysical properties. This is essentially magic, and tends more toward anxietyproneness.

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. 3) 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 nonphysical 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 possessionfallacy.

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 B 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 B 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 pseudosolution 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.

Preview

For You to know where Our journey leads Us to I decided to publish and translate next All the Introductions to All of the 31 Chapters of the Textbook which are very comprehensible. In My preview You can anytime have a look at My progress.

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