My only function here is salvation.
1. Salvation and forgiveness are the same. I
²Both imply that something has gone wrong—something from which you need to be saved or forgiven; something mistaken that calls for a corrective shift; something apart from or different than the Will of God.
³Both terms, therefore, imply the impossible, yet something that seems to have occurred, now resulting in a state of conflict between what is and what could never be.
2. Truth and illusion are now placed on equal footing, for both appear to have occurred.
²The impossible becomes that which you must forgive or be saved from.
³Salvation is the borderland between truth and illusion.
⁴It reflects truth, for it is the means by which you can escape illusions.
⁵But it is not the truth, because it undoes what never happened.
3. How can there be a meeting place where earth and Heaven may be reconciled within a mind that holds both?
²The mind that sees illusions believes they are real.
³They exist, in that they are thoughts.
⁴But they are not real, for the mind that thinks such thoughts is separate from God. II
4. What could join a separated mind and its thoughts with the Mind and the Thought that are forever One?
²What plan could preserve truth untouched, while also recognizing the needs that arise from believing in illusions, and provide the means to undo them without attack and without pain?
³What plan could this be but a Thought of God by which what never happened is overlooked, and sins that never were are gently left behind?
5. The Holy Spirit holds this plan of God exactly as He received it from Him, within the Mind of God, and also within your own.
²This plan is not bound by time, because its Source is timeless.
³Yet it works within time, because you believe time is real.
⁴The Holy Spirit is unmoved by all you see—sin, pain, death, grief, separation, and loss.
⁵For He knows one thing remains forever true: God is still Love, and what you see is not His Will. III
6. This is the Thought that brings illusions to the truth and sees them as appearances behind which lies what is changeless and sure.
²This is the Thought that saves and forgives, for it places no faith in anything not created by the only Source it knows.
³This is the Thought whose function is to save, by offering you Its Function as your own.
7. Salvation is the function you must fulfill, together with Him to Whom the plan was given.
²Now that plan is entrusted to you, along with Him.
³He has one answer to all appearances, regardless of their form, their size, their intensity, or any attribute they seem to have:
⁴My only function here is salvation.
⁵God is still Love, and this is not His Will.
8. You, who are destined to work miracles, be sure to practice today’s idea well.
²Try to feel the strength in what you say, for these words hold your freedom.
³Your Father loves you.
⁴That world of pain is not His Will.
⁵Forgive yourself for believing that He wanted that for you.
⁶Then let the Thought with which He has replaced all your errors enter the shadowed places of your mind that gave birth to such thoughts, which were never His Will.
⁷That part of your mind belongs to God, as does the rest.
⁸It holds no private thoughts, nor makes them real by hiding them from Him.
9. Let the Light come in, and you will see no obstacles to what He wills for you.
²Open your secrets to His gentle Light, and see how bright this Light still shines in you.
³Practice His Thought today, and let His Light seek out and light up all your darkened corners, shining upon them to unite them with the rest of your mind.
10. God’s Will is that your mind be One with His.
²God’s Will is to have one Son.
³God’s Will is that His only Son is you.
⁴Reflect on this during today’s practice, and begin the longer sessions with this teaching that leads the way to truth:
⁵My only function here is salvation.
⁶Salvation and forgiveness are the same.
⁷Then turn to Him Who shares your function with you, and let Him teach you what you need to learn to leave behind all fear, and know your Self as Love, which has no opposite within you.
11. Forgive all thoughts that stand in opposition to the truth of your wholeness, your oneness, and your peace.
²The gifts your Father gave you cannot be lost.
³You do not want to be someone else.
⁴You have no function but the one God gave you.
⁵Forgive yourself the function you believed you made for yourself.
⁶Forgiveness and salvation are the same.
⁷Forgive what you think you have done, and you will have been saved.
12. Today a special message has been given you that holds the power to remove all doubt and fear from your mind forever.
²If you are tempted to believe your doubts and fears are real, remember that no appearance can withstand the truth contained in these mighty words:
³My only function here is salvation.
⁴God is still Love, and this is not His Will.
13. Your only function tells you that you are One.
²Remind yourself of this often when you are not spending five minutes with the Voice that speaks for God.
³Remind yourself:
⁴My only function here is salvation.
⁵In this way, you place forgiveness in your mind, and gently lay all fear aside, so that Love may find Its rightful place in you and show you that you are the Son of God.
I Forgiveness is the act of ceasing to give importance to illusion—that is, to what does not exist—and in that very instant… you have already been saved, for from then on you remain only with what is real. How, then, could forgiving and being saved not be the same?
II Without a doubt, this is the most difficult Lesson in this Course. It is so difficult, in fact, that it cannot be understood. It is impossible for your particular mind to understand it for the simple reason that your particular mind does not exist—it is illusory. And this statement is also impossible to understand, and the personal mind will never understand it, because mind is not personal. This is the ontological principle upon which this Course is based: you are not the being you believe yourself to be, and the place in which you think you find yourself is an illusion conceived by a confused mind. You are everything you long for and believe you lack.
Acknowledge that it is difficult for you to accept that the world you perceive is an illusion, even though reason confirms it, for you see nothing permanent in it—everything changes. What is now soon ceases to be, and that disturbs you. You cannot halt that constant change which time imposes upon matter; physics itself confirms it. On the microscopic level, everything moves at dizzying speed. Then, what does it mean “to be”? For in that way of being there is no being, only becoming—but Heraclitus said that long ago. Parmenides, the enlightened one, on the other hand, says that this is not existence, that it is an illusion of existence—it is not being, but only seeming to be. What, then, could it be but a deception of the mind?
At this stage of the Course, though you may not have fully accepted the illusory nature of the world, you have opened your mind to the possibility, and perhaps even regard it sympathetically, for you understand that your liberation lies precisely in that. Yet what triggers all the alarms is the realization that your personal mind—the “instrument” with which you perceive this illusory world—is itself an illusion, and therefore does not exist. The being you believe yourself to be does not truly exist. And your mind rebels against that—how could it not?
Indeed, that which so fervently resists acknowledging its own nonexistence is precisely your ego. But is it not perfectly legitimate for something to refuse to recognize that it does not exist? Could anything be more legitimate than that? What is happening here? Where is truth? Do you now understand why this is the most difficult Lesson of the Course? Now, probably, you do.
The idea you hold of yourself is false. You are not what you think you are. How, then, can this be?
Try to see it this way: you are, indeed, real—you are a real mind; you exist. What has happened is that this real mind that you are conceived a thought whose content is untrue: the idea that it is a separate being. And it has identified itself with the content of that idea which it itself conceived. Now the mind no longer believes itself to be the mind that conceived the thought, but the very content of that false idea—that separate being.
The situation is simple yet utterly perverse. The mind has remained fixated on that bastard conception for an illusory span of time seemingly immense. And now that mind lovingly “nurtures” that aberrant “creature”—alone and separate—for it gave birth to it. That ghastly content is the idea the confused mind harbors. Is the mind separated? No! But it believes it is.
This is the tangle Jesus seeks to undo with this Course: the restoration of the mind to its natural state by dissolving the fictitious idea of separation. This he calls the healing of the mind. Realize, however, that Jesus invites you to heal a mind that in itself is perfectly whole, for it remains exactly as God created it. But since that mind believes in the madness it conceived, Jesus has no choice but to relate to it on its own terms, for in order to communicate with a mind that believes itself an individual, alone and separate, he must use its own language.
This Course does not operate within a real realm—it operates within an illusory one, for that is where it is needed, since the individual mind to which it is addressed does believe that what it perceives in its hallucination is real. Within the realm of the world, everything this Course says is strictly true and absolutely helpful—therefore, you would do well to give it your full attention. Yet in Reality, this Course is completely superfluous, for there it is not only unnecessary but inconceivable. But remember: your personal mind does not know Reality—it perceives only illusions. And as long as you believe yourself to be an individual in this world, so it will seem to be. That is why Jesus urges you to “forgive,” to disregard what you perceive—even your own thoughts.
Do not worry if you do not understand all this; it is not understandable, nor do you need to understand it. Nevertheless, you will probably grasp intuitively the idea that the Mind of your One Self—which is the Mind of God—does not “comprehend” anything. To comprehend is to grasp and incorporate, and the real mind does not do that; the real mind is everything. So return to your affairs, joyful in your new consecration, and celebrate that you are on the path to peace. Nothing more is needed.
A time will come when time itself will end for you—and with it, all your fears and doubts. Remember these words you will find in T-7.I.7: “We have said that the final step in the reawakening of knowledge is taken by God. This is true, but it is hard to explain in words, because words are but symbols, and what is true needs no explanation. Yet the Holy Spirit always has the task of translating the useless into the useful, the meaningless into the meaningful, and the temporal into the timeless. He therefore can tell you something about this last step. But this you must know: through this step you know what you are. This step is your being.”
III 1 John 4:8 “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
1 John 4:16 “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”