Death is not real. The Son of God is free.
1. Death is a thought that takes on many forms, often unrecognized.
²The idea of death can appear as sadness, fear, anxiety, or doubt.
³Every expression of anger, lack of faith, and distrust is also death.
⁴So, too, is concern for the body, envy, and every attitude in which the wish to be what you are not might tempt you.
⁵All these thoughts are but reflections of the worship of death as savior and deliverer. I
2. As the embodiment of fear, the host of sin, the god of the guilty, and the ruler of all illusions and deceit, the thought of death seems very powerful.
²It seems to clutch in its withered hand all living things, all hope and all desire, in its choking grasp, and every goal appears through its blind eyes.
³The weak, the helpless, and the sick bow down before its image, believing it alone is real, inevitable, and worthy of their trust.
⁴For death is the only thing that is certain to arrive.
3. All things, except death, are thought to be uncertain, and are lost too soon no matter how hard they are earned.
²Their outcome is unsure; they tend to betray the hopes they once inspired and leave behind the taste of dust and ashes instead of dreams and aspirations.
³But death is counted on.
⁴For it will come with steady pace when its time has come.
⁵It never fails to show up, taking hostage all that lives.
4. Would you bow before such an idol?
²For in it, you behold the Strength and Power of God Himself in an idol made of dust.
³In it, you proclaim that the opposite of God is lord of all creation, stronger than His Will for Life, and mightier than infinite Love and the perfect, changeless constancy of Heaven.
⁴So, the Will of the Father and of the Son has been at last overcome, and buried beneath the gravestone death has laid upon the body of God’s holy Son.
5. Now, defiled in his defeat, the Son has become what death would make of him.
²On his epitaph, written by death itself, his name is not even mentioned, for he has become but dust. II
³It says only this: “Here lies a witness that God is dead.” III
⁴And this it writes again and again, while all its worshipers bow down and, with foreheads pressed against the ground, whisper in fear that it is so.
6. It is impossible to worship death in any form and still select a few you do not want and would avoid, while keeping faith in the rest.
²For death is total.
³Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die.
⁴There is no halfway point.
⁵For once again we stand before a simple choice we must accept, if we are sane:
⁶What contradicts completely any thought cannot be true, unless the thought itself is false.
7. The idea that God is dead is so ridiculous that even the insane find it hard to believe.
²For it means He once lived, and somehow perished, slain by those who did not want Him to survive. IV
³Their will, more powerful than His, could triumph over Him, and so eternal life gave way to death.
⁴And with the Father died the Son as well.
8. Those who worship death may be afraid.
²But could they truly fear such an idea?
³If they saw what they believe for what it is, they would be instantly set free.
⁴And this is what you will reveal to them today.
⁵Death is not real, and we now renounce it in all its forms, for their salvation and for our own. V
⁶God did not create death.
⁷Therefore, whatever form it takes must be illusion.
⁸This is the stand we take today.
⁹And by it, we are given power to look beyond death and behold the Life that lies beyond.
9. Our Father,
bless our eyes today.
2We are Your messengers,
and we long to see the glorious reflection of Your Love shining in all things.VI
3We live and breathe in You alone.
4We have not left Your Eternal Life.VII
5Death is not real,
6For death is not Your Will.
7And we abide where You have placed us,
8In the Life we share with You
and with all living things,
to be like You
and part of You forever.
9We accept as ours Your Thoughts,
and our will is eternally One with Yours.
Amen.
I Before you lies one of the most luminous Lessons in thisWorkbook. Its power rests in the precise description of how the world shrinks, intimidated by the idea of death, which relentlessly annihilates every aspiration to existence. It is an exact narrative of the general human feeling, one that touches the deepest core, for to the idea of death the world offers no alternative. It is the logical conclusion of the depressing thought that gave rise to it in the first place: a dead end.
Death is not a fact; it is an attitude toward life. It is the final point of the sad story of a mind that hides from its true condition and takes refuge in the pathetic illusory tale of what the world calls “life.” For one dies as one lives.
Perhaps the most revealing part of this Lesson is its first paragraph, in which death is equated with all that denotes the absence of Love. This is perfectly logical: if Love is Life, its absence can only be the absence of Life—that is, death. If we were created by Infinite Love through the extension of Its Own Being, then to Love and to Live are the same. To live without Love is a contradiction—nothing but an illusion, an expression of death.
Death is the great farce of the ego, its most macabre joke. Why such persistence in maintaining it? Because as long as you believe in death, you cannot remember who you are. If you believe in death, you are denying God. There is no middle ground. You cannot serve two masters. You either choose Life or embrace fear. For the fear of death is, at its core, fear of Life. The ego fears Life because it cannot control it. That is why it invents death: an illusory refuge to avoid awakening.
This Lesson calls you to recognize that every form of suffering—sadness, sickness, sacrifice, loss—is an expression of the worship of death. Yet it does not ask you to fight it, but to undo it with the light of your mind. For when you choose Life, you become a living witness of Love. No proclamations are needed; your presence is enough. The mind that has been healed radiates eternity. And that heals.
All Creation proceeds from Love. Only one who Loves can Create. Only one who Loves can Teach. Only one who Loves can Heal. Only one who Loves can bring forth anything that, in any way, reflects the Love of God. All Worth comes from Love, and that which does not express Love is worthless, is nothing, and does not exist. Outside of Love there are only nightmares.
Death, like everything that can be perceived, is a symbol. But a symbol of an impossible idea. This world is made of absences of Love, and death is the symbol of the absence of Life. To perceive is to regard absences and take them as real; therefore, the world is nothing but the denial of Heaven.
Even in this world you can have a good “life.” This Course calls that “happy dreams”: illusions managed with Love. And that Love which you invest there, you will see reflected. It is a trampoline illusion, whose sole function is to lead you back to the Heart of God. That is the true Art of Living while you believe you are here: to use illusion to go beyond it.
Do you want to do something truly useful for this insane world? Stop believing in death. Do not reinforce weakness. Do not join in the weeping—offer your strength instead. For if you fall, they fall with you. But if you choose Life, you open a door through which they, too, may pass. That is your function: to remember that we are alive, that we are free, that death never existed.
II Genesis 3:19 “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
III This Lesson was dictated in April 1970, following the famous theological movement of the “Death of God” in the 1960s. The April 8, 1966, cover of Time magazine asked: “Is God Dead?” and the accompanying article addressed both the growing atheism in the United States and the rising popularity of the theology of the death of God. Much time has passed since then, but the idea of the death of God has not been overcome; rather, it has been absorbed. We live in profane times.
IV The idea that God has died because He was “killed… by those who did not want Him to survive” is possibly a reference to the influential passage of the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, often credited with popularizing the notion of the death of God: “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed Him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?” (The Gay Science, Section 125).
V Isaiah 25:8 “He will swallow up death forever; the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will remove from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.”
1 Corinthians 15:55 “O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?”
2 Timothy 1:10 “But now has been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.”
VI Acts 17:28 “…for in Him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are His offspring.’”
VII Proverbs 12:28 “In the way of righteousness there is life; in its path there is no death.”