God’s Name is my inheritance.
1. You live by symbols.
²You have invented names for everything you see.
³Each one of them has become a separate entity, identified by its own name.
⁴And thus you separate it from the unity to which it belongs.
⁵You assign its special attributes and distinguish it from other things by emphasizing the space that surrounds it.
⁶This is the space you place between all the things to which you give a different name—between all events in terms of both place and time, between all bodies you identify and name.I
2. This space that you believe divides one thing from another is what enables you to perceive the world.II
²You see something where there is nothing, and yet you fail to see what is there where there is unity.
³You see a space between all things, and between all things and yourself.
⁴And thus you think that by dividing, you have created life.
⁵Through this split, you believe that you are a separate unit with a will that is uniquely yours.
3. What are all these names by which the world becomes a series of separate events, of disconnected things, and bodies kept apart, containing fragments of a mind perceived as separate consciousnesses?
²You gave these names, and thus established how perception would appear.
³Things without a name were given one, and so they also gained reality.III
⁴For what is named takes on a meaning, and becomes a cause for real effects with consequences inherent in itself.
4. And so reality is fabricated through partial vision, set deliberately against the truth.
²Its enemy is wholeness.
³Perception dwells on trifles and gives them weight.
⁴And the absence of space, the sense of unity, and the vision that sees all things as one become the threats it must overcome, oppose, and deny.IV
5. Yet this other vision remains the natural direction for the mind’s perception.
²It is difficult to teach the mind a thousand alien names and then thousands more.
³Yet this is what you think learning means.
⁴You believe this is its primary purpose: that through this you can communicate and share concepts meaningfully.
6. This is the entire inheritance the world bestows.
²And all who learn to think in this way accept the signs and symbols that affirm the world is real.
³This is what they are for.
⁴They do not doubt that what they have named is really there, before their eyes.V
⁵It can be seen, just as it is expected to be.
⁶And what denies it must be an illusion, for this is the ultimate reality.
⁷To question it is madness; to accept it is a sign of sanity.
7. Such is the world’s teaching.
²It is a learning all who come here must undergo.VI
³But the sooner he perceives on what it rests, how questionable its premises are, and how uncertain are its outcomes, the sooner does he question its effects.VII
⁴Learning confined to what the world would teach stops short of meaning.VIII
⁵Yet if rightly directed, it can serve as a springboard for another kind of learning—one that leads to a new perception.IX
⁶And all the arbitrary names the world assigns can be withdrawn as they are questioned.X
8. Think not you made the world.
²Illusions, yes!
³But what is true in earth and Heaven is beyond what you have named.
⁴When you address a brother, you refer to his body.
⁵His true identity is hidden from you by what you believe he really is.
⁶His body responds to the name by which you call him, for his mind consents to take the name you gave as his.
⁷And thus his unity is twice denied.
⁸Once, as you perceive him separate from you.
⁹Again, as he accepts this separate name as his.
9. It would indeed be strange if you were asked to go beyond all symbols of the world, forgetting them forever, and yet were asked to teach.
²It is necessary to use the symbols of the world for a time.
³But do not be deceived by them as well.
⁴They do not represent anything at all.
⁵And it is this thought that will release you from them during your times of practice.XI
⁶The world’s symbols become merely means by which you can communicate in ways the world can understand.
⁷But you are aware that this is not the unity in which true communication can be found.XII
10. Therefore, you need intervals each day in which the learning of the world becomes a phase you pass aside; a cage from which you step into the sunlight and forget the darkness.XIII
²Here you understand the Word, the Name God gave to you; the One Identity all things share, the recognition of what is true.
³And then you go back into the dark, not because you think it is real, but only to proclaim its unreality using terms that still have meaning in a world of shadows.
11. Use all the little names and symbols of the world that dwell in darkness.
²But do not accept them as your reality.
³The Holy Spirit uses all of them, but He does not forget that Creation has One Name, One Meaning, and One Source, Which unites all things within Itself.
⁴Use all the names the world bestows by custom, yet be aware they share the Name of God along with you.
12. God has no name.
²And yet His Name becomes the final lesson that all things are one.
³And in this lesson does all learning end.
⁴All names are unified.
⁵All space is filled with truth’s reflection.
⁶Every gap is closed, and separation healed.
⁷The Name of God is the inheritance He gave to those who chose the teaching of the world to take the place of Heaven.
13. Our practice today is to let our minds accept as just this tribute to the Son whom God loves what God has given in response to the sad inheritance you made.
²No one who seeks the meaning of the Name of God can fail.
³Experience must come to supplement the Word.XIV
⁴But first, you must accept one Name for all reality, and realize the many names you gave its aspects merely cloud the truth. They did not change it.
⁵This is the Name we use in practicing.
⁶And through Its use, all sight is unified.
14. And though we use a different name for every awareness of an aspect of the Son of God, we understand they have but One Name, Which He has given them.
²It is this Name we use in practicing.
³And through Its use, all foolish separations disappear which kept us blind.
⁴And we are given strength to see beyond them.
⁵Now our sight is blessed with blessings we can give as we receive.
15. Father,
Your Name is ours.
²In It we are united with all living things and You,
Who are their one Creator.
³What we made and call by many different names is but a shadow we have tried to cast across Your Own Reality.
⁴And we are glad and thankful we were wrong.
⁵All our mistakes we give to You,
that we may be absolved of all effects our errors seemed to have.
⁶And we accept the truth You give,
in place of every one of them.
⁷Your Name is our salvation and escape from what we made.
⁸Your Name unites us in the Oneness which is our inheritance and peace.
⁹Amen.
I Notice that space and time are nothing but imaginative ways of using the mind in terms of separation; they actually express the difficulty you perceive in reaching what you behold. If you believe that in some way you can attain it, you call that difficulty “space”; and if you judge it to be entirely impossible, you call it “time.” Thus, according to your perception, the only thing with which you can truly relate is what is here and now—and indeed, that is true.
You relate to what is “distant” in much the same way as to what you place in the future, for in both cases you believe you need time to reach it. And you place in the past what you judge to be forever inaccessible.
This separation, however, is entirely illusory, for everything with which the mind relates is always here and now, in the present—regardless of whether you prefer to think of it as distant, past, or future. Everything with which the mind relates is within the mind itself and in the present. Memories and expectations are in the present, as are both the near and the far. All of it resides in one same “place”: the mind that beholds it.
II Today’s Lesson is very abstract, yet it is essential that you understand it, for it holds the key to the mechanism by which you perceive. For you, that mechanism constitutes your way of “knowing” the things of the world, since you call the act of placing fantasies in your mind “knowing.” That is why this branch of philosophy is called epistemology. If you understand how this mechanism operates, you will see more clearly how you deceive yourself.
You may recall—and still have very present—that the thought system this Course teaches is a perfect inversion of the world’s thought system; in fact, they are entirely opposite ways of thinking. So, to understand it, you will have to turn your mind inside out, as though you were turning a sock inside out. And then you will understand.
You perceive a world made up of things separate from one another, divided by a space that, to you, is merely a reference system. Yet you consider that space to be without substance. For you, space is simply what is “nothing,” the place where there are no “things.” Well, you must think exactly the other way around.
Imagine an immense rock with a perfectly smooth surface that extends in all directions and encompasses everything. You take a chisel and a hammer and begin to carve words into that surface, chipping away small fragments of stone. With those tools and by striking them, you inscribe a story upon the rock—the story you tell yourself. Then you immerse yourself in reading what you have written, and in your mind arise the images corresponding to those carved words.
Now stop and observe what has happened. To you, the rock—which is, in fact, the only thing that exists—has disappeared from your awareness, and now there exist only the images your mind perceives, generated from the signs created by removing portions of the rock.
What truly exists is no longer present to you, and the absence of the real has given rise to a world within your consciousness. One could say, in a sense, that the only thing you perceive as real is the space between the hollows you yourself have carved in the rock, but your mind is absorbed by those absences of reality. Does this image help you understand?
What truly exists is the rock, here called “oneness,” because it is one and comprises all that is. Yet you focus only on the absences of rock—which we could also call “absences of love”—and those form the world you think you perceive. That world, in fact, does not exist; it is merely a story without meaning, for the only meaning of what is real is love. Still, to you it seems very “real.” And since it lacks love, it engenders fear, which is understandable—though entirely unnatural.
Another aspect that would be comical if not for its seemingly tragic consequences is that each fragmented mind interprets its own story in its own way, and furthermore, sincerely believes it is sharing meanings with other minds. There are many anecdotes and jokes about the confusion that arises from referring to the same thing from different perspectives. But the truth is that the situation is pathetic and sad, because it frustrates the genuine longing to share the sacred meaning of love.
III Try to become aware of how difficult it is to grasp the absolute power that language holds over your mind—especially since you know no other language and therefore have no alternative frame of reference. You call “thinking” the act of manipulating meaningless words within an invented syntax. Child of God! That is not thinking—that is delirium. But you have nothing else… or at least that is what you believe.
Since you have now been warned of what is truly happening—even if you still do not believe what you are told—at least suspect it, and begin to question your own beliefs. It may help you to review the importance you give to your mental constructs and, instead of calling them “thoughts,” begin to call them “assumptions.” In this way, the absurdities that cross your mind will have less power over you, and it will be easier to let them go once you begin to feel their heaviness and notice how they affect your heart. Thus, the act of forgiving will also become more accessible to you. It will always be harder to release something you “believe” to be true than something you merely “assume” to be so—and that alone is already a great step forward.
In time, the suspicion that you may be mistaken will turn into certainty, and that certainty will lead you to choose more wisely. Realize that being happy is not at all difficult—unless you are convinced that hopelessness has some foundation. But if you learn to question it, everything becomes much simpler.
IV Perception is an integral symbolic experience that contains two levels of illusion. The first consists of the figurative expression, through an image—the symbol—of what the mind wishes to project outside itself; then, on a second level, it fragments that image—which in itself is whole and complete—into discrete elements, assigning them names and treating them as independent entities with particular attributes. Space—the distance between things—is nothing but a mental construct that expresses the idea of accessibility or separation, whether between objects or between them and the subject that perceives them.
The mind fragments and projects outward its own awareness of being, seeing itself simultaneously as subject and observer of events and entities it claims not to know. The perceptual phenomenon is born from the very root of separation and rejection, which, in truth, are different expressions of the same impulse. And thus, from that single intention, the mind erects a universe apparently filled with infinite diversity of content, to which it ascribes reality for itself.
V Do you realize the power of the word?
VI The educational system of the world is a factory of mental illness. That is the meaning of the world, and that is its purpose. Do not try to improve the world, for that is to improve an illusion in order to perpetuate it. Remember what Jesus says about this: “A desert is a desert, is a desert. You can do anything you want in it, but YOU CANNOT change what it is. It still lacks water; therefore it IS a desert. What one must do with a desert is LEAVE IT” (T-1.P77.12:2–5). And also: “The world is not left by death but by truth” (T-3.XIII.14:7).
VII To question the learning of the world—which is what gives it its apparent reality—is essential if you are to free yourself from its effects: fear, anger, guilt, sickness, and death. Only then can you perform miracles, for only then do you understand that the world is an illusion.
VIII The learning of the world is insufficient in regard to meaning, because it concerns itself only with effects—the illusory forms the body’s eyes believe they see—while entirely neglecting causes, that which gives rise to appearances. It is the same as in a night dream: if you focus only on the forms that appear, you overlook what originates them—their cause.
IX This is precisely what thisCourse does: it uses much of your existing knowledge and abilities to lead you toward a new perception.
X And as you withdraw those names, you cease to perceive things as separate entities, which fosters the recognition of the unity and wholeness inherent in reality.
The mind, trained by the ego, fragments—it cannot help it. It names, labels, classifies, separates. That is its basic strategy: to reduce the real to concrete, delimited, recognizable units. It does this to feel safe. But in that attempt to manage reality, it breaks it apart and loses it. For in focusing on the parts, it forgets the whole. And that forgetting is what the Course calls “the separation.”
Jesus does not ask you to fight against that tendency, but to reverse it—to invert the direction of your gaze. Instead of observing the objects, observe the field. Instead of reacting to bodies, recognize the space in which they appear. That space is not empty; it is the common, the permanent, the uncreated. That space is the Name of God. And it is also yours.
The metaphor is clear: if you are riding a motorcycle in traffic, your survival depends on one thing—not on controlling the cars, but on perceiving the space between them. The cars are obstacles; the space between them is your path to safety. The wisdom of that example applies directly to your life: your salvation does not lie in managing each problem, each comment, each gesture. It lies in regaining perspective—in releasing your obsessive focus on details and asking yourself, with radical honesty: Who do I want to be in the midst of all this?
You did not come into the world to solve scattered pieces. You came to remember the Whole. And this lesson is a call to stop naming forms and to begin listening to the Name you did not invent—the only one that does not change. The Name of God. The one that is also yours.
XI The things of the world are nothing in themselves, and their only function is the one the Holy Spirit assigns them within God’s plan for salvation.
XII True communication and union of your mind with your brother’s do not lie in transmitting your new thought system through the words you use; it occurs beyond words, though they may serve to facilitate its expression.
XIII That is the time you consecrate, in stillness and silence, to unite with your Self. There you escape the world and rest in the Love of your Father.
XIV The experience encompasses everything you do in the world—the way you relate to all things and to everyone you perceive. The eyes of the body will, of course, show you countless things that appear to be separate; yet for you there is an underlying unity that makes them all equal within one same unreality. The Love of God and your awareness of Being accompany you at every moment, and for you—who carry your Father’s Name upon your lips—that is the only Reality.