I am under no laws but God’s.
1. We have already seen how many meaningless things you have thought would bring you salvation. I
²Each one has imprisoned you with laws as senseless as itself.
³You are not bound by them.
⁴But to realize this, you must first recognize that salvation is not found there.
⁵If you seek it in things that mean nothing, you bind yourself to laws that have no meaning.
⁶In doing so, you try to prove that salvation is where it is not.
2. Today we rejoice that you cannot prove this.
²For if you could, you would seek salvation forever where it is not, and you would never find it.
³Today’s idea tells you once again how simple salvation is. II
⁴Seek it where it is waiting for you, and there you will find it.
⁵Do not seek it anywhere else, for it is nowhere else.
3. Think of the freedom that comes when you recognize that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws you have set up to save yourself.
²You truly believe you would starve if you did not have piles of colored paper and round bits of metal.
³You truly believe that a tiny pill you swallow or a fluid pushed into your veins through a slender needle will ward off death.
⁴You truly believe you are alone unless another body is with you.
4. It is madness that thinks these things.
²You call them laws and place them under many names in a long catalog of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose.
³You believe you must obey the “laws” of medicine, of economics, and of health.
⁴Protect the body and you will be saved.
⁵These are not laws, but madness. III
5. The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself.
²The body suffers only so the mind will not see it is its own victim.
³The body’s suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers.
⁴It does not want to understand that it is its own enemy, that it attacks itself, and that it wants to die.
⁵It is from this that your “laws” would save the body.
⁶This is why you think you are a body.
6. There are no laws but God’s.
²This must be repeated again and again until you recognize that it applies to everything you have made in opposition to His Will.
³Your magic has no meaning.
⁴What you think you are saved from does not exist.
⁵Only what your magic tries to hide can save you. IV
7. God’s Laws can never be replaced.
²Today we will rejoice that this is so.
³This is no longer a truth we want to hide.
⁴Instead, we recognize it is a truth that keeps us free forever. V
⁵Magic imprisons, but God’s Laws set free.
⁶Light has come, because there are no laws but His. VI
8. We will begin the longer practice periods today by briefly reviewing the different kinds of “laws” we have believed we must obey.
²Among them, for example, are the laws of nutrition, immunization, medication, and the countless ways of protecting the body.
³Think even further; you also believe in the laws of friendship, of “good” relationships, and of reciprocity. VII
⁴You may even believe there are laws that define what belongs to God and what belongs to you.
⁵Many “religions” have been based on this. VIII
⁶They do not save, but damn in Heaven’s Name.
⁷Yet they are no stranger than other “laws” you believe you must obey to ensure your safety.
9. The only laws that exist are God’s.
²Let go today of all these foolish magical beliefs, and keep your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice that tells you the truth.
³You will hear One who tells you that under God’s Laws loss is impossible.
⁴There are no payments given or received.
⁵There is no exchange, no substitutes, and nothing is replaced by something else.
⁶God’s Laws always give and never take.
10. Listen to the One who tells you this, and realize how senseless are the laws you thought upheld the world you see.
²Then listen even more closely.
³He will tell you more.
⁴He will speak to you of the Love your Father has for you.
⁵Of the endless joy He offers you.
⁶Of His longing for His only Son, created as His channel of Creation, whom His Son’s belief in hell has denied Him.
11. Today let us open the channels of God and allow His Will to extend through us to Him.
²Thus is Creation endlessly increased.
³His Voice will tell us of all this, as well as of the joys of Heaven, which His Laws forever keep unlimited.
⁴Now we will repeat today’s idea until we have listened and understood that God’s Laws are the only laws that exist.
⁵And then, as a conclusion to the practice, we will say to ourselves:
⁶I am under no laws but God’s.
12. We will repeat this idea as often as possible today; at least four or five times an hour, and also in response to any temptation to feel subject to other laws throughout the day.
²In this way we declare our freedom from all danger and all tyranny.
³It is our acknowledgment that God is our Father, and that His Son is saved.
I W-50.1:3 “You place your faith in the most trivial and absurd symbols: in pills, money, ‘protective’ clothing, ‘influence,’ ‘prestige,’ being well liked, knowing the ‘right’ people, and in an endless list of forms that are nothing, to which you ascribe magical powers.”
T-27.X.2:1-3 “…the body tries in many ways to PROVE that it is autonomous and real. It puts on things it has bought with little metal discs or strips of paper that the world proclaims as valuable and good. It works to get them by doing senseless things, and wastes them on senseless things it neither NEEDS nor even WANTS.”
II T-12.II.7:1 “How simple, then, is God’s plan for salvation!”
T-15.X.11:6 “Being of God, salvation is simple, and therefore it is VERY easy to understand.”
T-31.I.1:1 “How simple is salvation!”
Salvation, indeed, is something very simple, but that does not mean it will necessarily seem easy to you, for you can make it as difficult for yourself as you wish. Keep in mind that the determining factor in this, as in everything, is your will.
The problem is that you believe you know your individual will and claim not to know God’s, when in truth, because of your legendary lack of honesty, the situation is exactly the opposite. You know perfectly well what God’s Will is, for your heart constantly tells you through your moods. Yet the intense fear that God’s Love awakens in that small ego with which you have identified leads you to deceive yourself about what you truly want. You say you desire Heaven and the Love of God, but be honest with yourself: in reality, you do not wish to stop being you. And that is what makes such a simple Course seem so difficult to you, because the squaring of the circle you attempt to achieve is impossible.
The real difficulty of this Course lies in the intense fear that the Truth arouses in you. Acknowledge, at least, that although you deeply long to attain knowledge, you are also terrified of losing your cherished world.
Do not take this lightly, nor pretend to want what you truly do not want. The reality is that your will is always fulfilled, and therefore, you always have what you truly desire. Work humbly and face your essential fears. They are, in truth, nothing—but the fear you feel toward your own fear prevents you from recognizing this.
The paradox is that with your little will you will achieve only fantasies of salvation; renounce it, and you are already saved. Ultimately, forgive also your efforts at holiness. You do not need them; you are already holy.
In the last analysis, salvation is not even something simple—it is a myth belonging to a world of illusions, for in truth it has never existed, just as that world which so greatly needs it does not exist. To be saved is simply to realize that you have always been in the Heart of God and that everything else has been but a bad dream.
III From the perspective of the Course, “magic” is the belief that one illusion possesses the intrinsic capacity to affect another illusion. This belief is inherent to the thought of the world, which interprets relationships among illusions as though they were true cause-and-effect relationships. But they are not.
Illusions cannot be the cause of anything, because they themselves are effects. They are projections of the mind, and only the mind is cause. Therefore, illusions bear no real relationship to one another: each exists solely as a reflection of the thoughts that engender it. The only ontological “reality” of matter consists precisely in being an illusory projection of the mind that conceives it; and only for that mind does it have any sort of reality.
To think that a “thing” in the world—a dream image—can affect or alter another is to think magically. It is like believing that a figure projected in a film frame can influence, by itself, another figure in the same or a later frame. In truth, there is no causal relationship between them: both depend entirely on the projector that produces them.
That is what Jesus means when He says that a medicine—an illusion—cannot heal a body—another illusion. There is no real cause-and-effect relationship between them; they are merely symbols generated by the mind. It is the mind that decides what “relationship” they will have with each other, according to the belief it holds at that moment.
“Magical thinking,” therefore, is the exact opposite of the “miracle-mindedness.” It is the thought system of the world, the way in which you—and everyone here—interpret what you perceive. This way of thinking encompasses everything and completely conditions your understanding of the processes and relationships you believe you observe. It is the very basis of the world’s causal interpretation and the foundation of what is called “scientific thinking,” which ultimately seeks to predict the future through the application of so-called “physical laws.” Yet these “laws” do not exist in Reality: they are only agreements within the fragmented mind of the Son of God, affected by the belief in separation.
Consider this example: you are asleep and dream of a man in the jungle. Suddenly a tiger appears, pounces upon him, and devours him. When you awaken, you have no doubt that both the man and the tiger were projections of your imagination—symbols you placed there. But notice this: the way they related—the tiger devouring the man—was also your creation. You imagined the outcome, and you could have dreamed anything else: that the man escaped by climbing a tree, or that he simply rose into the air. In dreams, all things are possible, and you accept this without difficulty.
Well then, what you call your “real” life works in exactly the same way. You project everything you perceive and also the way those elements relate to each other.
You might object that this is hard to accept, since you feel incapable of altering the physical laws that seem to govern everything and everyone equally. But that “you” to which you refer is merely an expression of the fragmented mind of the Son of God, which shares those mental agreements—those “laws”—that appear to affect everything equally. That is the “reliability” of which the text speaks, as opposed to “validity”: the laws of the world are reliable only within the dream, but they are not valid in Reality.
Most Course students readily accept that taking a pill to cure an illness is magical thinking. However, they find it much harder to admit that believing they need to breathe to live is also magical thinking, or that if they let go of an object it does not necessarily have to fall to the ground. It could remain suspended in the air, for Newton’s laws are nothing but agreements within the shared mind. If you could descend into the depths of your true Self and free yourself from those collective beliefs, you would understand that you could walk on water or move mountains, just as Jesus said.
It is essential to understand this, for only thus will you comprehend the nature of miracles and why they can transcend the so-called “physical laws.” The Course expresses it with absolute clarity:
“Miracles place man beyond the laws of physics and raise him into the sphere of celestial order.” (T-1.P-54.1)
“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.” (T-1.P-9)
IV What magic seeks to conceal is “…that it (the mind) is its own enemy, that it attacks itself and wants to die.” (5:4)
V John 8:32 “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
VI This Course often refers to life in this world, to personal life, as a journey back to the Heart of God. It speaks constantly of walking a path, of your steps being guided by the loving Voice of the Holy Spirit—a path along which you walk hand in hand with Jesus. This is the part of the Course you enjoy and read with enthusiasm.
At other times—as in this Lesson—Jesus describes with great precision your worldly beliefs, the values of your thought system, and those very human desires that arise from the needs you perceive. Jesus knows you very well. He was human, like you. But then, to those beliefs so intimate, so common, and so absolutely widespread, Jesus calls them absurd and meaningless; He even tells you they are born of madness.
That other part of the Course certainly disturbs you; it touches you deeply and leaves you somewhat uneasy, for you fully identify with that character described in such a degraded manner. Do you not worry, after all, when your body or that of your loved ones falls ill? Do you not feel anxious when you do not know how to pay the bills at the end of the month? Then you ask yourself: where am I on that path? Am I near the end or still at the beginning?
Understand this well: you will never know. And moreover, it does not matter. It does not matter at all where you are; the only thing that matters is where you are going. Realize that everything you tell yourself about what you are or where you are is false; all that consists of the thoughts the early Lessons taught you mean nothing, and therefore are not important and require only your forgiveness—they are illusions.
The only thing that matters is your attitude. Do not worry about what you desire, nor blame yourself for still seeing yourself as having needs to satisfy. Instead, concern yourself with what you want to want. Concern yourself with where you place your will in the present. Detach completely from your past and your future, and with your feet firmly planted in the now say: “I have no laws but God’s,” and be free right now. There is no other time, nor any other you than this one.
VII Jesus asks you to realize that your life is governed not only by the laws you use to manage fear but also by others you use to manage love—and He calls them all perverse. Then, in the next paragraph, He will explain why.
The laws of the world are double-edged swords; they serve both to defend and to attack. In truth, they were conceived only to imprison you. God’s Laws, however, are perfectly univocal: they only give, always.
Realize that the laws that govern you in matters of “love” are as cruel as the others. Woe to him who does not return your love! You will destroy him. Forget the laws that govern your personal relationships; they contain the seed of hatred. See it clearly.
VIII The word “religions” appears in quotation marks—as it does in the Notes—because Jesus does not regard formal, institutionalized religions as true spiritual paths. According to His teaching, these structures tend to “humanize” God, projecting upon Him the traits of the ego: anger, punishment, favoritism, or guilt. Thus they transform the natural longing for union with the Creator into a system of human mediations and hierarchies that ascribe to themselves a spiritual power they do not possess. They are, in reality, attempts to bring truth to illusions instead of bringing illusions to truth.
Jesus alludes to this distortion in chapter 3 of the Text when He comments on the traditional view of the crucifixion: “…God permitted, and even encouraged, one of His Sons to suffer BECAUSE he was good” (T-3.IV.2:1), and He adds: “This particularly anti-religious concept occurs in many religions, and this is not by chance or coincidence.” (T-3.IV.2:4) Such beliefs reflect the irrational projections of the ego, which pervert the image of Divine Love and transform the message of salvation into a discourse of guilt and condemnation. That is why Jesus warns that those “religions” do not save, but condemn in the name of Heaven.