1. All magic is an attempt at reconciling the irreconcilable. 2All religion is the recognition that the irreconcilable cannot be reconciled. 3Sickness and perfection are irreconcilable. 4If God created you perfect, you are perfect. 5If you believe you can be sick, you have placed other gods before Him. 6God is not at war with the god of sickness you made, but you are. 7He is the symbol of deciding against God, and you are afraid of him because he cannot be reconciled with God’s Will. 8If you attack him, you will make him real to you. 9But if you refuse to worship him in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made.
2. Reality can dawn only on an unclouded mind. 2It is always there to be accepted, but its acceptance depends on your willingness to have it. 3To know reality must involve the willingness to judge unreality for what it is. 4To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to let it go. 5Knowledge cannot dawn on a mind full of illusions, because truth and illusions are irreconcilable. 6Truth is whole, and cannot be known by part of a mind.
3. The Sonship cannot be perceived as partly sick, because to perceive it that way is not to perceive it at all. 2If the Sonship is one, it is one in all respects. 3Oneness cannot be divided. 4If you perceive other gods your mind is split, and you will not be able to limit the split, because it is the sign that you have removed part of your mind from God’s Will. 5This means it is out of control. 6To be out of control is to be out of reason, and then the mind does become unreasonable. 7By defining the mind wrongly, you perceive it as functioning wrongly.
4. God’s laws will keep your mind at peace because peace is His Will, and His laws are established to uphold it. 2His are the laws of freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. 3Since freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws cannot be understood together. 4The laws of God work only for your good, and there are no other laws beside His. 5Everything else is merely lawless and therefore chaotic. 6Yet God Himself has protected everything He created by His laws. 7Everything that is not under them does not exist. 8“Laws of chaos” is a meaningless term. 9Creation is perfectly lawful, and the chaotic is without meaning because it is without God. 10You have “given” your peace to the gods you made, but they are not there to take it from you, and you cannot give it to them.
5. You are not free to give up freedom, but only to deny it. 2You cannot do what God did not intend, because what He did not intend does not happen. 3Your gods do not bring chaos; you are endowing them with chaos, and accepting it of them. 4All this has never been. 5Nothing but the laws of God has ever been, and nothing but His Will will ever be. 6You were created through His laws and by His Will, and the manner of your creation established you a creator. 7What you have made is so unworthy of you that you could hardly want it, if you were willing to see it as it is. 8You will see nothing at all. 9And your vision will automatically look beyond it, to what is in you and all around you. 10Reality cannot break through the obstructions you interpose, but it will envelop you completely when you let them go.
6. When you have experienced the protection of God, the making of idols becomes inconceivable. 2There are no strange images in the Mind of God, and what is not in His Mind cannot be in yours, because you are of one mind and that mind belongs to Him. 3It is yours because it belongs to Him, for to Him ownership is sharing. 4And if it is so for Him, it is so for you. 5His definitions are His laws, for by them He established the universe as what it is. 6No false gods you attempt to interpose between yourself and your reality affect truth at all. 7Peace is yours because God created you. 8And He created nothing else.
7. The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and calls on his brothers to do likewise. 2It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother can do it. 3It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call that is strengthened by joining. 4Because the miracle worker has heard God’s Voice, he strengthens It in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does not share. 5The power of one mind can shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. 6It is everywhere and it is eternal.
8. In many only the spark remains, for the Great Rays are obscured. 2Yet God has kept the spark alive so that the Rays can never be completely forgotten. 3If you but see the little spark you will learn of the greater light, for the Rays are there unseen. 4Perceiving the spark will heal, but knowing the light will create. 5Yet in the returning the little light must be acknowledged first, for the separation was a descent from magnitude to littleness. 6But the spark is still as pure as the Great Light, because it is the remaining call of creation. 7Put all your faith in it, and God Himself will answer you.