1. No one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are protected. 2There is no need to shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous. 3We are ready to look more closely at the ego’s thought system because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not want it, you must be ready. 4Let us be very calm in doing this, for we are merely looking honestly for truth. 5The “dynamics” of the ego will be our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this to see beyond it, since you have made it real. 6We will undo this error quietly together, and then look beyond it to truth.
2. What is healing but the removal of all that stands in the way of knowledge? 2And how else can one dispel illusions except by looking at them directly, without protecting them? 3Be not afraid, therefore, for what you will be looking at is the source of fear, and you are beginning to learn that fear is not real. 4You are also learning that its effects can be dispelled merely by denying their reality. 5The next step is obviously to recognize that what has no effects does not exist. 6Laws do not operate in a vacuum, and what leads to nothing has not happened. 7If reality is recognized by its extension, what leads to nothing could not be real. 8Do not be afraid, then, to look upon fear, for it cannot be seen. 9Clarity undoes confusion by definition, and to look upon darkness through light must dispel it.
3. Let us begin this lesson in “ego dynamics” by understanding that the term itself does not mean anything. 2It contains the very contradiction in terms that makes it meaningless. 3“Dynamics” implies the power to do something, and the whole separation fallacy lies in the belief that the ego has the power to do anything. 4The ego is fearful to you because you believe this. 5Yet the truth is very simple:
6All power is of God.
7What is not of Him has no power to do anything.
4. When we look at the ego, then, we are not considering dynamics but delusions. 2You can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it cannot have any effects if its source is not real. 3Fear becomes more obviously inappropriate if you recognize the ego’s goal, which is so clearly senseless that any effort on its behalf is necessarily expended on nothing. 4The ego’s goal is quite explicitly ego autonomy. 5From the beginning, then, its purpose is to be separate, sufficient unto itself and independent of any power except its own. 6This is why it is the symbol of separation.
5. Every idea has a purpose, and its purpose is always the natural outcome of what it is. 2Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its results is merely to recognize that their source is not natural, being out of accord with your true nature. 3I said before that to will contrary to God is wishful thinking and not real willing. 4His Will is One because the extension of His Will cannot be unlike itself. 5The real conflict you experience, then, is between the ego’s idle wishes and the Will of God, which you share. 6Can this be a real conflict?
6. Yours is the independence of creation, not of autonomy. 2Your whole creative function lies in your complete dependence on God, Whose function He shares with you. 3By His willingness to share it, He became as dependent on you as you are on Him. 4Do not ascribe the ego’s arrogance to Him Who wills not to be independent of you. 5He has included you in His Autonomy. 6Can you believe that autonomy is meaningful apart from Him? 7The belief in ego autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God, in which your freedom lies. 8The ego sees all dependency as threatening, and has twisted even your longing for God into a means of establishing itself. 9But do not be deceived by its interpretation of your conflict.
7. The ego always attacks on behalf of separation. 2Believing it has the power to do this it does nothing else, because its goal of autonomy is nothing else. 3The ego is totally confused about reality, but it does not lose sight of its goal. 4It is much more vigilant than you are, because it is perfectly certain of its purpose. 5You are confused because you do not recognize yours.
8. You must recognize that the last thing the ego wishes you to realize is that you are afraid of it. 2For if the ego could give rise to fear, it would diminish your independence and weaken your power. 3Yet its one claim to your allegiance is that it can give power to you. 4Without this belief you would not listen to it at all. 5How, then, can its existence continue if you realize that, by accepting it, you are belittling yourself and depriving yourself of power?
9. The ego can and does allow you to regard yourself as supercilious, unbelieving, “lighthearted,” distant, emotionally shallow, callous, uninvolved and even desperate, but not really afraid. 2Minimizing fear, but not its undoing, is the ego’s constant effort, and is indeed a skill at which it is very ingenious. 3How can it preach separation without upholding it through fear, and would you listen to it if you recognized this is what it is doing?
10. Your recognition that whatever seems to separate you from God is only fear, regardless of the form it takes and quite apart from how the ego wants you to experience it, is therefore the basic ego threat. 2Its dream of autonomy is shaken to its foundation by this awareness. 3For though you may countenance a false idea of independence, you will not accept the cost of fear if you recognize it. 4Yet this is the cost, and the ego cannot minimize it. 5If you overlook love you are overlooking yourself, and you must fear unreality because you have denied yourself. 6By believing that you have successfully attacked truth, you are believing that attack has power. 7Very simply, then, you have become afraid of yourself. 8And no one wants to find what he believes would destroy him.
11. If the ego’s goal of autonomy could be accomplished God’s purpose could be defeated, and this is impossible. 2Only by learning what fear is can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible and the false from the true. 3According to the ego’s teaching, its goal can be accomplished and God’s purpose can not. 4According to the Holy Spirit’s teaching, only God’s purpose can be accomplished, and it is accomplished already.
12. God is as dependent on you as you are on Him, because His Autonomy encompasses yours, and is therefore incomplete without it. 2You can only establish your autonomy by identifying with Him, and fulfilling your function as it exists in truth. 3The ego believes that to accomplish its goal is happiness. 4But it is given you to know that God’s function is yours, and happiness cannot be found apart from Your joint Will. 5Recognize only that the ego’s goal, which you have pursued so diligently, has merely brought you fear, and it becomes difficult to maintain that fear is happiness. 6Upheld by fear, this is what the ego would have you believe. 7Yet God’s Son is not insane, and cannot believe it. 8Let him but recognize it and he will not accept it. 9For only the insane would choose fear in place of love, and only the insane could believe that love can be gained by attack. 10But the sane realize that only attack could produce fear, from which the Love of God completely protects them.
13. The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit accepts. 2The appreciation of wholeness comes only through acceptance, for to analyze means to break down or to separate out. 3The attempt to understand totality by breaking it down is clearly the characteristically contradictory approach of the ego to everything. 4The ego believes that power, understanding and truth lie in separation, and to establish this belief it must attack. 5Unaware that the belief cannot be established, and obsessed with the conviction that separation is salvation, the ego attacks everything it perceives by breaking it into small, disconnected parts, without meaningful relationships and therefore without meaning. 6The ego will always substitute chaos for meaning, for if separation is salvation, harmony is threat.
14. The ego’s interpretations of the laws of perception are, and would have to be, the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit’s. 2The ego focuses on error and overlooks truth. 3It makes real every mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning concludes that because of the mistake consistent truth must be meaningless. 4The next step, then, is obvious. 5If consistent truth is meaningless, inconsistency must be true. 6Holding error clearly in mind, and protecting what it has made real, the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system: Error is real and truth is error.
15. The ego makes no attempt to understand this, and it is clearly not understandable, but the ego does make every attempt to demonstrate it, and this it does constantly. 2Analyzing to attack meaning, the ego succeeds in overlooking it and is left with a series of fragmented perceptions which it unifies on behalf of itself. 3This, then, becomes the universe it perceives. 4And it is this universe which, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality.
16. Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego’s demonstrations to those who would listen. 2Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully, and its witnesses are consistent. 3The case for insanity is strong to the insane. 4For reasoning ends at its beginning, and no thought system transcends its source. 5Yet reasoning without meaning cannot demonstrate anything, and those who are convinced by it must be deluded. 6Can the ego teach truly when it overlooks truth? 7Can it perceive what it has denied? 8Its witnesses do attest to its denial, but hardly to what it has denied. 9The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son.
17. Would you remember the Father? 2Accept His Son and you will remember Him. 3Nothing can demonstrate that His Son is unworthy, for nothing can prove that a lie is true. 4What you see of His Son through the eyes of the ego is a demonstration that His Son does not exist, yet where the Son is the Father must be. 5Accept what God does not deny, and it will demonstrate its truth. 6The witnesses for God stand in His light and behold what He created. 7Their silence is the sign that they have beheld God’s Son, and in the Presence of Christ they need demonstrate nothing, for Christ speaks to them of Himself and of His Father. 8They are silent because Christ speaks to them, and it is His words they speak.
18. Every brother you meet becomes a witness for Christ or for the ego, depending on what you perceive in him. 2Everyone convinces you of what you want to perceive, and of the reality of the kingdom you have chosen for your vigilance. 3Everything you perceive is a witness to the thought system you want to be true. 4Every brother has the power to release you, if you choose to be free. 5You cannot accept false witness of him unless you have evoked false witnesses against him. 6If he speaks not of Christ to you, you spoke not of Christ to him. 7You hear but your own voice, and if Christ speaks through you, you will hear Him.