1. Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself: “The real world is not like this. 2It has no buildings and there are no streets where people walk alone and separate. 3There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. 4It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. 5There is no day that brightens and grows dim. 6There is no loss. 7Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever.”
2. The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. 2You cannot see both worlds, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. 3The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other. 4Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you as the amount to which you hold it dear. 5And yet their power is not the same, because their real attraction to you is unequal.
3. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. 2The homes you built have never sheltered you. 3The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. 4Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. 5Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired and ready to return to dust even as you made it. 6This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. 7You could not give it that, and so although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads away from it into another world.
4. Yet the real world has the power to touch you even here, because you love it. 2And what you call with love will come to you. 3Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it from every part of this strange world you made but do not want. 4All that you need to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did not make is willingness to learn the one you made is false.
5. You have been wrong about the world because you have misjudged yourself. 2From such a twisted reference point, what could you see? 3All seeing starts with the perceiver, who judges what is true and what is false. 4And what he judges false he does not see. 5You who would judge reality cannot see it, for whenever judgment enters reality has slipped away. 6The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is there but is not recognized. 7Christ is still there, although you know Him not. 8His Being does not depend upon your recognition. 9He lives within you in the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind and enter into the world He holds out to you in love.
6. No one in this distracted world but has seen some glimpses of the other world about him. 2Yet while he still lays value on his own, he will deny the vision of the other, maintaining that he loves what he loves not, and following not the road that love points out. 3Love leads so gladly! 4As you follow Him, you will rejoice that you have found His company, and learned of Him the joyful journey home. 5You wait but for yourself. 6To give this sad world over and exchange your errors for the peace of God is but your will. 7And Christ will always offer you the Will of God, in recognition that you share it with Him.
7. It is God’s Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. 2He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything. 3The world about him shines with love because God placed him in Himself where pain is not, and love surrounds him without end or flaw. 4Disturbance of his peace can never be. 5In perfect sanity he looks on love, for it is all about him and within him. 6He must deny the world of pain the instant he perceives the arms of love around him. 7And from this point of safety he looks quietly about him and recognizes that the world is one with him.
8. The peace of God passeth your understanding only in the past. 2Yet here it is, and you can understand it now. 3God loves His Son forever, and His Son returns his Father’s Love forever. 4The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance of the one thing that is wholly true and wholly yours. 5For all else you have lent yourself in time, and it will fade. 6But this one thing is always yours, being the gift of God unto His Son. 7Your one reality was given you, and by it God created you as one with Him.
9. You will first dream of peace, and then awaken to it. 2Your first exchange of what you made for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. 3In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where all perception is. 4Knowledge needs no correction. 5Yet the dreams of love lead unto knowledge. 6In them you see nothing fearful, and because of this they are the welcome that you offer knowledge. 7Love waits on welcome, not on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was. 8Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have not lost.
10. Praise, then, the Father for the perfect sanity of His most holy Son. 2Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. 3In Heaven this is so, for what could you need in eternity? 4In your world you do need things. 5It is a world of scarcity in which you find yourself because you are lacking. 6Yet can you find yourself in such a world? 7Without the Holy Spirit the answer would be no. 8Yet because of Him the answer is a joyous yes! 9As Mediator between the two worlds, He knows what you have need of and what will not hurt you. 10Ownership is a dangerous concept if it is left to you. 11The ego wants to have things for salvation, for possession is its law. 12Possession for its own sake is the ego’s fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches it builds to itself. 13And at its altar it demands you lay all of the things it bids you get, leaving you no joy in them.
11. Everything the ego tells you that you need will hurt you. 2For although the ego urges you again and again to get, it leaves you nothing, for what you get it will demand of you. 3And even from the very hands that grasped it, it will be wrenched and hurled into the dust. 4For where the ego sees salvation it sees separation, and so you lose whatever you have gotten in its name. 5Therefore ask not of yourself what you need, for you do not know, and your advice to yourself will hurt you. 6For what you think you need will merely serve to tighten up your world against the light, and render you unwilling to question the value that this world can really hold for you.
12. Only the Holy Spirit knows what you need. 2For He will give you all things that do not block the way to light. 3And what else could you need? 4In time, He gives you all the things that you need have, and will renew them as long as you have need of them. 5He will take nothing from you as long as you have any need of it. 6And yet He knows that everything you need is temporary, and will but last until you step aside from all your needs and realize that all of them have been fulfilled. 7Therefore He has no investment in the things that He supplies, except to make certain that you will not use them on behalf of lingering in time. 8He knows that you are not at home there, and He wills no delay to wait upon your joyous homecoming.
13. Leave, then, your needs to Him. 2He will supply them with no emphasis at all upon them. 3What comes to you of Him comes safely, for He will ensure it never can become a dark spot, hidden in your mind and kept to hurt you. 4Under His guidance you will travel light and journey lightly, for His sight is ever on the journey’s end, which is His goal. 5God’s Son is not a traveller through outer worlds. 6However holy his perception may become, no world outside himself holds his inheritance. 7Within himself he has no needs, for light needs nothing but to shine in peace, and from itself to let the rays extend in quiet to infinity.
14. Whenever you are tempted to undertake a useless journey that would lead away from light, remember what you really want, and say:
2The Holy Spirit leads me unto Christ, and where else would I go? 3What need have I but to awake in Him?
15. Then follow Him in joy, with faith that He will lead you safely through all dangers to your peace of mind this world may set before you. 2Kneel not before the altars to sacrifice, and seek not what you will surely lose. 3Content yourself with what you will as surely keep, and be not restless, for you undertake a quiet journey to the peace of God, where He would have you be in quietness.
16. In me you have already overcome every temptation that would hold you back. 2We walk together on the way to quietness that is the gift of God. 3Hold me dear, for what except your brothers can you need? 4We will restore to you the peace of mind that we must find together. 5The Holy Spirit will teach you to awaken unto us and to yourself. 6This is the only real need to be fulfilled in time. 7Salvation from the world lies only here. 8My peace I give you. 9Take it of me in glad exchange for all the world has offered but to take away. 10And we will spread it like a veil of light across the world’s sad face, in which we hide our brothers from the world, and it from them.
17. We cannot sing redemption’s hymn alone. 2My task is not completed until I have lifted every voice with mine. 3And yet it is not mine, for as it is my gift to you, so was it the Father’s gift to me, given me through His Spirit. 4The sound of it will banish sorrow from the mind of God’s most holy Son, where it cannot abide. 5Healing in time is needed, for joy cannot establish its eternal reign where sorrow dwells. 6You dwell not here, but in eternity. 7You travel but in dreams, while safe at home. 8Give thanks to every part of you that you have taught how to remember you. 9Thus does the Son of God give thanks unto his Father for his purity.