1. Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? 2Yet that is what time is for; to learn just that and nothing more. 3God’s Teacher cannot be satisfied with His teaching until it constitutes all your learning. 4He has not fulfilled His teaching function until you have become such a consistent learner that you learn only of Him. 5When this has happened, you will no longer need a teacher or time in which to learn.
2. One source of perceived discouragement from which you may suffer is your belief that this takes time, and that the results of the Holy Spirit’s teaching are far in the future. 2This is not so. 3For the Holy Spirit uses time in His Own way, and is not bound by it. 4Time is His friend in teaching. 5It does not waste Him, as it does you. 6And all the waste that time seems to bring with it is due but to your identification with the ego, which uses time to support its belief in destruction. 7The ego, like the Holy Spirit, uses time to convince you of the inevitability of the goal and end of teaching. 8To the ego the goal is death, which is its end. 9But to the Holy Spirit the goal is life, which has no end.
3. The ego is an ally of time, but not a friend. 2For it is as mistrustful of death as it is of life, and what it wants for you it cannot tolerate. 3The ego wants you dead, but not itself. 4The outcome of its strange religion must therefore be the conviction that it can pursue you beyond the grave. 5And out of its unwillingness for you to find peace even in death, it offers you immortality in hell. 6It speaks to you of Heaven, but assures you that Heaven is not for you. 7How can the guilty hope for Heaven?
4. The belief in hell is inescapable to those who identify with the ego. 2Their nightmares and their fears are all associated with it. 3The ego teaches that hell is in the future, for this is what all its teaching is directed to. 4Hell is its goal. 5For although the ego aims at death and dissolution as an end, it does not believe it. 6The goal of death, which it craves for you, leaves it unsatisfied. 7No one who follows the ego’s teaching is without the fear of death. 8Yet if death were thought of merely as an end to pain, would it be feared? 9We have seen this strange paradox in the ego’s thought system before, but never so clearly as here. 10For the ego must seem to keep fear from you to hold your allegiance. 11Yet it must engender fear in order to maintain itself. 12Again the ego tries, and all too frequently succeeds, in doing both, by using dissociation for holding its contradictory aims together so that they seem to be reconciled. 13The ego teaches thus: Death is the end as far as hope of Heaven goes. 14Yet because you and the ego cannot be separated, and because it cannot conceive of its own death, it will pursue you still, because guilt is eternal. 15Such is the ego’s version of immortality. 16And it is this the ego’s version of time supports.
5. The ego teaches that Heaven is here and now because the future is hell. 2Even when it attacks so savagely that it tries to take the life of someone who thinks its is the only voice, it speaks of hell even to him. 3For it tells him hell is here as well, and bids him leap from hell into oblivion. 4The only time the ego allows anyone to look upon with equanimity is the past. 5And even there, its only value is that it is no more.
6. How bleak and despairing is the ego’s use of time! 2And how terrifying! 3For underneath its fanatical insistence that the past and future be the same is hidden a far more insidious threat to peace. 4The ego does not advertise its final threat, for it would have its worshippers still believe that it can offer them escape. 5But the belief in guilt must lead to the belief in hell, and always does. 6The only way in which the ego allows the fear of hell to be experienced is to bring hell here, but always as a foretaste of the future. 7For no one who considers himself as deserving of hell can believe that punishment will end in peace.
7. The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There is no hell. 2Hell is only what the ego has made of the present. 3The belief in hell is what prevents you from understanding the present, because you are afraid of it. 4The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven as the ego drives to hell. 5For the Holy Spirit, Who knows only the present, uses it to undo the fear by which the ego would make the present useless. 6There is no escape from fear in the ego’s use of time. 7For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teaching device for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing, demanding vengeance forever.
8. The Holy Spirit would undo all of this now. 2Fear is not of the present, but only of the past and future, which do not exist. 3There is no fear in the present when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future. 4Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which the Son of God emerges from the past into the present. 5And the present extends forever. 6It is so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt that nothing but happiness is there. 7No darkness is remembered, and immortality and joy are now.
9. This lesson takes no time. 2For what is time without a past and future? 3It has taken time to misguide you so completely, but it takes no time at all to be what you are. 4Begin to practice the Holy Spirit’s use of time as a teaching aid to happiness and peace. 5Take this very instant, now, and think of it as all there is of time. 6Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that you are completely absolved, completely free and wholly without condemnation. 7From this holy instant wherein holiness was born again you will go forth in time without fear, and with no sense of change with time.
10. Time is inconceivable without change, yet holiness does not change. 2Learn from this instant more than merely that hell does not exist. 3In this redeeming instant lies Heaven. 4And Heaven will not change, for the birth into the holy present is salvation from change. 5Change is an illusion, taught by those who cannot see themselves as guiltless. 6There is no change in Heaven because there is no change in God. 7In the holy instant, in which you see yourself as bright with freedom, you will remember God. 8For remembering Him is to remember freedom.
11. If you are tempted to be dispirited by thinking how long it would take to change your mind so completely, ask yourself, “How long is an instant?” 2Could you not give so short a time to the Holy Spirit for your salvation? 3He asks no more, for He has no need of more. 4It takes far longer to teach you to be willing to give Him this than for Him to use this tiny instant to offer you the whole of Heaven. 5In exchange for this instant He stands ready to give you the remembrance of eternity.
12. You will never give this holy instant to the Holy Spirit on behalf of your release while you are unwilling to give it to your brothers on behalf of theirs. 2For the instant of holiness is shared, and cannot be yours alone. 3Remember, then, when you are tempted to attack a brother, that his instant of release is yours. 4Miracles are the instants of release you offer, and will receive. 5They attest to your willingness to be released, and to offer time to the Holy Spirit for His use of it.
13. How long is an instant? 2It is as short for your brother as it is for you. 3Practice giving this blessed instant of freedom to all who are enslaved by time, and thus make time their friend for them. 4The Holy Spirit gives their blessed instant to you through your giving it. 5As you give it, He offers it to you. 6Be not unwilling to give what you would receive of Him, for you join with Him in giving. 7In the crystal cleanness of the release you give is your instantaneous escape from guilt. 8You must be holy if you offer holiness.
14. How long is an instant? 2As long as it takes to re-establish perfect sanity, perfect peace and perfect love for everyone, for God and for yourself. 3As long as it takes to remember immortality, and your immortal creations who share it with you. 4As long as it takes to exchange hell for Heaven. 5Long enough to transcend all of the ego’s making, and ascend unto your Father.
15. Time is your friend, if you leave it to the Holy Spirit to use. 2He needs but very little to restore God’s whole power to you. 3He Who transcends time for you understands what time is for. 4Holiness lies not in time, but in eternity. 5There never was an instant in which God’s Son could lose his purity. 6His changeless state is beyond time, for his purity remains forever beyond attack and without variability. 7Time stands still in his holiness, and changes not. 8And so it is no longer time at all. 9For caught in the single instant of the eternal sanctity of God’s creation, it is transformed into forever. 10Give the eternal instant, that eternity may be remembered for you, in that shining instant of perfect release. 11Offer the miracle of the holy instant through the Holy Spirit, and leave His giving it to you to Him.