1. There is nothing outside you. 2That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is the realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. 3For God created only this, and He did not depart from it nor leave it separate from Himself. 4The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father and dwells not apart from Him. 5Heaven is not a place nor a condition. 6It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within.
2. What could God give but knowledge of Himself? 2What else is there to give? 3The belief that you could give and get something else, something outside yourself, has cost you the awareness of Heaven and of your Identity. 4And you have done a stranger thing than you yet realize. 5You have displaced your guilt to your body from your mind. 6Yet a body cannot be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. 7You who think you hate your body deceive yourself. 8You hate your mind, for guilt has entered into it, and it would remain separate from your brother’s, which it cannot do.
3. Minds are joined; bodies are not. 2Only by assigning to the mind the properties of the body does separation seem to be possible. 3And it is mind that seems to be fragmented and private and alone. 4Its guilt, which keeps it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies because it is attacked to hold the separation in the mind, and let it not know its Identity. 5Mind cannot attack, but it can make fantasies and direct the body to act them out. 6Yet it is never what the body does that seems to satisfy. 7Unless the mind believes the body is actually acting out its fantasies, it will attack the body by increasing the projection of its guilt upon it.
4. In this, the mind is clearly delusional. 2It cannot attack, but it maintains it can, and uses what it does to hurt the body to prove it can. 3The mind cannot attack, but it can deceive itself. 4And this is all it does when it believes it has attacked the body. 5It can project its guilt, but it will not lose it through projection. 6And though it clearly can misperceive the function of the body, it cannot change its function from what the Holy Spirit establishes it to be. 7The body was not made by love. 8Yet love does not condemn it and can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made and using it to save him from illusions.
5. Would you not have the instruments of separation reinterpreted as means for salvation, and used for purposes of love? 2Would you not welcome and support the shift from fantasies of vengeance to release from them? 3Your perception of the body can clearly be sick, but project not this upon the body. 4For your wish to make destructive what cannot destroy can have no real effect at all. 5What God created is only what He would have it be, being His Will. 6You cannot make His Will destructive. 7You can make fantasies in which your will conflicts with His, but that is all.
6. It is insane to use the body as the scapegoat for guilt, directing its attack and blaming it for what you wished it to do. 2It is impossible to act out fantasies. 3For it is still the fantasies you want, and they have nothing to do with what the body does. 4It does not dream of them, and they but make it a liability where it could be an asset. 5For fantasies have made your body your “enemy”; weak, vulnerable and treacherous, worthy of the hate that you invest in it. 6How has this served you? 7You have identified with this thing you hate, the instrument of vengeance and the perceived source of your guilt. 8You have done this to a thing that has no meaning, proclaiming it to be the dwelling place of God’s Son, and turning it against him.
7. This is the host of God that you have made. 2And neither God nor His most holy Son can enter an abode that harbors hate, and where you have sown the seeds of vengeance, violence and death. 3This thing you made to serve your guilt stands between you and other minds. 4The minds are joined, but you do not identify with them. 5You see yourself locked in a separate prison, removed and unreachable, incapable of reaching out as being reached. 6You hate this prison you have made, and would destroy it. 7But you would not escape from it, leaving it unharmed, without your guilt upon it.
8. Yet only thus can you escape. 2The home of vengeance is not yours; the place you set aside to house your hate is not a prison, but an illusion of yourself. 3The body is a limit imposed on the universal communication that is an eternal property of mind. 4But the communication is internal. 5Mind reaches to itself. 6It is not made up of different parts, which reach each other. 7It does not go out. 8Within itself it has no limits, and there is nothing outside it. 9It encompasses everything. 10It encompasses you entirely; you within it and it within you. 11There is nothing else, anywhere or ever.
9. The body is outside you, and but seems to surround you, shutting you off from others and keeping you apart from them, and them from you. 2It is not there. 3There is no barrier between God and His Son, nor can His Son be separated from Himself except in illusions. 4This is not his reality, though he believes it is. 5Yet this could only be if God were wrong. 6God would have had to create differently, and to have separated Himself from His Son to make this possible. 7He would have had to create different things, and to establish different orders of reality, only some of which were love. 8Yet love must be forever like itself, changeless forever, and forever without alternative. 9And so it is. 10You cannot put a barrier around yourself, because God placed none between Himself and you.
10. You can stretch out your hand and reach to Heaven. 2You whose hand is joined with your brother’s have begun to reach beyond the body, but not outside yourself, to reach your shared Identity together. 3Could this be outside you? 4Where God is not? 5Is He a body, and did He create you as He is not, and where He cannot be? 6You are surrounded only by Him. 7What limits can there be on you whom He encompasses?
11. Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being transported beyond himself. 2This feeling of liberation far exceeds the dream of freedom sometimes hoped for in special relationships. 3It is a sense of actual escape from limitations. 4If you will consider what this “transportation” really entails, you will realize that it is a sudden unawareness of the body, and a joining of yourself and something else in which your mind enlarges to encompass it. 5It becomes part of you, as you unite with it. 6And both become whole, as neither is perceived as separate. 7What really happens is that you have given up the illusion of a limited awareness, and lost your fear of union. 8The love that instantly replaces it extends to what has freed you, and unites with it. 9And while this lasts you are not uncertain of your Identity, and would not limit It. 10You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions of reality, but merely accepting it. 11You have accepted this instead of the body, and have let yourself be one with something beyond it, simply by not letting your mind be limited by it.
12. This can occur regardless of the physical distance that seems to be between you and what you join; of your respective positions in space; and of your differences in size and seeming quality. 2Time is not relevant; it can occur with something past, present or anticipated. 3The “something” can be anything and anywhere; a sound, a sight, a thought, a memory, and even a general idea without specific reference. 4Yet in every case, you join it without reservation because you love it, and would be with it. 5And so you rush to meet it, letting your limits melt away, suspending all the “laws” your body obeys and gently setting them aside.
13. There is no violence at all in this escape. 2The body is not attacked, but simply properly perceived. 3It does not limit you, merely because you would not have it so. 4You are not really “lifted out” of it; it cannot contain you. 5You go where you would be, gaining, not losing, a sense of Self. 6In these instants of release from physical restrictions, you experience much of what happens in the holy instant; the lifting of the barriers of time and space, the sudden experience of peace and joy, and, above all, the lack of awareness of the body, and of the questioning whether or not all this is possible.
14. It is possible because you want it. 2The sudden expansion of awareness that takes place with your desire for it is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. 3It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. 4There are the laws of limit lifted for you, to welcome you to openness of mind and freedom. 5Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. 6Not through destruction, not through a breaking out, but merely by a quiet melting in. 7For peace will join you there, simply because you have been willing to let go the limits you have placed upon love, and joined it where it is and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call to be at peace.