1. Do you not see that all your misery comes from the strange belief that you are powerless? 2Being helpless is the cost of sin. 3Helplessness is sin’s condition; the one requirement that it demands to be believed. 4Only the helpless could believe in it. 5Enormity has no appeal save to the little. 6And only those who first believe that they are little could see attraction there. 7Treachery to the Son of God is the defense of those who do not identify with him. 8And you are for him or against him; either you love him or attack him, protect his unity or see him shattered and slain by your attack.
2. No one believes the Son of God is powerless. 2And those who see themselves as helpless must believe that they are not the Son of God. 3What can they be except his enemy? 4And what can they do but envy him his power, and by their envy make themselves afraid of it? 5These are the dark ones, silent and afraid, alone and not communicating, fearful the power of the Son of God will strike them dead, and raising up their helplessness against him. 6They join the army of the powerless, to wage their war of vengeance, bitterness and spite on him, to make him one with them. 7Because they do not know that they are one with him, they know not whom they hate. 8They are indeed a sorry army, each one as likely to attack his brother or turn upon himself as to remember that they thought they had a common cause.
3. Frantic and loud and strong the dark ones seem to be. 2Yet they know not their “enemy,” except they hate him. 3In hatred they have come together, but have not joined each other. 4For had they done so hatred would be impossible. 5The army of the powerless must be disbanded in the presence of strength. 6Those who are strong are never treacherous, because they have no need to dream of power and to act out their dream. 7How would an army act in dreams? 8Any way at all. 9It could be seen attacking anyone with anything. 10Dreams have no reason in them. 11A flower turns into a poisoned spear, a child becomes a giant and a mouse roars like a lion. 12And love is turned to hate as easily. 13This is no army, but a madhouse. 14What seems to be a planned attack is bedlam.
4. The army of the powerless is weak indeed. 2It has no weapons and it has no enemy. 3Yes, it can overrun the world and seek an enemy. 4But it can never find what is not there. 5Yes, it can dream it found an enemy, but this will shift even as it attacks, so that it runs at once to find another, and never comes to rest in victory. 6And as it runs it turns against itself, thinking it caught a glimpse of the great enemy who always eludes its murderous attack by turning into something else. 7How treacherous does this enemy appear, who changes so it is impossible even to recognize him.
5. Yet hate must have a target. 2There can be no faith in sin without an enemy. 3Who that believes in sin would dare believe he has no enemy? 4Could he admit that no one made him powerless? 5Reason would surely bid him seek no longer what is not there to find. 6Yet first he must be willing to perceive a world where it is not. 7It is not necessary that he understand how he can see it. 8Nor should he try. 9For if he focuses on what he cannot understand, he will but emphasize his helplessness, and let sin tell him that his enemy must be himself. 10But let him only ask himself these questions, which he must decide, to have it done for him:
11Do I desire a world I rule instead of one that rules me?
12Do I desire a world where I am powerful instead of helpless?
13Do I desire a world in which I have no enemies and cannot sin?
14And do I want to see what I denied because it is the truth?
6. You may already have answered the first three questions, but not yet the last. 2For this one still seems fearful, and unlike the others. 3Yet reason would assure you they are all the same. 4We said this year would emphasize the sameness of things that are the same. 5This final question, which is indeed the last you need decide, still seems to hold a threat the rest have lost for you. 6And this imagined difference attests to your belief that truth may be the enemy you yet may find. 7Here, then, would seem to be the last remaining hope of finding sin, and not accepting power.
7. Forget not that the choice of sin or truth, helplessness or power, is the choice of whether to attack or heal. 2For healing comes of power, and attack of helplessness. 3Whom you attack you cannot want to heal. 4And whom you would have healed must be the one you chose to be protected from attack. 5And what is this decision but the choice whether to see him through the body’s eyes, or let him be revealed to you through vision? 6How this decision leads to its effects is not your problem. 7But what you want to see must be your choice. 8This is a course in cause and not effect.
8. Consider carefully your answer to the last question you have left unanswered still. 2And let your reason tell you that it must be answered, and is answered in the other three. 3And then it will be clear to you that, as you look on the effects of sin in any form, all you need do is simply ask yourself:
4Is this what I would see? 5Do I want this?
9. This is your one decision; this the condition for what occurs. 2It is irrelevant to how it happens, but not to why. 3You have control of this. 4And if you choose to see a world without an enemy, in which you are not helpless, the means to see it will be given you.
10. Why is the final question so important? 2Reason will tell you why. 3It is the same as are the other three, except in time. 4The others are decisions that can be made, and then unmade and made again. 5But truth is constant, and implies a state where vacillations are impossible. 6You can desire a world you rule that rules you not, and change your mind. 7You can desire to exchange your helplessness for power, and lose this same desire as a little glint of sin attracts you. 8And you can want to see a sinless world, and let an “enemy” tempt you to use the body’s eyes and change what you desire.
11. In content all the questions are the same. 2For each one asks if you are willing to exchange the world of sin for what the Holy Spirit sees, since it is this the world of sin denies. 3And therefore those who look on sin are seeing the denial of the real world. 4Yet the last question adds the wish for constancy in your desire to see the real world, so the desire becomes the only one you have. 5By answering the final question “yes,” you add sincerity to the decisions you have already made to all the rest. 6For only then have you renounced the option to change your mind again. 7When it is this you do not want, the rest are wholly answered.
12. Why do you think you are unsure the others have been answered? 2Could it be necessary they be asked so often, if they had? 3Until the last decision has been made, the answer is both “yes” and “no.” 4For you have answered “yes” without perceiving that “yes” must mean “not no.” 5No one decides against his happiness, but he may do so if he does not see he does it. 6And if he sees his happiness as ever changing, now this, now that, and now an elusive shadow attached to nothing, he does decide against it.
13. Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing form that shifts with time and place, is an illusion that has no meaning. 2Happiness must be constant, because it is attained by giving up the wish for the inconstant. 3Joy cannot be perceived except through constant vision. 4And constant vision can be given only those who wish for constancy. 5The power of the Son of God’s desire remains the proof that he is wrong who sees himself as helpless. 6Desire what you want, and you will look on it and think it real. 7No thought but has the power to release or kill. 8And none can leave the thinker’s mind, or leave him unaffected.