1. Let reason take another step. 2If you attack whom God would heal and hate the one He loves, then you and your Creator have a different will. 3Yet if you are His Will, what you must then believe is that you are not yourself. 4You can indeed believe this, and you do. 5And you have faith in this and see much evidence on its behalf. 6And where, you wonder, does your strange uneasiness, your sense of being disconnected, and your haunting fear of lack of meaning in yourself arise? 7It is as though you wandered in without a plan of any kind except to wander off, for only that seems certain.
2. Yet we have heard a very similar description earlier, but it was not of you. 2But still this strange idea which it does accurately describe, you think is you. 3Reason would tell you that the world you see through eyes that are not yours must make no sense to you. 4To whom would seeing such as this send back its messages? 5Surely not you, whose sight is wholly independent of the eyes that look upon the world. 6If this is not your vision, what can it show to you? 7The brain cannot interpret what your vision sees. 8This you would understand. 9The brain interprets to the body, of which it is a part. 10But what it says you cannot understand. 11Yet you have listened to it. 12And long and hard you tried to understand its messages.
3. You have not realized it is impossible to understand what fails entirely to reach you. 2You have received no messages at all you understand. 3For you have listened to what can never communicate at all. 4Think, then, what happens. 5Denying what you are, and firm in faith that you are something else, this “something else” that you have made to be yourself becomes your sight. 6Yet it must be the “something else” that sees, and as not you, explains its sight to you. 7Your vision would, of course, render this quite unnecessary. 8Yet if your eyes are closed and you have called upon this thing to lead you, asking it to explain to you the world it sees, you have no reason not to listen, nor to suspect that what it tells you is not true. 9Reason would tell you it cannot be true because you do not understand it. 10God has no secrets. 11He does not lead you through a world of misery, waiting to tell you, at the journey’s end, why He did this to you.
4. What could be secret from God’s Will? 2Yet you believe that you have secrets. 3What could your secrets be except another “will” that is your own, apart from His? 4Reason would tell you that this is no secret that need be hidden as a sin. 5But a mistake indeed! 6Let not your fear of sin protect it from correction, for the attraction of guilt is only fear. 7Here is the one emotion that you made, whatever it may seem to be. 8This is the emotion of secrecy, of private thoughts and of the body. 9This is the one emotion that opposes love, and always leads to sight of differences and loss of sameness. 10Here is the one emotion that keeps you blind, dependent on the self you think you made to lead you through the world it made for you.
5. Your sight was given you, along with everything that you can understand. 2You will perceive no difficulty in understanding what this vision tells you, for everyone sees only what he thinks he is. 3And what your sight would show you, you will understand because it is the truth. 4Only your vision can convey to you what you can see. 5It reaches you directly, without a need to be interpreted to you. 6What needs interpretation must be alien. 7Nor will it ever be made understandable by an interpreter you cannot understand.
6. Of all the messages you have received and failed to understand, this course alone is open to your understanding and can be understood. 2This is your language. 3You do not understand it yet only because your whole communication is like a baby’s. 4The sounds a baby makes and what he hears are highly unreliable, meaning different things to him at different times. 5Neither the sounds he hears nor sights he sees are stable yet. 6But what he hears and does not understand will be his native tongue, through which he will communicate with those around him, and they with him. 7And the strange, shifting ones he sees about him will become to him his comforters, and he will recognize his home and see them there with him.
7. So in each holy relationship is the ability to communicate instead of separate reborn. 2Yet a holy relationship, so recently reborn itself from an unholy relationship, and yet more ancient than the old illusion it has replaced, is like a baby now in its rebirth. 3Still in this infant is your vision returned to you, and he will speak the language you can understand. 4He is not nurtured by the “something else” you thought was you. 5He was not given there, nor was received by anything except yourself. 6For no two brothers can unite except through Christ, Whose vision sees them one.
8. Think what is given you, my holy brother. 2This child will teach you what you do not understand, and make it plain. 3For his will be no alien tongue. 4He will need no interpreter to you, for it was you who taught him what he knows because you knew it. 5He could not come to anyone but you, never to “something else.” 6Where Christ has entered no one is alone, for never could He find a home in separate ones. 7Yet must He be reborn into His ancient home, so seeming new and yet as old as He, a tiny newcomer, dependent on the holiness of your relationship to let Him live.
9. Be certain God did not entrust His Son to the unworthy. 2Nothing but what is part of Him is worthy of being joined. 3Nor is it possible that anything not part of Him can join. 4Communication must have been restored to those who join, for this they could not do through bodies. 5What, then, has joined them? 6Reason will tell you that they must have seen each other through a vision not of the body, and communicated in a language the body does not speak. 7Nor could it be a fearful sight or sound that drew them gently into one. 8Rather, in each the other saw a perfect shelter where his Self could be reborn in safety and in peace. 9Such did his reason tell him; such he believed because it was the truth.
10. Here is the first direct perception that you can make. 2You make it through awareness older than perception, and yet reborn in just an instant. 3For what is time to what was always so? 4Think what that instant brought; the recognition that the “something else” you thought was you is an illusion. 5And truth came instantly, to show you where your Self must be. 6It is denial of illusions that calls on truth, for to deny illusions is to recognize that fear is meaningless. 7Into the holy home where fear is powerless love enters thankfully, grateful that it is one with you who joined to let it enter.
11. Christ comes to what is like Himself; the same, not different. 2For He is always drawn unto Himself. 3What is as like Him as a holy relationship? 4And what draws you and your brother together draws Him to you. 5Here are His sweetness and His gentle innocence protected from attack. 6And here can He return in confidence, for faith in another is always faith in Him. 7You are indeed correct in looking on your brother as His chosen home, for here you will with Him and with His Father. 8This is your Father’s Will for you, and yours with His. 9And who is drawn to Christ is drawn to God as surely as Both are drawn to every holy relationship, the home prepared for Them as earth is turned to Heaven.