1. How bitterly does everyone tied to this world defend the specialness he wants to be the truth! 2His wish is law to him, and he obeys. 3Nothing his specialness demands does he withhold. 4Nothing it needs does he deny to what he loves. 5And while it calls to him he hears no other Voice. 6No effort is too great, no cost too much, no price too dear to save his specialness from the least slight, the tiniest attack, the whispered doubt, the hint of threat, or anything but deepest reverence. 7This is your son, beloved of you as you are to your Father. 8Yet it stands in place of your creations, who are son to you, that you might share the Fatherhood of God, not snatch it from Him. 9What is this son that you have made to be your strength? 10What is this child of earth on whom such love is lavished? 11What is this parody of God’s creation that takes the place of yours? 12And where are they, now that the host of God has found another son whom he prefers to them?
2. The memory of God shines not alone. 2What is within your brother still contains all of creation, everything created and creating, born and unborn as yet, still in the future or apparently gone by. 3What is in him is changeless, and your changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment. 4The holiness in you belongs to him. 5And by your seeing it in him, returns to you. 6All of the tribute you have given specialness belongs to him, and thus returns to you. 7All of the love and care, the strong protection, the thought by day and night, the deep concern, the powerful conviction this is you, belong to him. 8Nothing you gave to specialness but is his due. 9And nothing due him is not due to you.
3. How can you know your worth while specialness claims you instead? 2How can you fail to know it in his holiness? 3Seek not to make your specialness the truth, for if it were you would be lost indeed. 4Be thankful, rather, it is given you to see his holiness because it is the truth. 5And what is true in him must be as true in you.
4. Ask yourself this: Can you protect the mind? 2The body, yes, a little; not from time, but temporarily. 3And much you think you save, you hurt. 4What would you save it for? 5For in that choice lie both its health and harm. 6Save it for show, as bait to catch another fish, to house your specialness in better style, or weave a frame of loveliness around your hate, and you condemn it to decay and death. 7And if you see this purpose in your brother’s, such is your condemnation of your own. 8Weave, rather, then, a frame of holiness around him, that the truth may shine on him, and give you safety from decay.
5. The Father keeps what He created safe. 2You cannot touch it with the false ideas you made, because it was created not by you. 3Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. 4What is immortal cannot be attacked; what is but temporal has no effect. 5Only the purpose that you see in it has meaning, and if that is true, its safety rests secure. 6If not, it has no purpose, and is means for nothing. 7Whatever is perceived as means for truth shares in its holiness, and rests in light as safely as itself. 8Nor will that light go out when it is gone. 9Its holy purpose gave it immortality, setting another light in Heaven, where your creations recognize a gift from you, a sign that you have not forgotten them.
6. The test of everything on earth is simply this; “What is it for?” 2The answer makes it what it is for you. 3It has no meaning of itself, yet you can give reality to it, according to the purpose that you serve. 4Here you are but means, along with it. 5God is a Means as well as End. 6In Heaven, means and end are one, and one with Him. 7This is the state of true creation, found not within time, but in eternity. 8To no one here is this describable. 9Nor is there any way to learn what this condition means. 10Not till you go past learning to the Given; not till you make again a holy home for your creations is it understood.
7. A co-creator with the Father must have a Son. 2Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. 3A perfect being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken from; not born of size nor place nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of any kind. 4Here do the means and end unite as one, nor does this one have any end at all. 5All this is true, and yet it has no meaning to anyone who still retains one unlearned lesson in his memory, one thought with purpose still uncertain, or one wish with a divided aim.
8. This course makes no attempt to teach what cannot easily be learned. 2Its scope does not exceed your own, except to say that what is yours will come to you when you are ready. 3Here are the means and the purpose separate because they were so made and so perceived. 4And therefore do we deal with them as if they were. 5It is essential it be kept in mind that all perception still is upside down until its purpose has been understood. 6Perception does not seem to be a means. 7And it is this that makes it hard to grasp the whole extent to which it must depend on what you see it for. 8Perception seems to teach you what you see. 9Yet it but witnesses to what you taught. 10It is the outward picture of a wish; an image that you wanted to be true.
9. Look at yourself, and you will see a body. 2Look at this body in a different light and it looks different. 3And without a light it seems that it is gone. 4Yet you are reassured that it is there because you still can feel it with your hands and hear it move. 5Here is an image that you want to be yourself. 6It is the means to make your wish come true. 7It gives the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the ears with which you listen to the sounds it makes. 8It proves its own reality to you.
10. Thus is the body made a theory of yourself, with no provisions made for evidence beyond itself, and no escape within its sight. 2Its course is sure, when seen through its own eyes. 3It grows and withers, flourishes and dies. 4And you cannot conceive of you apart from it. 5You brand it sinful and you hate its acts, judging it evil. 6Yet your specialness whispers, “Here is my own beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” 7Thus does the “son” become the means to serve his “father’s” purpose. 8Not identical, not even like, but still a means to offer to the “father” what he wants. 9Such is the travesty on God’s creation. 10For as His Son’s creation gave Him joy and witness to His Love and shared His purpose, so does the body testify to the idea that made it, and speak for its reality and truth.
11. And thus are two sons made, and both appear to walk this earth without a meeting place and no encounter. 2One do you perceive outside yourself, your own beloved son. 3The other rests within, his Father’s Son, within your brother as he is in you. 4Their difference does not lie in how they look, nor where they go, nor even what they do. 5They have a different purpose. 6It is this that joins them to their like, and separates each from all aspects with a different purpose. 7The Son of God retains his Father’s Will. 8The son of man perceives an alien will and wishes it were so. 9And thus does his perception serve his wish by giving it appearances of truth. 10Yet can perception serve another goal. 11It is not bound to specialness but by your choice. 12And it is given you to make a different choice, and use perception for a different purpose. 13And what you see will serve that purpose well, and prove its own reality to you.