1. Power cannot oppose. 2For opposition would weaken it, and weakened power is a contradiction in ideas. 3Weak strength is meaningless, and power used to weaken is employed to limit. 4And therefore it must be limited and weak, because that is its purpose. 5Power is unopposed, to be itself. 6No weakness can intrude on it without changing it into something it is not. 7To weaken is to limit, and impose an opposite that contradicts the concept that it attacks. 8And by this does it join to the idea a something it is not, and make it unintelligible. 9Who can understand a double concept, such as “weakened power” or “hateful love”?
2. You have decided that your brother is a symbol for a “hateful love,” a “weakened power,” and above all, a “living death.” 2And so he has no meaning to you, for he stands for what is meaningless. 3He represents a double thought, where half is cancelled out by the remaining half. 4Yet even this is quickly contradicted by the half it cancelled out, and so they both are gone. 5And now he stands for nothing. 6Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot be must stand for empty space and nothingness. 7Yet nothingness and empty space can not be interference. 8What can interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that there is something there.
3. The picture of your brother that you see means nothing. 2There is nothing to attack or to deny; to love or hate, or to endow with power or to see as weak. 3The picture has been wholly cancelled out, because it symbolized a contradiction that cancelled out the thought it represents. 4And thus the picture has no cause at all. 5Who can perceive effect without a cause? 6What can the causeless be but nothingness? 7The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent and has never been. 8Let, then, the empty space it occupies be recognized as vacant, and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as idly spent, a time unoccupied.
4. An empty space that is not seen as filled, an unused interval of time not seen as spent and fully occupied, become a silent invitation to the truth to enter, and to make itself at home. 2No preparation can be made that would enhance the invitation’s real appeal. 3For what you leave as vacant God will fill, and where He is there must the truth abide. 4Unweakened power, with no opposite, is what creation is. 5For this there are no symbols. 6Nothing points beyond the truth, for what can stand for more than everything? 7Yet true undoing must be kind. 8And so the first replacement for your picture is another picture of another kind.
5. As nothingness cannot be pictured, so there is no symbol for totality. 2Reality is ultimately known without a form, unpictured and unseen. 3Forgiveness is not yet a power known as wholly free of limits. 4Yet it sets no limits you have chosen to impose. 5Forgiveness is the means by which the truth is represented temporarily. 6It lets the Holy Spirit make exchange of pictures possible, until the time when aids are meaningless and learning done. 7No learning aid has use that can extend beyond the goal of learning. 8When its aim has been accomplished it is functionless. 9Yet in the learning interval it has a use that now you fear, but yet will love.
6. The picture of your brother given you to occupy the space so lately left unoccupied and vacant will not need defense of any kind. 2For you will give it overwhelming preference. 3Nor delay an instant in deciding that it is the only one you want. 4It does not stand for double concepts. 5Though it is but half the picture and is incomplete, within itself it is the same. 6The other half of what it represents remains unknown, but is not cancelled out. 7And thus is God left free to take the final step Himself. 8For this you need no pictures and no learning aids. 9And what will ultimately take the place of every learning aid will merely be.
7. Forgiveness vanishes and symbols fade, and nothing that the eyes have ever seen or ears have heard remains to be perceived. 2A power wholly limitless has come, not to destroy, but to receive its own. 3There is no choice of function anywhere. 4The choice you fear to lose you never had. 5Yet only this appears to interfere with power unlimited and single thoughts, complete and happy, without opposite. 6You do not know the peace of power that opposes nothing. 7Yet no other kind can be at all. 8Give welcome to the power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of symbols and of limitations. 9He would merely be, and so He merely is.