1. Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without effects there is no cause. 2The cause a cause is made by its effects; the Father is a Father by His Son. 3Effects do not create their cause, but they establish its causation. 4Thus, the Son gives Fatherhood to his Creator, and receives the gift that he has given Him. 5It is because he is God’s Son that he must also be a father, who creates as God created him. 6The circle of creation has no end. 7Its starting and its ending are the same. 8But in itself it holds the universe of all creation, without beginning and without an end.
2. Fatherhood is creation. 2Love must be extended. 3Purity is not confined. 4It is the nature of the innocent to be forever uncontained, without a barrier or limitation. 5Thus is purity not of the body. 6Nor can it be found where limitation is. 7The body can be healed by its effects, which are as limitless as is itself. 8Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as not within the body, and its innocence is quite apart from it, and where all healing is. 9Where, then, is healing? 10Only where its cause is given its effects. 11For sickness is a meaningless attempt to give effects to causelessness, and make it be a cause.
3. Always in sickness does the Son of God attempt to make himself his cause, and not allow himself to be his Father’s Son. 2For this impossible desire, he does not believe that he is Love’s Effect, and must be cause because of what he is. 3The cause of healing is the only Cause of everything. 4It has but one Effect. 5And in that recognition, causelessness is given no effects and none is seen. 6A mind within a body and a world of other bodies, each with separate minds, are your “creations,” you the “other” mind, creating with effects unlike yourself. 7And as their “father,” you must be like them.
4. Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone else’s dream. 2The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the dreamer is. 3It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you are still asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming. 4Do you wish for dreams of healing, or for dreams of death? 5A dream is like a memory in that it pictures what you wanted shown to you.
5. An empty storehouse, with an open door, holds all your shreds of memories and dreams. 2Yet if you are the dreamer, you perceive this much at least: that you have caused the dream, and can accept another dream as well. 3But for this change in content of the dream, it must be realized that it is you who dreamed the dreaming that you do not like. 4It is but an effect that you have caused, and you would not be cause of this effect. 5In dreams of murder and attack are you the victim in a dying body slain. 6But in forgiving dreams is no one asked to be the victim and the sufferer. 7These are the happy dreams the miracle exchanges for your own. 8It does not ask you make another; only that you see you made the one you would exchange for this.
6. This world is causeless, as is every dream that anyone has dreamed within the world. 2No plans are possible, and no design exists that could be found and understood. 3What else could be expected from a thing that has no cause? 4Yet if it has no cause, it has no purpose. 5You may cause a dream, but never will you give it real effects. 6For that would change its cause, and it is this you cannot do. 7The dreamer of a dream is not awake, but does not know he sleeps. 8He sees illusions of himself as sick or well, depressed or happy, but without a stable cause with guaranteed effects.
7. The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. 2This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. 3No one is afraid of them when he perceives he made them up. 4The fear was held in place because he did not see that he was author of the dream, and not a figure in the dream. 5He gives himself the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. 6And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. 7Thus does he fear his own attack, but sees it at another’s hands. 8As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but not their cause. 9He authored not his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused. 10The miracle does nothing but to show him that he has done nothing. 11What he fears is cause without the consequences that would make it cause. 12And so it never was.
8. The separation started with the dream the Father was deprived of His Effects, and powerless to keep them since He was no longer their Creator. 2In the dream, the dreamer made himself. 3But what he made has turned against him, taking on the role of its creator, as the dreamer had. 4And as he hated his Creator, so the figures in the dream have hated him. 5His body is their slave, which they abuse because the motives he has given it have they adopted as their own. 6And hate it for the vengeance it would offer them. 7It is their vengeance on the body which appears to prove the dreamer could not be the maker of the dream. 8Effect and cause are first split off, and then reversed, so that effect becomes a cause; the cause, effect.
9. This is the separation’s final step, with which salvation, which proceeds to go the other way, begins. 2This final step is an effect of what has gone before, appearing as a cause. 3The miracle is the first step in giving back to cause the function of causation, not effect. 4For this confusion has produced the dream, and while it lasts will wakening be feared. 5Nor will the call to wakening be heard, because it seems to be the call to fear.
10. Like every lesson that the Holy Spirit requests you learn, the miracle is clear. 2It demonstrates what He would have you learn, and shows you its effects are what you want. 3In His forgiving dreams are the effects of yours undone, and hated enemies perceived as friends with merciful intent. 4Their enmity is seen as causeless now, because they did not make it. 5And you can accept the role of maker of their hate, because you see that it has no effects. 6Now are you freed from this much of the dream; the world is neutral, and the bodies that still seem to move about as separate things need not be feared. 7And so they are not sick.
11. The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it. 2But it also shows that, having no effects, it is not cause, because the function of causation is to have effects. 3And where effects are gone, there is no cause. 4Thus is the body healed by miracles because they show the mind made sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or effect, of what it made. 5Yet half the lesson will not teach the whole. 6The miracle is useless if you learn but that the body can be healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. 7The lesson is the mind was sick that thought the body could be sick; projecting out its guilt caused nothing, and had no effects.
12. This world is full of miracles. 2They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. 3They are the dream’s alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. 4They are the glad effects of taking back the consequence of sickness to its cause. 5The body is released because the mind acknowledges “this is not done to me, but I am doing this.” 6And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. 7Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the world undone.