1. What waits in perfect certainty beyond salvation is not our concern. 2For you have barely started to allow your first, uncertain steps to be directed up the ladder separation led you down. 3The miracle alone is your concern at present. 4Here is where we must begin. 5And having started, will the way be made serene and simple in the rising up to waking and the ending of the dream. 6When you accept a miracle, you do not add your dream of fear to one that is already being dreamed. 7Without support, the dream will fade away without effects. 8For it is your support that strengthens it.
2. No mind is sick until another mind agrees that they are separate. 2And thus it is their joint decision to be sick. 3If you withhold agreement and accept the part you play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in letting it perceive itself as separate and apart from you. 4Thus is the body not perceived as sick by both your minds from separate points of view. 5Uniting with a brother’s mind prevents the cause of sickness and perceived effects. 6Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate.
3. The miracle does nothing just because the minds are joined, and cannot separate. 2Yet in the dreaming has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which are separated and which cannot join. 3Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have you abandoned him to his own dream by sharing it with him. 4He has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and you have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred. 5Thus are you joined in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. 6Fight not His coming with illusions, for it is His coming that you want above all things that seem to glisten in the dream.
4. The end of dreaming is the end of fear, and love was never in the world of dreams. 2The gap is little. 3Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a wish to keep apart and not to join. 4And thus it seems to give a cause to sickness which is not its cause. 5The purpose of the gap is all the cause that sickness has. 6For it was made to keep you separated, in a body which you see as if it were the cause of pain.
5. The cause of pain is separation, not the body, which is only its effect. 2Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the empty place between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by. 3And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to close the gap, and as the waves in joining cover it. 4Where is the gap between the waves when they have joined, and covered up the space which seemed to keep them separate for a little while? 5Where are the grounds for sickness when the minds have joined to close the little gap between them, where the seeds of sickness seemed to grow?
6. God builds the bridge, but only in the space left clean and vacant by the miracle. 2The seeds of sickness and the shame of guilt He cannot bridge, for He can not destroy the alien will that He created not. 3Let its effects be gone and clutch them not with eager hands, to keep them for yourself. 4The miracle will brush them all aside, and thus make room for Him Who wills to come and bridge His Son’s returning to Himself.
7. Count, then, the silver miracles and golden dreams of happiness as all the treasures you would keep within the storehouse of the world. 2The door is open, not to thieves, but to your starving brothers, who mistook for gold the shining of a pebble, and who stored a heap of snow that shone like silver. 3They have nothing left behind the open door. 4What is the world except a little gap perceived to tear eternity apart, and break it into days and months and years? 5And what are you who live within the world except a picture of the Son of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of clay?
8. Be not afraid, my child, but let your world be gently lit by miracles. 2And where the little gap was seen to stand between you and your brother, join him there. 3And so sickness will now be seen without a cause. 4The dream of healing in forgiveness lies, and gently shows you that you never sinned. 5The miracle would leave no proof of guilt to bring you witness to what never was. 6And in your storehouse it will make a place of welcome for your Father and your Self. 7The door is open, that all those may come who would no longer starve, and would enjoy the feast of plenty set before them there. 8And they will meet with your invited Guests the miracle has asked to come to you.
9. This is a feast unlike indeed to those the dreaming of the world has shown. 2For here, the more that anyone receives, the more is left for all the rest to share. 3The Guests have brought unlimited supply with Them. 4And no one is deprived or can deprive. 5Here is a feast the Father lays before His Son, and shares it equally with him. 6And in Their sharing there can be no gap in which abundance falters and grows thin. 7Here can the lean years enter not, for time waits not upon this feast, which has no end. 8For love has set its table in the space that seemed to keep your Guests apart from you.