1. Who punishes the body is insane. 2For here the little gap is seen, and yet it is not here. 3It has not judged itself, nor made itself to be what it is not. 4It does not seek to make of pain a joy and look for lasting pleasure in the dust. 5It does not tell you what its purpose is and cannot understand what it is for. 6It does not victimize, because it has no will, no preferences and no doubts. 7It does not wonder what it is. 8And so it has no need to be competitive. 9It can be victimized, but cannot feel itself as victim. 10It accepts no role, but does what it is told, without attack.
2. It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible for sight a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the sounds you do not like, although it cannot hear. 2It suffers not the punishment you give because it has no feeling. 3It behaves in ways you want, but never makes the choice. 4It is not born and does not die. 5It can but follow aimlessly the path on which it has been set. 6And if that path is changed, it walks as easily another way. 7It takes no sides and judges not the road it travels. 8It perceives no gap, because it does not hate. 9It can be used for hate, but it cannot be hateful made thereby.
3. The thing you hate and fear and loathe and want, the body does not know. 2You send it forth to seek for separation and be separate. 3And then you hate it, not for what it is, but for the uses you have made of it. 4You shrink from what it sees and what it hears, and hate its frailty and littleness. 5And you despise its acts, but not your own. 6It sees and acts for you. 7It hears your voice. 8And it is frail and little by your wish. 9It seems to punish you, and thus deserve your hatred for the limitations that it brings to you. 10Yet you have made of it a symbol for the limitations that you want your mind to have and see and keep.
4. The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. 2You hate it, yet you think it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost. 3This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. 4This is the secret oath you take again, whenever you perceive yourself attacked. 5No one can suffer if he does not see himself attacked, and losing by attack. 6Unstated and unheard in consciousness is every pledge to sickness. 7Yet it is a promise to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return.
5. Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that it will suffer pain. 2It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret, in agreement with another’s secret wish to be apart from you, as you would be apart from him. 3Unless you both agree that is your wish, it can have no effects. 4Whoever says, “There is no gap between my mind and yours” has kept God’s promise, not his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. 5And by his healing is his brother healed.
6. Let this be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and not apart. 2And he will keep the promise that you make with him, because it is the one that he has made to God, as God has made to him. 3God keeps His promises; His Son keeps his. 4In his creation did his Father say, “You are beloved of Me and I of you forever. 5Be you perfect as Myself, for you can never be apart from Me.” 6His Son remembers not that he replied “I will,” though in that promise he was born. 7Yet God reminds him of it every time he does not share a promise to be sick, but lets his mind be healed and unified. 8His secret vows are powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises he shares. 9And what he substitutes is not his will, who has made promise of himself to God.