1. There is a tendency to think the world can offer consolation and escape from problems that its purpose is to keep. 2Why should this be? 3Because it is a place where choice among illusions seems to be the only choice. 4And you are in control of outcomes of your choosing. 5Thus you think, within the narrow band from birth to death, a little time is given you to use for you alone; a time when everyone conflicts with you, but you can choose which road will lead you out of conflict, and away from difficulties that concern you not. 6Yet they are your concern. 7How, then, can you escape from them by leaving them behind? 8What must go with you, you will take with you whatever road you choose to walk along.
2. Real choice is no illusion. 2But the world has none to offer. 3All its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. 4There is no choice in its alternatives. 5Seek not escape from problems here. 6The world was made that problems could not be escaped. 7Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. 8They have but one end. 9And each is but the means to gain that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. 10Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. 11All of them will lead to death. 12On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. 13And on some the thorns are felt at once. 14The choice is not what will the ending be, but when it comes.
3. There is no choice where every end is sure. 2Perhaps you would prefer to try them all, before you really learn they are but one. 3The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. 4Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way except the pathways offered by the world. 5And learning they led nowhere, lost their hope. 6And yet this was the time they could have learned their greatest lesson. 7All must reach this point, and go beyond it. 8It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. 9But this is not the lesson in itself. 10The lesson has a purpose, and in this you come to understand what it is for.
4. Why would you seek to try another road, another person or another place, when you have learned the way the lesson starts, but do not yet perceive what it is for? 2Its purpose is the answer to the search that all must undertake who still believe there is another answer to be found. 3Learn now, without despair, there is no hope of answer in the world. 4But do not judge the lesson that is but begun with this. 5Seek not another signpost in the world that seems to point to still another road. 6No longer look for hope where there is none. 7Make fast your learning now, and understand you but waste time unless you go beyond what you have learned to what is yet to learn. 8For from this lowest point will learning lead to heights of happiness, in which you see the purpose of the lesson shining clear, and perfectly within your learning grasp.
5. Who would be willing to be turned away from all the roadways of the world, unless he understood their real futility? 2Is it not needful that he should begin with this, to seek another way instead? 3For while he sees a choice where there is none, what power of decision can he use? 4The great release of power must begin with learning where it really has a use. 5And what decision has power if it be applied in situations without choice?
6. The learning that the world can offer but one choice, no matter what its form may be, is the beginning of acceptance that there is a real alternative instead. 2To fight against this step is to defeat your purpose here. 3You did not come to learn to find a road the world does not contain. 4The search for different pathways in the world is but the search for different forms of truth. 5And this would keep the truth from being reached.
7. Think not that happiness is ever found by following a road away from it. 2This makes no sense, and cannot be the way. 3To you who seem to find this course to be too difficult to learn, let me repeat that to achieve a goal you must proceed in its direction, not away from it. 4And every road that leads the other way will not advance the purpose to be found. 5If this be difficult to understand, then is this course impossible to learn. 6But only then. 7For otherwise, it is a simple teaching in the obvious.
8. There is a choice that you have power to make when you have seen the real alternatives. 2Until that point is reached you have no choice, and you can but decide how you would choose the better to deceive yourself again. 3This course attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the same illusion and the same mistake. 4All choices in the world depend on this; you choose between your brother and yourself, and you will gain as much as he will lose, and what you lose is what is given him. 5How utterly opposed to truth is this, when all the lesson’s purpose is to teach that what your brother loses you have lost, and what he gains is what is given you.
9. He has not left His Thoughts! 2But you forgot His Presence and remembered not His Love. 3No pathway in the world can lead to Him, nor any worldly goal be one with His. 4What road in all the world will lead within, when every road was made to separate the journey from the purpose it must have unless it be but futile wandering? 5All roads that lead away from what you are will lead you to confusion and despair. 6Yet has He never left His Thoughts to die, without their Source forever in themselves.
10. He has not left His Thoughts! 2He could no more depart from them than they could keep Him out. 3In unity with Him do they abide, and in Their Oneness Both are kept complete. 4There is no road that leads away from Him. 5A journey from yourself does not exist. 6How foolish and insane it is to think that there could be a road with such an aim! 7Where could it go? 8And how could you be made to travel on it, walking there without your own reality at one with you?
11. Forgive yourself your madness, and forget all senseless journeys and all goal-less aims. 2They have no meaning. 3You can not escape from what you are. 4For God is merciful, and did not let His Son abandon Him. 5For what He is be thankful, for in that is your escape from madness and from death. 6Nowhere but where He is can you be found. 7There is no path that does not lead to Him.