1. Attitudes toward the body are attitudes toward attack. 2The ego’s definitions of anything are childish, and are always based on what it believes the thing is for. 3This is because it is incapable of true generalizations, and equates what it sees with the function it ascribes to it. 4It does not equate it with what it is. 5To the ego the body is to attack with. 6Equating you with the body, it teaches that you are to attack with. 7The body, then, is not the source of its own health. 8The body’s condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function. 9Functions are part of being since they arise from it, but the relationship is not reciprocal. 10The whole does define the part, but the part does not define the whole. 11Yet to know in part is to know entirely because of the fundamental difference between knowledge and perception. 12In perception the whole is built up of parts that can separate and reassemble in different constellations. 13But knowledge never changes, so its constellation is permanent. 14The idea of part-whole relationships has meaning only at the level of perception, where change is possible. 15Otherwise, there is no difference between the part and whole.
2. The body exists in a world that seems to contain two voices fighting for its possession. 2In this perceived constellation the body is seen as capable of shifting its allegiance from one to the other, making the concepts of both health and sickness meaningful. 3The ego makes a fundamental confusion between means and end as it always does. 4Regarding the body as an end, the ego has no real use for it because it is not an end. 5You must have noticed an outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has accepted as its own. 6When you have achieved it, it has not satisfied you. 7This is why the ego is forced to shift ceaselessly from one goal to another, so that you will continue to hope it can yet offer you something.
3. It has been particularly difficult to overcome the ego’s belief in the body as an end, because it is synonymous with the belief in attack as an end. 2The ego has a profound investment in sickness. 3If you are sick, how can you object to the ego’s firm belief that you are not invulnerable? 4This is an appealing argument from the ego’s point of view, because it obscures the obvious attack that underlies the sickness. 5If you recognized this and also decided against attack, you could not give this false witness to the ego’s stand.
4. It is hard to perceive sickness as a false witness, because you do not realize that it is entirely out of keeping with what you want. 2This witness, then, appears to be innocent and trustworthy because you have not seriously cross-examined him. 3If you had, you would not consider sickness such a strong witness on behalf of the ego’s views. 4A more honest statement would be that those who want the ego are predisposed to defend it. 5Therefore, their choice of witnesses should be suspect from the beginning. 6The ego does not call upon witnesses who would disagree with its case, nor does the Holy Spirit. 7I have said that judgment is the function of the Holy Spirit, and one He is perfectly equipped to fulfill. 8The ego as a judge gives anything but an impartial judgment. 9When the ego calls on a witness, it has already made the witness an ally.
5. It is still true that the body has no function of itself, because it is not an end. 2The ego, however, establishes it as an end because, as such, its true function is obscured. 3This is the purpose of everything the ego does. 4Its sole aim is to lose sight of the function of everything. 5A sick body does not make any sense. 6It could not make sense because sickness is not what the body is for. 7Sickness is meaningful only if the two basic premises on which the ego’s interpretation of the body rests are true; that the body is for attack, and that you are a body. 8Without these premises sickness is inconceivable.
6. Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. 2It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance. 3The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for its guidance. 4It dictates endless prescriptions for avoiding catastrophic outcomes. 5The Holy Spirit, perfectly aware of the same situation, does not bother to analyze it at all. 6If data are meaningless there is no point in analyzing them. 7The function of truth is to collect information that is true. 8Any way you handle error results in nothing. 9The more complicated the results become the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine all possible outcomes to which premises give rise in order to judge them truly.
7. A learning device is not a teacher. 2It cannot tell you how you feel. 3You do not know how you feel because you have accepted the ego’s confusion, and you therefore believe that a learning device can tell you how you feel. 4Sickness is merely another example of your insistence on asking guidance of a teacher who does not know the answer. 5The ego is incapable of knowing how you feel. 6When I said that the ego does not know anything, I said the one thing about the ego that is wholly true. 7But there is a corollary; if only knowledge has being and the ego has no knowledge, then the ego has no being.
8. You might well ask how the voice of something that does not exist can be so insistent. 2Have you thought about the distorting power of something you want, even if it is not real? 3There are many instances of how what you want distorts perception. 4No one can doubt the ego’s skill in building up false cases. 5Nor can anyone doubt your willingness to listen until you choose not to accept anything except truth. 6When you lay the ego aside, it will be gone. 7The Holy Spirit’s Voice is as loud as your willingness to listen. 8It cannot be louder without violating your freedom of choice, which the Holy Spirit seeks to restore, never to undermine.
9. The Holy Spirit teaches you to use your body only to reach your brothers, so He can teach His message through you. 2This will heal them and therefore heal you. 3Everything used in accordance with its function as the Holy Spirit sees it cannot be sick. 4Everything used otherwise is. 5Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind. 6Do not let it be an image of your own perception of littleness. 7Do not let it reflect your decision to attack. 8Health is seen as the natural state of everything when interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, Who perceives no attack on anything. 9Health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly. 10Health is the beginning of the proper perspective on life under the guidance of the one Teacher Who knows what life is, being the Voice for Life Itself.