1. To be a teacher of God, it is not necessary to be religious or even to believe in God to any recognizable extent. 2It is necessary, however, to teach forgiveness rather than condemnation. 3Even in this, complete consistency is not required, for one who had achieved that point could teach salvation completely, within an instant and without a word. 4Yet he who has learned all things does not need a teacher, and the healed have no need for a therapist. 5Relationships are still the temple of the Holy Spirit, and they will be made perfect in time and restored to eternity.
2. Formal religion has no place in psychotherapy, but it also has no real place in religion. 2In this world, there is an astonishing tendency to join contradictory words into one term without perceiving the contradiction at all. 3The attempt to formalize religion is so obviously an ego attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable that it hardly requires elaboration here. 4Religion is experience; psychotherapy is experience. 5At the highest levels they become one. 6Neither is truth itself, but both can lead to truth. 7What can be necessary to find truth, which remains perfectly obvious, but to remove the seeming obstacles to true awareness?
3. No one who learns to forgive can fail to remember God. 2Forgiveness, then, is all that need be taught, because it is all that need be learned. 3All blocks to the remembrance of God are forms of unforgiveness, and nothing else. 4This is never apparent to the patient, and only rarely so to the therapist. 5The world has marshalled all its forces against this one awareness, for in it lies the ending of the world and all it stands for.
4. Yet it is not the awareness of God that constitutes a reasonable goal for psychotherapy. 2This will come when psychotherapy is complete, for where there is forgiveness truth must come. 3It would be unfair indeed if belief in God were necessary to psychotherapeutic success. 4Nor is belief in God a really meaningful concept, for God can be but known. 5Belief implies that unbelief is possible, but knowledge of God has no true opposite. 6Not to know God is to have no knowledge, and it is to this that all unforgiveness leads. 7And without knowledge one can have only belief.
5. Different teaching aids appeal to different people. 2Some forms of religion have nothing to do with God, and some forms of psychotherapy have nothing to do with healing. 3Yet if pupil and teacher join in sharing one goal, God will enter into their relationship because He has been invited to come in. 4In the same way, a union of purpose between patient and therapist restores the place of God to ascendance, first through Christ’s vision and then through the memory of God Himself. 5The process of psychotherapy is the return to sanity. 6Teacher and pupil, therapist and patient, are all insane or they would not be here. 7Together they can find a pathway out, for no one will find sanity alone.
6. If healing is an invitation to God to enter into His Kingdom, what difference does it make how the invitation is written? 2Does the paper matter, or the ink, or the pen? 3Or is it he who writes that gives the invitation? 4God comes to those who would restore His world, for they have found the way to call to Him. 5If any two are joined, He must be there. 6It does not matter what their purpose is, but they must share it wholly to succeed. 7It is impossible to share a goal not blessed by Christ, for what is unseen through His eyes is too fragmented to be meaningful.
7. As true religion heals, so must true psychotherapy be religious. 2But both have many forms, because no good teacher uses one approach to every pupil. 3On the contrary, he listens patiently to each one, and lets him formulate his own curriculum; not the curriculum’s goal, but how he can best reach the aim it sets for him. 4Perhaps the teacher does not think of God as part of teaching. 5Perhaps the psychotherapist does not understand that healing comes from God. 6They can succeed where many who believe they have found God will fail.
8. What must the teacher do to ensure learning? 2What must the therapist do to bring healing about? 3Only one thing; the same requirement salvation asks of everyone. 4Each one must share one goal with someone else, and in so doing, lose all sense of separate interests. 5Only by doing this is it possible to transcend the narrow boundaries the ego would impose upon the self. 6Only by doing this can teacher and pupil, therapist and patient, you and I, accept Atonement and learn to give it as it was received.
9. Communion is impossible alone. 2No one who stands apart can receive Christ’s vision. 3It is held out to him, but he cannot hold out his hand to receive it. 4Let him be still and recognize his brother’s need is his own. 5And let him then meet his brother’s need as his and see that they are met as one, for such they are. 6What is religion but an aid in helping him to see that this is so? 7And what is psychotherapy except a help in just this same direction? 8It is the goal that makes these processes the same, for they are one in purpose and must thus be one in means.