1. False healing merely makes a poor exchange of one illusion for a “nicer” one; a dream of sickness for a dream of health. 2This can occur at lower forms of prayer, combining with forgiveness kindly meant but not completely understood as yet. 3Only false healing can give way to fear, so sickness will be free to strike again. 4False healing can indeed remove a form of pain and sickness. 5But the cause remains, and will not lack effects. 6The cause is still the wish to die and overcome the Christ. 7And with this wish is death a certainty, for prayer is answered. 8Yet there is a kind of seeming death that has a different source. 9It does not come because of hurtful thoughts and raging anger at the universe. 10It merely signifies the end has come for usefulness of body functioning. 11And so it is discarded as a choice, as one lays by a garment now outworn.
2. This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. 2We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us. 3But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. 4Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again.
3. We call it death, but it is liberty. 2It does not come in forms that seem to be thrust down in pain upon unwilling flesh, but as a gentle welcome to release. 3If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labor gladly done and gladly ended. 4Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate, where it is not hard to see the gifts we gave were saved for us. 5For Christ is clearer now; His vision more sustained in us; His Voice, the Word of God, more certainly our own.
4. This gentle passage to a higher prayer, a kind forgiveness of the ways of earth, can only be received with thankfulness. 2Yet first true healing must have come to bless the mind with loving pardon for the sins it dreamed about and laid upon the world. 3Now are its dreams dispelled in quiet rest. 4Now its forgiveness comes to heal the world and it is ready to depart in peace, the journey over and the lessons learned.
5. This is not death according to the world, for death is cruel in its frightened eyes and takes the form of punishment for sin. 2How could it be a blessing, then? 3And how could it be welcome when it must be feared? 4What healing has occurred in such a view of what is merely opening the gate to higher prayer and kindly justice done? 5Death is reward and not a punishment. 6But such a viewpoint must be fostered by the healing that the world cannot conceive. 7There is no partial healing. 8What but shifts illusions has done nothing. 9What is false cannot be partly true. 10If you are healed your healing is complete. 11Forgiveness is the only gift you give and would receive.
6. False healing rests upon the body’s cure, leaving the cause of illness still unchanged, ready to strike again until it brings a cruel death in seeming victory. 2It can be held at bay a little while, and there can be brief respite as it waits to take its vengeance on the Son of God. 3Yet it cannot be overcome until all faith in it has been laid by, and placed upon God’s substitute for evil dreams; a world in which there is no veil of sin to keep it dark and comfortless. 4At last the gate of Heaven opens and God’s Son is free to enter in the home that stands ready to welcome him, and was prepared before time was and still but waits for him.