It is impossible to understand, for example, what the very first principle of miracles
means...there is no order of difficulty among them...it is impossible to understand that
without recognizing that the reason that is so is because every problem in this world
is equally an illusion, without exception.
One times zero is the same as a thousand times zero and there can be no exception to this.
Our fear of what this truly means, which deep within us, is our fear of annihilation, which
of course represents the annihilation of the ego; hardly the annihilation of Christ.
But our fear of what that means to the ego is so enormous that we do whatever we can
to somehow compromise this important principle.
Certainly this became very clear when you study the history of any formal religion,
whether it's Judaism, Christianity or religions of the East when people attempt to make certain
parts of this world sacred.
We have sacred vessels, we have sacred objects, we have sacred prayers, we have sacred altars,
we have sacred houses of worship, we have sacred people, rituals.
While it is clear as people work with the Course that there are no sacred objects, there
are no sacred people, it is very easy, however, to slip into the same mistake of developing
rituals, developing forms and somehow believing that the ritual or the form is the truth.
I think there's a temptation that many people who work with the workbook can make.
Somehow you believe if you do the workbook, then that's salvation.
It's not just doing a daily lesson or remembering every hour, etc.
It's in becoming what the workbook is teaching us.
It's changing a thought system that is so profound that to believe we can do that in
one year I think is probably the greatest illusion that any of us can have.
There's probably no more annoying line than the one that says right at the end of the
workbook, "This course is a beginning and not an end."
I think one of the things that we wish to emphasize and probably emphasize this more
than anything else that we would say tonight is that it is so difficult to appreciate the
enormity of the ego thought system.
It is not so simple to just because this "holy" book tells you that you forgive somebody and
the Kingdom is going to open in front of us.
There are several places where the Course makes this very clear, actually it says that
you have no idea of the enormity of that one error.
This is kind of an excellent summary of what we've been talking about in terms of fragmentation
and all the rest.
It's on page 347 in the text.
I'm starting with the last paragraph on that page and going onto the next.
"You who believe that God is fear made but one substitution.
It has taken many forms because it was the substitution of illusion for truth, of fragmentation
for wholeness.
It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it
is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one and still is what it was.
That one error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time and life to death, was all
you ever made.
Your whole world rests upon it.
Everything you see reflects it and every special relationship that you have ever made is part
of it.
You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see.
You do not realize the magnitude of that one error.
It was so vast and so completely incredible, that from it a world of total unreality had
to emerge.
What else could come of it?
Its fragmented aspects are fearful enough as you begin to look at them, but nothing
you have seen begins to show you the enormity of the original error, which seemed to cast
you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perception and
force you to make further substitutions.
That was the first projection of error outward."
It goes on to say in that section and in another section in that same chapter called "The Two
Worlds," how this entire world arose as a defense against our ever looking at the enormity
of that one error.
And when you consider that it was our mind that made this entire physical universe, all
the galaxies and solar systems beyond this one, made the bodies which tell us that these
galaxies and solar systems are so vast and so real.
It's our bodies that tell us what is beautiful and what is holy and what is ugly and what
is painful and which seem to be the witness of the reality of these feelings...when you
recognize that it was our mind that did all that and the tremendous investment that we
all have in maintaining that illusion...at that point, I think we can begin to at least
have an intimation of the enormity of the task of undoing this.
As many of you know, the Course repeatedly says how simple it is, but it never really
says that it's easy.
And I think, again, one of the big mistakes that confronts students of the Course is believing
that somehow this is an easy process.
I think if you study the text carefully, and I guess that's another plea we can make is
that if you do work with the Course, please, please, please read the book.
One of the things that we find...I think when we were in Australia so many people would
come up to us and tell us that they had been students of the course for two, three, four
years and then when we'd talk a little bit more, what they meant was that they were doing
the workbook.
Now there's nothing against doing the workbook and reading it, but there's nothing in the
workbook that will help you to understand what we're talking about.
There's absolutely nothing in the workbook that explains what happened when the separation
occurred.
There is nothing in the workbook that explains what special relationships are, which are
really the whole guts of the Course itself.
I think trying to, for example, just work with the workbook instead of the text is another
example of trying to kind of whittle the Course down to our size.
There is certainly nothing wrong in anyone doing anything that is helpful and certainly
if you feel guided by the Holy Spirit to read the Course backwards or upside down, that's
certainly what you should do.
But I think at that point, it ceases to be "A Course in Miracles."
In other words, it's like taking a course in a college and then not reading the syllabus
or not listening to what the teacher says.
There's nothing that says you have to read the syllabus or listen to what the teacher
says, but why then are you taking the course?
The obvious reason of taking the course is to learn what the material is and I think
that's the same thing with these books.
And the point in back of all of this, once again, is that the reason we don't do it is
not because we're evil or bad or sinful, but we're just frightened.
And we're frightened of the truth.
And so anything we can do to compromise this truth, to somehow make form real or ritual
real or this world real in some fashion or another, is just an attempt to compromise
the truth.
There's a line in the Course which says you will either believe all of this course or
you believe none of it.
Because every single principle in the Course rests on all the rest.
And if you say I believe all this, but this is something I can't handle, again, there's
nothing wrong in doing that, we've all had that feeling.
But at that point what you're really doing is without being aware of it, is trying to
disprove what the Course is saying.
It's a very carefully constructed thought system and each principle builds on the next.