Typically—and there are always exceptions—one would say (and we frequently say here) that
this course is not for children; certainly not for children, and really is not for young
adults who are still trying to make their way in the world and still have the illusion
that doing things in this world is important, is valuable, etcetera, etcetera. It's only
when you get a little older and you realize that nothing works here, that nothing has
worked in your life let alone anybody else's life; that you're ready to consider, you know—seriously
consider—a spiritual alternative. Jung had said—actually many, many times—that one
could divide a person's life into two stages: the first stage is basically dealing with
the world and that usually takes you somewhere into your mid-30s and then there's a second
stage, which then becomes dealing with religious or spiritual issues. In other words, when
people begin to realize that the world doesn't really hold what they—what they thought it
held and they begin to look for some kind of deeper purpose or meaning in their lives.
So that it really is our dissatisfaction—our sense of hopelessness, despair, pain that
drives us to really seek a different answer. It's at that point—whether one literally
thinks of a Jesus or a Holy Spirit or any other symbol; it doesn't matter—there is
some recognition that the thought system we've been following or that the world espouses
doesn't work. In Bill's famous line to Helen: "There must be another way," and what impelled
him to finally say that to her was seven years of absolute hell, all right, in his relationship
with her as well as in their relationship with other people on the faculty, and on
the medical centers, etcetera. And he finally said, "There must be another way because what
we're doing is not working," and the Course, obviously, as you all know, was the answer
to that—to their joint request. Jesus echoes that in Chapter 2 of the text when he says
the same thing, that tolerance for pain is very high in all of us, but at some point
we say, "There must be a better way." All right, and in a sense that's what sets us
on the pathway of forgiveness. Rather than digging in our heels at the bottom of the
ladder and trying to make the best of our life here, we say, "There's something very
wrong with this picture, and even if I don't know what it is I know there's something very
wrong with this picture." In one sense one could say that's the only positive factor
or use of pain. It could finally impel us to say, "There must be another teacher, you
know, floating around in my mind." So all that's really necessary is that a part of
my mind that I'm not even aware of—that decision-making part of my mind—is already choosing against
the ego thought system. It's saying, "You know, specialness just doesn't do it, you
know. I have everything I want, you know. I tricked, manipulated, seduced everyone and
everything and got everything I want and I'm still not happy. There must be something else,"
you know. It doesn't matter what form it takes; the form is nothing. The content is everything,
and the content is simply expressing some awareness that the ego is not the only teacher,
or at least the ego is a false teacher. That's what the Course would refer to as the invitation
to the Holy Spirit. It's opening up a door to a mind that was alread—that had been closed;
and again, what the Course refers to as the right mind, all right? And at that point we
could begin to hear our inner Teacher, and obviously it doesn't—when we say "hear" we're
not talking about any physical. You don't have to hear the way Helen heard, or anybody
else hears internally. It simply means beginning to have thoughts that are different from your
ego thoughts. However you express that in form or understand that conceptually is your
business; it doesn't matter. But the content is what's important, that you're beginning
to look within and opening up your mind to hearing or getting some other kind of message
that points you in a different direction. But what I'm going to read to you now would
be the content of what you'd be hearing: "Projection makes perception. The world you see is what
you gave it; nothing more than that. But though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore,
to you it is important. It is the witness"—and again, the "it" is the world that you see;
the world of our experience; the way that our relationships, our situations that we're
in. "It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition."
It's a very, very important phrase. That's what the world is; it's an outside picture
of an inward condition. Remember, once again, there is no difference between the inner and
the outer, you know? The film that runs through a projector is exactly what you see on the
screen in the movie theatre; exactly. It's an outside picture of an inward condition,
all right. In that sense the inward condition is what goes on in the projection booth, and
the outside picture is what you see on the movie screen. All right, for our purposes
here, and obviously this is what Jesus is talking about, is the way we perceive the
world, the way we experience the world is a picture of what is inside. "As a man thinketh,
so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your
mind about the world. Perception is a result and not a cause." So when I finally throw
up my hands in despair and say, "There must be another way; there must be another teacher,"
this is what the Teacher says to me. Not so much in these words necessarily, but certainly
in the content. The world—the world we experience; more specifically the world of our special
relationships is the royal road to understanding the activities of our unconscious mind, and
specifically the activity he's talking about—the only activity there is in our mind—is the
decision to choose the ego instead of the Holy Spirit, to understand the guilt that
follows from that choice, and then how the world then is the out picturing of that guilt
that we have made real in our minds. And he's trying to get us to shift our whole perspective
and orientation from this world to the world of our thoughts. Not the thoughts in the brain,
but the world of our thoughts in our mind. Without that, without that redirection of
understanding what our perception is telling us, we would have no way of accessing the
mind, because we do not know what a mind is. Part of the problem in understanding the mind
is that you can't see a mind. The mind existed before time and space. So we know about a
brain; you could see a brain. You could dissect the organ, and you could study the brain.
You could study the cells; you could manipulate the cells; stimulate the cells. You could
do all kinds of things with the brain because you could see it, but the mind you can't see,
meaning you can't see it with your body's eyes. And we don't have the concepts really
for a mind, because they're—sometimes in the workshops people ask, "Well, where is
the mind?" Well, it's not a "where" question; it's not anywhere. It's not spatially or temporally
oriented. There are no reference for it; that's why it's so difficult. Just as earlier this
morning, that I was saying how difficult it is to talk about God. For the same reason
it's difficult to talk about the mind because it's—the mind is not of this world. The puppet
has no conception of the puppeteer. All the puppet knows is that if a string is pulled,
it goes like this; jerks one hand up or another—jerks another hand up or throws out a leg or moves
the mouth and words come out. Well, this body is a puppet; it has no life; simply does what
the puppeteer tells it to do. But if I don't know that then I will think that the puppets
are real, just as if you take a small child to a puppet show, and the child doesn't understand
that the puppets are not real, the child can get very upset by what goes on, on stage,
and so you comfort the child and explain what a puppet is. In a sense that's what Jesus
does. We're getting upset all the time by what's going on, on stage, right? And we don't
want to hear that nothing's going on, on stage, so he has to be very patient and lead us step
by step by step, which means really that we have to—that we only hear the truth to the
extent we're ready to open our minds to it. So it's not that he literally leads us step
by step; he doesn't do anything. His presence is there; we just closed the door. So when
we open the door a little bit we feel, well he's taking another step with us, and then
we open a little bit more. But we're the ones who do all the work. We did all the work in
closing our mind to the truth, and we have to do the work of opening the mind to the
truth. Again, what Jesus does is that he's a loving, true presence; a thought in our
mind that by his very nature and his very presence in our mind reminds us that there's
another path that we can choose. He can't open our minds for us. We closed them; we
have to open them.