Chapter 28.

THE UNDOING OF FEAR

I. The Present Memory

T-28.I.1. The miracle does nothing. 2 All it does is to undo. 3 And thus it 
cancels out the interference to what has been done. 4 It does not add, but 
merely takes away. 5 And what it takes away is long since gone, but being kept 
in memory appears to have immediate effects. 6 This world was over long ago. 7 
The thoughts that made it are no longer in the mind that thought of them and 
loved them for a little while. 8 The miracle but shows the past is gone, and 
what has truly gone has no effects. 9 Remembering a cause can but produce 
illusions of its presence, not effects.

T-28.I.2. All the effects of guilt are here no more. 2 For guilt is over. 3 In 
its passing went its consequences, left without a cause. 4 Why would you cling 
to it in memory if you did not desire its effects? 5 Remembering is as selective 
as perception, being its past tense. 6 It is perception of the past as if it 
were occurring now, and still were there to see. 7 Memory, like perception, is a 
skill made up by you to take the place of what God gave in your creation. 8 And 
like all the things you made, it can be used to serve another purpose, and to be 
the means for something else. 9 It can be used to heal and not to hurt, if you 
so wish it be.

T-28.I.3. Nothing employed for healing represents an effort to do anything at 
all. 2 It is a recognition that you have no needs which mean that something must 
be done. 3 It is an unselective memory, that is not used to interfere with 
truth. 4 All things the Holy Spirit can employ for healing have been given Him, 
without the content and the purposes for which they have been made. 5 They are 
but skills without an application. 6 They await their use. 7 They have no 
dedication and no aim.

T-28.I.4. The Holy Spirit can indeed make use of memory, for God Himself is 
there. 2 Yet this is not a memory of past events, but only of a present state. 3 
You are so long accustomed to believe that memory holds only what is past, that 
it is hard for you to realize it is a skill that can remember <now.> 4 The 
limitations on remembering the world imposes on it are as vast as those you let 
the world impose on you. 5 There is no link of memory to the past. 6 If you 
would have it there, then there it is. p589 7 But only your desire made the 
link, and only you have held it to a part of time where guilt appears to linger 
still.

T-28.I.5. The Holy Spirit's use of memory is quite apart from time. 2 He does 
not seek to use it as a means to keep the past, but rather as a way to let it 
go. 3 Memory holds the message it receives, and does what it is given it to do. 
4 It does not write the message, nor appoint what it is for. 5 Like to the body, 
it is purposeless within itself. 6 And if it seems to serve to cherish ancient 
hate, and gives you pictures of injustices and hurts that you were saving, this 
is what you asked its message be and that it is. 7 Committed to its vaults, the 
history of all the body's past is hidden there. 8 All of the strange 
associations made to keep the past alive, the present dead, are stored within 
it, waiting your command that they be brought to you, and lived again. 9 And 
thus do their effects appear to be increased by time, which took away their 
cause.

T-28.I.6. Yet time is but another phase of what does nothing. 2 It works hand in 
hand with all the other attributes with which you seek to keep concealed the 
truth about yourself. 3 Time neither takes away nor can restore. 4 And yet you 
make strange use of it, as if the past had caused the present, which is but a 
consequence in which no change can be made possible because its cause has gone. 
5 Yet change must have a cause that will endure, or else it will not last. 6 No 
change can be made in the present if its cause is past. 7 Only the past is held 
in memory as you make use of it, and so it is a way to hold the past against the 
now.

T-28.I.7. Remember nothing that you taught yourself, for you were badly taught. 
2 And who would keep a senseless lesson in his mind, when he can learn and can 
preserve a better one? 3 When ancient memories of hate appear, remember that 
their cause is gone. 4 And so you cannot understand what they are for. 5 Let not 
the cause that you would give them now be what it was that made them what they 
were, or seemed to be. 6 Be glad that it is gone, for this is what you would be 
pardoned from. 7 And see, instead, the new effects of cause accepted <now,> with 
consequences <here.> 8 They will surprise you with their loveliness. 9 The 
ancient new ideas they bring will be the happy consequences of a Cause so 
ancient that It far exceeds the span of memory which your perception sees.

T-28.I.8. This is the Cause the Holy Spirit has remembered for you, when you 
would forget. 2 It is not past because He let It not be unremembered. 3 It has 
never changed, because there never was a time in which He did not keep It safely 
in your mind. 4 Its consequences will indeed seem new, because you thought that 
you remembered not their Cause. 5 Yet was It never absent from your mind, for it 
was not your Father's Will that He be unremembered by His Son.

T-28.I.9. What <you> remember never was. 2 It came from causelessness which you 
confused with cause. p590 3 It can deserve but laughter, when you learn you have 
remembered consequences that were causeless and could never be effects. 4 The 
miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and 
interference. 5 Never changed from what It is. 6 And you are Its Effect, as 
changeless and as perfect as Itself. 7 Its memory does not lie in the past, nor 
waits the future. 8 It is not revealed in miracles. 9 They but remind you that 
It has not gone. 10 When you forgive It for your sins, It will no longer be 
denied.

T-28.I.10. You who have sought to lay a judgment on your own Creator cannot 
understand it is not He Who laid a judgment on His Son. 2 You would deny Him His 
Effects, yet have They never been denied. 3 There was no time in which His Son 
could be condemned for what was causeless and against His Will. 4 What your 
remembering would witness to is but the fear of God. 5 He has not done the thing 
you fear. 6 No more have you. 7 And so your innocence has not been lost. 8 You 
need no healing to be healed. 9 In quietness, see in the miracle a lesson in 
allowing Cause to have Its Own Effects, and doing nothing that would interfere.

T-28.I.11. The miracle comes quietly into the mind that stops an instant and is 
still. 2 It reaches gently from that quiet time, and from the mind it healed in 
quiet then, to other minds to share its quietness. 3 And they will join in doing 
nothing to prevent its radiant extension back into the Mind which caused all 
minds to be. 4 Born out of sharing, there can be no pause in time to cause the 
miracle delay in hastening to all unquiet minds, and bringing them an instant's 
stillness, when the memory of God returns to them. 5 Their own remembering is 
quiet now, and what has come to take its place will not be wholly unremembered 
afterwards.

T-28.I.12. He to Whom time is given offers thanks for every quiet instant given 
Him. 2 For in that instant is God's memory allowed to offer all its treasures to 
the Son of God, for whom they have been kept. 3 How gladly does He offer them 
unto the one for whom He has been given them! 4 And His Creator shares His 
thanks, because He would not be deprived of His Effects. p591 5 The instant's 
silence that His Son accepts gives welcome to eternity and Him, and lets Them 
enter where They would abide. 6 For in that instant does the Son of God do 
nothing that would make himself afraid.

T-28.I.13. How instantly the memory of God arises in the mind that has no fear 
to keep the memory away! 2 Its own remembering has gone. 3 There is no past to 
keep its fearful image in the way of glad awakening to present peace. 4 The 
trumpets of eternity resound throughout the stillness, yet disturb it not. 5 And 
what is now remembered is not fear, but rather is the Cause that fear was made 
to render unremembered and undone. 6 The stillness speaks in gentle sounds of 
love the Son of God remembers from before his own remembering came in between 
the present and the past, to shut them out.

T-28.I.14. Now is the Son of God at last aware of present Cause and Its benign 
Effects. 2 Now does he understand what he has made is causeless, having no 
effects at all. 3 He has done nothing. 4 And in seeing this, he understands he 
never had a need for doing anything, and never did. 5 His Cause <is> Its 
Effects. 6 There never was a cause beside It that could generate a different 
past or future. 7 Its Effects are changelessly eternal, beyond fear, and past 
the world of sin entirely.

T-28.I.15. What has been lost, to see the causeless not? 2 And where is 
sacrifice, when memory of God has come to take the place of loss? 3 What better 
way to close the little gap between illusions and reality than to allow the 
memory of God to flow across it, making it a bridge an instant will suffice to 
reach beyond? 4 For God has closed it with Himself. 5 His memory has not gone 
by, and left a stranded Son forever on a shore where he can glimpse another 
shore that he can never reach. 6 His Father wills that he be lifted up and 
gently carried over. 7 He has built the bridge, and it is He Who will transport 
His Son across it. 8 Have no fear that He will fail in what He wills. 9 Nor that 
you be excluded from the Will that is for you.




II. Reversing Effect and Cause

T-28.II.1. Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without effects 
there is no cause. 2 The cause a cause is <made> by its effects; the Father <is> 
a Father by His Son. 3 Effects do not create their cause, but they establish its 
causation. 4 Thus, the Son gives Fatherhood to his Creator, and receives the 
gift that he has given Him. 5 It is <because> he is God's Son that he must also 
be a father, who creates as God created him. 6 The circle of creation has no 
end. 7 Its starting and its ending are the same. 8 But in itself it holds the 
universe of all creation, without beginning and without an end.

T-28.II.2. Fatherhood <is> creation. 2 Love must be extended. 3 Purity is not 
confined. p592 4 It is the nature of the innocent to be forever uncontained, 
without a barrier or limitation. 5 Thus is purity not of the body. 6 Nor can it 
be found where limitation is. 7 The body can be healed by its effects, which are 
as limitless as is itself. 8 Yet must all healing come about because the mind is 
recognized as not within the body, and its innocence is quite apart from it, and 
where all healing is. 9 Where, then, is healing? 10 Only where its cause is 
given its effects. 11 For sickness is a meaningless attempt to give effects to 
causelessness, and make it be a cause.

T-28.II.3. Always in sickness does the Son of God attempt to make himself his 
cause, and not allow himself to be his Father's Son. 2 For this impossible 
desire, he does not believe that he is Love's Effect, and must be cause because 
of what he is. 3 The cause of healing is the only Cause of everything. 4 It has 
but <one> Effect. 5 And in that recognition, causelessness is given no effects 
and none is seen. 6 A mind within a body and a world of other bodies, each with 
separate minds, are your "creations," you the "other" mind, creating with 
effects unlike yourself. 7 And as their "father," you must be like them.

T-28.II.4. Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, 
and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of 
someone else's dream. 2 The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you 
who the dreamer is. 3 It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you are 
still asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming. 4 Do you wish for 
dreams of healing, or for dreams of death? 5 A dream is like a memory in that it 
pictures what you wanted shown to you.

T-28.II.5. An empty storehouse, with an open door, holds all your shreds of 
memories and dreams. 2 Yet if you are the dreamer, you perceive this much at 
least: that you have caused the dream, and can accept another dream as well. 3 
But for this change in content of the dream, it must be realized that it is you 
who dreamed the dreaming that you do not like. 4 It is but an effect that <you> 
have caused, and you would not be cause of this effect. 5 In dreams of murder 
and attack are you the victim in a dying body slain. p593 6 But in forgiving 
dreams is no one asked to be the victim and the sufferer. 7 These are the happy 
dreams the miracle exchanges for your own. 8 It does not ask you make another; 
only that you see you made the one you would exchange for this.

T-28.II.6. This world is causeless, as is every dream that anyone has dreamed 
within the world. 2 No plans are possible, and no design exists that could be 
found and understood. 3 What else could be expected from a thing that has no 
cause? 4 Yet if it has no cause, it has no purpose. 5 You may cause a dream, but 
never will you give it real effects. 6 For that would change its cause, and it 
is this you cannot do. 7 The dreamer of a dream is not awake, but does not know 
he sleeps. 8 He sees illusions of himself as sick or well, depressed or happy, 
but without a stable cause with guaranteed effects.

T-28.II.7. The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is 
not true. 2 This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. 3 No one is afraid 
of them when he perceives he made them up. 4 The fear was held in place because 
he did not see that he was author of the dream, and not a figure in the dream. 5 
He gives himself the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. 6 And it 
is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his 
wishes have been done. 7 Thus does he fear his own attack, but sees it at 
another's hands. 8 As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but not their 
cause. 9 He authored not his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused. 
10 The miracle does nothing but to show him that he has done nothing. 11 What he 
fears is cause without the consequences that would make it cause. 12 And so it 
never was.

T-28.II.8. The separation started with the dream the Father was deprived of His 
Effects, and powerless to keep them since He was no longer their Creator. 2 In 
the dream, the dreamer made himself. 3 But what he made has turned against him, 
taking on the role of its creator, as the dreamer had. 4 And as he hated his 
Creator, so the figures in the dream have hated him. 5 His body is their slave, 
which they abuse because the motives he has given it have they adopted as their 
own. 6 And hate it for the vengeance it would offer them. 7 It is their 
vengeance on the body which appears to prove the dreamer could not be the maker 
of the dream. 8 Effect and cause are first split off, and then reversed, so that 
effect becomes a cause; the cause, effect. p594

T-28.II.9. This is the separation's final step, with which salvation, which 
proceeds to go the other way, begins. 2 This final step is an effect of what has 
gone before, appearing as a cause. 3 The miracle is the first step in giving 
back to cause the function of causation, not effect. 4 For this confusion has 
produced the dream, and while it lasts will wakening be feared. 5 Nor will the 
call to wakening be heard, because it seems to be the call to fear.

T-28.II.10. Like every lesson that the Holy Spirit requests you learn, the 
miracle is clear. 2 It demonstrates what He would have you learn, and shows you 
its effects are what you want. 3 In His forgiving dreams are the effects of 
yours undone, and hated enemies perceived as friends with merciful intent. 4 
Their enmity is seen as causeless now, because they did not make it. 5 And you 
can accept the role of maker of their hate, because you see that it has no 
effects. 6 Now are you freed from this much of the dream; the world is neutral, 
and the bodies that still seem to move about as separate things need not be 
feared. 7 And so they are not sick.

T-28.II.11. The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it. 2 But it 
also shows that, having no effects, it is not cause, because the function of 
causation is to have effects. 3 And where effects are gone, there is no cause. 4 
Thus is the body healed by miracles because they show the mind made sickness, 
and employed the body to be victim, or effect, of what it made. 5 Yet half the 
lesson will not teach the whole. 6 The miracle is useless if you learn but that 
the body can be healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. 7 The 
lesson is the <mind> was sick that thought the body could be sick; projecting 
out its guilt caused nothing, and had no effects.

T-28.II.12. This world is full of miracles. 2 They stand in shining silence next 
to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. 3 They are the dream's 
alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in 
making up the dream. 4 They are the glad effects of taking back the consequence 
of sickness to its cause. 5 The body is released because the mind acknowledges 
"this is not done to me, but <I> am doing this." 6 And thus the mind is free to 
make another choice instead. 7 Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change 
the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have 
been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the world undone. p595




III. The Agreement to Join

T-28.III.1. What waits in perfect certainty beyond salvation is not our concern. 
2 For you have barely started to allow your first, uncertain steps to be 
directed up the ladder separation led you down. 3 The miracle alone is your 
concern at present. 4 Here is where we must begin. 5 And having started, will 
the way be made serene and simple in the rising up to waking and the ending of 
the dream. 6 When you accept a miracle, you do not add your dream of fear to one 
that is already being dreamed. 7 Without support, the dream will fade away 
without effects. 8 For it is your support that strengthens it.

T-28.III.2. No mind is sick until another mind agrees that they are separate. 2 
And thus it is their joint decision to be sick. 3 If you withhold agreement and 
accept the part you play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project 
its guilt without your aid in letting it perceive itself as separate and apart 
from you. 4 Thus is the body not perceived as sick by both your minds from 
separate points of view. 5 Uniting with a brother's mind prevents the cause of 
sickness and perceived effects. 6 Healing is the effect of minds that join, as 
sickness comes from minds that separate.

T-28.III.3. The miracle does nothing just <because> the minds are joined, and 
cannot separate. 2 Yet in the dreaming has this been reversed, and separate 
minds are seen as bodies, which are separated and which cannot join. 3 Do not 
allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have you abandoned him to his own 
dream by sharing it with him. 4 He has not seen the cause of sickness where it 
is, and you have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been 
bred. 5 Thus are you joined in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, 
where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm 
belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. 6 Fight 
not His coming with illusions, for it is His coming that you want above all 
things that seem to glisten in the dream.

T-28.III.4. The end of dreaming is the end of fear, and love was never in the 
world of dreams. 2 The gap <is> little. 3 Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence 
and every form of ill, because it is a wish to keep apart and not to join. 4 And 
thus it seems to give a cause to sickness which is not its cause. 5 The purpose 
of the gap is all the cause that sickness has. 6 For it was made to keep you 
separated, in a body which you see as if it were the cause of pain. p596

T-28.III.5. The cause of pain is separation, not the body, which is only its 
effect. 2 Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, 
and as unsubstantial as the empty place between the ripples that a ship has made 
in passing by. 3 And covered just as fast, as water rushes in to close the gap, 
and as the waves in joining cover it. 4 Where is the gap between the waves when 
they have joined, and covered up the space which seemed to keep them separate 
for a little while? 5 Where are the grounds for sickness when the minds have 
joined to close the little gap between them, where the seeds of sickness seemed 
to grow?

T-28.III.6. God builds the bridge, but only in the space left clean and vacant 
by the miracle. 2 The seeds of sickness and the shame of guilt He cannot bridge, 
for He can not destroy the alien will that He created not. 3 Let its effects be 
gone and clutch them not with eager hands, to keep them for yourself. 4 The 
miracle will brush them all aside, and thus make room for Him Who wills to come 
and bridge His Son's returning to Himself.

T-28.III.7. Count, then, the silver miracles and golden dreams of happiness as 
all the treasures you would keep within the storehouse of the world. 2 The door 
is open, not to thieves, but to your starving brothers, who mistook for gold the 
shining of a pebble, and who stored a heap of snow that shone like silver. 3 
They have nothing left behind the open door. 4 What is the world except a little 
gap perceived to tear eternity apart, and break it into days and months and 
years? 5 And what are you who live within the world except a picture of the Son 
of God in broken pieces, each concealed within a separate and uncertain bit of 
clay?

T-28.III.8. Be not afraid, my child, but let your world be gently lit by 
miracles. 2 And where the little gap was seen to stand between you and your 
brother, join him there. 3 And so sickness will now be seen without a cause. 4 
The dream of healing in forgiveness lies, and gently shows you that you never 
sinned. 5 The miracle would leave no proof of guilt to bring you witness to what 
never was. 6 And in your storehouse it will make a place of welcome for your 
Father and your Self. 7 The door is open, that all those may come who would no 
longer starve, and would enjoy the feast of plenty set before them there. 8 And 
they will meet with your invited Guests the miracle has asked to come to you.

T-28.III.9. This is a feast unlike indeed to those the dreaming of the world has 
shown. 2 For here, the more that anyone receives, the more is left for all the 
rest to share. 3 The Guests have brought unlimited supply with Them. p597 4 And 
no one is deprived or can deprive. 5 Here is a feast the Father lays before His 
Son, and shares it equally with him. 6 And in Their sharing there can be no gap 
in which abundance falters and grows thin. 7 Here can the lean years enter not, 
for time waits not upon this feast, which has no end. 8 For love has set its 
table in the space that seemed to keep your Guests apart from you.




IV. The Greater Joining

T-28.IV.1. Accepting the Atonement for yourself means not to give support to 
someone's dream of sickness and of death. 2 It means that you share not his wish 
to separate, and let him turn illusions on himself. 3 Nor do you wish that they 
be turned, instead, on you. 4 Thus have they no effects. 5 And you are free of 
dreams of pain because you let him be. 6 Unless you help him, you will suffer 
pain with him because that is your wish. 7 And you become a figure in his dream 
of pain, as he in yours. 8 So do you and your brother both become illusions, and 
without identity. 9 You could be anyone or anything, depending on whose evil 
dream you share. 10 You can be sure of just one thing; that you are evil, for 
you share in dreams of fear.

T-28.IV.2. There is a way of finding certainty right here and now. 2 Refuse to 
be a part of fearful dreams whatever form they take, for you will lose identity 
in them. 3 You find yourself by not accepting them as causing you, and giving 
you effects. 4 You stand apart from them, but not apart from him who dreams 
them. 5 Thus you separate the dreamer from the dream, and join in one, but let 
the other go. 6 The dream is but illusion in the mind. 7 And with the mind you 
would unite, but never with the dream. 8 It is the dream you fear, and not the 
mind. 9 You see them as the same, because you think that <you> are but a dream. 
10 And what is real and what is but illusion in yourself you do not know and 
cannot tell apart.

T-28.IV.3. Like you, your brother thinks he is a dream. 2 Share not in his 
illusion of himself, for your Identity depends on his reality. 3 Think, rather, 
of him as a mind in which illusions still persist, but as a mind which brother 
is to you. 4 He is not brother made by what he dreams, nor is his body, "hero" 
of the dream, your brother. 5 It is his reality that is your brother, as is 
yours to him. 6 Your mind and his are joined in brotherhood. 7 His body and his 
dreams but seem to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. p598

T-28.IV.4. And yet, between your minds there is no gap. 2 To join his dreams is 
thus to meet him not, because his dreams would separate from you. 3 Therefore 
release him, merely by your claim on brotherhood, and not on dreams of fear. 4 
Let him acknowledge who he is, by not supporting his illusions by your faith, 
for if you do, you will have faith in yours. 5 With faith in yours, he will not 
be released, and you are kept in bondage to his dreams. 6 And dreams of fear 
will haunt the little gap, inhabited but by illusions which you have supported 
in your brother's mind.

T-28.IV.5. Be certain, if you do your part, he will do his, for he will join you 
where you stand. 2 Call not to him to meet you in the gap between you, or you 
must believe that it is your reality as well as his. 3 You cannot do his part, 
but this you <do> when you become a passive figure in his dreams, instead of 
dreamer of your own. 4 Identity in dreams is meaningless because the dreamer and 
the dream are one. 5 Who shares a dream must be the dream he shares, because by 
sharing is a cause produced.

T-28.IV.6. You share confusion and you are confused, for in the gap no stable 
self exists. 2 What is the same seems different, because what is the same 
appears to be unlike. 3 His dreams are yours because you let them be. 4 But if 
you took your own away would he be free of them, and of his own as well. 5 Your 
dreams are witnesses to his, and his attest the truth of yours. 6 Yet if you see 
there is no truth in yours, his dreams will go, and he will understand what made 
the dream.

T-28.IV.7. The Holy Spirit is in both your minds, and He is One because there is 
no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself. 2 The gap between your bodies 
matters not, for what is joined in Him is always one. 3 No one is sick if 
someone else accepts his union with him. 4 His desire to be a sick and separated 
mind can not remain without a witness or a cause. 5 And both are gone if someone 
wills to be united with him. 6 He has dreams that he was separated from his 
brother who, by sharing not his dream, has left the space between them vacant. 7 
And the Father comes to join His Son the Holy Spirit joined.

T-28.IV.8. The Holy Spirit's function is to take the broken picture of the Son 
of God and put the pieces into place again. 2 This holy picture, healed 
entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture 
in itself. 3 To each He offers his Identity, which the whole picture represents, 
instead of just a little, broken bit that he insisted was himself. p599 4 And 
when he sees this picture he will recognize himself. 5 If you share not your 
brother's evil dream, this is the picture that the miracle will place within the 
little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin. 6 And here the 
Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself.

T-28.IV.9. I thank You, Father, knowing You will come to close each little gap 
that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy Son. 2 Your Holiness, complete 
and perfect, lies in every one of them. 3 And they are joined because what is in 
one is in them all. 4 How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is 
recognized as being part of the completed picture of God's Son! 5 The forms the 
broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. 6 For the whole is in each one. 7 And 
every aspect of the Son of God is just the same as every other part.

T-28.IV.10. Join not your brother's dreams but join with him, and where you join 
His Son the Father is. 2 Who seeks for substitutes when he perceives he has lost 
nothing? 3 Who would want to have the "benefits" of sickness when he has 
received the simple happiness of health? 4 What God has given cannot be a loss, 
and what is not of Him has no effects. 5 What, then, would you perceive within 
the gap? 6 The seeds of sickness come from the belief that there is joy in 
separation, and its giving up would be a sacrifice. 7 But miracles are the 
result when you do not insist on seeing in the gap what is not there. 8 Your 
willingness to let illusions go is all the Healer of God's Son requires. 9 He 
will place the miracle of healing where the seeds of sickness were. 10 And there 
will be no loss, but only gain.




V. The Alternate to Dreams of Fear

T-28.V.1. What is a sense of sickness but a sense of limitation? 2 Of a 
splitting <off> and separating <from>? 3 A gap that is perceived between you and 
your brother, and what is now seen as health? 4 And so the good is seen to be 
outside; the evil, in. 5 And thus is sickness separating off the self from good, 
and keeping evil in. 6 God is the Alternate to dreams of fear. 7 Who shares in 
them can never share in Him. 8 But who withdraws his mind from sharing them <is> 
sharing Him. 9 There is no other choice. 10 Except you share it, nothing can 
exist. 11 And you exist because God shared His Will with you, that His creation 
might create. p600

T-28.V.2. It is the sharing of the evil dreams of hate and malice, bitterness 
and death, of sin and suffering and pain and loss, that makes them real. 2 
Unshared, they are perceived as meaningless. 3 The fear is gone from them 
because you did not give them your support. 4 Where fear has gone there love 
must come, because there are but these alternatives. 5 Where one appears, the 
other disappears. 6 And which you share becomes the only one you have. 7 You 
have the one that you accept, because it is the only one you wish to have.

T-28.V.3. You share no evil dreams if you forgive the dreamer, and perceive that 
he is not the dream he made. 2 And so he cannot be a part of yours, from which 
you both are free. 3 Forgiveness separates the dreamer from the evil dream, and 
thus releases him. 4 Remember if you share an evil dream, you will believe you 
are the dream you share. 5 And fearing it, you will not want to know your own 
Identity, because you think that It is fearful. 6 And you will deny your Self, 
and walk upon an alien ground which your Creator did not make, and where you 
seem to be a something you are not. 7 You will make war upon your Self, which 
seems to be your enemy; and will attack your brother, as a part of what you 
hate. 8 There is no compromise. 9 You are your Self or an illusion. 10 What can 
be between illusion and the truth? 11 A middle ground, where you can be a thing 
that is not you, must be a dream and cannot be the truth.

T-28.V.4. You have conceived a little gap between illusions and the truth to be 
the place where all your safety lies, and where your Self is safely hidden by 
what you have made. 2 Here is a world established that is sick, and this the 
world the body's eyes perceive. 3 Here are the sounds it hears; the voices that 
its ears were made to hear. 4 Yet sights and sounds the body can perceive are 
meaningless. 5 It cannot see nor hear. 6 It does not know what seeing <is>; what 
listening is <for.> 7 It is as little able to perceive as it can judge or 
understand or know. 8 Its eyes are blind; its ears are deaf. 9 It can not think, 
and so it cannot have effects.

T-28.V.5. What is there God created to be sick? 2 And what that He created not 
can be? 3 Let not your eyes behold a dream; your ears bear witness to illusion. 
4 They were made to look upon a world that is not there; to hear the voices that 
can make no sound. 5 Yet are there other sounds and other sights that <can> be 
seen and heard and understood. 6 For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and 
what they see and hear they but report. p601 7 It is not they that hear and see, 
but you, who put together every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of 
evidence, and make a witness to the world you want. 8 Let not the body's ears 
and eyes perceive these countless fragments seen within the gap that you 
imagined, and let them persuade their maker his imaginings are real.

T-28.V.6. Creation proves reality because it shares the function all creation 
shares. 2 It is not made of little bits of glass, a piece of wood, a thread or 
two, perhaps, all put together to attest its truth. 3 Reality does not depend on 
this. 4 There is no gap that separates the truth from dreams and from illusions. 
5 Truth has left no room for them in any place or time. 6 For it fills every 
place and every time, and makes them wholly indivisible.

T-28.V.7. You who believe there is a little gap between you and your brother, do 
not see that it is here you are as prisoners in a world perceived to be existing 
here. 2 The world you see does not exist, because the place where you perceive 
it is not real. 3 The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise 
to cover it with vague uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever 
unsubstantial and unsure. 4 Yet in the gap is nothing. 5 And there are no 
awesome secrets and no darkened tombs where terror rises from the bones of 
death. 6 Look at the little gap, and you behold the innocence and emptiness of 
sin that you will see within yourself, when you have lost the fear of 
recognizing love.




VI. The Secret Vows

T-28.VI.1. Who punishes the body is insane. 2 For here the little gap is seen, 
and yet it is not here. 3 It has not judged itself, nor made itself to be what 
it is not. 4 It does not seek to make of pain a joy and look for lasting 
pleasure in the dust. 5 It does not tell you what its purpose is and cannot 
understand what it is for. 6 It does not victimize, because it has no will, no 
preferences and no doubts. 7 It does not wonder what it is. 8 And so it has no 
need to be competitive. 9 It can be victimized, but cannot feel itself as 
victim. 10 It accepts no role, but does what it is told, without attack.

T-28.VI.2. It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible for sight 
a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the sounds you do not like, although 
it cannot hear. 2 It suffers not the punishment you give because it has no 
feeling. 3 It behaves in ways you want, but never makes the choice. p602 4 It is 
not born and does not die. 5 It can but follow aimlessly the path on which it 
has been set. 6 And if that path is changed, it walks as easily another way. 7 
It takes no sides and judges not the road it travels. 8 It perceives no gap, 
because it does not hate. 9 It can be used for hate, but it cannot be hateful 
made thereby.

T-28.VI.3. The thing you hate and fear and loathe and want, the body does not 
know. 2 You send it forth to seek for separation and be separate. 3 And then you 
hate it, not for what it is, but for the uses you have made of it. 4 You shrink 
from what it sees and what it hears, and hate its frailty and littleness. 5 And 
you despise its acts, but not your own. 6 It sees and acts for <you.> 7 It hears 
your voice. 8 And it is frail and little by your wish. 9 It seems to punish you, 
and thus deserve your hatred for the limitations that it brings to you. 10 Yet 
you have made of it a symbol for the limitations that you want your mind to have 
and see and keep.

T-28.VI.4. The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call 
your own and all the rest of what is really yours. 2 You hate it, yet you think 
it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost. 3 This is the 
secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. 4 This is 
the secret oath you take again, whenever you perceive yourself attacked. 5 No 
one can suffer if he does not see himself attacked, and losing by attack. 6 
Unstated and unheard in consciousness is every pledge to sickness. 7 Yet it is a 
promise to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return.

T-28.VI.5. Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that it will suffer 
pain. 2 It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret, in agreement with 
another's secret wish to be apart from you, as you would be apart from him. 3 
Unless you both agree that is your wish, it can have no effects. 4 Whoever says, 
"There is no gap between my mind and yours" has kept God's promise, not his tiny 
oath to be forever faithful unto death. 5 And by his healing is his brother 
healed.

T-28.VI.6. Let this be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him 
and not apart. 2 And he will keep the promise that you make with him, because it 
is the one that he has made to God, as God has made to him. 3 God keeps His 
promises; His Son keeps his. 4 In his creation did his Father say, "You are 
beloved of Me and I of you forever. 5 Be you perfect as Myself, for you can 
never be apart from Me." 6 His Son remembers not that he replied "I will," 
though in that promise he was born. p603 7 Yet God reminds him of it every time 
he does not share a promise to be sick, but lets his mind be healed and unified. 
8 His secret vows are powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises he 
shares. 9 And what he substitutes is not his will, who has made promise of 
himself to God.




VII. The Ark of Safety

T-28.VII.1. God asks for nothing, and His Son, like Him, need ask for nothing. 2 
For there is no lack in him. 3 An empty space, a little gap, would be a lack. 4 
And it is only there that he could want for something he has not. 5 A space 
where God is not, a gap between the Father and the Son is not the Will of 
Either, Who have promised to be One. 6 God's promise is a promise to Himself, 
and there is no one who could be untrue to what He wills as part of what He is. 
7 The promise that there is no gap between Himself and what He is cannot be 
false. 8 What will can come between what must be One, and in Whose Wholeness 
there can be no gap?

T-28.VII.2. The beautiful relationship you have with all your brothers is a part 
of you because it is a part of God Himself. 2 Are you not sick, if you deny 
yourself your wholeness and your health, the Source of help, the Call to healing 
and the Call to heal? 3 Your savior waits for healing, and the world waits with 
him. 4 Nor are you apart from it. 5 For healing will be one or not at all, its 
oneness being where the healing is. 6 What could correct for separation but its 
opposite? 7 There is no middle ground in any aspect of salvation. 8 You accept 
it wholly or accept it not. 9 What is unseparated must be joined. 10 And what is 
joined cannot be separate.

T-28.VII.3. Either there is a gap between you and your brother, or you are as 
one. 2 There is no in between, no other choice, and no allegiance to be split 
between the two. 3 A split allegiance is but faithlessness to both, and merely 
sets you spinning round, to grasp uncertainly at any straw that seems to hold 
some promise of relief. 4 Yet who can build his home upon a straw, and count on 
it as shelter from the wind? 5 The body can be made a home like this, because it 
lacks foundation in the truth. 6 And yet, because it does, it can be seen as not 
your home, but merely as an aid to help you reach the home where God abides.

T-28.VII.4. With <this> as purpose is the body healed. 2 It is not used to 
witness to the dream of separation and disease. p604 3 Nor is it idly blamed for 
what it did not do. 4 It serves to help the healing of God's Son, and for this 
purpose it cannot be sick. 5 It will not join a purpose not your own, and you 
have chosen that it not be sick. 6 All miracles are based upon this choice, and 
given you the instant it is made. 7 No forms of sickness are immune, because the 
choice cannot be made in terms of form. 8 The choice of sickness seems to be of 
form, yet it is one, as is its opposite. 9 And you are sick or well, 
accordingly.

T-28.VII.5. But never you alone. 2 This world is but the dream that you can be 
alone, and think without affecting those apart from you. 3 To be alone must mean 
you are apart, and if you are, you cannot but be sick. 4 This seems to prove 
that you must be apart. 5 Yet all it means is that you tried to keep a promise 
to be true to faithlessness. 6 Yet faithlessness is sickness. 7 It is like the 
house set upon straw. 8 It seems to be quite solid and substantial in itself. 9 
Yet its stability cannot be judged apart from its foundation. 10 If it rests on 
straw, there is no need to bar the door and lock the windows and make fast the 
bolts. 11 The wind will topple it, and rain will come and carry it into 
oblivion.

T-28.VII.6. What is the sense in seeking to be safe in what was made for danger 
and for fear? 2 Why burden it with further locks and chains and heavy anchors, 
when its weakness lies, not in itself, but in the frailty of the little gap of 
nothingness whereon it stands? 3 What can be safe that rests upon a shadow? 4 
Would you build your home upon what will collapse beneath a feather's weight?

T-28.VII.7. Your home is built upon your brother's health, upon his happiness, 
his sinlessness, and everything his Father promised him. 2 No secret promise you 
have made instead has shaken the Foundation of his home. 3 The winds will blow 
upon it and the rain will beat against it, but with no effect. 4 The world will 
wash away and yet this house will stand forever, for its strength lies not 
within itself alone. 5 It is an ark of safety, resting on God's promise that His 
Son is safe forever in Himself. 6 What gap can interpose itself between the 
safety of this shelter and its Source? 7 From here the body can be seen as what 
it is, and neither less nor more in worth than the extent to which it can be 
used to liberate God's Son unto his home. 8 And with this holy purpose is it 
made a home of holiness a little while, because it shares your Father's Will 
with you. p605






Chapter 29.

THE AWAKENING

I. The Closing of the Gap

T-29.I.1. There is no time, no place, no state where God is absent. 2 There is 
nothing to be feared. 3 There is no way in which a gap could be conceived of in 
the Wholeness that is His. 4 The compromise the least and littlest gap would 
represent in His eternal love is quite impossible. 5 For it would mean His Love 
could harbor just a hint of hate, His gentleness turn sometimes to attack, and 
His eternal patience sometimes fail. 6 All this do you believe, when you 
perceive a gap between your brother and yourself. 7 How could you trust Him, 
then? 8 For He must be deceptive in His Love. 9 Be wary, then; let Him not come 
too close, and leave a gap between you and His Love, through which you can 
escape if there be need for you to flee.

T-29.I.2. Here is the fear of God most plainly seen. 2 For love <is> treacherous 
to those who fear, since fear and hate can never be apart. 3 No one who hates 
but is afraid of love, and therefore must he be afraid of God. 4 Certain it is 
he knows not what love means. 5 He fears to love and loves to hate, and so he 
thinks that love is fearful; hate is love. 6 This is the consequence the little 
gap must bring to those who cherish it, and think that it is their salvation and 
their hope.

T-29.I.3. The fear of God! 2 The greatest obstacle that peace must flow across 
has not yet gone. 3 The rest are past, but this one still remains to block your 
path, and make the way to light seem dark and fearful, perilous and bleak. 4 You 
had decided that your brother is your enemy. 5 Sometimes a friend, perhaps, 
provided that your separate interests made your friendship possible a little 
while. 6 But not without a gap perceived between you and him, lest he turn again 
into an enemy. 7 Let him come close to you, and you jumped back; as you 
approached, did he but instantly withdraw. 8 A cautious friendship, and limited 
in scope and carefully restricted in amount, became the treaty that you had made 
with him. 9 Thus you and your brother but shared a qualified entente, in which a 
clause of separation was a point you both agreed to keep intact. 10 And 
violating this was thought to be a breach of treaty not to be allowed. p606

T-29.I.4. The gap between you and your brother is not one of space between two 
separate bodies. 2 And this but seems to be dividing off your separate minds. 3 
It is the symbol of a promise made to meet when you prefer, and separate till 
you and he elect to meet again. 4 And then your bodies seem to get in touch, and 
thereby signify a meeting place to join. 5 But always is it possible for you and 
him to go your separate ways. 6 Conditional upon the "right" to separate will 
you and he agree to meet from time to time, and keep apart in intervals of 
separation, which do protect you from the "sacrifice" of love. 7 The body saves 
you, for it gets away from total sacrifice and gives to you the time in which to 
build again your separate self, which you truly believe diminishes as you and 
your brother meet.

T-29.I.5. The body could not separate your mind from your brother's unless you 
wanted it to be a cause of separation and of distance seen between you and him. 
2 Thus do you endow it with a power that lies not within itself. 3 And herein 
lies its power over you. 4 For now you think that it determines when your 
brother and you meet, and limits your ability to make communion with your 
brother's mind. 5 And now it tells you where to go and how to go there, what is 
feasible for you to undertake, and what you cannot do. 6 It dictates what its 
health can tolerate, and what will tire it and make it sick. 7 And its 
"inherent" weaknesses set up the limitations on what you would do, and keep your 
purpose limited and weak.

T-29.I.6. The body will accommodate to this, if you would have it so. 2 It will 
allow but limited indulgences in "love," with intervals of hatred in between. 3 
And it will take command of when to "love," and when to shrink more safely into 
fear. 4 It will be sick because you do not know what loving means. 5 And so you 
must misuse each circumstance and everyone you meet, and see in them a purpose 
not your own.

T-29.I.7. It is not love that asks a sacrifice. 2 But fear demands the sacrifice 
of love, for in love's presence fear cannot abide. 3 For hate to be maintained, 
love must be feared; and only sometimes present, sometimes gone. 4 Thus is love 
seen as treacherous, because it seems to come and go uncertainly, and offer no 
stability to you. 5 You do not see how limited and weak is your allegiance, and 
how frequently you have demanded that love go away, and leave you quietly alone 
in "peace." p607

T-29.I.8. The body, innocent of goals, is your excuse for variable goals you 
hold, and force the body to maintain. 2 You do not fear its weakness, but its 
lack of strength <or> weakness. 3 Would you know that nothing stands between you 
and your brother? 4 Would you know there is no gap behind which you can hide? 5 
There is a shock that comes to those who learn their savior is their enemy no 
more. 6 There is a wariness that is aroused by learning that the body is not 
real. 7 And there are overtones of seeming fear around the happy message, "God 
is Love."

T-29.I.9. Yet all that happens when the gap is gone is peace eternal. 2 Nothing 
more than that, and nothing less. 3 Without the fear of God, what could induce 
you to abandon Him? 4 What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you 
back an instant from His Love? 5 Would you allow the body to say "no" to 
Heaven's calling, were you not afraid to find a loss of self in finding God? 6 
Yet can your self be lost by being found?




II. The Coming of the Guest

T-29.II.1. Why would you not perceive it as release from suffering to learn that 
you are free? 2 Why would you not acclaim the truth instead of looking on it as 
an enemy? 3 Why does an easy path, so clearly marked it is impossible to lose 
the way, seem thorny, rough and far too difficult for you to follow? 4 Is it not 
because you see it as the road to hell instead of looking on it as a simple way, 
without a sacrifice or any loss, to find yourself in Heaven and in God? 5 Until 
you realize you give up nothing, until you understand there is no loss, you will 
have some regrets about the way that you have chosen. 6 And you will not see the 
many gains your choice has offered you. 7 Yet though you do not see them, they 
are there. 8 Their cause has been effected, and they must be present where their 
cause has entered in.

T-29.II.2. You have accepted healing's cause, and so it must be you are healed. 
2 And being healed, the power to heal must also now be yours. 3 The miracle is 
not a separate thing that happens suddenly, as an effect without a cause. 4 Nor 
is it, in itself, a cause. 5 But where its cause is must it be. 6 Now is it 
caused, though not as yet perceived. 7 And its effects are there, though not yet 
seen. 8 Look inward now, and you will not behold a reason for regret, but cause 
indeed for glad rejoicing and for hope of peace. p608

T-29.II.3. It has been hopeless to attempt to find the hope of peace upon a 
battleground. 2 It has been futile to demand escape from sin and pain of what 
was made to serve the function of retaining sin and pain. 3 For pain and sin are 
one illusion, as are hate and fear, attack and guilt but one. 4 Where they are 
causeless their effects are gone, and love must come wherever they are not. 5 
Why are you not rejoicing? 6 You are free of pain and sickness, misery and loss, 
and all effects of hatred and attack. 7 No more is pain your friend and guilt 
your god, and you should welcome the effects of love.

T-29.II.4. Your Guest <has> come. 2 You asked Him, and He came. 3 You did not 
hear Him enter, for you did not wholly welcome Him. 4 And yet His gifts came 
with Him. 5 He has laid them at your feet, and asks you now that you will look 
on them and take them for your own. 6 He needs your help in giving them to all 
who walk apart, believing they are separate and alone. 7 They will be healed 
when you accept your gifts, because your Guest will welcome everyone whose feet 
have touched the holy ground whereon you stand, and where His gifts for them are 
laid.

T-29.II.5. You do not see how much you now can give, because of everything you 
have received. 2 Yet He Who entered in but waits for you to come where you 
invited Him to be. 3 There is no other place where He can find His host, nor 
where His host can meet with Him. 4 And nowhere else His gifts of peace and joy, 
and all the happiness His Presence brings, can be obtained. 5 For they are where 
He is Who brought them with Him, that they might be yours. 6 You cannot see your 
Guest, but you can see the gifts He brought. 7 And when you look on them, you 
will believe His Presence must be there. 8 For what you now can do could not be 
done without the love and grace His Presence holds.

T-29.II.6. Such is the promise of the living God; His Son have life and every 
living thing be part of him, and nothing else have life. 2 What you have given 
"life" is not alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive apart from life, 
alive in death, with death perceived as life, and living, death. 3 Confusion 
follows on confusion here, for on confusion has this world been based, and there 
is nothing else it rests upon. 4 Its basis does not change, although it seems to 
be in constant change. 5 Yet what is that except the state confusion really 
means? 6 Stability to those who are confused is meaningless, and shift and 
change become the law on which they predicate their lives.

T-29.II.7. The body does not change. 2 It represents the larger dream that 
change is possible. p609 3 To change is to attain a state unlike the one in 
which you found yourself before. 4 There is no change in immortality, and Heaven 
knows it not. 5 Yet here on earth it has a double purpose, for it can be made to 
teach opposing things. 6 And they reflect the teacher who is teaching them. 7 
The body can appear to change with time, with sickness or with health, and with 
events that seem to alter it. 8 Yet this but means the mind remains unchanged in 
its belief of what the purpose of the body is.

T-29.II.8. Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. 2 Its 
nothingness is guarantee that it can <not> be sick. 3 In your demand that it be 
more than this lies the idea of sickness. 4 For it asks that God be less than 
all He really is. 5 What, then, becomes of you, for it is you of whom the 
sacrifice is asked? 6 For He is told that part of Him belongs to Him no longer. 
7 He must sacrifice your self, and in His sacrifice are you made more and He is 
lessened by the loss of you. 8 And what is gone from Him becomes your god, 
protecting you from being part of Him.

T-29.II.9. The body that is asked to be a god will be attacked, because its 
nothingness has not been recognized. 2 And so it seems to be a thing with power 
in itself. 3 As something, it can be perceived and thought to feel and act, and 
hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. 4 And it can fail to be what you 
demanded that it be. 5 And you will hate it for its littleness, unmindful that 
the failure does not lie in that it is not more than it should be, but only in 
your failure to perceive that it is nothing. 6 Yet its nothingness is your 
salvation, from which you would flee.

T-29.II.10. As "something" is the body asked to be God's enemy, replacing what 
He is with littleness and limit and despair. 2 It is His loss you celebrate when 
you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate. 3 
For if He be the sum of everything, then what is not in Him does not exist, and 
His completion is its nothingness. 4 Your savior is not dead, nor does he dwell 
in what was built as temple unto death. 5 He lives in God, and it is this that 
makes him savior unto you, and only this. 6 His body's nothingness releases 
yours from sickness and from death. 7 For what is yours cannot be more or less 
than what is his. p610




III. God's Witnesses

T-29.III.1. Condemn your savior not because he thinks he is a body. 2 For beyond 
his dreams is his reality. 3 But he must learn he is a savior first, before he 
can remember what he is. 4 And he must save who would be saved. 5 On saving you 
depends his happiness. 6 For who is savior but the one who gives salvation? 7 
Thus he learns it must be his to give. 8 Unless he gives he will not know he 
has, for giving is the proof of having. 9 Only those who think that God is 
lessened by their strength could fail to understand this must be so. 10 For who 
could give unless he has, and who could lose by giving what must be increased 
thereby?

T-29.III.2. Think you the Father lost Himself when He created you? 2 Was He made 
weak because He shared His Love? 3 Was He made incomplete by your perfection? 4 
Or are you the proof that He is perfect and complete? 5 Deny Him not His witness 
in the dream His Son prefers to his reality. 6 He must be savior from the dream 
he made, that he be free of it. 7 He must see someone else as not a body, one 
with him without the wall the world has built to keep apart all living things 
who know not that they live.

T-29.III.3. Within the dream of bodies and of death is yet one theme of truth; 
no more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of light created in the dark, 
where God still shines. 2 You cannot wake yourself. 3 Yet you can let yourself 
be wakened. 4 You can overlook your brother's dreams. 5 So perfectly can you 
forgive him his illusions he becomes your savior from your dreams. 6 And as you 
see him shining in the space of light where God abides within the darkness, you 
will see that God Himself is where his body is. 7 Before this light the body 
disappears, as heavy shadows must give way to light. 8 The darkness cannot 
choose that it remain. 9 The coming of the light means it is gone. 10 In glory 
will you see your brother then, and understand what really fills the gap so long 
perceived as keeping you apart. 11 There, in its place, God's witness has set 
forth the gentle way of kindness to God's Son. 12 Whom you forgive is given 
power to forgive you your illusions. 13 By your gift of freedom is it given unto 
you.

T-29.III.4. Make way for love, which you did not create, but which you can 
extend. 2 On earth this means forgive your brother, that the darkness may be 
lifted from your mind. 3 When light has come to him through your forgiveness, he 
will not forget his savior, leaving him unsaved. 4 For it was in your face he 
saw the light that he would keep beside him, as he walks through darkness to the 
everlasting light. p611

T-29.III.5. How holy are you, that the Son of God can be your savior in the 
midst of dreams of desolation and disaster. 2 See how eagerly he comes, and 
steps aside from heavy shadows that have hidden him, and shines on you in 
gratitude and love. 3 He is himself, but not himself alone. 4 And as his Father 
lost not part of him in your creation, so the light in him is brighter still 
because you gave your light to him, to save him from the dark. 5 And now the 
light in you must be as bright as shines in him. 6 This is the spark that shines 
within the dream; that you can help him waken, and be sure his waking eyes will 
rest on you. 7 And in his glad salvation you are saved.




IV. Dream Roles

T-29.IV.1. Do you believe that truth can be but some illusions? 2 They are 
dreams <because> they are not true. 3 Their equal lack of truth becomes the 
basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood that dreams are 
dreams; and that escape depends, not on the dream, but only on awaking. 4 Could 
it be some dreams are kept, and others wakened from? 5 The choice is not between 
which dreams to keep, but only if you want to live in dreams or to awaken from 
them. 6 Thus it is the miracle does not select some dreams to leave untouched by 
its beneficence. 7 You cannot dream some dreams and wake from some, for you are 
either sleeping or awake. 8 And dreaming goes with only one of these.

T-29.IV.2. The dreams you think you like would hold you back as much as those in 
which the fear is seen. 2 For every dream is but a dream of fear, no matter what 
the form it seems to take. 3 The fear is seen within, without, or both. 4 Or it 
can be disguised in pleasant form. 5 But never is it absent from the dream, for 
fear is the material of dreams, from which they all are made. 6 Their form can 
change, but they cannot be made of something else. 7 The miracle were 
treacherous indeed if it allowed you still to be afraid because you did not 
recognize the fear. 8 You would not then be willing to awake, for which the 
miracle prepares the way.

T-29.IV.3. In simplest form, it can be said attack is a response to function 
unfulfilled as you perceive the function. 2 It can be in you or someone else, 
but where it is perceived it will be there it is attacked. p612 3 Depression or 
assault must be the theme of every dream, for they are made of fear. 4 The thin 
disguise of pleasure and of joy in which they may be wrapped but slightly veils 
the heavy lump of fear that is their core. 5 And it is this the miracle 
perceives, and not the wrappings in which it is bound.

T-29.IV.4. When you are angry, is it not because someone has failed to fill the 
function you allotted him? 2 And does not this become the "reason" your attack 
is justified? 3 The dreams you think you like are those in which the functions 
you have given have been filled; the needs which you ascribe to you are met. 4 
It does not matter if they be fulfilled or merely wanted. 5 It is the idea that 
they exist from which the fears arise. 6 Dreams are not wanted more or less. 7 
They are desired or not. 8 And each one represents some function that you have 
assigned; some goal which an event, or body, or a thing <should> represent, and 
<should> achieve for you. 9 If it succeeds you think you like the dream. 10 If 
it should fail you think the dream is sad. 11 But whether it succeeds or fails 
is not its core, but just the flimsy covering.

T-29.IV.5. How happy would your dreams become if you were not the one who gave 
the "proper" role to every figure which the dream contains. 2 No one can fail 
but your idea of him, and there is no betrayal but of this. 3 The core of dreams 
the Holy Spirit gives is never one of fear. 4 The coverings may not appear to 
change, but what they mean has changed because they cover something else. 5 
Perceptions are determined by their purpose, in that they seem to be what they 
are for. 6 A shadow figure who attacks becomes a brother giving you a chance to 
help, if this becomes the function of the dream. 7 And dreams of sadness thus 
are turned to joy.

T-29.IV.6. What is your brother for? 2 You do not know, because your function is 
obscure to you. 3 Do not ascribe a role to him that you imagine would bring 
happiness to you. 4 And do not try to hurt him when he fails to take the part 
that you assigned to him, in what you dream your life was meant to be. 5 He asks 
for help in every dream he has, and you have help to give him if you see the 
function of the dream as He perceives its function, Who can utilize all dreams 
as means to serve the function given Him. 6 Because He loves the dreamer, not 
the dream, each dream becomes an offering of love. 7 For at its center is His 
Love for you, which lights whatever form it takes with love. p613




V. The Changeless Dwelling Place

T-29.V.1. There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten; 
where no memory of sin and of illusion lingers still. 2 There is a place in you 
which time has left, and echoes of eternity are heard. 3 There is a resting 
place so still no sound except a hymn to Heaven rises up to gladden God the 
Father and the Son. 4 Where Both abide are They remembered, Both. 5 And where 
They are is Heaven and is peace.

T-29.V.2. Think not that you can change Their dwelling place. 2 For your 
Identity abides in Them, and where They are, forever must you be. 3 The 
changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world 
but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. 4 The still infinity of endless peace 
surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the 
might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within.

T-29.V.3. Here is the role the Holy Spirit gives to you who wait upon the Son of 
God, and would behold him waken and be glad. 2 He is a part of you and you of 
him, because he is his Father's Son, and not for any purpose you may see in him. 
3 Nothing is asked of you but to accept the changeless and eternal that abide in 
him, for your Identity is there. 4 The peace in you can but be found in him. 5 
And every thought of love you offer him but brings you nearer to your wakening 
to peace eternal and to endless joy.

T-29.V.4. This sacred Son of God is like yourself; the mirror of his Father's 
Love for you, the soft reminder of his Father's Love by which he was created and 
which still abides in him as it abides in you. 2 Be very still and hear God's 
Voice in him, and let It tell you what his function is. 3 He was created that 
you might be whole, for only the complete can be a part of God's completion, 
which created you.

T-29.V.5. There is no gift the Father asks of you but that you see in all 
creation but the shining glory of His gift to you. 2 Behold His Son, His perfect 
gift, in whom his Father shines forever, and to whom is all creation given as 
his own. 3 Because he has it is it given you, and where it lies in him behold 
your peace. 4 The quiet that surrounds you dwells in him, and from this quiet 
come the happy dreams in which your hands are joined in innocence. 5 These are 
not hands that grasp in dreams of pain. 6 They hold no sword, for they have left 
their hold on every vain illusion of the world. 7 And being empty they receive, 
instead, a brother's hand in which completion lies. p614

T-29.V.6. If you but knew the glorious goal that lies beyond forgiveness, you 
would not keep hold on any thought, however light the touch of evil on it may 
appear to be. 2 For you would understand how great the cost of holding anything 
God did not give in minds that can direct the hand to bless, and lead God's Son 
unto his Father's house. 3 Would you not want to be a friend to him, created by 
his Father as His home? 4 If God esteems him worthy of Himself, would you attack 
him with the hands of hate? 5 Who would lay bloody hands on Heaven itself, and 
hope to find its peace? 6 Your brother thinks he holds the hand of death. 7 
Believe him not. 8 But learn, instead, how blessed are you who can release him, 
just by offering him yours.

T-29.V.7. A dream is given you in which he is your savior, not your enemy in 
hate. 2 A dream is given you in which you have forgiven him for all his dreams 
of death; a dream of hope you share with him, instead of dreaming evil separate 
dreams of hate. 3 Why does it seem so hard to share this dream? 4 Because unless 
the Holy Spirit gives the dream its function, it was made for hate, and will 
continue in death's services. 5 Each form it takes in some way calls for death. 
6 And those who serve the lord of death have come to worship in a separated 
world, each with his tiny spear and rusted sword, to keep his ancient promises 
to die.

T-29.V.8. Such is the core of fear in every dream that has been kept apart from 
use by Him Who sees a different function for a dream. 2 When dreams are shared 
they lose the function of attack and separation, even though it was for this 
that every dream was made. 3 Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without 
the hope of change and betterment, for here is not where changelessness is 
found. 4 Let us be glad indeed that this is so, and seek not the eternal in this 
world. 5 Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreaming of a world 
outside yourself. 6 And leading finally beyond all dreams, unto the peace of 
everlasting life.




VI. Forgiveness and the End of Time

T-29.VI.1. How willing are you to forgive your brother? 2 How much do you desire 
peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? 3 These questions are the 
same, in different form. 4 Forgiveness is your peace, for herein lies the end of 
separation and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness 
and of murder, grief and loss. p615 5 This is the "sacrifice" salvation asks, 
and gladly offers peace instead of this.

T-29.VI.2. Swear not to die, you holy Son of God! 2 You make a bargain that you 
cannot keep. 3 The Son of Life cannot be killed. 4 He is immortal as his Father. 
5 What he is cannot be changed. 6 He is the only thing in all the universe that 
must be one. 7 What <seems> eternal all will have an end. 8 The stars will 
disappear, and night and day will be no more. 9 All things that come and go, the 
tides, the seasons and the lives of men; all things that change with time and 
bloom and fade will not return. 10 Where time has set an end is not where the 
eternal is. 11 God's Son can never change by what men made of him. 12 He will be 
as he was and as he is, for time appointed not his destiny, nor set the hour of 
his birth and death. 13 Forgiveness will not change him. 14 Yet time waits upon 
forgiveness that the things of time may disappear because they have no use.

T-29.VI.3. Nothing survives its purpose. 2 If it be conceived to die, then die 
it must unless it does not take this purpose as its own. 3 Change is the only 
thing that can be made a blessing here, where purpose is not fixed, however 
changeless it appears to be. 4 Think not that you can set a goal unlike God's 
purpose for you, and establish it as changeless and eternal. 5 You can give 
yourself a purpose that you do not have. 6 But you can not remove the power to 
change your mind, and see another purpose there.

T-29.VI.4. Change is the greatest gift God gave to all that you would make 
eternal, to ensure that only Heaven would not pass away. 2 You were not born to 
die. 3 You cannot change, because your function has been fixed by God. 4 All 
other goals are set in time and change that time might be preserved, excepting 
one. 5 Forgiveness does not aim at keeping time, but at its ending, when it has 
no use. 6 Its purpose ended, it is gone. 7 And where it once held seeming sway 
is now restored the function God established for His Son in full awareness. 8 
Time can set no end to its fulfillment nor its changelessness. 9 There is no 
death because the living share the function their Creator gave to them. 10 
Life's function cannot be to die. 11 It must be life's extension, that it be as 
one forever and forever, without end.

T-29.VI.5. This world will bind your feet and tie your hands and kill your body 
only if you think that it was made to crucify God's Son. 2 For even though it 
was a dream of death, you need not let it stand for this to you. p616 3 Let 
<this> be changed, and nothing in the world but must be changed as well. 4 For 
nothing here but is defined as what you see it for.

T-29.VI.6. How lovely is the world whose purpose is forgiveness of God's Son! 2 
How free from fear, how filled with blessing and with happiness! 3 And what a 
joyous thing it is to dwell a little while in such a happy place! 4 Nor can it 
be forgot, in such a world, it <is> a little while till timelessness comes 
quietly to take the place of time.




VII. Seek Not Outside Yourself

T-29.VII.1. Seek not outside yourself. 2 For it will fail, and you will weep 
each time an idol falls. 3 Heaven cannot be found where it is not, and there can 
be no peace excepting there. 4 Each idol that you worship when God calls will 
never answer in His place. 5 There is no other answer you can substitute, and 
find the happiness His answer brings. 6 Seek not outside yourself. 7 For all 
your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where 
it must be found. 8 What if it is not there? 9 Do you prefer that you be right 
or happy? 10 Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no 
longer elsewhere. 11 You will fail. 12 But it is given you to know the truth, 
and not to seek for it outside yourself.

T-29.VII.2. No one who comes here but must still have hope, some lingering 
illusion, or some dream that there is something outside of himself that will 
bring happiness and peace to him. 2 If everything is in him this cannot be so. 3 
And therefore by his coming, he denies the truth about himself, and seeks for 
something more than everything, as if a part of it were separated off and found 
where all the rest of it is not. 4 This is the purpose he bestows upon the body; 
that it seek for what he lacks, and give him what would make himself complete. 5 
And thus he wanders aimlessly about, in search of something that he cannot find, 
believing that he is what he is not.

T-29.VII.3. The lingering illusion will impel him to seek out a thousand idols, 
and to seek beyond them for a thousand more. 2 And each will fail him, all 
excepting one; for he will die, and does not understand the idol that he seeks 
<is> but his death. 3 Its form appears to be outside himself. 4 Yet does he seek 
to kill God's Son within, and prove that he is victor over him. p617 5 This is 
the purpose every idol has, for this the role that is assigned to it, and this 
the role that cannot be fulfilled.

T-29.VII.4. Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment 
is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death. 2 For you 
believe that you can suffer lack, and lack <is> death. 3 To sacrifice is to give 
up, and thus to be without and to have suffered loss. 4 And by this giving up is 
life renounced. 5 Seek not outside yourself. 6 The search implies you are not 
whole within and fear to look upon your devastation, but prefer to seek outside 
yourself for what you are.

T-29.VII.5. Idols must fall <because> they have no life, and what is lifeless is 
a sign of death. 2 You came to die, and what would you expect but to perceive 
the signs of death you seek? 3 No sadness and no suffering proclaim a message 
other than an idol found that represents a parody of life which, in its 
lifelessness, is really death, conceived as real and given living form. 4 Yet 
each must fail and crumble and decay, because a form of death cannot be life, 
and what is sacrificed cannot be whole.

T-29.VII.6. All idols of this world were made to keep the truth within from 
being known to you, and to maintain allegiance to the dream that you must find 
what is outside yourself to be complete and happy. 2 It is vain to worship idols 
in the hope of peace. 3 God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. 4 No 
idol takes His place. 5 Look not to idols. 6 Do not seek outside yourself.

T-29.VII.7. Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has given it. 2 For 
otherwise, the future will be like the past, and but a series of depressing 
dreams, in which all idols fail you, one by one, and you see death and 
disappointment everywhere.

T-29.VII.8. To change all this, and open up a road of hope and of release in 
what appeared to be an endless circle of despair, you need but to decide you do 
not know the purpose of the world. 2 You give it goals it does not have, and 
thus do you decide what it is for. 3 You try to see in it a place of idols found 
outside yourself, with power to make complete what is within by splitting what 
you are between the two. 4 You choose your dreams, for they are what you wish, 
perceived as if it had been given you. 5 Your idols do what you would have them 
do, and have the power you ascribe to them. 6 And you pursue them vainly in the 
dream, because you want their power as your own.

T-29.VII.9. Yet where are dreams but in a mind asleep? 2 And can a dream succeed 
in making real the picture it projects outside itself? p618 3 Save time, my 
brother; learn what time is for. 4 And speed the end of idols in a world made 
sad and sick by seeing idols there. 5 Your holy mind is altar unto God, and 
where He is no idols can abide. 6 The fear of God is but the fear of loss of 
idols. 7 It is not the fear of loss of your reality. 8 But you have made of your 
reality an idol, which you must protect against the light of truth. 9 And all 
the world becomes the means by which this idol can be saved. 10 Salvation thus 
appears to threaten life and offer death.

T-29.VII.10. It is not so. 2 Salvation seeks to prove there is no death, and 
only life exists. 3 The sacrifice of death is nothing lost. 4 An idol cannot 
take the place of God. 5 Let Him remind you of His Love for you, and do not seek 
to drown His Voice in chants of deep despair to idols of yourself. 6 Seek not 
outside your Father for your hope. 7 For hope of happiness is <not> despair.




VIII. The Anti-Christ

T-29.VIII.1. What is an idol? 2 Do you think you know? 3 For idols are 
unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. 4 That is the 
only power that they have. 5 Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared and 
worshipped, both, <because> you do not know what they are for, and why they have 
been made. 6 An idol is an image of your brother that you would value more than 
what he is. 7 Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. 
8 And it is this that never is perceived and recognized. 9 Be it a body or a 
thing, a place, a situation or a circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a 
right demanded or achieved, it is the same.

T-29.VIII.2. Let not their form deceive you. 2 Idols are but substitutes for 
your reality. 3 In some way, you believe they will complete your little self, 
for safety in a world perceived as dangerous, with forces massed against your 
confidence and peace of mind. 4 They have the power to supply your lacks, and 
add the value that you do not have. 5 No one believes in idols who has not 
enslaved himself to littleness and loss. 6 And thus must seek beyond his little 
self for strength to raise his head, and stand apart from all the misery the 
world reflects. 7 This is the penalty for looking not within for certainty and 
quiet calm that liberates you from the world, and lets you stand apart, in quiet 
and in peace. p619

T-29.VIII.3. An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of 
anti-Christ, that constitutes a gap between the Christ and what you see. 2 An 
idol is a wish, made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real and 
seen outside the mind. 3 Yet it is still a thought, and cannot leave the mind 
that is its source. 4 Nor is its form apart from the idea it represents. 5 All 
forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. 6 And fall before His face like a dark 
veil that seems to shut you off from Him, alone in darkness. 7 Yet the light is 
there. 8 A cloud does not put out the sun. 9 No more a veil can banish what it 
seems to separate, nor darken by one whit the light itself.

T-29.VIII.4. This world of idols <is> a veil across the face of Christ, because 
its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself. 2 A dark and fearful 
purpose, yet a thought without the power to change one blade of grass from 
something living to a sign of death. 3 Its form is nowhere, for its source 
abides within your mind where God abideth not. 4 Where is this place where what 
is everywhere has been excluded and been kept apart? 5 What hand could be held 
up to block God's way? 6 Whose voice could make demand He enter not? 7 The 
"more-than-everything" is not a thing to make you tremble and to quail in fear. 
8 Christ's enemy is nowhere. 9 He can take no form in which he ever will be 
real.

T-29.VIII.5. What is an idol? 2 Nothing! 3 It must be believed before it seems 
to come to life, and given power that it may be feared. 4 Its life and power are 
its believer's gift, and this is what the miracle restores to what <has> life 
and power worthy of the gift of Heaven and eternal peace. 5 The miracle does not 
restore the truth, the light the veil between has not put out. 6 It merely lifts 
the veil, and lets the truth shine unencumbered, being what it is. 7 It does not 
need belief to be itself, for it has been created; so it <is.>

T-29.VIII.6. An idol is established by belief, and when it is withdrawn the idol 
"dies." 2 This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power past 
omnipotence, a place beyond the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. 3 
Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time 
are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. 4 Here 
the deathless come to die, the all-encompassing to suffer loss, the timeless to 
be made the slaves of time. 5 Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, 
forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. 6 And the Son of God, as 
perfect, sinless and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to 
suffer pain and finally to die. p620

T-29.VIII.7. Where is an idol? 2 Nowhere! 3 Can there be a gap in what is 
infinite, a place where time can interrupt eternity? 4 A place of darkness set 
where all is light, a dismal alcove separated off from what is endless, <has> no 
place to be. 5 An idol is beyond where God has set all things forever, and has 
left no room for anything to be except His Will. 6 Nothing and nowhere must an 
idol be, while God is everything and everywhere.

T-29.VIII.8. What purpose has an idol, then? 2 What is it for? 3 This is the 
only question that has many answers, each depending on the one of whom the 
question has been asked. 4 The world believes in idols. 5 No one comes unless he 
worshipped them, and still attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him a 
gift reality does not contain. 6 Each worshipper of idols harbors hope his 
special deities will give him more than other men possess. 7 It must be more. 8 
It does not really matter more of what; more beauty, more intelligence, more 
wealth, or even more affliction and more pain. 9 But more of something is an 
idol for. 10 And when one fails another takes its place, with hope of finding 
more of something else. 11 Be not deceived by forms the "something" takes. 12 An 
idol is a means for getting more. 13 And it is this that is against God's Will.

T-29.VIII.9. God has not many Sons, but only One. 2 Who can have more, and who 
be given less? 3 In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh, if idols could 
intrude upon his peace. 4 It is for him the Holy Spirit speaks, and tells you 
idols have no purpose here. 5 For more than Heaven can you never have. 6 If 
Heaven is within, why would you seek for idols that would make of Heaven less, 
to give you more than God bestowed upon your brother and on you, as one with 
Him? 7 God gave you all there is. 8 And to be sure you could not lose it, did He 
also give the same to every living thing as well. 9 And thus is every living 
thing a part of you, as of Himself. 10 No idol can establish you as more than 
God. 11 But you will never be content with being less. p621




IX. The Forgiving Dream

T-29.IX.1. The slave of idols is a willing slave. 2 For willing he must be to 
let himself bow down in worship to what has no life, and seek for power in the 
powerless. 3 What happened to the holy Son of God that this could be his wish; 
to let himself fall lower than the stones upon the ground, and look to idols 
that they raise him up? 4 Hear, then, your story in the dream you made, and ask 
yourself if it be not the truth that you believe that it is not a dream.

T-29.IX.2. A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as 
Himself. 2 And in that dream was Heaven changed to hell, and God made enemy unto 
His Son. 3 How can God's Son awaken from the dream? 4 It is a dream of judgment. 
5 So must he judge not, and he will waken. 6 For the dream will seem to last 
while he is part of it. 7 Judge not, for he who judges will have need of idols, 
which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. 8 Nor can he know the 
Self he has condemned. 9 Judge not, because you make yourself a part of evil 
dreams, where idols are your "true" identity, and your salvation from the 
judgment laid in terror and in guilt upon yourself.

T-29.IX.3. All figures in the dream are idols, made to save you from the dream. 
2 Yet they are part of what they have been made to save you <from.> 3 Thus does 
an idol keep the dream alive and terrible, for who could wish for one unless he 
were in terror and despair? 4 And this the idol represents, and so its worship 
is the worship of despair and terror, and the dream from which they come. 5 
Judgment is an injustice to God's Son, and it <is> justice that who judges him 
will not escape the penalty he laid upon himself within the dream he made. 6 God 
knows of justice, not of penalty. 7 But in the dream of judgment you attack and 
are condemned; and wish to be the slave of idols, which are interposed between 
your judgment and the penalty it brings.

T-29.IX.4. There can be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming it. 2 For 
idols must be part of it, to save you from what you believe you have 
accomplished, and have done to make you sinful and put out the light within you. 
3 Little child, the light is there. 4 You do but dream, and idols are the toys 
you dream you play with. 5 Who has need of toys but children? 6 They pretend 
they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and 
think and feel and speak for them. 7 Yet everything their toys appear to do is 
in the minds of those who play with them. 8 But they are eager to forget that 
they made up the dream in which their toys are real, nor recognize their wishes 
are their own. p622

T-29.IX.5. Nightmares are childish dreams. 2 The toys have turned against the 
child who thought he made them real. 3 Yet can a dream attack? 4 Or can a toy 
grow large and dangerous and fierce and wild? 5 This does the child believe, 
because he fears his thoughts and gives them to the toys instead. 6 And their 
reality becomes his own, because they seem to save him from his thoughts. 7 Yet 
do they keep his thoughts alive and real, but seen outside himself, where they 
can turn against him for his treachery to them. 8 He thinks he needs them that 
he may escape his thoughts, because he thinks the thoughts are real. 9 And so he 
makes of anything a toy, to make his world remain outside himself, and play that 
he is but a part of it.

T-29.IX.6. There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. 2 
Seek not to retain the toys of children. 3 Put them all away, for you have need 
of them no more. 4 The dream of judgment is a children's game, in which the 
child becomes the father, powerful, but with the little wisdom of a child. 5 
What hurts him is destroyed; what helps him, blessed. 6 Except he judges this as 
does a child, who does not know what hurts and what will heal. 7 And bad things 
seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is 
governed by the laws he made. 8 Yet is the real world unaffected by the world he 
thinks is real. 9 Nor have its laws been changed because he does not understand.

T-29.IX.7. The real world still is but a dream. 2 Except the figures have been 
changed. 3 They are not seen as idols which betray. 4 It is a dream in which no 
one is used to substitute for something else, nor interposed between the 
thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. 5 No one is used for something he 
is not, for childish things have all been put away. 6 And what was once a dream 
of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy, because that is the 
purpose that it has. 7 Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost 
over. 8 And the forms that enter in the dream are now perceived as brothers, not 
in judgment, but in love.

T-29.IX.8. Forgiving dreams have little need to last. 2 They are not made to 
separate the mind from what it thinks. 3 They do not seek to prove the dream is 
being dreamed by someone else. 4 And in these dreams a melody is heard that 
everyone remembers, though he has not heard it since before all time began. 5 
Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can 
be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar 
that abides forever deep within the Son of God. p623 6 And when he hears this 
song again, he knows he never heard it not. 7 And where is time, when dreams of 
judgment have been put away?

T-29.IX.9. Whenever you feel fear in any form,-and you <are> fearful if you do 
not feel a deep content, a certainty of help, a calm assurance Heaven goes with 
you,-be sure you made an idol, and believe it will betray you. 2 For beneath 
your hope that it will save you lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and 
uncertainty, so deep and bitter that the dream cannot conceal completely all 
your sense of doom. 3 Your self-betrayal must result in fear, for fear <is> 
judgment, leading surely to the frantic search for idols and for death.

T-29.IX.10. Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety and have not 
attacked yourself. 2 So do your childish terrors melt away, and dreams become a 
sign that you have made a new beginning, not another try to worship idols and to 
keep attack. 3 Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in the dream. 4 
And so they bring the dreamer full release from dreams of fear. 5 He does not 
fear his judgment for he has judged no one, nor has sought to be released 
through judgment from what judgment must impose. 6 And all the while he is 
remembering what he forgot, when judgment seemed to be the way to save him from 
its penalty. p624






Chapter 30.

THE NEW BEGINNING

Introduction

T-30.in.1. The new beginning now becomes the focus of the curriculum. 2 The goal 
is clear, but now you need specific methods for attaining it. 3 The speed by 
which it can be reached depends on this one thing alone; your willingness to 
practice every step. 4 Each one will help a little, every time it is attempted. 
5 And together will these steps lead you from dreams of judgment to forgiving 
dreams and out of pain and fear. 6 They are not new to you, but they are more 
ideas than rules of thought to you as yet. 7 So now we need to practice them 
awhile, until they are the rules by which you live. 8 We seek to make them 
habits now, so you will have them ready for whatever need.




I. Rules for Decision

T-30.I.1. Decisions are continuous. 2 You do not always know when you are making 
them. 3 But with a little practice with the ones you recognize, a set begins to 
form which sees you through the rest. 4 It is not wise to let yourself become 
preoccupied with every step you take. 5 The proper set, adopted consciously each 
time you wake, will put you well ahead. 6 And if you find resistance strong and 
dedication weak, you are not ready. 7 <Do not fight yourself.> 8 But think about 
the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way in which this very 
day can happen just like that. 9 Then try again to have the day you want.

T-30.I.2. (1) The outlook starts with this:




2 Today I will make no decisions by myself. 




3 This means that you are choosing not to be the judge of what to do. 4 But it 
must also mean you will not judge the situations where you will be called upon 
to make response. 5 For if you judge them, you have set the rules for how you 
should react to them. 6 And then another answer cannot but produce confusion and 
uncertainty and fear. p625

T-30.I.3. This is your major problem now. 2 You still make up your mind, and 
<then> decide to ask what you should do. 3 And what you hear may not resolve the 
problem as you saw it first. 4 This leads to fear, because it contradicts what 
you perceive and so you feel attacked. 5 And therefore angry. 6 There are rules 
by which this will not happen. 7 But it does occur at first, while you are 
learning how to hear.

T-30.I.4. (2) Throughout the day, at any time you think of it and have a quiet 
moment for reflection, tell yourself again the kind of day you want; the 
feelings you would have, the things you want to happen to you, and the things 
you would experience, and say:




2 If I make no decisions by myself, this is the day that will be given me.




3 These two procedures, practiced well, will serve to let you be directed 
without fear, for opposition will not first arise and then become a problem in 
itself.

T-30.I.5. But there will still be times when you have judged already. 2 Now the 
answer will provoke attack, unless you quickly straighten out your mind to want 
an answer that will work. 3 Be certain this has happened if you feel yourself 
unwilling to sit by and ask to have the answer given you. 4 This means you have 
decided by yourself, and can not see the question. 5 Now you need a quick 
restorative before you ask again.

T-30.I.6. (3) Remember once again the day you want, and recognize that something 
has occurred that is not part of it. 2 Then realize that you have asked a 
question by yourself, and must have set an answer in your terms. 3 Then say: 




4 I have no question. 5 I forgot what to decide.




6 This cancels out the terms that you have set, and lets the answer show you 
what the question must have really been.

T-30.I.7. Try to observe this rule without delay, despite your opposition. 2 For 
you have already gotten angry. 3 And your fear of being answered in a different 
way from what your version of the question asks will gain momentum, until you 
believe the day you want is one in which you get <your> answer to <your> 
question. 4 And you will not get it, for it would destroy the day by robbing you 
of what you really want. p626 5 This can be very hard to realize, when once you 
have decided by yourself the rules that promise you a happy day. 6 Yet this 
decision still can be undone, by simple methods that you can accept.

T-30.I.8. (4) If you are so unwilling to receive you cannot even let your 
question go, you can begin to change your mind with this: 




2 At least I can decide I do not like what I feel now. 




3 This much is obvious, and paves the way for the next easy step.

T-30.I.9. (5) Having decided that you do not like the way you feel, what could 
be easier than to continue with: 




2 And so I hope I have been wrong. 




3 This works against the sense of opposition, and reminds you that help is not 
being thrust upon you but is something that you want and that you need, because 
you do not like the way you feel. 4 This tiny opening will be enough to let you 
go ahead with just a few more steps you need to let yourself be helped.

T-30.I.10. Now you have reached the turning point, because it has occurred to 
you that you will gain if what you have decided is not so. 2 Until this point is 
reached, you will believe your happiness depends on being right. 3 But this much 
reason have you now attained; you would be better off if you were wrong.

T-30.I.11. (6) This tiny grain of wisdom will suffice to take you further. 2 You 
are not coerced, but merely hope to get a thing you want. 3 And you can say in 
perfect honesty: 




4 I want another way to look at this. 




5 Now you have changed your mind about the day, and have remembered what you 
really want. 6 Its purpose has no longer been obscured by the insane belief you 
want it for the goal of being right when you are wrong. 7 Thus is the readiness 
for asking brought to your awareness, for you cannot be in conflict when you ask 
for what you want, and see that it is this for which you ask.

T-30.I.12. (7) This final step is but acknowledgment of lack of opposition to be 
helped. 2 It is a statement of an open mind, not certain yet, but willing to be 
shown: p627




3 Perhaps there is another way to look at this. 

4 What can I lose by asking? 




5 Thus you now can ask a question that makes sense, and so the answer will make 
sense as well. 6 Nor will you fight against it, for you see that it is you who 
will be helped by it.

T-30.I.13. It must be clear that it is easier to have a happy day if you prevent 
unhappiness from entering at all. 2 But this takes practice in the rules that 
will protect you from the ravages of fear. 3 When this has been achieved, the 
sorry dream of judgment has forever been undone. 4 But meanwhile, you have need 
for practicing the rules for its undoing. 5 Let us, then, consider once again 
the very first of the decisions which are offered here.

T-30.I.14. We said you can begin a happy day with the determination not to make 
decisions by yourself. 2 This seems to be a real decision in itself. 3 And yet, 
you <cannot> make decisions by yourself. 4 The only question really is with what 
you choose to make them. 5 That is really all. 6 The first rule, then, is not 
coercion, but a simple statement of a simple fact. 7 You will not make decisions 
by yourself whatever you decide. 8 For they are made with idols or with God. 9 
And you ask help of anti-Christ or Christ, and which you choose will join with 
you and tell you what to do.

T-30.I.15. Your day is not at random. 2 It is set by what you choose to live it 
with, and how the friend whose counsel you have sought perceives your happiness. 
3 You always ask advice before you can decide on anything. 4 Let this be 
understood, and you can see there cannot be coercion here, nor grounds for 
opposition that you may be free. 5 There is no freedom from what must occur. 6 
And if you think there is, you must be wrong.

T-30.I.16. The second rule as well is but a fact. 2 For you and your adviser 
must agree on what you want before it can occur. 3 It is but this agreement that 
permits all things to happen. 4 Nothing can be caused without some form of 
union, be it with a dream of judgment or the Voice for God. 5 Decisions cause 
results <because> they are not made in isolation. 6 They are made by you and 
your adviser, for yourself and for the world as well. 7 The day you want you 
offer to the world, for it will be what you have asked for, and will reinforce 
the rule of your adviser in the world. 8 Whose kingdom is the world for you 
today? 9 What kind of day will you decide to have?

T-30.I.17. It needs but two who would have happiness this day to promise it to 
all the world. p628 2 It needs but two to understand that they cannot decide 
alone, to guarantee the joy they asked for will be wholly shared. 3 For they 
have understood the basic law that makes decision powerful, and gives it all 
effects that it will ever have. 4 It needs but two. 5 These two are joined 
before there can be a decision. 6 Let this be the one reminder that you keep in 
mind, and you will have the day you want, and give it to the world by having it 
yourself. 7 Your judgment has been lifted from the world by your decision for a 
happy day. 8 And as you have received, so must you give.




II. Freedom of Will

T-30.II.1. Do you not understand that to oppose the Holy Spirit is to fight 
<yourself?> 2 He tells you but your will; He speaks for you. 3 In His Divinity 
is but your own. 4 And all He knows is but your knowledge, saved for you that 
you may do your will through Him. 5 God <asks> you do your will. 6 He joins with 
<you.> 7 He did not set His Kingdom up alone. 8 And Heaven itself but represents 
your will, where everything created is for you. 9 No spark of life but was 
created with your glad consent, as you would have it be. 10 And not one Thought 
that God has ever had but waited for your blessing to be born. 11 God is no 
enemy to you. 12 He asks no more than that He hear you call Him "Friend."

T-30.II.2. How wonderful it is to do your will! 2 For that is freedom. 3 There 
is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom's name. 4 Unless you do 
your will you are not free. 5 And would God leave His Son without what he has 
chosen for himself? 6 God but ensured that you would never lose your will when 
He gave you His perfect Answer. 7 Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His 
Love and learn your will. 8 God would not have His Son made prisoner to what he 
does not want. 9 He joins with you in willing you be free. 10 And to oppose Him 
is to make a choice against yourself, and choose that you be bound.

T-30.II.3. Look once again upon your enemy, the one you chose to hate instead of 
love. 2 For thus was hatred born into the world, and thus the rule of fear 
established there. 3 Now hear God speak to you, through Him Who is His Voice and 
yours as well, reminding you that it is not your will to hate and be a prisoner 
to fear, a slave to death, a little creature with a little life. 4 Your will is 
boundless; it is not your will that it be bound. p629 5 What lies in you has 
joined with God Himself in all creation's birth. 6 Remember Him Who has created 
you, and through your will created everything. 7 Not one created thing but gives 
you thanks, for it is by your will that it was born. 8 No light of Heaven shines 
except for you, for it was set in Heaven by your will.

T-30.II.4. What cause have you for anger in a world that merely waits your 
blessing to be free? 2 If you be prisoner, then God Himself could not be free. 3 
For what is done to him whom God so loves is done to God Himself. 4 Think not He 
wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. 5 
He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless. 6 This world awaits 
the freedom you will give when you have recognized that you are free. 7 But you 
will not forgive the world until you have forgiven Him Who gave your will to 
you. 8 For it is by your will the world is given freedom. 9 Nor can you be free 
apart from Him Whose holy Will you share.

T-30.II.5. God turns to you to ask the world be saved, for by your own salvation 
is it healed. 2 And no one walks upon the earth but must depend on your 
decision, that he learn death has no power over him, because he shares your 
freedom as he shares your will. 3 It <is> your will to heal him, and because you 
have decided with him, he is healed. 4 And now is God forgiven, for you chose to 
look upon your brother as a friend.




III. Beyond All Idols

T-30.III.1. Idols are quite specific. 2 But your will is universal, being 
limitless. 3 And so it has no form, nor is content for its expression in the 
terms of form. 4 Idols are limits. 5 They are the belief that there are forms 
that will bring happiness, and that, by limiting, is all attained. 6 It is as if 
you said, "I have no need of everything. 7 This little thing I want, and it will 
be as everything to me." 8 And this must fail to satisfy, because it is your 
will that everything be yours. 9 Decide for idols and you ask for loss. 10 
Decide for truth and everything is yours.

T-30.III.2. It is not form you seek. 2 What form can be a substitute for God the 
Father's Love? 3 What form can take the place of all the love in the Divinity of 
God the Son? 4 What idol can make two of what is one? 5 And can the limitless be 
limited? 6 You do not want an idol. p630 7 It is not your will to have one. 8 It 
will not bestow on you the gift you seek. 9 When you decide upon the form of 
what you want, you lose the understanding of its purpose. 10 So you see your 
will within the idol, thus reducing it to a specific form. 11 Yet this could 
never be your will, because what shares in all creation cannot be content with 
small ideas and little things.

T-30.III.3. Behind the search for every idol lies the yearning for completion. 2 
Wholeness has no form because it is unlimited. 3 To seek a special person or a 
thing to add to you to make yourself complete, can only mean that you believe 
some form is missing. 4 And by finding this, you will achieve completion in a 
form you like. 5 This is the purpose of an idol; that you will not look beyond 
it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete. 6 Only if you had 
sinned could this be so. 7 For sin is the idea you are alone and separated off 
from what is whole. 8 And thus it would be necessary for the search for 
wholeness to be made beyond the boundaries of limits on yourself.

T-30.III.4. It never is the idol that you want. 2 But what you think it offers 
you, you want indeed and have the right to ask for. 3 Nor could it be possible 
it be denied. 4 Your will to be complete is but God's Will, and this is given 
you by being His. 5 God knows not form. 6 He cannot answer you in terms that 
have no meaning. 7 And your will could not be satisfied with empty forms, made 
but to fill a gap that is not there. 8 It is not this you want. 9 Creation gives 
no separate person and no separate thing the power to complete the Son of God. 
10 What idol can be called upon to give the Son of God what he already has?

T-30.III.5. Completion is the <function> of God's Son. 2 He has no need to seek 
for it at all. 3 Beyond all idols stands his holy will to be but what he is. 4 
For more than whole is meaningless. 5 If there were change in him, if he could 
be reduced to any form and limited to what is not in him, he would not be as God 
created him. 6 What idol can he need to be himself? 7 For can he give a part of 
him away? 8 What is not whole cannot make whole. 9 But what is really asked for 
cannot be denied. 10 Your will <is> granted. 11 Not in any form that would 
content you not, but in the whole completely lovely Thought God holds of you.

T-30.III.6. Nothing that God knows not exists. 2 And what He knows exists 
forever, changelessly. 3 For thoughts endure as long as does the mind that 
thought of them. 4 And in the Mind of God there is no ending, nor a time in 
which His Thoughts were absent or could suffer change. p631 5 Thoughts are not 
born and cannot die. 6 They share the attributes of their creator, nor have they 
a separate life apart from his. 7 The thoughts you think are in your mind, as 
you are in the Mind which thought of you. 8 And so there are no separate parts 
in what exists within God's Mind. 9 It is forever One, eternally united and at 
peace.

T-30.III.7. Thoughts seem to come and go. 2 Yet all this means is that you are 
sometimes aware of them, and sometimes not. 3 An unremembered thought is born 
again to you when it returns to your awareness. 4 Yet it did not die when you 
forgot it. 5 It was always there, but you were unaware of it. 6 The Thought God 
holds of you is perfectly unchanged by your forgetting. 7 It will always be 
exactly as it was before the time when you forgot, and will be just the same 
when you remember. 8 And it is the same within the interval when you forgot.

T-30.III.8. The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. 2 
They await not birth. 3 They wait for welcome and remembering. 4 The Thought God 
holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. 5 So high in Heaven 
is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. 6 Yet still and 
white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. 7 There was no time it was 
not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was.

T-30.III.9. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky 
that holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. 2 Its perfect purity 
does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. 3 The sky embraces it and 
softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from 
Heaven. 4 It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to 
earth. 5 But those who seek for idols cannot know the star is there.

T-30.III.10. Beyond all idols is the Thought God holds of you. 2 Completely 
unaffected by the turmoil and the terror of the world, the dreams of birth and 
death that here are dreamed, the myriad of forms that fear can take; quite 
undisturbed, the Thought God holds of you remains exactly as it always was. 3 
Surrounded by a stillness so complete no sound of battle comes remotely near, it 
rests in certainty and perfect peace. 4 Here is your one reality kept safe, 
completely unaware of all the world that worships idols, and that knows not God. 
5 In perfect sureness of its changelessness and of its rest in its eternal home, 
the Thought God holds of you has never left the Mind of its Creator Whom it 
knows, as its Creator knows that it is there. p633

T-30.III.11. Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you are? 2 
Is your reality a thing apart from you, and in a world which your reality knows 
nothing of? 3 Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no 
reality. 4 The mind of Heaven's Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of Father 
and of Son joined in creation which can have no end. 5 You have not two 
realities, but one. 6 Nor can you be aware of more than one. 7 An idol <or> the 
Thought God holds of you is your reality. 8 Forget not, then, that idols must 
keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. 9 The 
star shines still; the sky has never changed. 10 But you, the holy Son of God 
Himself, are unaware of your reality.




IV. The Truth behind Illusions

T-30.IV.1. You will attack what does not satisfy, and thus you will not see you 
made it up. 2 You always fight illusions. 3 For the truth behind them is so 
lovely and so still in loving gentleness, were you aware of it you would forget 
defensiveness entirely, and rush to its embrace. 4 The truth could never be 
attacked. 5 And this you knew when you made idols. 6 They were made that this 
might be forgotten. 7 You attack but false ideas, and never truthful ones. 8 All 
idols are the false ideas you made to fill the gap you think arose between 
yourself and what is true. 9 And you attack them for the things you think they 
represent. 10 What lies beyond them cannot be attacked.

T-30.IV.2. The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children's 
toys. 2 A child is frightened when a wooden head springs up as a closed box is 
opened suddenly, or when a soft and silent woolly bear begins to squeak as he 
takes hold of it. 3 The rules he made for boxes and for bears have failed him, 
and have broken his "control" of what surrounds him. 4 And he is afraid, because 
he thought the rules protected him. 5 Now must he learn the boxes and the bears 
did not deceive him, broke no rules, nor mean his world is made chaotic and 
unsafe. 6 He was mistaken. 7 He misunderstood what made him safe, and thought 
that it had left.

T-30.IV.3. The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms. 2 
And each one seems to break the rules you set for it. 3 It never was the thing 
you thought. p633 4 It must appear to break your rules for safety, since the 
rules were wrong. 5 But <you> are not endangered. 6 You can laugh at popping 
heads and squeaking toys, as does the child who learns they are no threat to 
him. 7 Yet while he likes to play with them, he still perceives them as obeying 
rules he made for his enjoyment. 8 So there still are rules that they can seem 
to break and frighten him. 9 Yet <is> he at the mercy of his toys? 10 And <can> 
they represent a threat to him?

T-30.IV.4. Reality observes the laws of God, and not the rules you set. 2 It is 
His laws that guarantee your safety. 3 All illusions that you believe about 
yourself obey no laws. 4 They seem to dance a little while, according to the 
rules you set for them. 5 But then they fall and cannot rise again. 6 They are 
but toys, my child, so do not grieve for them. 7 Their dancing never brought you 
joy. 8 But neither were they things to frighten you, nor make you safe if they 
obeyed your rules. 9 They must be neither cherished nor attacked, but merely 
looked upon as children's toys without a single meaning of their own. 10 See one 
in them and you will see them all. 11 See none in them and they will touch you 
not.

T-30.IV.5. Appearances deceive <because> they are appearances and not reality. 2 
Dwell not on them in any form. 3 They but obscure reality, and they bring fear 
<because> they hide the truth. 4 Do not attack what you have made to let you be 
deceived, for thus you prove that you have been deceived. 5 Attack has power to 
make illusions real. 6 Yet what it makes is nothing. 7 Who could be made fearful 
by a power that can have no real effects at all? 8 What could it be but an 
illusion, making things appear like to itself? 9 Look calmly at its toys, and 
understand that they are idols which but dance to vain desires. 10 Give them not 
your worship, for they are not there. 11 Yet this is equally forgotten in 
attack. 12 God's Son needs no defense against his dreams. 13 His idols do not 
threaten him at all. 14 His one mistake is that he thinks them real. 15 What can 
the power of illusions do?

T-30.IV.6. Appearances can but deceive the mind that wants to be deceived. 2 And 
you can make a simple choice that will forever place you far beyond deception. 3 
You need not concern yourself with how this will be done, for this you cannot 
understand. 4 But you will understand that mighty changes have been quickly 
brought about, when you decide one very simple thing; you do not want whatever 
you believe an idol gives. 5 For thus the Son of God declares that he is free of 
idols. 6 And thus <is> he free. p634

T-30.IV.7. Salvation is a paradox indeed! 2 What could it be except a happy 
dream? 3 It asks you but that you forgive all things that no one ever did; to 
overlook what is not there, and not to look upon the unreal as reality. 4 You 
are but asked to let your will be done, and seek no longer for the things you do 
not want. 5 And you are asked to let yourself be free of all the dreams of what 
you never were, and seek no more to substitute the strength of idle wishes for 
the Will of God.

T-30.IV.8. Here does the dream of separation start to fade and disappear. 2 For 
here the gap that is not there begins to be perceived without the toys of terror 
that you made. 3 No more than this is asked. 4 Be glad indeed salvation asks so 
little, not so much. 5 It asks for nothing in reality. 6 And even in illusions 
it but asks forgiveness be the substitute for fear. 7 Such is the only rule for 
happy dreams. 8 The gap is emptied of the toys of fear, and then its unreality 
is plain. 9 Dreams are for nothing. 10 And the Son of God can have no need of 
them. 11 They offer him no single thing that he could ever want. 12 He is 
delivered from illusions by his will, and but restored to what he is. 13 What 
could God's plan for his salvation be, except a means to give him to Himself?




V. The Only Purpose

T-30.V.1. The real world is the state of mind in which the only purpose of the 
world is seen to be forgiveness. 2 Fear is not its goal, for the escape from 
guilt becomes its aim. 3 The value of forgiveness is perceived and takes the 
place of idols, which are sought no longer, for their "gifts" are not held dear. 
4 No rules are idly set, and no demands are made of anyone or anything to twist 
and fit into the dream of fear. 5 Instead, there is a wish to understand all 
things created as they really are. 6 And it is recognized that all things must 
be first forgiven, and <then> understood.

T-30.V.2. Here, it is thought that understanding is acquired by attack. 2 There, 
it is clear that by attack is understanding lost. 3 The folly of pursuing guilt 
as goal is fully recognized. 4 And idols are not wanted there, for guilt is 
understood as the sole cause of pain in any form. 5 No one is tempted by its 
vain appeal, for suffering and death have been perceived as things not wanted 
and not striven for. 6 The possibility of freedom has been grasped and welcomed, 
and the means by which it can be gained can now be understood. p635 7 The world 
becomes a place of hope, because its only purpose is to be a place where hope of 
happiness can be fulfilled. 8 And no one stands outside this hope, because the 
world has been united in belief the purpose of the world is one which all must 
share, if hope be more than just a dream.

T-30.V.3. Not yet is Heaven quite remembered, for the purpose of forgiveness 
still remains. 2 Yet everyone is certain he will go beyond forgiveness, and he 
but remains until it is made perfect in himself. 3 He has no wish for anything 
but this. 4 And fear has dropped away, because he is united in his purpose with 
himself. 5 There is a hope of happiness in him so sure and constant he can 
barely stay and wait a little longer, with his feet still touching earth. 6 Yet 
is he glad to wait till every hand is joined, and every heart made ready to 
arise and go with him. 7 For thus is he made ready for the step in which is all 
forgiveness left behind.

T-30.V.4. The final step is God's, because it is but God Who could create a 
perfect Son and share His Fatherhood with him. 2 No one outside of Heaven knows 
how this can be, for understanding this is Heaven itself. 3 Even the real world 
has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity. 4 But fear is gone because 
its purpose is forgiveness, not idolatry. 5 And so is Heaven's Son prepared to 
be himself, and to remember that the Son of God knows everything his Father 
understands, and understands it perfectly with Him.

T-30.V.5. The real world still falls short of this, for this is God's Own 
purpose; only His, and yet completely shared and perfectly fulfilled. 2 The real 
world is a state in which the mind has learned how easily do idols go when they 
are still perceived but wanted not. 3 How willingly the mind can let them go 
when it has understood that idols are nothing and nowhere, and are purposeless. 
4 For only then can guilt and sin be seen without a purpose, and as meaningless.

T-30.V.6. Thus is the real world's purpose gently brought into awareness, to 
replace the goal of sin and guilt. 2 And all that stood between your image of 
yourself and what you are, forgiveness washes joyfully away. 3 Yet God need not 
create His Son again, that what is his be given back to him. 4 The gap between 
your brother and yourself was never there. 5 And what the Son of God knew in 
creation he must know again.

T-30.V.7. When brothers join in purpose in the world of fear, they stand already 
at the edge of the real world. 2 Perhaps they still look back, and think they 
see an idol that they want. 3 Yet has their path been surely set away from idols 
toward reality. p636 4 For when they joined their hands it was Christ's hand 
they took, and they will look on Him Whose hand they hold. 5 The face of Christ 
is looked upon before the Father is remembered. 6 For He must be unremembered 
till His Son has reached beyond forgiveness to the Love of God. 7 Yet is the 
Love of Christ accepted first. 8 And then will come the knowledge They are One.

T-30.V.8. How light and easy is the step across the narrow boundaries of the 
world of fear when you have recognized Whose hand you hold! 2 Within your hand 
is everything you need to walk with perfect confidence away from fear forever, 
and to go straight on, and quickly reach the gate of Heaven itself. 3 For He 
Whose hand you hold was waiting but for you to join Him. 4 Now that you have 
come, would He delay in showing you the way that He must walk with you? 5 His 
blessing lies on you as surely as His Father's Love rests upon Him. 6 His 
gratitude to you is past your understanding, for you have enabled Him to rise 
from chains and go with you, together, to His Father's house.

T-30.V.9. An ancient hate is passing from the world. 2 And with it goes all 
hatred and all fear. 3 Look back no longer, for what lies ahead is all you ever 
wanted in your heart. 4 Give up the world! 5 But not to sacrifice. 6 You never 
wanted it. 7 What happiness have you sought here that did not bring you pain? 8 
What moment of content has not been bought at fearful price in coins of 
suffering? 9 Joy has no cost. 10 It is your sacred right, and what you pay for 
is not happiness. 11 Be speeded on your way by honesty, and let not your 
experiences here deceive in retrospect. 12 They were not free from bitter cost 
and joyless consequence.

T-30.V.10. Do not look back except in honesty. 2 And when an idol tempts you, 
think of this: 




3 There never was a time an idol brought you anything except the "gift" of 
guilt. 4 Not one was bought except at cost of pain, nor was it ever paid by you 
alone. 




5 Be merciful unto your brother, then. 6 And do not choose an idol 
thoughtlessly, remembering that he will pay the cost as well as you. 7 For he 
will be delayed when you look back, and you will not perceive Whose loving hand 
you hold. 8 Look forward, then; in confidence walk with a happy heart that beats 
in hope and does not pound in fear. p637

T-30.V.11. The Will of God forever lies in those whose hands are joined. 2 Until 
they joined, they thought He was their enemy. 3 But when they joined and shared 
a purpose, they were free to learn their will is one. 4 And thus the Will of God 
must reach to their awareness. 5 Nor can they forget for long that it is but 
their own.




VI. The Justification for Forgiveness

T-30.VI.1. Anger is <never> justified. 2 Attack has <no> foundation. 3 It is 
here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. 4 Here is the real 
world given in exchange for dreams of terror. 5 For it is on this forgiveness 
rests, and is but natural. 6 You are not asked to offer pardon where attack is 
due, and would be justified. 7 For that would mean that you forgive a sin by 
overlooking what is really there. 8 This is not pardon. 9 For it would assume 
that, by responding in a way which is not justified, your pardon will become the 
answer to attack that has been made. 10 And thus is pardon inappropriate, by 
being granted where it is not due.

T-30.VI.2. Pardon is <always> justified. 2 It has a sure foundation. 3 You do 
not forgive the unforgivable, nor overlook a real attack that calls for 
punishment. 4 Salvation does not lie in being asked to make unnatural responses 
which are inappropriate to what is real. 5 Instead, it merely asks that you 
respond appropriately to what is not real by not perceiving what has not 
occurred. 6 If pardon were unjustified, you would be asked to sacrifice your 
rights when you return forgiveness for attack. 7 But you are merely asked to see 
forgiveness as the natural reaction to distress that rests on error, and thus 
calls for help. 8 Forgiveness is the only sane response. 9 It <keeps> your 
rights from being sacrificed.

T-30.VI.3. This understanding is the only change that lets the real world rise 
to take the place of dreams of terror. 2 Fear cannot arise unless attack is 
justified, and if it had a real foundation pardon would have none. 3 The real 
world is achieved when you perceive the basis of forgiveness is quite real and 
fully justified. 4 While you regard it as a gift unwarranted, it must uphold the 
guilt you would "forgive." 5 Unjustified forgiveness is attack. 6 And this is 
all the world can ever give. 7 It pardons "sinners" sometimes, but remains aware 
that they have sinned. 8 And so they do not merit the forgiveness that it gives.

T-30.VI.4. This is the false forgiveness which the world employs to keep the 
sense of sin alive. p638 2 And recognizing God is just, it seems impossible His 
pardon could be real. 3 Thus is the fear of God the sure result of seeing pardon 
as unmerited. 4 No one who sees himself as guilty can avoid the fear of God. 5 
But he is saved from this dilemma if he can forgive. 6 The mind must think of 
its Creator as it looks upon itself. 7 If you can see your brother merits 
pardon, you have learned forgiveness is your right as much as his. 8 Nor will 
you think that God intends for you a fearful judgment that your brother does not 
merit. 9 For it is the truth that you can merit neither more nor less than he.

T-30.VI.5. Forgiveness recognized as merited will heal. 2 It gives the miracle 
its strength to overlook illusions. 3 This is how you learn that you must be 
forgiven too. 4 There can be no appearance that can not be overlooked. 5 For if 
there were, it would be necessary first there be some sin that stands beyond 
forgiveness. 6 There would be an error that is more than a mistake; a special 
form of error that remains unchangeable, eternal, and beyond correction or 
escape. 7 There would be one mistake that had the power to undo creation, and to 
make a world that could replace it and destroy the Will of God. 8 Only if this 
were possible could there be some appearances that could withstand the miracle, 
and not be healed by it.

T-30.VI.6. There is no surer proof idolatry is what you wish than a belief there 
are some forms of sickness and of joylessness forgiveness cannot heal. 2 This 
means that you prefer to keep some idols, and are not prepared, as yet, to let 
all idols go. 3 And thus you think that some appearances are real and not 
appearances at all. 4 Be not deceived about the meaning of a fixed belief that 
some appearances are harder to look past than others are. 5 It always means you 
think forgiveness must be limited. 6 And you have set a goal of partial pardon 
and a limited escape from guilt for you. 7 What can this be except a false 
forgiveness of yourself, and everyone who seems apart from you?

T-30.VI.7. It must be true the miracle can heal all forms of sickness, or it 
cannot heal. 2 Its purpose cannot be to judge which forms are real, and which 
appearances are true. 3 If one appearance must remain apart from healing, one 
illusion must be part of truth. 4 And you could not escape all guilt, but only 
some of it. 5 You must forgive God's Son entirely. 6 Or you will keep an image 
of yourself that is not whole, and will remain afraid to look within and find 
escape from every idol there. 7 Salvation rests on faith there cannot be some 
forms of guilt that you cannot forgive. p639 8 And so there cannot be 
appearances that have replaced the truth about God's Son.

T-30.VI.8. Look on your brother with the willingness to see him as he is. 2 And 
do not keep a part of him outside your willingness that he be healed. 3 To heal 
is to make whole. 4 And what is whole can have no missing parts that have been 
kept outside. 5 Forgiveness rests on recognizing this, and being glad there 
cannot be some forms of sickness which the miracle must lack the power to heal.

T-30.VI.9. God's Son is perfect, or he cannot be God's Son. 2 Nor will you know 
him, if you think he does not merit the escape from guilt in all its 
consequences and its forms. 3 There is no way to think of him but this, if you 
would know the truth about yourself. 




4 I thank You, Father, for Your perfect Son, and in his glory will I see my own. 




5 Here is the joyful statement that there are no forms of evil that can overcome 
the Will of God; the glad acknowledgment that guilt has not succeeded by your 
wish to make illusions real. 6 And what is this except a simple statement of the 
truth?

T-30.VI.10. Look on your brother with this hope in you, and you will understand 
he could not make an error that could change the truth in him. 2 It is not 
difficult to overlook mistakes that have been given no effects. 3 But what you 
see as having power to make an idol of the Son of God you will not pardon. 4 For 
he has become to you a graven image and a sign of death. 5 Is this your savior? 
6 Is his Father wrong about His Son? 7 Or have you been deceived in him who has 
been given you to heal, for your salvation and deliverance?




VII. The New Interpretation

T-30.VII.1. Would God have left the meaning of the world to your interpretation? 
2 If He had, it <has> no meaning. 3 For it cannot be that meaning changes 
constantly, and yet is true. 4 The Holy Spirit looks upon the world as with one 
purpose, changelessly established. 5 And no situation can affect its aim, but 
must be in accord with it. 6 For only if its aim could change with every 
situation could each one be open to interpretation which is different every time 
you think of it. 7 You add an element into the script you write for every minute 
in the day, and all that happens now means something else. p640 8 You take away 
another element, and every meaning shifts accordingly.

T-30.VII.2. What do your scripts reflect except your plans for what the day 
<should> be? 2 And thus you judge disaster and success, advance, retreat, and 
gain and loss. 3 These judgments all are made according to the roles the script 
assigns. 4 The fact they have no meaning in themselves is demonstrated by the 
ease with which these labels change with other judgments, made on different 
aspects of experience. 5 And then, in looking back, you think you see another 
meaning in what went before. 6 What have you really done, except to show there 
was no meaning there? 7 But you assigned a meaning in the light of goals that 
change, with every meaning shifting as they change.

T-30.VII.3. Only a constant purpose can endow events with stable meaning. 2 But 
it must accord <one> meaning to them all. 3 If they are given different 
meanings, it must be that they reflect but different purposes. 4 And this is all 
the meaning that they have. 5 Can this be meaning? 6 Can confusion be what 
meaning means? 7 Perception cannot be in constant flux, and make allowance for 
stability of meaning anywhere. 8 Fear is a judgment never justified. 9 Its 
presence has no meaning but to show you wrote a fearful script, and are afraid 
accordingly. 10 But not because the thing you fear has fearful meaning in 
itself.

T-30.VII.4. A common purpose is the only means whereby perception can be 
stabilized, and one interpretation given to the world and all experiences here. 
2 In this shared purpose is one judgment shared by everyone and everything you 
see. 3 You do not have to judge, for you have learned one meaning has been given 
everything, and you are glad to see it everywhere. 4 It cannot change <because> 
you would perceive it everywhere, unchanged by circumstance. 5 And so you offer 
it to all events, and let them offer you stability.

T-30.VII.5. Escape from judgment simply lies in this; all things have but one 
purpose, which you share with all the world. 2 And nothing in the world can be 
opposed to it, for it belongs to everything, as it belongs to you. 3 In single 
purpose is the end of all ideas of sacrifice, which must assume a different 
purpose for the one who gains and him who loses. 4 There could be no thought of 
sacrifice apart from this idea. 5 And it is this idea of different goals that 
makes perception shift and meaning change. 6 In one united goal does this become 
impossible, for your agreement makes interpretation stabilize and last. p641

T-30.VII.6. How can communication really be established while the symbols that 
are used mean different things? 2 The Holy Spirit's goal gives one 
interpretation, meaningful to you and to your brother. 3 Thus can you 
communicate with him, and he with you. 4 In symbols that you both can understand 
the sacrifice of meaning is undone. 5 All sacrifice entails the loss of your 
ability to see relationships among events. 6 And looked at separately they have 
no meaning. 7 For there is no light by which they can be seen and understood. 8 
They have no purpose. 9 And what they are for cannot be seen. 10 In any thought 
of loss there is no meaning. 11 No one has agreed with you on what it means. 12 
It is a part of a distorted script, which cannot be interpreted with meaning. 13 
It must be forever unintelligible. 14 This is not communication. 15 Your dark 
dreams are but the senseless, isolated scripts you write in sleep. 16 Look not 
to separate dreams for meaning. 17 Only dreams of pardon can be shared. 18 They 
mean the same to both of you.

T-30.VII.7. Do not interpret out of solitude, for what you see means nothing. 2 
It will shift in what it stands for, and you will believe the world is an 
uncertain place, in which you walk in danger and uncertainty. 3 It is but your 
interpretations which are lacking in stability, for they are not in line with 
what you really are. 4 This is a state so seemingly unsafe that fear must rise. 
5 Do not continue thus, my brother. 6 We have one Interpreter. 7 And through His 
use of symbols are we joined, so that they mean the same to all of us. 8 Our 
common language lets us speak to all our brothers, and to understand with them 
forgiveness has been given to us all, and thus we can communicate again.




VIII. Changeless Reality

T-30.VIII.1. Appearances deceive, but can be changed. 2 Reality is changeless. 3 
It does not deceive at all, and if you fail to see beyond appearances you <are> 
deceived. 4 For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real 
before, and now you think it real again. 5 Reality is thus reduced to form, and 
capable of change. 6 Reality is changeless. 7 It is this that makes it real, and 
keeps it separate from all appearances. 8 It must transcend all form to be 
itself. 9 It cannot change.

T-30.VIII.2. The miracle is means to demonstrate that all appearances can change 
because they <are> appearances, and cannot have the changelessness reality 
entails. p642 2 The miracle attests salvation from appearances by showing they 
can change. 3 Your brother has a changelessness in him beyond appearance and 
deception, both. 4 It is obscured by changing views of him that you perceive as 
his reality. 5 The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his 
perfect health, his perfect freedom from all forms of lack, and safety from 
disaster of all kinds. 6 The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or 
suffering in any form, because it can so easily be changed. 7 This demonstrates 
that it was never real, and could not stem from his reality. 8 For that is 
changeless, and has no effects that anything in Heaven or on earth could ever 
alter. 9 But appearances are shown to be unreal <because> they change.

T-30.VIII.3. What is temptation but a wish to make illusions real? 2 It does not 
seem to be the wish that no reality be so. 3 Yet it is an assertion that some 
forms of idols have a powerful appeal that makes them harder to resist than 
those you would not want to have reality. 4 Temptation, then, is nothing more 
than this; a prayer the miracle touch not some dreams, but keep their unreality 
obscure and give to them reality instead. 5 And Heaven gives no answer to the 
prayer, nor can a miracle be given you to heal appearances you do not like. 6 
You have established limits. 7 What you ask <is> given you, but not of God Who 
knows no limits. 8 You have limited yourself.

T-30.VIII.4. Reality is changeless. 2 Miracles but show what you have interposed 
between reality and your awareness is unreal, and does not interfere at all. 3 
The cost of the belief there must be some appearances beyond the hope of change 
is that the miracle cannot come forth from you consistently. 4 For you have 
asked it be withheld from power to heal all dreams. 5 There is no miracle you 
cannot have when you desire healing. 6 But there is no miracle that can be given 
you unless you want it. 7 Choose what you would heal, and He Who gives all 
miracles has not been given freedom to bestow His gifts upon God's Son. 8 When 
he is tempted, he denies reality. 9 And he becomes the willing slave of what he 
chose instead.

T-30.VIII.5. <Because> reality is changeless is a miracle already there to heal 
all things that change, and offer them to you to see in happy form, devoid of 
fear. 2 It will be given you to look upon your brother thus. 3 But not while you 
would have it otherwise in some respects. p643 4 For this but means you would 
not have him healed and whole. 5 The Christ in him is perfect. 6 Is it this that 
you would look upon? 7 Then let there be no dreams about him that you would 
prefer to seeing this. 8 And you will see the Christ in him because you let Him 
come to you. 9 And when He has appeared to you, you will be certain you are like 
Him, for He is the changeless in your brother and in you.

T-30.VIII.6. This will you look upon when you decide there is not one appearance 
you would hold in place of what your brother really is. 2 Let no temptation to 
prefer a dream allow uncertainty to enter here. 3 Be not made guilty and afraid 
when you are tempted by a dream of what he is. 4 But do not give it power to 
replace the changeless in him in your sight of him. 5 There is no false 
appearance but will fade, if you request a miracle instead. 6 There is no pain 
from which he is not free, if you would have him be but what he is. 7 Why should 
you fear to see the Christ in him? 8 You but behold yourself in what you see. 9 
As he is healed are you made free of guilt, for his appearance is your own to 
you. p644






Chapter 31.

THE FINAL VISION

I. The Simplicity of Salvation

T-31.I.1. How simple is salvation! 2 All it says is what was never true is not 
true now, and never will be. 3 The impossible has not occurred, and can have no 
effects. 4 And that is all. 5 Can this be hard to learn by anyone who wants it 
to be true? 6 Only unwillingness to learn it could make such an easy lesson 
difficult. 7 How hard is it to see that what is false can not be true, and what 
is true can not be false? 8 You can no longer say that you perceive no 
differences in false and true. 9 You have been told exactly how to tell one from 
the other, and just what to do if you become confused. 10 Why, then, do you 
persist in learning not such simple things?

T-31.I.2. There is a reason. 2 But confuse it not with difficulty in the simple 
things salvation asks you learn. 3 It teaches but the very obvious. 4 It merely 
goes from one apparent lesson to the next, in easy steps that lead you gently 
from one to another, with no strain at all. 5 This cannot be confusing, yet you 
are confused. 6 For somehow you believe that what is totally confused is easier 
to learn and understand. 7 What you have taught yourself is such a giant 
learning feat it is indeed incredible. 8 But you accomplished it because you 
wanted to, and did not pause in diligence to judge it hard to learn or too 
complex to grasp.

T-31.I.3. No one who understands what you have learned, how carefully you 
learned it, and the pains to which you went to practice and repeat the lessons 
endlessly, in every form you could conceive of them, could ever doubt the power 
of your learning skill. 2 There is no greater power in the world. 3 The world 
was made by it, and even now depends on nothing else. 4 The lessons you have 
taught yourself have been so overlearned and fixed they rise like heavy curtains 
to obscure the simple and the obvious. 5 Say not you cannot learn them. 6 For 
your power to learn is strong enough to teach you that your will is not your 
own, your thoughts do not belong to you, and even you are someone else.

T-31.I.4. Who could maintain that lessons such as these are easy? 2 Yet you have 
learned more than this. 3 You have continued, taking every step, however 
difficult, without complaint, until a world was built that suited you. p645 4 
And every lesson that makes up the world arises from the first accomplishment of 
learning; an enormity so great the Holy Spirit's Voice seems small and still 
before its magnitude. 5 The world began with one strange lesson, powerful enough 
to render God forgotten, and His Son an alien to himself, in exile from the home 
where God Himself established him. 6 You who have taught yourself the Son of God 
is guilty, say not that you cannot learn the simple things salvation teaches 
you!

T-31.I.5. Learning is an ability you made and gave yourself. 2 It was not made 
to do the Will of God, but to uphold a wish that it could be opposed, and that a 
will apart from it was yet more real than it. 3 And this has learning sought to 
demonstrate, and you have learned what it was made to teach. 4 Now does your 
ancient overlearning stand implacable before the Voice of truth, and teach you 
that Its lessons are not true; too hard to learn, too difficult to see, and too 
opposed to what is really true. 5 Yet you will learn them, for their learning is 
the only purpose for your learning skill the Holy Spirit sees in all the world. 
6 His simple lessons in forgiveness have a power mightier than yours, because 
they call from God and from your Self to you.

T-31.I.6. Is this a little Voice, so small and still It cannot rise above the 
senseless noise of sounds that have no meaning? 2 God willed not His Son forget 
Him. 3 And the power of His Will is in the Voice that speaks for Him. 4 Which 
lesson will you learn? 5 What outcome is inevitable, sure as God, and far beyond 
all doubt and question? 6 Can it be your little learning, strange in outcome and 
incredible in difficulty will withstand the simple lessons being taught to you 
in every moment of each day, since time began and learning had been made?

T-31.I.7. The lessons to be learned are only two. 2 Each has its outcome in a 
different world. 3 And each world follows surely from its source. 4 The certain 
outcome of the lesson that God's Son is guilty is the world you see. 5 It is a 
world of terror and despair. 6 Nor is there hope of happiness in it. 7 There is 
no plan for safety you can make that ever will succeed. 8 There is no joy that 
you can seek for here and hope to find. 9 Yet this is not the only outcome which 
your learning can produce. 10 However much you may have overlearned your chosen 
task, the lesson that reflects the Love of God is stronger still. 11 And you 
will learn God's Son is innocent, and see another world. p646

T-31.I.8. The outcome of the lesson that God's Son is guiltless is a world in 
which there is no fear, and everything is lit with hope and sparkles with a 
gentle friendliness. 2 Nothing but calls to you in soft appeal to be your 
friend, and let it join with you. 3 And never does a call remain unheard, 
misunderstood, nor left unanswered in the selfsame tongue in which the call was 
made. 4 And you will understand it was this call that everyone and everything 
within the world has always made, but you had not perceived it as it was. 5 And 
now you see you were mistaken. 6 You had been deceived by forms the call was 
hidden in. 7 And so you did not hear it, and had lost a friend who always wanted 
to be part of you. 8 The soft eternal calling of each part of God's creation to 
the whole is heard throughout the world this second lesson brings.

T-31.I.9. There is no living thing that does not share the universal Will that 
it be whole, and that you do not leave its call unheard. 2 Without your answer 
is it left to die, as it is saved from death when you have heard its calling as 
the ancient call to life, and understood that it is but your own. 3 The Christ 
in you remembers God with all the certainty with which He knows His Love. 4 But 
only if His Son is innocent can He be Love. 5 For God were fear indeed if he 
whom He created innocent could be a slave to guilt. 6 God's perfect Son 
remembers his creation. 7 But in guilt he has forgotten what he really is.

T-31.I.10. The fear of God results as surely from the lesson that His Son is 
guilty as God's Love must be remembered when he learns his innocence. 2 For hate 
must father fear, and look upon its father as itself. 3 How wrong are you who 
fail to hear the call that echoes past each seeming call to death, that sings 
behind each murderous attack and pleads that love restore the dying world. 4 You 
do not understand Who calls to you beyond each form of hate; each call to war. 5 
Yet you will recognize Him as you give Him answer in the language that He calls. 
6 He will appear when you have answered Him, and you will know in Him that God 
is Love.

T-31.I.11. What is temptation but a wish to make the wrong decision on what you 
would learn, and have an outcome that you do not want? 2 It is the recognition 
that it is a state of mind unwanted that becomes the means whereby the choice is 
reassessed; another outcome seen to be preferred. 3 You are deceived if you 
believe you want disaster and disunity and pain. 4 Hear not the call for this 
within yourself. p647 5 But listen, rather, to the deeper call beyond it that 
appeals for peace and joy. 6 And all the world will give you joy and peace. 7 
For as you hear, you answer. 8 And behold! 9 Your answer is the proof of what 
you learned. 10 Its outcome is the world you look upon.

T-31.I.12. Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, 
all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean 
and what their purpose is. 2 Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world 
is for. 3 We do not know. 4 Let every image held of everyone be loosened from 
our minds and swept away.

T-31.I.13. Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good 
that ever crossed your mind of anyone. 2 Now do you know him not. 3 But you are 
free to learn of him, and learn of him anew. 4 Now is he born again to you, and 
you are born again to him, without the past that sentenced him to die, and you 
with him. 5 Now is he free to live as you are free, because an ancient learning 
passed away, and left a place for truth to be reborn.




II. Walking with Christ

T-31.II.1. An ancient lesson is not overcome by the opposing of the new and old. 
2 It is not vanquished that the truth be known, nor fought against to lose to 
truth's appeal. 3 There is no battle that must be prepared; no time to be 
expended, and no plans that need be laid for bringing in the new. 4 There <is> 
an ancient battle being waged against the truth, but truth does not respond. 5 
Who could be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts himself? 6 He has no enemy in 
truth. 7 And can he be assailed by dreams?

T-31.II.2. Let us review again what seems to stand between you and the truth of 
what you are. 2 For there are steps in its relinquishment. 3 The first is a 
decision that you make. 4 But afterwards, the truth is given you. 5 You would 
establish truth. 6 And by your wish you set two choices to be made, each time 
you think you must decide on anything. 7 Neither is true. 8 Nor are they 
different. 9 Yet must we see them both, before you can look past them to the one 
alternative that <is> a different choice. 10 But not in dreams you made, that 
this might be obscured to you.

T-31.II.3. What you would choose between is not a choice and gives but the 
illusion it is free, for it will have one outcome either way. p648 2 Thus is it 
really not a choice at all. 3 The leader and the follower emerge as separate 
roles, each seeming to possess advantages you would not want to lose. 4 So in 
their fusion there appears to be the hope of satisfaction and of peace. 5 You 
see yourself divided into both these roles, forever split between the two. 6 And 
every friend or enemy becomes a means to help you save yourself from this.

T-31.II.4. Perhaps you call it love. 2 Perhaps you think that it is murder 
justified at last. 3 You hate the one you gave the leader's role when you would 
have it, and you hate as well his not assuming it at times you want to let the 
follower in you arise, and give away the role of leadership. 4 And this is what 
you made your brother for, and learned to think that this his purpose is. 5 
Unless he serves it, he has not fulfilled the function that was given him by 
you. 6 And thus he merits death, because he has no purpose and no usefulness to 
you.

T-31.II.5. And what of him? 2 What does he want of you? 3 What could he want, 
but what you want of him? 4 Herein is life as easily as death, for what you 
choose you choose as well for him. 5 Two calls you make to him, as he to you. 6 
Between these two <is> choice, because from them there is a different outcome. 7 
If he be the leader or the follower to you it matters not, for you have chosen 
death. 8 But if he calls for death or calls for life, for hate or for 
forgiveness and for help, is not the same in outcome. 9 Hear the one, and you 
are separate from him and are lost. 10 But hear the other, and you join with him 
and in your answer is salvation found. 11 The voice you hear in him is but your 
own. 12 What does he ask you for? 13 And listen well! 14 For he is asking what 
will come to you, because you see an image of yourself and hear your voice 
requesting what you want.

T-31.II.6. Before you answer, pause to think of this: 




2 The answer that I give my brother is what I am asking for. 3 And what I learn 
of him is what I learn about myself.




4 Then let us wait an instant and be still, forgetting everything we thought we 
heard; remembering how much we do not know. 5 This brother neither leads nor 
follows us, but walks beside us on the selfsame road. 6 He is like us, as near 
or far away from what we want as we will let him be. 7 We make no gains he does 
not make with us, and we fall back if he does not advance. p649 8 Take not his 
hand in anger but in love, for in his progress do you count your own. 9 And we 
go separately along the way unless you keep him safely by your side.

T-31.II.7. Because he is your equal in God's Love, you will be saved from all 
appearances and answer to the Christ Who calls to you. 2 Be still and listen. 3 
Think not ancient thoughts. 4 Forget the dismal lessons that you learned about 
this Son of God who calls to you. 5 Christ calls to all with equal tenderness, 
seeing no leaders and no followers, and hearing but one answer to them all. 6 
Because He hears one Voice, He cannot hear a different answer from the one He 
gave when God appointed Him His only Son.

T-31.II.8. Be very still an instant. 2 Come without all thought of what you ever 
learned before, and put aside all images you made. 3 The old will fall away 
before the new without your opposition or intent. 4 There will be no attack upon 
the things you thought were precious and in need of care. 5 There will be no 
assault upon your wish to hear a call that never has been made. 6 Nothing will 
hurt you in this holy place, to which you come to listen silently and learn the 
truth of what you really want. 7 No more than this will you be asked to learn. 8 
But as you hear it, you will understand you need but come away without the 
thoughts you did not want, and that were never true.

T-31.II.9. Forgive your brother all appearances, that are but ancient lessons 
you have taught yourself about the sinfulness in you. 2 Hear but his call for 
mercy and release from all the fearful images he holds of what he is and of what 
you must be. 3 He is afraid to walk with you, and thinks perhaps a bit behind, a 
bit ahead would be a safer place for him to be. 4 Can you make progress if you 
think the same, advancing only when he would step back, and falling back when he 
would go ahead? 5 For so do you forget the journey's goal, which is but to 
decide to walk with him, so neither leads nor follows. 6 Thus it is a way you go 
together, not alone. 7 And in this choice is learning's outcome changed, for 
Christ has been reborn to both of you.

T-31.II.10. An instant spent without your old ideas of who your great companion 
is and what he should be asking for, will be enough to let this happen. 2 And 
you will perceive his purpose is the same as yours. 3 He asks for what you want, 
and needs the same as you. 4 It takes, perhaps, a different form in him, but it 
is not the form you answer to. 5 He asks and you receive, for you have come with 
but one purpose; that you learn you love your brother with a brother's love. 
p650 6 And as a brother, must his Father be the same as yours, as he is like 
yourself in truth.

T-31.II.11. Together is your joint inheritance remembered and accepted by you 
both. 2 Alone it is denied to both of you. 3 Is it not clear that while you 
still insist on leading or on following, you think you walk alone, with no one 
by your side? 4 This is the road to nowhere, for the light cannot be given while 
you walk alone, and so you cannot see which way you go. 5 And thus there is 
confusion, and a sense of endless doubting as you stagger back and forward in 
the darkness and alone. 6 Yet these are but appearances of what the journey is, 
and how it must be made. 7 For next to you is One Who holds the light before 
you, so that every step is made in certainty and sureness of the road. 8 A 
blindfold can indeed obscure your sight, but cannot make the way itself grow 
dark. 9 And He Who travels with you <has> the light.




III. The Self-Accused

T-31.III.1. Only the self-accused condemn. 2 As you prepare to make a choice 
that will result in different outcomes, there is first one thing that must be 
overlearned. 3 It must become a habit of response so typical of everything you 
do that it becomes your first response to all temptation, and to every situation 
that occurs. 4 Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here delay of happiness 
is shortened by a span of time you cannot realize. 5 You never hate your brother 
for his sins, but only for your own. 6 Whatever form his sins appear to take, it 
but obscures the fact that you believe them to be yours, and therefore meriting 
a "just" attack.

T-31.III.2. Why should his sins be sins, if you did not believe they could not 
be forgiven in you? 2 Why are they real in him, if you did not believe that they 
are your reality? 3 And why do you attack them everywhere except you hate 
yourself? 4 Are <you> a sin? 5 You answer "yes" whenever you attack, for by 
attack do you assert that you are guilty, and must give as you deserve. 6 And 
what can you deserve but what you are? 7 If you did not believe that you 
deserved attack, it never would occur to you to give attack to anyone at all. 8 
Why should you? 9 What would be the gain to you? 10 What could the outcome be 
that you would want? 11 And how could murder bring you benefit? p651

T-31.III.3. Sins are in bodies. 2 They are not perceived in minds. 3 They are 
not seen as purposes, but actions. 4 Bodies act, and minds do not. 5 And 
therefore must the body be at fault for what it does. 6 It is not seen to be a 
passive thing, obeying your commands, and doing nothing of itself at all. 7 If 
you are sin you <are> a body, for the mind acts not. 8 And purpose must be in 
the body, not the mind. 9 The body must act on its own, and motivate itself. 10 
If you are sin you lock the mind within the body, and you give its purpose to 
its prison house, which acts instead of it. 11 A jailer does not follow orders, 
but enforces orders on the prisoner.

T-31.III.4. Yet is the <body> prisoner, and not the mind. 2 The body thinks no 
thoughts. 3 It has no power to learn, to pardon, nor enslave. 4 It gives no 
orders that the mind need serve, nor sets conditions that it must obey. 5 It 
holds in prison but the willing mind that would abide in it. 6 It sickens at the 
bidding of the mind that would become its prisoner. 7 And it grows old and dies, 
because that mind is sick within itself. 8 Learning is all that causes change. 9 
And so the body, where no learning can occur, could never change unless the mind 
preferred the body change in its appearances, to suit the purpose given by the 
mind. 10 For mind can learn, and there is all change made.

T-31.III.5. The mind that thinks it is a sin has but one purpose; that the body 
be the source of sin, to keep it in the prison house it chose and guards and 
holds itself at bay, a sleeping prisoner to the snarling dogs of hate and evil, 
sickness and attack; of pain and age, of grief and suffering. 2 Here are the 
thoughts of sacrifice preserved, for here guilt rules, and orders that the world 
be like itself; a place where nothing can find mercy, nor survive the ravages of 
fear except in murder and in death. 3 For here are you made sin, and sin cannot 
abide the joyous and the free, for they are enemies which sin must kill. 4 In 
death is sin preserved, and those who think that they are sin must die for what 
they think they are.

T-31.III.6. Let us be glad that you will see what you believe, and that it has 
been given you to change what you believe. 2 The body will but follow. 3 It can 
never lead you where you would not be. 4 It does not guard your sleep, nor 
interfere with your awakening. 5 Release your body from imprisonment, and you 
will see no one as prisoner to what you have escaped. 6 You will not want to 
hold in guilt your chosen enemies, nor keep in chains, to the illusion of a 
changing love, the ones you think are friends. p652

T-31.III.7. The innocent release in gratitude for their release. 2 And what they 
see upholds their freedom from imprisonment and death. 3 Open your mind to 
change, and there will be no ancient penalty exacted from your brother or 
yourself. 4 For God has said there <is> no sacrifice that can be asked; there 
<is> no sacrifice that can be made.




IV. The Real Alternative

T-31.IV.1. There is a tendency to think the world can offer consolation and 
escape from problems that its purpose is to keep. 2 Why should this be? 3 
Because it is a place where choice among illusions seems to be the only choice. 
4 And you are in control of outcomes of your choosing. 5 Thus you think, within 
the narrow band from birth to death, a little time is given you to use for you 
alone; a time when everyone conflicts with you, but you can choose which road 
will lead you out of conflict, and away from difficulties that concern you not. 
6 Yet they <are> your concern. 7 How, then, can you escape from them by leaving 
them behind? 8 What must go with you, you will take with you whatever road you 
choose to walk along.

T-31.IV.2. Real choice is no illusion. 2 But the world has none to offer. 3 All 
its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. 4 There is no 
choice in its alternatives. 5 Seek not escape from problems here. 6 The world 
was made that problems could not <be> escaped. 7 Be not deceived by all the 
different names its roads are given. 8 They have but one end. 9 And each is but 
the means to gain that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however 
differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. 10 Their 
end is certain, for there is no choice among them. 11 All of them will lead to 
death. 12 On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. 13 
And on some the thorns are felt at once. 14 The choice is not what will the 
ending be, but when it comes.

T-31.IV.3. There is no choice where every end is sure. 2 Perhaps you would 
prefer to try them all, before you really learn they are but one. 3 The roads 
this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come 
when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. 4 Men have died on 
seeing this, because they saw no way except the pathways offered by the world. 
p653 5 And learning they led nowhere, lost their hope. 6 And yet this was the 
time they could have learned their greatest lesson. 7 All must reach this point, 
and go beyond it. 8 It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the 
world. 9 But this is not the lesson in itself. 10 The lesson has a purpose, and 
in this you come to understand what it is for.

T-31.IV.4. Why would you seek to try another road, another person or another 
place, when you have learned the way the lesson starts, but do not yet perceive 
what it is for? 2 Its purpose is the answer to the search that all must 
undertake who still believe there is another answer to be found. 3 Learn now, 
without despair, there is no hope of answer in the world. 4 But do not judge the 
lesson that is but begun with this. 5 Seek not another signpost in the world 
that seems to point to still another road. 6 No longer look for hope where there 
is none. 7 Make fast your learning now, and understand you but waste time unless 
you go beyond what you have learned to what is yet to learn. 8 For from this 
lowest point will learning lead to heights of happiness, in which you see the 
purpose of the lesson shining clear, and perfectly within your learning grasp.

T-31.IV.5. Who would be willing to be turned away from all the roadways of the 
world, unless he understood their real futility? 2 Is it not needful that he 
should begin with this, to seek another way instead? 3 For while he sees a 
choice where there is none, what power of decision can he use? 4 The great 
release of power must begin with learning where it really has a use. 5 And what 
decision has power if it be applied in situations without choice?

T-31.IV.6. The learning that the world can offer but one choice, no matter what 
its form may be, is the beginning of acceptance that there is a real alternative 
instead. 2 To fight against this step is to defeat your purpose here. 3 You did 
not come to learn to find a road the world does not contain. 4 The search for 
different pathways in the world is but the search for different forms of truth. 
5 And this would <keep> the truth from being reached.

T-31.IV.7. Think not that happiness is ever found by following a road away from 
it. 2 This makes no sense, and cannot be the way. 3 To you who seem to find this 
course to be too difficult to learn, let me repeat that to achieve a goal you 
must proceed in its direction, not away from it. 4 And every road that leads the 
other way will not advance the purpose to be found. 5 If this be difficult to 
understand, then is this course impossible to learn. 6 But only then. p654 7 For 
otherwise, it is a simple teaching in the obvious.

T-31.IV.8. There <is> a choice that you have power to make when you have seen 
the real alternatives. 2 Until that point is reached you have no choice, and you 
can but decide how you would choose the better to deceive yourself again. 3 This 
course attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision cannot lie in 
choosing different forms of what is still the same illusion and the same 
mistake. 4 All choices in the world depend on this; you choose between your 
brother and yourself, and you will gain as much as he will lose, and what you 
lose is what is given him. 5 How utterly opposed to truth is this, when all the 
lesson's purpose is to teach that what your brother loses <you> have lost, and 
what he gains is what is given <you.>

T-31.IV.9. He has not left His Thoughts! 2 But you forgot His Presence and 
remembered not His Love. 3 No pathway in the world can lead to Him, nor any 
worldly goal be one with His. 4 What road in all the world will lead within, 
when every road was made to separate the journey from the purpose it must have 
unless it be but futile wandering? 5 All roads that lead away from what you are 
will lead you to confusion and despair. 6 Yet has He never left His Thoughts to 
die, without their Source forever in themselves.

T-31.IV.10. He has not left His Thoughts! 2 He could no more depart from them 
than they could keep Him out. 3 In unity with Him do they abide, and in Their 
Oneness Both are kept complete. 4 There is no road that leads away from Him. 5 A 
journey from yourself does not exist. 6 How foolish and insane it is to think 
that there could be a road with such an aim! 7 Where could it go? 8 And how 
could you be made to travel on it, walking there without your own reality at one 
with you?

T-31.IV.11. Forgive yourself your madness, and forget all senseless journeys and 
all goal-less aims. 2 They have no meaning. 3 You can not escape from what you 
are. 4 For God is merciful, and did not let His Son abandon Him. 5 For what He 
is be thankful, for in that is your escape from madness and from death. 6 
Nowhere but where He is can you be found. 7 There <is> no path that does not 
lead to Him. p655




V. Self-Concept versus Self

T-31.V.1. The learning of the world is built upon a concept of the self adjusted 
to the world's reality. 2 It fits it well. 3 For this an image is that suits a 
world of shadows and illusions. 4 Here it walks at home, where what it sees is 
one with it. 5 The building of a concept of the self is what the learning of the 
world is for. 6 This is its purpose; that you come without a self, and make one 
as you go along. 7 And by the time you reach "maturity" you have perfected it, 
to meet the world on equal terms, at one with its demands.

T-31.V.2. A concept of the self is made by you. 2 It bears no likeness to 
yourself at all. 3 It is an idol, made to take the place of your reality as Son 
of God. 4 The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it 
appears to be. 5 For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind 
can recognize. 6 The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted on. 
7 It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. 8 It searches 
for companions and it looks, at times with pity, on the suffering, and sometimes 
offers solace. 9 It believes that it is good within an evil world.

T-31.V.3. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked and unable to 
provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. 2 And so this face is often wet 
with tears at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous 
and good. 3 This aspect never makes the first attack. 4 But every day a hundred 
little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to 
irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse.

T-31.V.4. The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly wears can 
tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a well-known fact the world deals 
harshly with defenseless innocence? 2 No one who makes a picture of himself 
omits this face, for he has need of it. 3 The other side he does not want to 
see. 4 Yet it is here the learning of the world has set its sights, for it is 
here the world's "reality" is set, to see to it the idol lasts.

T-31.V.5. Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of 
the self was made to teach. 2 It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a 
fear so devastating that the face that smiles above it must forever look away, 
lest it perceive the treachery it hides. 3 The lesson teaches this: "I am the 
thing you made of me, and as you look on me, you stand condemned because of what 
I am." 4 On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it 
guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them 
will not escape. p656

T-31.V.6. Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned 
eternally. 2 For what you are has now become his sin. 3 For this is no 
forgiveness possible. 4 No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing 
finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. 5 It points to you as 
well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. 6 
And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved and kept in 
darkness, where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely 
show. 7 You can be neither blamed for what you are, nor can you change the 
things it makes you do. 8 Your brother then is symbol of your sins to you who 
are but silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency, condemning still your brother 
for the hated thing you are.

T-31.V.7. Concepts are learned. 2 They are not natural. 3 Apart from learning 
they do not exist. 4 They are not given, so they must be made. 5 Not one of them 
is true, and many come from feverish imaginations, hot with hatred and 
distortions born of fear. 6 What is a concept but a thought to which its maker 
gives a meaning of his own? 7 Concepts maintain the world. 8 But they can not be 
used to demonstrate the world is real. 9 For all of them are made within the 
world, born in its shadow, growing in its ways and finally "maturing" in its 
thought. 10 They are ideas of idols, painted with the brushes of the world, 
which cannot make a single picture representing truth.

T-31.V.8. A concept of the self is meaningless, for no one here can see what it 
is for, and therefore cannot picture what it is. 2 Yet is all learning that the 
world directs begun and ended with the single aim of teaching you this concept 
of yourself, that you will choose to follow this world's laws, and never seek to 
go beyond its roads nor realize the way you see yourself. 3 Now must the Holy 
Spirit find a way to help you see this concept of the self must be undone, if 
any peace of mind is to be given you. 4 Nor can it be unlearned except by 
lessons aimed to teach that you are something else. 5 For otherwise, you would 
be asked to make exchange of what you now believe for total loss of self, and 
greater terror would arise in you.

T-31.V.9. Thus are the Holy Spirit's lesson plans arranged in easy steps, that 
though there be some lack of ease at times and some distress, there is no 
shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what seems to be 
the evidence on its behalf. p657 2 Let us consider, then, what proof there is 
that you are what your brother made of you. 3 For even though you do not yet 
perceive that this is what you think, you surely learned by now that you behave 
as if it were. 4 Does he react for you? 5 And does he know exactly what would 
happen? 6 Can he see your future and ordain, before it comes, what you should do 
in every circumstance? 7 He must have made the world as well as you to have such 
prescience in the things to come.

T-31.V.10. That you are what your brother made of you seems most unlikely. 2 
Even if he did, who gave the face of innocence to you? 3 Is this your 
contribution? 4 Who is, then, the "you" who made it? 5 And who is deceived by 
all your goodness, and attacks it so? 6 Let us forget the concept's foolishness, 
and merely think of this; there are two parts to what you think yourself to be. 
7 If one were generated by your brother, who was there to make the other? 8 And 
from whom must something be kept hidden? 9 If the world be evil, there is still 
no need to hide what you are made of. 10 Who is there to see? 11 And what but is 
attacked could need defense?

T-31.V.11. Perhaps the reason why this concept must be kept in darkness is that, 
in the light, the one who would not think it true is you. 2 And what would 
happen to the world you see, if all its underpinnings were removed? 3 Your 
concept of the world depends upon this concept of the self. 4 And both would go, 
if either one were ever raised to doubt. 5 The Holy Spirit does not seek to 
throw you into panic. 6 So He merely asks if just a little question might be 
raised.

T-31.V.12. There are alternatives about the thing that you must be. 2 You might, 
for instance, be the thing you chose to have your brother be. 3 This shifts the 
concept of the self from what is wholly passive, and at least makes way for 
active choice, and some acknowledgment that interaction must have entered in. 4 
There is some understanding that you chose for both of you, and what he 
represents has meaning that was given it by you. 5 It also shows some glimmering 
of sight into perception's law that what you see reflects the state of the 
perceiver's mind. 6 Yet who was it that did the choosing first? 7 If you are 
what you chose your brother be, alternatives were there to choose among, and 
someone must have first decided on the one to choose, and let the other go.

T-31.V.13. Although this step has gains, it does not yet approach a basic 
question. 2 Something must have gone before these concepts of the self. p658 3 
And something must have done the learning which gave rise to them. 4 Nor can 
this be explained by either view. 5 The main advantage of the shifting to the 
second from the first is that you somehow entered in the choice by your 
decision. 6 But this gain is paid in almost equal loss, for now you stand 
accused of guilt for what your brother is. 7 And you must share his guilt, 
because you chose it for him in the image of your own. 8 While only he was 
treacherous before, now must you be condemned along with him.

T-31.V.14. The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of 
the world. 2 And everyone believes that he must find the answer to the riddle of 
himself. 3 Salvation can be seen as nothing more than the escape from concepts. 
4 It does not concern itself with content of the mind, but with the simple 
statement that it thinks. 5 And what can think has choice, and can be shown that 
different thoughts have different consequence. 6 So it can learn that everything 
it thinks reflects the deep confusion that it feels about how it was made and 
what it is. 7 And vaguely does the concept of the self appear to answer what it 
does not know.

T-31.V.15. Seek not your Self in symbols. 2 There can be no concept that can 
stand for what you are. 3 What matters it which concept you accept while you 
perceive a self that interacts with evil, and reacts to wicked things? 4 Your 
concept of yourself will still remain quite meaningless. 5 And you will not 
perceive that you can interact but with yourself. 6 To see a guilty world is but 
the sign your learning has been guided by the world, and you behold it as you 
see yourself. 7 The concept of the self embraces all you look upon, and nothing 
is outside of this perception. 8 If you can be hurt by anything, you see a 
picture of your secret wishes. 9 Nothing more than this. 10 And in your 
suffering of any kind you see your own concealed desire to kill.

T-31.V.16. You will make many concepts of the self as learning goes along. 2 
Each one will show the changes in your own relationships, as your perception of 
yourself is changed. 3 There will be some confusion every time there is a shift, 
but be you thankful that the learning of the world is loosening its grasp upon 
your mind. 4 And be you sure and happy in the confidence that it will go at 
last, and leave your mind at peace. 5 The role of the accuser will appear in 
many places and in many forms. 6 And each will seem to be accusing you. 7 Yet 
have no fear it will not be undone. p659

T-31.V.17. The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them. 2 
There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know 
not what you are. 3 It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, 
unhindered and unbound. 4 Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth 
revealed exactly as it is. 5 When every concept has been raised to doubt and 
question, and been recognized as made on no assumptions that would stand the 
light, then is the truth left free to enter in its sanctuary, clean and free of 
guilt. 6 There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this: 




7 I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where 
I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself.




8 Yet in this learning is salvation born. 9 And What you are will tell you of 
Itself.




VI. Recognizing the Spirit

T-31.VI.1. You see the flesh or recognize the spirit. 2 There is no compromise 
between the two. 3 If one is real the other must be false, for what is real 
denies its opposite. 4 There is no choice in vision but this one. 5 What you 
decide in this determines all you see and think is real and hold as true. 6 On 
this one choice does all your world depend, for here have you established what 
you are, as flesh or spirit in your own belief. 7 If you choose flesh, you never 
will escape the body as your own reality, for you have chosen that you want it 
so. 8 But choose the spirit, and all Heaven bends to touch your eyes and bless 
your holy sight, that you may see the world of flesh no more except to heal and 
comfort and to bless.

T-31.VI.2. Salvation is undoing. 2 If you choose to see the body, you behold a 
world of separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at all. 
3 This one appears and disappears in death; that one is doomed to suffering and 
loss. 4 And no one is exactly as he was an instant previous, nor will he be the 
same as he is now an instant hence. 5 Who could have trust where so much change 
is seen, for who is worthy if he be but dust? 6 Salvation is undoing of all 
this. p660 7 For constancy arises in the sight of those whose eyes salvation has 
released from looking at the cost of keeping guilt, because they chose to let it 
go instead.

T-31.VI.3. Salvation does not ask that you behold the spirit and perceive the 
body not. 2 It merely asks that this should be your choice. 3 For you can see 
the body without help, but do not understand how to behold a world apart from 
it. 4 It is your world salvation will undo, and let you see another world your 
eyes could never find. 5 Be not concerned how this could ever be. 6 You do not 
understand how what you see arose to meet your sight. 7 For if you did, it would 
be gone. 8 The veil of ignorance is drawn across the evil and the good, and must 
be passed that both may disappear, so that perception finds no hiding place. 9 
How is this done? 10 It is not done at all. 11 What could there be within the 
universe that God created that must still be done?

T-31.VI.4. Only in arrogance could you conceive that you must make the way to 
Heaven plain. 2 The means are given you by which to see the world that will 
replace the one you made. 3 Your will be done! 4 In Heaven as on earth this is 
forever true. 5 It matters not where you believe you are, nor what you think the 
truth about yourself must really be. 6 It makes no difference what you look 
upon, nor what you choose to feel or think or wish. 7 For God Himself has said, 
"Your will be done." 8 And it is done to you accordingly.

T-31.VI.5. You who believe that you can choose to see the Son of God as you 
would have him be, forget not that no concept of yourself will stand against the 
truth of what you are. 2 Undoing truth would be impossible. 3 But concepts are 
not difficult to change. 4 One vision, clearly seen, that does not fit the 
picture as it was perceived before will change the world for eyes that learn to 
see, because the concept of the self has changed.

T-31.VI.6. Are you invulnerable? 2 Then the world is harmless in your sight. 3 
Do you forgive? 4 Then is the world forgiving, for you have forgiven it its 
trespasses, and so it looks on you with eyes that see as yours. 5 Are you a 
body? 6 So is all the world perceived as treacherous, and out to kill. 7 Are you 
a spirit, deathless, and without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin 
upon you? 8 So the world is seen as stable, fully worthy of your trust; a happy 
place to rest in for a while, where nothing need be feared, but only loved. 9 
Who is unwelcome to the kind in heart? 10 And what could hurt the truly 
innocent? p661

T-31.VI.7. Your will be done, you holy child of God. 2 It does not matter if you 
think you are in earth or Heaven. 3 What your Father wills of you can never 
change. 4 The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as 
innocent as love itself. 5 And you <are> worthy that your will be done!




VII. The Savior's Vision

T-31.VII.1. Learning is change. 2 Salvation does not seek to use a means as yet 
too alien to your thinking to be helpful, nor to make the kinds of change you 
could not recognize. 3 Concepts are needed while perception lasts, and changing 
concepts is salvation's task. 4 For it must deal in contrasts, not in truth, 
which has no opposite and cannot change. 5 In this world's concepts are the 
guilty "bad"; the "good" are innocent. 6 And no one here but holds a concept of 
himself in which he counts the "good" to pardon him the "bad." 7 Nor does he 
trust the "good" in anyone, believing that the "bad" must lurk behind. 8 This 
concept emphasizes treachery, and trust becomes impossible. 9 Nor could it 
change while you perceive the "bad" in you.

T-31.VII.2. You could not recognize your "evil" thoughts as long as you see 
value in attack. 2 You will perceive them sometimes, but will not see them as 
meaningless. 3 And so they come in fearful form, with content still concealed, 
to shake your sorry concept of yourself and blacken it with still another 
"crime." 4 You cannot give yourself your innocence, for you are too confused 
about yourself. 5 But should <one> brother dawn upon your sight as wholly worthy 
of forgiveness, then your concept of yourself is wholly changed. 6 Your "evil" 
thoughts have been forgiven with his, because you let them all affect you not. 7 
No longer do you choose that you should be the sign of evil and of guilt in him. 
8 And as you give your trust to what is good in him, you give it to the good in 
you.

T-31.VII.3. In terms of concepts, it is thus you see him more than just a body, 
for the good is never what the body seems to be. 2 The actions of the body are 
perceived as coming from the "baser" part of you, and thus of him as well. 3 By 
focusing upon the good in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your 
sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling 
round the good. 4 And this will be your concept of yourself, when you have 
reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see. p662 5 
For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. 
6 And in His sight there <is> another world.

T-31.VII.4. You live in that world just as much as this. 2 For both are concepts 
of yourself, which can be interchanged but never jointly held. 3 The contrast is 
far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, because 
it was not made for you alone. 4 Born as a gift for someone not perceived to be 
yourself, it has been given you. 5 For your forgiveness, offered unto him, has 
been accepted now for both of you.

T-31.VII.5. Have faith in him who walks with you, so that your fearful concept 
of yourself may change. 2 And look upon the good in him, that you may not be 
frightened by your "evil" thoughts because they do not cloud your view of him. 3 
And all this shift requires is that you be willing that this happy change occur. 
4 No more than this is asked. 5 On its behalf, remember what the concept of 
yourself that now you hold has brought you in its wake, and welcome the glad 
contrast offered you. 6 Hold out your hand, that you may have the gift of kind 
forgiveness which you offer one whose need for it is just the same as yours. 7 
And let the cruel concept of yourself be changed to one that brings the peace of 
God.

T-31.VII.6. The concept of yourself that now you hold would guarantee your 
function here remain forever unaccomplished and undone. 2 And thus it dooms you 
to a bitter sense of deep depression and futility. 3 Yet it need not be fixed, 
unless you choose to hold it past the hope of change and keep it static and 
concealed within your mind. 4 Give it instead to Him Who understands the changes 
that it needs to let it serve the function given you to bring you peace, that 
you may offer peace to have it yours. 5 Alternatives are in your mind to use, 
and you can see yourself another way. 6 Would you not rather look upon yourself 
as needed for salvation of the world, instead of as salvation's enemy?

T-31.VII.7. The concept of the self stands like a shield, a silent barricade 
before the truth, and hides it from your sight. 2 All things you see are images, 
because you look on them as through a barrier that dims your sight and warps 
your vision, so that you behold nothing with clarity. 3 The light is kept from 
everything you see. 4 At most, you glimpse a shadow of what lies beyond. 5 At 
least, you merely look on darkness, and perceive the terrified imaginings that 
come from guilty thoughts and concepts born of fear. p663 6 And what you see is 
hell, for fear <is> hell. 7 All that is given you is for release; the sight, the 
vision and the inner Guide all lead you out of hell with those you love beside 
you, and the universe with them.

T-31.VII.8. Behold your role within the universe! 2 To every part of true 
creation has the Lord of Love and life entrusted all salvation from the misery 
of hell. 3 And to each one has He allowed the grace to be a savior to the holy 
ones especially entrusted to his care. 4 And this he learns when first he looks 
upon one brother as he looks upon himself, and sees the mirror of himself in 
him. 5 Thus is the concept of himself laid by, for nothing stands between his 
sight and what he looks upon, to judge what he beholds. 6 And in this single 
vision does he see the face of Christ, and understands he looks on everyone as 
he beholds this one. 7 For there is light where darkness was before, and now the 
veil is lifted from his sight.

T-31.VII.9. The veil across the face of Christ, the fear of God and of 
salvation, and the love of guilt and death, they all are different names for 
just one error; that there is a space between you and your brother, kept apart 
by an illusion of yourself that holds him off from you, and you away from him. 2 
The sword of judgment is the weapon that you give to the illusion of yourself, 
that it may fight to keep the space that holds your brother off unoccupied by 
love. 3 Yet while you hold this sword, you must perceive the body as yourself, 
for you are bound to separation from the sight of him who holds the mirror to 
another view of what he is, and thus what you must be.

T-31.VII.10. What is temptation but the wish to stay in hell and misery? 2 And 
what could this give rise to but an image of yourself that can be miserable, and 
remain in hell and torment? 3 Who has learned to see his brother not as this has 
saved himself, and thus is he a savior to the rest. 4 To everyone has God 
entrusted all, because a partial savior would be one who is but partly saved. 5 
The holy ones whom God has given you to save are but everyone you meet or look 
upon, not knowing who they are; all those you saw an instant and forgot, and 
those you knew a long while since, and those you will yet meet; the unremembered 
and the not yet born. 6 For God has given you His Son to save from every concept 
that he ever held.

T-31.VII.11. Yet while you wish to stay in hell, how could you be the savior of 
the Son of God? 2 How would you know his holiness while you see him apart from 
yours? p664 3 For holiness is seen through holy eyes that look upon the 
innocence within, and thus expect to see it everywhere. 4 And so they call it 
forth in everyone they look upon, that he may be what they expect of him. 5 This 
is the savior's vision; that he see his innocence in all he looks upon, and see 
his own salvation everywhere. 6 He holds no concept of himself between his calm 
and open eyes and what he sees. 7 He brings the light to what he looks upon, 
that he may see it as it really is.

T-31.VII.12. Whatever form temptation seems to take, it always but reflects a 
wish to be a self that you are not. 2 And from that wish a concept rises, 
teaching that you are the thing you wish to be. 3 It will remain your concept of 
yourself until the wish that fathered it no longer is held dear. 4 But while you 
cherish it, you will behold your brother in the likeness of the self whose image 
has the wish begot of you. 5 For seeing can but represent a wish, because it has 
no power to create. 6 Yet it can look with love or look with hate, depending 
only on the simple choice of whether you would join with what you see, or keep 
yourself apart and separate.

T-31.VII.13. The savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is 
free of any judgment made upon yourself. 2 It sees no past in anyone at all. 3 
And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts, and prepared 
to look on only what the present holds. 4 It cannot judge because it does not 
know. 5 And recognizing this, it merely asks, "What is the meaning of what I 
behold?" 6 Then is the answer given. 7 And the door held open for the face of 
Christ to shine upon the one who asks, in innocence, to see beyond the veil of 
old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear against the vision of the 
Christ in you.

T-31.VII.14. Be vigilant against temptation, then, remembering that it is but a 
wish, insane and meaningless, to make yourself a thing that you are not. 2 And 
think as well upon the thing that you would be instead. 3 It is a thing of 
madness, pain and death; a thing of treachery and black despair, of failing 
dreams and no remaining hope except to die, and end the dream of fear. 4 <This> 
is temptation; nothing more than this. 5 Can this be difficult to choose 
<against?> 6 Consider what temptation is, and see the real alternatives you 
choose between. 7 There are but two. 8 Be not deceived by what appears as many 
choices. 9 There is hell or Heaven, and of these you choose but one.

T-31.VII.15. Let not the world's light, given unto you, be hidden from the 
world. p665 2 It needs the light, for it is dark indeed, and men despair because 
the savior's vision is withheld and what they see is death. 3 Their savior 
stands, unknowing and unknown, beholding them with eyes unopened. 4 And they 
cannot see until he looks on them with seeing eyes, and offers them forgiveness 
with his own. 5 Can you to whom God says, "Release My Son!" be tempted not to 
listen, when you learn that it is you for whom He asks release? 6 And what but 
this is what this course would teach? 7 And what but this is there for you to 
learn?




VIII. Choose Once Again

T-31.VIII.1. Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, 
wherever it occurs. 2 It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born 
in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him 
to feel. 3 It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength 
he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. 4 Would you be this, if Christ 
appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this: 




5 Choose once again if you would take your place among the saviors of the world, 
or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there.




6 For He <has> come, and He <is> asking this.

T-31.VIII.2. How do you make the choice? 2 How easily is this explained! 3 You 
always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you. 4 And 
what you choose is what you think is real. 5 Simply by never using weakness to 
direct your actions, you have given it no power. 6 And the light of Christ in 
you is given charge of everything you do. 7 For you have brought your weakness 
unto Him, and He has given you His strength instead.

T-31.VIII.3. Trials are but lessons that you failed to learn presented once 
again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, 
and thus escape all pain that what you chose before has brought to you. 2 In 
every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity Christ calls to you and 
gently says, "My brother, choose again." 3 He would not leave one source of pain 
unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. p666 4 He would remove all 
misery from you whom God created altar unto joy. 5 He would not leave you 
comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your mind from 
everything that hides His face from you. 6 His Holiness is yours because He is 
the only power that is real in you. 7 His strength is yours because He is the 
Self that God created as His only Son.

T-31.VIII.4. The images you make cannot prevail against what God Himself would 
have you be. 2 Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as it is; 
another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength prevail in every 
circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. 3 For what 
appears to hide the face of Christ is powerless before His majesty, and 
disappears before His holy sight. 4 The saviors of the world, who see like Him, 
are merely those who choose His strength instead of their own weakness, seen 
apart from Him. 5 They will redeem the world, for they are joined in all the 
power of the Will of God. 6 And what they will is only what He wills.

T-31.VIII.5. Learn, then, the happy habit of response to all temptation to 
perceive yourself as weak and miserable with these words: 




2 I am as God created me. 3 His Son can suffer nothing. 4 And I am His Son.




5 Thus is Christ's strength invited to prevail, replacing all your weakness with 
the strength that comes from God and that can never fail. 6 And thus are 
miracles as natural as fear and agony appeared to be before the choice for 
holiness was made. 7 For in that choice are false distinctions gone, illusory 
alternatives laid by, and nothing left to interfere with truth.

T-31.VIII.6. You <are> as God created you, and so is every living thing you look 
upon, regardless of the images you see. 2 What you behold as sickness and as 
pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive 
yourself defenseless and in hell. 3 Yield not to this, and you will see all 
pain, in every form, wherever it occurs, but disappear as mists before the sun. 
4 A miracle has come to heal God's Son, and close the door upon his dreams of 
weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release. 5 Choose once again what 
you would have him be, remembering that every choice you make establishes your 
own identity as you will see it and believe it is.

T-31.VIII.7. Deny me not the little gift I ask, when in exchange I lay before 
your feet the peace of God, and power to bring this peace to everyone who 
wanders in the world uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear. p667 2 For it is 
given you to join with him, and through the Christ in you unveil his eyes, and 
let him look upon the Christ in him.

T-31.VIII.8. My brothers in salvation, do not fail to hear my voice and listen 
to my words. 2 I ask for nothing but your own release. 3 There is no place for 
hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it 
is but a step from there to Heaven. 4 To your tired eyes I bring a vision of a 
different world, so new and clean and fresh you will forget the pain and sorrow 
that you saw before. 5 Yet this a vision is which you must share with everyone 
you see, for otherwise you will behold it not. 6 To give this gift is how to 
make it yours. 7 And God ordained, in loving kindness, that it be for you.

T-31.VIII.9. Let us be glad that we can walk the world, and find so many chances 
to perceive another situation where God's gift can once again be recognized as 
ours! 2 And thus will all the vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates 
be gone. 3 And all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns of 
Heaven to our sight, to lift us high above the thorny roads we travelled on 
before the Christ appeared. 4 Hear me, my brothers, hear and join with me. 5 God 
has ordained I cannot call in vain, and in His certainty I rest content. 6 For 
you <will> hear, and you <will> choose again. 7 And in this choice is everyone 
made free.

T-31.VIII.10. I thank You, Father, for these holy ones who are my brothers as 
they are Your Sons. 2 My faith in them is Yours. 3 I am as sure that they will 
come to me as You are sure of what they are, and will forever be. 4 They will 
accept the gift I offer them, because You gave it me on their behalf. 5 And as I 
would but do Your holy Will, so will they choose. 6 And I give thanks for them. 
7 Salvation's song will echo through the world with every choice they make. 8 
For we are one in purpose, and the end of hell is near.

T-31.VIII.11. In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who 
would join with me in reaching past temptation, and who looks with fixed 
determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. 2 Give 
me my own, for they belong to You. 3 And can You fail in what is but Your Will? 
4 I give You thanks for what my brothers are. 5 And as each one elects to join 
with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny scattered 
threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell, and 
giving thanks to You. p668




T-31.VIII.12. And now we say "Amen." 2 For Christ has come to dwell in the abode 
You set for Him before time was, in calm eternity. 3 The journey closes, ending 
at the place where it began. 4 No trace of it remains. 5 Not one illusion is 
accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the face of 
Christ from anyone. 6 Thy Will is done, complete and perfectly, and all creation 
recognizes You, and knows You as the only Source it has. 7 Clear in Your 
likeness does the light shine forth from everything that lives and moves in You. 
8 For we have reached where all of us are one, and we are home, where You would 
have us be. p669