A Course in Miracles (Original Edition)

by Helen Schucman

Each day should be devoted to miracles. The purpose of time is to enable man to learn to use it constructively. Time is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. It will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning.

Remember that error cannot really threaten truth, which can always withstand it. Only the error is really vulnerable.

52 The Soul is in a state of grace forever. Man's reality is only his Soul. Therefore, man is in a state of grace forever.

When man projects this onto others, he does imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made.

57 40. The miracle dissolves error, because the

Spiritual eye identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears.

58 Darkness is lack of light, as sin is lack of love. It has no unique properties of its own. It is an example of the “scarcity” fallacy, from which only error can proceed. Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that th...

Behavior is response, so that the question “response to what?” becomes crucial.

63 As ye perceive, So shall ye behave.

The only limit which is put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters.

The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened and thus made to hold is one of the distortions on which the reversal of the Golden Rule rests.

80 I bridge the distance as an elder brother to man on the one hand and as a Son of God on the other.

There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers.

The miracle is the only device which man has at his immediate disposal for controlling time. Only revelation transcends time, having nothing to do with time at all.

While he

believes he is in a body, however, man can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of expression. He can make an empty shell, but he cannot express nothing at all. He can wait, delay, paralyze himself, reduce his creativity to almost nothing, and even introduce a developmental arrest or even a regression. But he cannot abolish his creativity. He can destroy his medium of communication but not his potential.

The basic decision of the miracle-minded is not to wait on time any longer than is necessary.

While the concept of lack does not exist in the creation of God, it is very apparent in the creations of man. It is, in fact, the essential difference.

Until the “separation,” which is a better term than the “fall,” nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them. After the separation, needs

became the most powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not a divine attribute. The body is the mechanism for behavior. The belief that he could be better off is the reason why man has this mechanism at his disposal.

Each one acts according to the particular hierarchy of needs he establishes for himself. His hierarchy, in turn, depends on his perception of what he is—that is, what he lacks. A sense of separation from God is the only lack he really needs to correct. This sense of separation would never have occurred if he had not distorted his perception of truth an...

having made this fundamental error, he had already fragmented himself into levels with different need...

one, and his needs become one ...

The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his unbelief, which placed him in it originally.

He can never control the effects of fear himself because he made fear and believes in what he made.

Who has perfect faith in His creations because He created them. Belief in a creatio...

Every aspect of fear proceeds from upside-down perception.

Since the miracle aims at restoring the awareness of reality, it would hardly be useful if it were bound by the laws which govern the error it aims to correct.

To whatever extent a man is willing to submit his beliefs to this test, to that extent are perceptions corrected.

100 If perfect love casts out fear, And if fear exists, Then there is not perfect love. But only perfect love really exists. If there is fear, It creates a state which does not exist.