Corresponding Manual for Teachers Section
Chapter 4: Teacher / Individual Questions
8. Why Is the Illusion of Many Necessary? (The True Purpose of the Body)
The illusion of many is necessary only because Reality is not understandable to the deluded. Only a relatively few as yet can hear the Divine’s Voice at all, and even they cannot communicate directly, spirit to spirit, to their sisters and brothers the Divine’s Messages via the Voice Which gives these Messages. These Messages need a medium through which communication becomes possible to those who do not yet realize that they are spirit. They can perceive bodies. They can understand and listen to human voices without the fear that receiving Truth directly would produce in them. Remember that Truth can come only where It is welcomed without fear. So do the Divine’s Teachers need bodies, for their Unity with their sisters and brothers could not be recognized directly.
Yet what makes the Divine’s Teachers who they are is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body. As they advance in their own learning, they become more and more certain that the body’s function is only to let the Divine’s Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer Messages that are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source. From this understanding will come the recognition in each new Teacher of the Divine of what the body’s true Purpose is as reinterpreted by the Holy Spirit—the only use there really is for it. This lesson is enough to let the Thought of Unity come in, and what is One is recognized as One. The Teachers of the Divine appear to share the illusion of separation, but because of what they use the body for, they do not believe in the illusion despite appearances.
The central awakening lesson regarding the body is always this: that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it to perpetuate separation, or for attack in any form, which is the same as separation, and you will look upon it as flawed and unholy. Because it is looked upon as flawed and unholy it will be perceived as weak, and being weak it will suffer and die. Use the body to bring the Divine’s Word of Truth and Love to those who have not yet received It, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is merely laid aside, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body’s condition. Yet the Teacher of the Divine does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose than the one that keeps it holy. The Divine’s Voice will tell the teacher when they have fulfilled their role in a body, just as It tells them what their function in this world is. The teacher does not suffer either in remaining or in going. Sickness is now impossible to them.
Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. The Divine’s Teachers choose to perceive dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all real choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put their faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of the Divine’s Teachers. They watch the dream figures seem to come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they perceive. They recognize that to perceive a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real or meaningful than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Except for the happy dreams the Holy Spirit gives toward awakening, the content of dreams is all the same.
Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this the Divine’s Teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing, and yet surely theirs.
