Corresponding Text Section
Chapter 8: The Journey Home
7. The Unwell Body as a False Witness
Attitudes toward the body that make it anything other than a medium of communication are attitudes toward attack, regardless of the shades of meaning contained in them. All of the ego’s definitions are foolish, and are always based merely on what it believes a thing is specifically designed for, in the context of its thought system. This is because the ego, being a very specific aspect of a mind at war with itself, is incapable of true generalizations, and equates each thing it perceives with the function or end it ascribes to each thing. It is incapable of equating anything with what the thing actually is.
To the ego part of the mind, ultimately the body’s function and end are attack, even if the ego believes it must at times use the body more covertly to achieve its ultimate end. Equating you with the body, it teaches that you are to attack with, because this is what it believes.
The body, then, is not the source of its own health or illness. Its condition is solely in your interpretation of its function, that is, the interpretation you accept, which must come either from the ego or the Holy Spirit.
The reason defining something by its perceived function rather than by its being is unreliable is merely because the perception of function may well be inaccurate, and may then shift in an attempt to account for this discovered inaccuracy. True functions are part of being, since they arise from it. But this relationship is not reciprocal. Being does not arise from function, nor is it defined by it. The whole does define the part, because the part has its meaning from the whole, but the part does not define the whole. This is as true of Knowledge as it is of perception. The reason why to know in part is to know entirely is merely because of the fundamental difference between Knowledge and perception. In perception, the whole is built up of parts, which can separate and reassemble in different combinations or constellations. Knowledge never changes, so Its Constellation is permanent. In fact, the only areas in which part-whole relationships seem to have any meaning are those in which change is possible. There is no difference between the whole and the part where change is impossible.
The body exists in a world that seems to contain two voices that are fighting for its possession. In this perceived constellation, the body is regarded as being capable of shifting what controls it from one voice to the other, making the concept of both health and sickness possible. This is the result of the ego’s fundamental confusion between means and ends, a confusion it always generates. Regarding the body as an end, the ego has no real use for it at all, because it is not an end but a means. An outstanding characteristic of every end the ego has accepted as its own is that when you have achieved it, it has not satisfied you. This is why the ego is forced to shift from one end to another without ceasing, so that you will continue to hope that it can yet offer you something of value.
It has been particularly difficult for you to overcome the ego’s belief in the body as an end because this is synonymous with the hidden belief of attack as an end. The ego has a substantial investment in sickness. If you are sick, how can you object to the ego’s firm belief that you are vulnerable? This is a particularly appealing argument from the ego’s point of view, because it obscures the obvious quality of attack that underlies sickness. If this connection becomes clear to you, and you decide against attack, you cannot give this false witness of sickness to the ego’s belief in your vulnerability. It is hard for you to perceive sickness as a false witness only because you do not realize that sickness is entirely out of keeping with the End you actually want. This witness of sickness, then, appears to be innocent and trustworthy only because you have not seriously cross-examined it. If you did, you would not consider sickness such a strong witness in support of the ego’s views.
A more honest statement would be as follows: Those who believe they want the ego are predisposed to defend it. Therefore, their choice of witnesses, including themselves and others when they are sick, should be suspect from the beginning. While the ego does not call upon witnesses who might disagree with its case (the case for its survival), neither does the Holy Spirit with Its Case (the Case for your awakening), but for very different reasons. This Course stated before that true Evaluation is a Function of the Holy Spirit, and one that It is perfectly equipped to fulfill. The ego, as a judge, gives anything but an impartial judgment. When the ego calls on a witness, it has already made it an ally in bearing false witness.
It is still true that the body has no purpose of itself alone. This is because the body is a means and not an end. The ego, however, would establish the body as an end because, as such, it will lose in your awareness its true function as a means. The ego’s purpose, and the sole aim of everything it does, is to lose sight of the true functions of everything. A sick body does not make any sense, since sickness is not the body’s function as defined by Spirit, and therefore not what it is for. Sickness is meaningful only if the two basic premises on which the ego’s interpretation of the body rests are true: first, that the body is for attack, and second, that you are a body. If either or both of these premises are false then sickness is completely inconceivable.
Sickness is a way of demonstrating that you can be hurt. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance and “remedies.” The ego uses this as its best argument for your need for its guidance and remedies. It dictates endless prescriptions for avoiding this “catastrophic” outcome of the appearance of infirmity, and endless remedies when the outcome appears to have come about anyway.
The Holy Spirit, perfectly aware of the same data, does not bother to analyze or call upon them at all. A function of truth in this world is to collect data that are true. If the data are meaningless, there is no point in responding to or trying to make sense out of them at all. Any way they are handled results in nothing. The more complicated the results become, the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine all possible outcomes to which premises give rise to evaluate the premises truly.
A learning device such as the body is not a teacher. It cannot tell you how you feel, including telling you that you feel sick. You do not actually know how you feel when you misperceive, because you have accepted the ego’s confusion and conclusion about the purpose of your body, and you therefore believe that a learning device can tell you how to feel. Sickness is merely another example of your insistence on asking for guidance of a teacher who does not and cannot know the answer. The ego is incapable of knowing how you feel. When this Course said that the ego does not know anything, it stated the one thing about the ego that is entirely true. But there is a corollary. If Knowledge is Being, and the ego has no knowledge, then the ego has no being.
It should be asked how the voice of something that does not exist can be so insistent. Have you ever seriously considered the distorting power of something you want, even if it is not true? You have had many experiences of how what you want can distort what you perceive. When assessed truly, the ego’s skill in building up false cases cannot be doubted. And your willingness to listen to the ego cannot be doubted until you learn not to tolerate anything except Truth.
When you lay the ego aside by withdrawing your belief in it and its false witnesses, it will be gone. The Holy Spirit’s Voice is as strong as your willingness to listen. It cannot be stronger without violating your will, which It seeks to free but never to command. The Holy Spirit will teach you to use your body only to reach your sisters and brothers so It can teach Its Message through you. This will heal them and you.
Everything used in accordance with its true function here as Spirit sees this can only be whole and well. Everything used otherwise must be fragmented and sick. Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind. Do not let it be an image of your own perception of littleness guided falsely by the ego. Do not let it reflect your false belief in attack.
Health is the natural state of anything whose interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, Who perceives no attack on anything. Health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly. It is the beginning of the proper perspective on Life, under the Guidance of the one Teacher Who knows what Life is, being the Voice for Life Itself.
