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Chapter 22: True Reason and the Final Question

1. The Ancient Song to the Divine

Projection makes perception. The world you perceive is what you gave it, nothing more than that, and also nothing less. Therefore to you perception is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a person thinks, so do they perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but will to change your mind about the world.

Perception is a result and not a cause, and that is why levels and orders of magnitude of difficulty in miracles are meaningless. Everything seen with vision is healed and holy. Nothing perceived without it means anything. And where there is no meaning, there is chaos experienced.

Doom and damnation are the ego’s judgment on yourself. And as you accept this judgment, you will project it upon the world. Perceive the world as doomed or damned, and all you will be perceiving is what you believe you did to hurt the Children of the Divine. If you look upon disaster and catastrophe, then you thought to harm your sisters and brothers. If you see Holiness and Hope, then you joined the Will of the Divine to set your sisters and brothers free. There is no choice that is between these two decisions. And you will perceive the witness to the choice you made, and learn from this to recognize the one you made. The world you perceive merely shows you how much Joy you have allowed yourself to perceive in your sisters and brothers and yourself, and to accept as yours. And if this is the world’s Meaning, then the Power to give it Joy must be within you.

Always remember that the world the sightless think they look upon must be imagined. And what it really is must be unknown to them. They must infer from evidence endlessly indirect what they believe could be perceived, and reconstruct their inferences as they stumble and fall because of what they did not recognize, or walk unharmed through open doorways they thought were closed.

And so it is with you. You do not yet see, and your cues for inference are wrong. And so you stumble and fall upon the obstacles you did not recognize, while failing to be aware you can go through the doors you thought were closed, but which stand open before unseeing eyes, while what is beyond these doors is waiting to welcome you.

How foolish it is to attempt to judge what could be seen instead. It is not necessary to imagine what the world must be. It must be seen in order for you to recognize it for what it is. You can be shown which doors are open, and you can see where Safety is—which way leads to darkness, and which to Light. Judgment will always give you false directions, but vision shows you truly where to go. Why should you guess? There is no need to learn through pain. And gentle lessons are acquired joyously, and are remembered gladly. What gives you Happiness you want to learn, and then not forget.

It is not this idea that you would question or deny. Your question is whether the means by which this Course is learned will bring the Joy it promises. If you believed they would, the learning of the Course would be assured. You are not an entirely happy learner yet because you still remain uncertain whether vision gives you more than judgment does, and you have learned that both you cannot have.

The blind become accustomed to their world by their adjustments to it. They think they know their way about in it. However, they learned it not through joyous lessons, but through the stern necessity of limits they believed they could not overcome. And, still believing this, they hold those lessons dear, and cling to them because they cannot yet see. They don’t yet understand that unjoyful lessons keep them blind. This they simply don’t believe. And so they keep the world they learned to look upon in their imagination, believing that their choice is either that or nothing.

Unjoyful learners fear the world they learned through pain. And everything they think is in it serves to remind them that they feel incomplete and deprived. It is thus they define their lives and where they live these lives, adjusting to the imagined world as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that they believe they have. And so it is with all who perceive the body and its world as all they are and have, and all that their sisters and brothers are and have. They continuously try to reach each other, and they believe they fail. And fail again. And they adjust to loneliness, believing that to keep the body is to save the little that they have.

Listen, and see if you remember what we will speak of now. Listen, and see if you perhaps catch a hint of an ancient State not quite forgotten. Dim, perhaps, yet not altogether unfamiliar—like a song the name of which is long forgotten, and the circumstances in which you heard it completely unremembered. Not the whole song has stayed with you, but just a little wisp of melody, attached not to a person or place or anything particular. But you remember from just this little wisp how lovely the song was, how wonderful the setting where you heard it, and how you loved those who were there and listened with you. The notes are nothing, yet you have kept them with you, not for themselves, but as a soft reminder of what would make you weep with joy if you remembered how dear it was to you. You could remember, yet you are afraid, believing that if you remembered, you would lose the world you have learned to live in since then. And yet you know that nothing in the world you have learned through painful lessons is half so dear as this. Listen, and see if you remember an ancient Song you knew so long ago, and held more dear than any melody you taught yourself to cherish since.

Beyond the body, beyond the Sun and stars, past everything you perceive and yet somehow deeply familiar, is an Arc of golden Light that stretches, as you behold It, into a great and shining Circle. And all the Circle fills with Light before your spiritual eye. The edges of the Circle disappear, and what is in It no longer is contained at all. The Light expands and covers everything, extending to Infinity, forever shining, and with no break or limit anywhere. Within It, everything is joined in perfect Continuity. Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside. For there is nowhere that this Light is not.

This is the Vision of the Divine Family, whom you know well. Here is the sight of them who know their Creator. Here is the Memory of what you are. For you are a Part of this, with all of It within you, and joined to all of It as surely as All is joined to you.

Accept the Vision that can show you this in place of the body. You know the ancient Song, and know It well. Nothing will ever be as dear to you as is this ancient Hymn of Love the Children of the Divine sing to their Creator still. And now the blind can see, for that same Song they sing in honor of their Creator gives praise to them as well. The blindness that they made will not withstand the Memory of this Song. And they will behold the Vision of the Children of the Divine, remembering who they are that this Song sings of.

What is a miracle but this remembering? And who is there in whom this Memory does not reside? The Light in one awakens It in All. And, when you see It in each other, you are remembering for everyone.