Corresponding Manual for Teachers Section

Introduction

The role of teaching and learning is actually reversed in the thinking of the world. The reversal is characteristic. It seems as if the teacher and the learner are separated, the teacher giving something to the learner rather than to themself. Further, the act of teaching is regarded as a special activity in which one engages only a relatively small proportion of one’s time, if at all.

This Course, on the other hand, emphasizes that to teach is to learn, just as to learn is to teach, so that teacher and learner are the same. It also emphasizes that teaching and learning are a constant process. They go on every moment of the day and night, both as waking and sleeping thoughts.

Teaching and learning are continuous because to teach and to learn is simply to demonstrate. There are only two thought systems, and you demonstrate all the time that you believe one or the other is true. From your demonstration others learn, and so do you.

The question is not whether you will demonstrate and therefore teach, for in that there is no choice. The purpose of this Course might be said to provide you with a means of choosing what you want to demonstrate and teach, on the basis of what you want to learn. The Law of Love states that what you give to someone else you give to yourself, and this you learn through teaching.

Teaching is simply a call to witnesses to attest to what you believe. It is a method of confirmation, and can be used either for conversion or transformation. This is not done by words alone. In every situation you teach others what you believe you are, and what they are to you. No more than that, but also never less. The curriculum in life’s lessons that you set up for yourself at any time is therefore determined exclusively by what you think you are, and what you believe the relationship of others is to you, and you to them. In a formal teaching situation, these questions may be totally unrelated to what you think you are teaching. Yet it is impossible not to use the content of every situation on behalf of what you really teach, or demonstrate, and therefore really learn. To this the verbal content of your teaching is quite irrelevant. It may coincide with what you are actually teaching, or it may not. It is the actual teaching, or message, underlying what you say that teaches you – that reinforces what you believe about yourself and others – and also teaches those learning from you.

Teaching’s fundamental purpose is to diminish self-doubt, that is, to reinforce what you believe about yourself. This does not mean that the self you are trying to protect is real. But it does mean that the self you think is real is what you will teach. This is inevitable. There is no escape from it. How could it be otherwise? Everyone who follows the curriculum of the world of illusions, and everyone here does follow it until they fundamentally change or transform their mind, teaches solely to convince themself that they are what they are not. Herein is the purpose of this world. What else, then, would its curriculum be?

Into this closed and hopeless learning situation, which teaches nothing but delusion and despair, the Divine sends Its Teachers—those learning Truth’s Curriculum. And as they teach Truth’s Lessons of Joy and Hope, their learning of awakening finally becomes complete. Except for the Divine’s Teachers there would be no hope of awakening, for the world of separation and error, unholiness and guilt, would forever be believed to be real. The self-deceiving must deceive, for they must teach deception. And what else is “hell”?

This is a Manual for the Divine’s Teachers. They have not yet fully remembered their Perfection or they would not be here. Yet it is their Mission to remember and realize their Perfection here, and so they teach Perfection over and over, in many, many ways, until they have truly learned It. And then they are perceived no more, although their Thoughts remain a source of Strength and Truth forever.

Who are they? How do they choose their Path? What do they do? How can they work out their own awakening and the awakening of the world? This Manual attempts to answer these questions.