3,4,,,del 4

2.33 Creating anew is the precursor of the coming of the new world. Remember, only from a shared vision of what is can you begin to produce unity and relationship through unity and relationship. This is your purpose now, and this the curriculum to guide you to the fulfillment of your purpose.
chapter 3
Natural Vision

3.1 Observation is an extension of the embrace that in turn makes the embrace observable. The embrace is not an action so much as a state of being. Awareness of the embrace comes from the vision of which I have just begun to speak.

3.2 Observation and vision are closely linked but not the same. Observation has to do with the elevation of the personal self. Vision has to do with what cannot be elevated. Vision has to do with the divine pattern, the unity that binds all living things. Observation is the means of seeing this binding pattern in physical form.

3.3 The personal self is still in need of being elevated — elevated to its original nature — by its original nature or intent. The devotion of the observant will return you to your original purpose. The vision of Christ-consciousness will take you beyond it.

3.4 Original intent has everything to do with the nature of things for original intent is synonymous with cause. The original intent of this chosen experience was the expression of the Self of love in observable form. This original intent or cause formed the true nature of the personal self capable of being observed in relationship. The displacement of the original intent, while it did not change the original cause, formed a false nature for the personal self. This displacement of the original intent can be simply stated as the displacement of love with fear. It is as simple as that. Yet the way in which each of you have interpreted this displacement has come to seem quite complex.
3.5 You may not feel that you have ever intended to live in fear. But the displacement of the original intent was so complete that each life began with fear and proceeded from this beginning continually reacting to fear. While the original intent remained within you and caused you to attempt to express a Self of love despite your fear, fear has thwarted your every effort and caused the very effort that has continued the cycle of fear. To have to try to be who you are and to express who you are is the result of the displacement of the nature of love with the nature of fear. What we now are about is reversing this displacement and returning you to your true nature.

3.6 For every being there is a natural state that is joyful, effortless, and full of love. For every being existing in time there is also an unnatural state of being. Both states of being — the natural and the unnatural — exist in relationship. While relationship is what has kept you forever unable to be separate and alone, relationship is also what has kept you forever unable to return to your natural state of being. The fear that was birthed along with the erroneously inherited idea that it was your nature to be separate and alone, made relationships fearful as well. Trust became something to be earned. Even the most loving parent, like unto your most loving image of God, having brought a child into a fearful world, became subject to the tests of time. Thus did the world become a world of effort with all things in it and beyond it, including God, weighed and balanced against the idea of fear.

3.7 Now, as we reverse this set of circumstances, and replace the world of fear with a world of love, there can be no more weighing of love against fear. God did not create fear and will not be judged by it. All judgment is the cause of fear and this effort to weigh love’s strength against fear’s veracity. While you chose to believe and live in a world the nature of which was fear, you could not know God. You could not know God because you judged God from within the nature of fear, believing fear to be your natural state.

3.8 As the natural state of love is returned to you, judgment falls away because vision will arise. With the onset of the vision of love, many of you will make one final judgment in which you find everything to be good and full of love. Once all has been judged with the vision of love, judgment is over naturally for it has served its purpose. This is the final judgment.

3.9 The vision that will arise in you now is not new. It is your natural vision, the vision of love. What is new is the elevation of the personal self that will be caused by the return of your natural state of love. This is where observation comes in.

3.10 Vision will allow you to see the nature of the world and all that exists within it truly. Observation will allow you to elevate the personal self to its rightful place within the nature of a world of love.

3.11 Vision is the natural means of knowing of all who were created in love. Observation is the natural means of sharing what is known in physical form.

3.12 The physical form is not the natural or original form of the created. Vision is the means by which the original nature of the created can once again be known. Observation is the means by which the original nature of the created can newly be seen in physical form. Once the original nature of the created becomes observable in physical form, physical form will surpass what it once was and become the new nature of the created. There is no reason why the original nature of your being cannot become a being the nature of which is form if you so choose it to be. There is a reason why the original nature of your being cannot exist in a form unnatural to love. A form whose nature is fear cannot house the creation of love.

3.13 Man has striven since the beginning of time to be done with the separated state of a being of form, and at the same time to hang on to life, not realizing that what exists in form does not have to be separate and alone; not realizing that what lives does not have to die. That the nature of form can change. That the nature of matter is one of change. That the nature, even of form, once returned to its natural state of love, is one of unity and everlasting life.

3.14 The idea of everlasting life in form has seemed a curse to some, a miracle to others. Death comes as destruction to some, as new life to others. Either way is but your choice. Your attachment to life has kept you alive in form. Your attachment to death has kept your form subject to the cycle of decay and rebirth. There is another alternative.

3.15 The promise of life everlasting was not an empty promise. It is a promise that has been fulfilled. It is you who have chosen the means. Now a new choice is before you.
chapter 4
the Inheritance of Everlasting Life


4.1 Everywhere within your world you see the pattern of life-everlasting. Where there is a pattern of life-everlasting, there is everlasting life. Means and end are one, cause and effect the same.

4.2 The pattern of life-everlasting is one of changing form. It is one that is revealed on Earth by birth and death, decay and renewal, seasons of growth and seasons of decline. This is the pattern of creation taken to extremes. Inherent within the extreme is the balance. Even in the biblical description of creation was a day of rest spoken of. Creation balanced with rest is the pattern that has been taken to extremes within your world. You think of birth as creation and death as rest. You do not realize that your nature, and the nature of your life, like that of all around you, is governed by seasons natural to the state of love, seasons of regeneration.

4.3 In your history, generations pass, through death, to allow for new generations to be born. As your planet has reached a state of growth known as over-population, this balance between old generations and new seems necessary and even crucial. One generation must pass to make room for the new.

4.4 Even before the planet reached the state of over-population, this idea was much in evidence. The passing of a parent was seen, particularly historically, as the time of the child of the parent coming into his or her inheritance or time of
fullness. The power and prestige, the earthly wealth of the parent, passed historically to the son.

4.5 This is one of the reasons that I came in the form of the “Son of God.” In the time in which I lived, the idea of inheritance was an even stronger idea, an idea with much more power than in current times. Inherent within the idea of inheritance was an idea of passing as well as an idea of continuity. What belonged to the father passed to the son and thereafter belonged to the son. What was of the father continued with the son.

4.6 What my life demonstrated was a capacity for inheritance not based upon death. My life, death, and resurrection revealed the power of inheritance, the power of the Father, as one of life-giving union. I called you then, and I call you now, to this inheritance.

4.7 This idea of inheritance is a natural idea arising from the nature of creation itself. It is an idea of continuity that is an idea consistent with that of creation. There is no discontinuity within creation. Like begets like. Life begets life. Thus is revealed the pattern of life-everlasting.

4.8 Changing form is part of the pattern of life-everlasting. The change in the form you now occupy, the change I have spoken of as that of elevation of the personal self, is a natural part of the pattern of life-everlasting. It is long over-due. It is long over-due because you have rejected rather than accepted your inheritance.

4.9 This is why this treatise is called A Treatise on the New. There has not been a time on Earth in which the inheritance of God the Father was accepted, save by me. This is why this time is spoken of as the time of fullness. It is the time during which you have within your awareness the ability to come into your time of fullness by accepting the inheritance of your Father. You have the awareness and thus the ability to accept the continuity of life-everlasting.

4.10 Lest this sound like the ranting of your science fiction, and cause you to turn deaf ears to the knowledge I would impart, let me assure you that immortality is not the change of which I speak. You are not mortal, and so a word that speaks of an opposite to what you are not and have never been is not the accurate word. I do not speak of bodies living forever instead of living for what you call a lifetime — be it a lifetime of twenty, or fifty, or ninety years. Life has continuously been prolonged without a substantial change in the nature of life. To think of living on and on as you have lived your life thus far would not appeal to many of you. Those aged and contemplating death might wish for prolonged life, but many of these same welcome death as the end to suffering and strife. To continue on endlessly with life as it has been would only relegate more and more to lives not worth living.

4.11 What is it then, of which I speak? If you still must look ahead and see death looming on the horizon, how can it be that I speak of life-everlasting? Am I but using new words to repeat what you have heard in various form from various religions and systems of belief for countless ages? Am I but calling you to a happy death and an after-life in heaven?

4.12 I am calling you to the new. I am calling you to transform. I am calling you to Christ-consciousness. I am calling you to everlasting consciousness even while you still abide in form. To be cognizant or aware of everlasting consciousness while you still abide in form is to be fully aware that you have life-everlasting.

4.13 Being fully aware that you have life-everlasting is totally different than having faith in an after-life. Faith is based upon the unknown. If the unknown were not unknown faith would not be necessary. Faith will become unnecessary, as life-everlasting becomes known to you.

4.14 This knowing will come from the return of true vision. True vision sees life-everlasting where perception but saw finite life and mortal bodies. Once vision and Christ-consciousness have returned to you, the means of life-everlasting will be understood as a choice. Because there was no relationship save that of intermediaries between the human and the divine, there was no choice but to end the separated state in order to return to unity through death. Once the return to unity has occurred in form, the decision to continue in form or to not continue in form will be yours.

4.15 Continuity is an attribute of relationship, not of matter. It is only in the relationship of matter to the divine that matter can become divine and thus eternal. If you can abide in unity while in human form, you will have no cause, save your own choice, to leave human form. To abide in unity is to abide in your natural state, a state of life-everlasting. To abide in a state of separation is to abide in an unnatural state from which you eventually will seek release.

4.16 Although this discussion is likely to cause many of you serious doubts about the truth and applicability of this course, this discussion is necessary to your awareness of Christ-consciousness. To believe that you are mortal is to believe that you must die to the personal self of form in order to be reborn as a true Self. This is an old way of thinking. Have we not worked throughout this Course to return your true identity to you now? The joining of heart and mind in relationship is the joining of the personal self with the true Self in the reality in which you exist now. Remember, the heart must abide in the reality where you think you are. Only through your mind’s acceptance of your new reality has the heart been freed to exist in the new reality that is the state of unity and relationship.

4.17 Can you not see the necessity of removing the idea that your true Self will be returned to you only through death? What purpose would this Course serve if it were just another preview of what to expect after you die? What difference would this make to your way of living or to the world in which you live?

4.18 What purpose will death serve when your true Self has joined with your physical form? You will see it simply as the transformation it has always been, the transformation from singular consciousness to Christ-consciousness. Form has been but a representation of singular consciousness. As form becomes a representation of Christ-consciousness it will take on the nature of Christ-consciousness of which my life was the example life. To sustain Christ-consciousness in form is creation of the new. My one example life could not sustain Christ-consciousness for those who came after me but could only be an example. What you are called to do is to, through your multitude, sustain Christ-consciousness, and create the union of the human and the divine as a new state of being. This union will take you beyond the goal of expressing your Self in form because this goal but reflected the desire for a temporary experience. The temporary experience has been elongated because of the appeal of the physical experience. What this treatise is saying to you is that if the physical experience appeals to you, and if you create the union of the human and the divine as a new state of being, this choice will be eternally yours. It will be a choice of your creation, a creation devoid of fear. It will be a new choice.