 There is a borderland of thought that stands between this world and heaven. It is not a place, and when you reach it, is a part from time. Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought together, where conflicting values meet, and all illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of heaven. Here is every thought made pure and holy simple. Here is sin denied and everything that is received instead. This is the journey's end. We have referred to it as the real world. And so this would be another description of the right mind, of the state of mind that is available when the mind can consistently choose the Holy Spirit and can consistently choose the right mind and has laid aside the desire for the wrong mind. If we move on to several sections ahead, the little hindrance, page 511, we can start to get a grasp of the Course's outline of time and the meaning of time. We'll begin with the second paragraph on that section. Nothing is ever lost but time, which in the end is meaningless. For it is but a little hindrance to eternity, quite meaningless to the real teacher of the world. Yet since you do believe in it, why should you waste it going nowhere when it can be used to reach a goal as high as learning can achieve? Think not the way to heaven's gate is difficult at all. Nothing you undertake with certain purpose and high resolve and happy confidence holding your brother's hand and keeping step to heaven's song is difficult to do. But it is hard indeed to wander off alone and miserable on a road that leads to nothing and that has no purpose. God gave his teacher to replace the one you made, not to conflict with it, and what he would replace has been replaced. Time lasted but an instant in your mind with no effect upon eternity, and so is all time past and everything exactly as it was before the way to nothingness was made. The tiny tick of time in which the first mistake was made and all of them within that one mistake held also the correction for that one and all of them that came within the first. And in that tiny instant time was gone for that was all it ever was. What God gave answer to is answered and is gone. To you who still believe you live in time and know not it is gone, the Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and senseless maze you still perceive in time, though it has long since gone. You think you live in what is past, each thing you look upon, you saw but for an instant, so long ago before its unreality gave way to truth. Not one illusion still remains unanswered in your mind. Uncertainty was brought to certainty so long ago that it is hard indeed to hold it to your heart as if it were before you still. The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal passed away in heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come. It appeared too quickly to affect the simple knowledge of the Son of God can hardly still be there for you to choose to be your teacher. Only in a past, an ancient past too short to make a world in answer to creation did this world appear to rise. So very long ago for such a tiny interval of time that not one note in heaven's song was missed. Yet in each unforgiving act or thought, in every judgment and in all belief and sin is that one instance still called back as if it could be made again in time. You keep an ancient memory before your eyes and he who lives in memories alone is unaware of where he is. This is a description that the perceptual world of time and space was over and down a long time ago and that these images though they are still being called forth are all past. It's quite a statement. If we move over to the next page we find the statement now you are shifting back and forth between the past and present. Sometimes the past seems real as if it were the present. Voices from the past are heard and then are doubted. You are like the one who still hallucinates but lacks conviction in what he perceives. This is the borderland between the worlds the bridge between the past and present. Here the shadow of the past remains but still a present light is dimly recognized. Once it is seen this light can never be forgotten. It must draw you from the past into the present where you really are. The shadow of voices do not change the laws of time nor of eternity. They come from what is past and gone and hinder not the true existence of the here and now. The real world is the second part of the hallucination time and death are real but have existence that can be perceived. This terrible illusion was denied but the time it took for God to give his answer to illusion for all time and every circumstance and then it was no more to be experienced as there. Each day and every minute in each day and every instant that each minute holds you but relive the single instant when the time of terror took the place of love and so you die each day to live again until you cross the gap between the past and present which is not a gap at all. Such is each life a seeming interval from birth to death and on to life again a repetition of an instant gone by long ago that cannot be relived and all of time is but the mad belief that what is over is still here and now. Forgive the past and let it go for it is gone. So this is a great commentary on the deepest levels of the self-concept the perception of time being linear that time goes forward and that the past repeats itself in the future and skips over the present from the ego's perspective but that the Course is telling us that the present and the past do not have a meeting place that each present instant is a newborn chance for the mind to be free of the past completely. We move ahead to the section titled the immediacy of salvation on page 519. The one remaining problem that you have is that you see an interval between the time when you forgive and will receive the benefits of trusting in your brother. This but reflects the little you would keep between yourselves that you might be a little separate. For time and space are one illusion which takes different forms. If it has been projected beyond your mind you think of it as time. The nearer it is brought to where it is the more you think of it in terms of space. There is a distance you would keep apart from one another and this space you see is time because you still believe you are external to your brother. This makes trust impossible and you cannot believe that trust would settle every problem now. Thus do you think it is safer to remain a little careful and a little watchful of interest perceived as separate. From this perception you cannot conceive of gaining what forgiveness offers now. The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift seems to be one in which you sacrifice and suffer loss. You see eventual salvation not immediate results. Salvation is immediate. Unless you so perceive it you will be afraid of it believing that the risk of loss is great between the time its purpose is made yours and its effects will come to you. In this form is the error still obscured that is the source of fear. Salvation would wipe out the space you see between you still and lets you instantly become as one and it is here you fear the loss would lie. Do not project this fear to time for time is not the enemy that you perceive. Time is as neutral as the body is except in terms of what you see it for. If you would keep a little space between you still you want a little time in which forgiveness is withheld a little while. This makes the interval between the time in which forgiveness is withheld and given seem dangerous with terror justified. Yet space between you is apparent now and cannot be perceived in future time. No more can it be overlooked except within the present. Future loss is not your fear but present joining is your dread. Who can feel desolation except now? A future cause as yet has no effects and therefore must it be that if you fear there is a present cause and it is this that needs correction not a future state. So this is bringing it back to a metaphysical distinction the course of miracles makes is that all of the pain and guilt and discomfort and fear that is ever experienced is not because of something that's happening out in the world and further not because of something that's happened long ago that is in the past so to speak but it is because of a present decision to hold on to a past cause or to hold on to a belief that has no existence in reality and that truly is over and done to continue the plans you make for safety are all laid within the future where you cannot plan no purpose has been given it as yet and what will happen has as yet no cause who can predict effects without a cause and who could fear effects unless he thought they had been caused and judged disastrous now belief in sin arouses fear and like its cause is looking forward looking back but overlooking what is here and now yet only here and now its cause must be if its effects already have been judged as fearful and in overlooking this is it protected and kept separate from healing for a miracle is now it stands already here in present grace within the only interval of time that sin and fear have overlooked but which is all there is to time the working out of all correction takes no time at all yet the acceptance of the working out can seem to take forever the change of purpose the Holy Spirit brought to your relationship has in it all effects that you will see