 The morning before we started the session, Tom was saying, I want it. I want it now. So maybe this would be a time to go into the section of the immediacy of salvation and to examine the whole idea of can I really want it now and not have it. Chapter 26, Section 8. The immediacy of salvation. 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 you and your brother that you and he 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. Now there's a lot of metaphysics there, right? There in that first paragraph, I mean it kind of eases into it, but then the last three sentences are the basis of everything we look at. They're zeroing in on that one remaining problem that you have. Everything is a thought in the mind. So every memory is just a thought. And if it has been projected beyond your mind, you think of it as time. So all those memories... Of the times we've read this. Of the times we've read this, of all those comings together. If you think of it, everything is just a thought. And if it's projected beyond your mind, you think of it as time. In other words, it seems that it's happened in the past. Or to flip it the other way, if you can imagine it, even some of the images that have been coming about a center and how it would look and what kind of atmosphere it would have and so on and so forth. All those images, even of a coming center or of a trip to Kamloops or Calgary or whatever. All those are images. And if it's been projected beyond one's own mind, you think of it as time. As if that I'm a person and I have a private mind. And as if I'm a person in time, instead of time and all the circumstances and events that have ever happened in a personal past or any past. I use the example of Julius Caesar or Cleopatra or Abraham Lincoln or Gandhi or whatever. All of the images are of the wrong mind. And when it seems to be beyond one's own personal private mind, it seems to be projected to time as if it's happened in the past or it will happen in the future. There's nothing that happens apart from me. When I say I am the universe, that is in the deepest sense of the word, the universe of creation, of God and His creations. That would be the universe. But even if you talked about the projected cosmos, that there's no aspect of the cosmos that's apart from me in the sense of the right mind is a perspective that sees that the entire projection was made up and that there's no ordering of any of the concepts and images. And so without that ordering, there's no sense of being in the cosmos or a teeny little speck or a teeny little part. It's more of a sense of the vastness of I dreamed this up, which is kind of the dreamer of the dream analogy. And again, in that experience, there would be no sound, no image, no light or variation of light and nothing within the cosmos that would be apart from oneself, so to speak. If one is the dreamer of all that, dreamed all that up. Now, the second part that says the nearer it is brought to where it is, the more you think of it in terms of space, we've been through this one before as well, in the sense that if you perceive yourself as a body or as a person in the world, then, and you think of it as the deceived mind has surrounded itself with the cosmos. The first thing that it seems to have surrounded itself with in terms of spatial, if you divided the cosmos into spaces, it's wrapped in a body. And then, seemingly outside that body, there are other bodies and walls and furniture and trees and grass and sky above and earth below and moon and sun and other planets and stars and so on and so forth. It seems to have wrapped the whole cosmos around it, beginning with the body. And so we get the line, the nearer it is brought to where it is, the more you think of it in terms of space. You could think of the projector. The closer you bring it to the projector, the more it's thought in terms of space. And that's literally how it's described. And I know we've talked about the idea that even stars are described in terms of light years because the space seems to be getting so far out away from the projector that then they start being described in terms of time, like all those events that happened, seem to happen before or all those events that will happen in the future. At any rate, whether it's time or space, it's a means for distancing, the description of the distancing. And it's the same thing. It sounds like something different. We wouldn't say, you wouldn't think of the past as two miles ago versus a few years ago or minutes ago or something. Or time and space are one illusion, which takes different forms. It comes back to that whole thing, like even with the tree truck and the tree analogy, that all the branches come back to the trunk. So you could have time and space seeming to be branches off this trunk, but if the ego is the ego and everything that's of the ego is the ego. Or what you call it. Or how you conceive of it. Or how many times it seems to have been multiplied. You know, you talk about the ego belief system. It seemed like it's got oodles and oodles and oodles of beliefs. Billion times zero. Yeah. But if the ego is zero, the ego is zero. There is a distance you would keep apart from your brother. In this space, you perceive as time because you still believe you are external to him. You can tell the personhood that's in there. You'd have to have a belief in personhood to be external to your brother. But if your brother is a body or your brother is a person and you're a person, then you seem to be external to your brother. If you're a private mind and your brother seems to have a private mind, then your private mind seems to be external to your brother's private mind. And that's the basis of what we go into from all these different angles is that personhood and the idea of a private mind, both of those are made up, cannot be so. This makes trust impossible. You could say the subject-object split makes trust impossible. When the mind seemed to fall asleep and believe in the ego, then it had two opposite thought systems, two thought systems that had no meaning point. And that's where the intolerable sense of strain came in. And it tried to dissociate and forget about the light and keep them apart. To use that diagram that Tom has been working on, it tried to spiral out away from that light at the bottom so that it could keep the two thought systems apart. Because if they were ever brought together, who would be seen that they can't coexist, one denies the other. So the way to try to hang on to both and to hang on to the split and hang on to the separation would be to spiral away from the light as the darkness as if it can have an existence by itself apart from the light. So that intolerable sense of strain from trying to hold them both in, that's when we talk about the cosmos was projected out. And the split, instead of being seen in the mind, instead of being seen as, oh, we have two thought systems here that are irreconcilable, the split was seen as on the screen. And that is exemplified in the subject-object split, where the mind identified with the person, and then everything outside of that person seemed to be perceived with the five senses was seen as the object. So there's the split. Now, there's fear because the mind has done all this, and in one sense you could say it knows it's done all this. It's tried to forget what is done. It's tried to forget the way it set things up. But the Holy Spirit is a reminder that this can't be forgotten, that God can't be forgotten. So in other words, it still has the guilt, it still has the strain. It just seems to have relieved itself with this projected cosmos. It seems to have loosened up the strain a bit. And so it's afraid because it's really afraid of God, but it's projected it out so that it seems it's afraid of all these things in the world. And it's a setup, it's a scam. The thing is that the subject-object split has not resolved the conflict. It's tried to forget the wholeness that it truly is, and it's made up this concept of a whole person. Now I'm a whole person, separate from the cosmos. And that's where the subject-object split comes in. So as long as the fear is maintained until the fear is found to be, you know, just a hoax, unfounded, then the mind is in a fearful state and therefore that's what lack of trust or doubt is about. It's in a state of deception and it's constantly in doubt. And it can't trust anything because it doesn't know itself. And that's why the split has to be seen as not on the screen, not a split between a person and another person or a subject and an objective world, but the split has to be seen in the mind for trust to be possible. Listening to the Holy Spirit would be the basis of trust. And if one truly listened to the Holy Spirit, one would see that one is the dreamer of the dream. One is not a person or a little figure in the dream. The one thing that can truly be trusted in is invisible in terms of the body. And that's the one thing that the seed mind is afraid of. As Jesus says in a number of places in the text, He says, you are afraid of spiritual sight. You believe that spiritual sight, i.e. the Holy Spirit would rob you of something. You would lose something if you ever had spiritual sight. You would lose the world you see, which you would. But as long as it seems like something, then it feels like lost. This makes trust impossible. And you cannot believe that trust would settle every problem now. Thus do you think it's 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. So the mind is afraid of giving and receiving true forgiveness. That's where the loss seems to be. It seems to entail a loss, to give or to extend and receive the gift. Not forgiveness. Well, forgiveness just sees the false as false. And what seems to be lost in forgiveness is personhood. There's that little gap that makes one separate, unique individual person with personal interest and a personal past and a personal future and a personal will, small w. That's what the mind is terrified of losing. It's a sense of a separate self. That's that little space, that little distance it would like to retain. And I think in the past weekend even when we were getting into the thing of discussions about lots of anguish and pain and gut-wrenching stuff was coming up and I remember at one point you were saying, it goes much deeper.