 It doesn't really make any difference because the difference is so small compared to body versus Son of God. So really, that's why, you know, he's trying to be so inclusive here and says, you know, everything is death real. This is really where we're having a hallucination of death. This is not life. People call this life, but it's not real life. You know, life as the gift of God includes no limitation whatsoever. So nothing to burden you, no responsibility, no problem, nothing, no form of difficulty to burden your mind. No form, period. No form, period. And I think that a good point is, of course, is that if you're saying the level of decision, if you start to look, mind over matter might sound like, ooh, that sounds good. If you still think, I want to be a person in this world and have mind over matter, that would be the decision where I want to choose not to feel hot when it's 90 degrees or whatever, this and that. And what we're doing, we're talking about holding peace to the goal and seeing our brother, seeing the Christ and our brother, and then as a byproduct, there's no discomfort in the Christ. In other words, when you can recognize the Christ and your brother and you recognize yourself as Christ, pain or death in any form is absolutely impossible. But coming at it that way as opposed to the byproducts we're writing into it, talking about it. It keeps coming back to purpose. I mean, over and over again. It seems like the discussion keeps coming back to, you know, what's the purpose behind it? What's the intention? And that's always the thing to look at. When you said, Takas, that we realized the truth, then we wouldn't be able to be here. I'm sure you didn't mean that we are here anyway. Right. But obviously, we're not here. You know, we are, I guess, you know, we are the dreamer and the figures are out there. Right. So once you realize the truth, you know, that you are a mind, then perhaps you will appear as a body to those who still need to learn. Right. And yet, go ahead. Right. But I think even when we realize maybe an intellectual level, still parts of the mind have not accepted that. Yeah. And probably we know that this is true because different things happen on different days where poop, you know, you feel the fear, you feel, you know, the constriction, you feel, you know, that here my rules, you know, things are not going as I set them up according to my rules. And you suddenly feel the punch of fear or anxiety or annoyance or depression or whatever. And then you know that you're mind really, at one level it says, yeah, I believe in my mind as God created me, but really, doesn't believe it really because then you wouldn't feel any annoyance or anxiety or any other disturbance. That's your ego causes not though, isn't it? Right. But for the ego to have any power to cause that, it means that part of my, of me, is still identifying with it. And therefore, even though somebody can be a teacher of God, still in the world too, but at the same time he also needs to learn certain lessons to continue to be in the world. Because once his lesson is over, he cannot possibly have any experience of being in the world. I think that's why Jesus disappeared when he was 33. He didn't, you know, disappear at 70 or 80. Why didn't he stay for 40 more years to teach? Yeah, but it seems like since we're, you know, not here anyway, then the appearance of whether we're here or not makes no difference because we're just figures in another's dream. Right. But does it make a difference whether you, we have this impression that we are here versus that the impression completely disappears? Well, it's like to me when the Course says that once we realize the truth, then we realize that it has always been. Right. Then whenever we, you know, realize the truth and buy into the truth as it is, who's to say how, you know, what the appearance will be to that part of the sun shift that is still deceived? I think what we want to do is keep it practical too because what I'm hearing is that as we talk and as we go into things we can start to see some of those beliefs that we still are holding on to and that's really what we want to do is focus on. In other words, Jesus, at some parts of the Course, he'll start to talk about the oneness, you know, he'll start to talk about heaven and knowledge. You know, go, like I was reading part in the workbook today where he kind of went for a few paragraphs and he said, but there's no point in talking any further. There's much work to do. Right. And he immediately, once you start to think about it, it's just so amazing, you know, you just start, you know, it's just like, you know, the implications of this because it's so completely contrary to ordinary patterns of living and thought, you know. And I think what we'll do is get into that tonight. The whole thing about, you know, as long as the mind believes that it's here, he uses all this metaphor, you know, you are my hands, you are my feet, you are to reach my brothers. It's the metaphor that the mind can grab on to. Even the role of teacher of God is a very metaphorical thing where, you know, you'll speak, I was reading a section today where he says, you'll speak of things beyond this world as a teacher of God. And you'll speak that what is yet to come has already been. You know, that's the idea that we were talking about last week which is a very high metaphysical idea that the script is written. You know, that the future, what the world would consider the future is the past. I call it the future past past and the future past because basically Jesus is saying that the entire script of form, you know, was spun out and the Holy Spirit gave a new purpose to it and it's already healed. A lot of times people feel like if I really keep doing this course I'm just going to poof out of here and feel sorry for all the miserable circles I've lost, you know. I'm putting all this hard work here and everything but what it does is it gets away from the idea that this is a perceptual hallucination and all that happens is when you wake up is that, you know, you let go of the hallucination. There's nobody left behind because, you know, it's literally just a hallucination so it kind of gets past that whole thing about, you know, even if it's possible to still be there and be teaching everything it just keeps bringing down to that ultimate thing that it's just a hallucination and once you wake up you really accept the atonement and everything then in a sense that God takes the final step and the mind returns to complete abstraction. Abstraction means no form. No perception. That's the natural condition. Yeah. We cannot speak of this. We must go on. You know, you could see. You would just spend a whole night going around on this. You know, it's like, ah. In pride in what you're saying, she had to look at... Yeah, we got to do the nitty-gritty stuff. And I just want to get on with it. We're going to get into the good stuff. Look at my book. The Near Death Experience. Let's just basically jump to 167 for just one more look at... Less than 167. Hey, it's 311 in the old book. 18. The second paragraph is going to get at this idea we're talking about about the different forms. It says, in this world there appears to be a state that is life's opposite. You call it death. Yet we have learned that the idea of death takes many forms. That's the lesson that we just looked at in 163. It is the one idea which underlies all feelings that are not supremely happy. It is the alarm to which you give response of any kind that is not perfect joy. All sorrow, loss, anxiety, and suffering, and pain, even a little sigh of weirdness. See, now we're getting down to stretching that definition of death a little bit. A slight discomfort or the nearest frown acknowledged death and thus deny you live. So this kind of sheds light on what we're talking about. We're talking about a complete transformation of our mind, so complete that the idea of death is seen to be preposterous, that no more frowns even, or no more size of weirdness or whatever. There's another line in the course in the text where it says you will learn this course entirely or not at all. The ego can't be transcended in every single attack thought. Every single false idea and false belief has been looked at and seen as false. It's a great undertaking, what we're going to be doing, but what an opportunity we have when we come together and we can go into this to our different beliefs and everything because we're all kind of making that headway and that progress towards seeing things for what they are. Doesn't this mean, of course, that personality is a false idea, right? Yes, and that's part of the self-concept, the big object thing. If I'm the subject and I consider myself David and I look at my history and talk a little bit last week about shyness or all the different mental traits, all the different personality traits, they're all just kind of superficial, they're all kind of up on the surface. And the deeper you go beneath the clouds, you just come down to this light, which is formless and timeless and changeless. So it seems like the body and the personality is like clothing or dressing that covers up, attempts to cover up the real thing. And that we pay 99.9% of our time paying attention to the clothing rather than to the real thing. In a sense, you can look at it this way too, that here's the surface of the mind and this is where the body is, this is where you're talking about the clothing. And basically, this was made to cover up what's below it, which are the beliefs and underpinnings. It's like if you can think about this world as, you know, on stage in screenplays and plays in New York where they have a stage and then if you go behind the stage you can see all this wood. They have all these rafters and everything underpinnings holding the stage up. That here's the world of the body and all the perceptual world up here and then here are all these underpinnings that are holding it up. And these are the beliefs that are in the mind. So when we talk about giving up the world or relinquishing the world to the deceived mind it will be like okay I'm going to go to the Himalayas and I'm never going to look at girls again I'm going to detach from pleasure I'm going to give up, give up and the mistake is to think that you can give up the things up here which is just the form. But what Jesus is saying is come on we've got to go down into the mind we've got to get to the wood and we've got to get to the underpinnings and we've got to get to the beliefs because without getting to the beliefs there's no way. And this was made as a cover but the only reason this was made is as a distractive cover so I can be so, I can get so caught up in the drama of the world and in these bodies and everything that's happening and all this so that I won't look at these beliefs. And isn't it interesting that for the ego it's always the guilt that the ego induces it's always for things that we have done that it's like you always think back and say oh I feel so guilty that I said that or I did that and really from Jesus' perspective the guilt is not there at all the guilt is not at the behavioral level what you say or what you do the error is what the mind chose to believe about who it is and who your brother is and nobody feels guilty when I think about that and I let go of the behavioral level within to look at that level of ok who am I choosing to think I am and who am I choosing to think my brother is and realize the error there it doesn't make me feel guilty because at that level you choose it's only normal to say ok I made an error so now I'm willing to accept the correction of the error and accept my brother as they really are and that's an induced guilt and it seems like the ego is so persistent doesn't want us to go to that level and make the choice again he wants us to be preoccupied with the external level oh my god I said that oh my god I did that and be preoccupied with that always running the external world to fix things that we did wrong supposedly wrong which has nothing to do because the error is not there and cannot be corrected at that level but it's such a temptation to feel that the error is there I blew the test that's where the error is I blew my job that's where the error is I should straighten up I should now pay more attention I should now be more cautious all these external things all of that is the ego's way of salvation it doesn't bring salvation so what if it is instead of way A becomes B or C or D so you still believe in the world you still believe in death to let go of that level and not be tempted by the ego to always look at that external level to fix things that's not where the correction can take place