 We'll turn to page 51 in the text, in the old text. In the new text it's titled, The Ego and False Autonomy. It's the first paragraph. 56 in the new and 51 in the old. It's the very first paragraph under the ego and false autonomy. Jesus, Bill Thetford, I think when this was being dictated, Bill Thetford kind of said, how could such a thing have happened ever in the first place, you know? And Jesus, in a sense, this was incorporated into the text. Jesus says, it is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego. In fact, it is the best question you could ask. There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter. And history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present. Abstract thought applies to knowledge because knowledge is completely impersonal. And examples are irrelevant to its understanding. Perception, however, is always specific and therefore quite concrete. So, in a sense of going on a witch hunt and looking back into the past and saying, you know, how could the ego, how could this guilt have come about? Or how could the ego have come about? Jesus is kind of saying, don't go looking in a sense in the past for the answer. You need to have a present experience. No, it will still happen now. Yeah, as long as you're still feeling upset in any way, then obviously by your experience you can tell that the same mistake is being repeated. That's like the thinking not fine. Yeah, but that doesn't answer the question of, I promise, how could the mind have made the ego? Okay, then here we go. Back now to the clarification of terms, which is the back of the book. We want to go down to the, it's on page 73 in the old book, the introduction to the clarification of terms. The fourth paragraph. The ego will demand many answers that this course does not get. It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask, how did the impossible occur? To what did the impossible happen? It may ask this in many forms. Yet there is no answer. Only an experience. Seek only this and do not let theology delay you. In other words, to really ask that question and to kind of get really bent on that question like how could the impossible happen? You can kind of go into a metaphysical theological tailspin. But to ask the question, how could the impossible happen? There is an underlying assumption that's beneath the question. What is the underlying assumption beneath how could the impossible happen? Impossible. That the impossible could happen and has happened. Why would you ask how it happened unless you already believed that it did? So you see where if Jesus answers this question, then that makes the error real. It's kind of like defining the ego. You really say, I want a good solid definition of the ego. In the next couple pages later, Jesus does not give a definition for the ego. But he does talk about the miracle. He does talk about the right mind and the correction. The third paragraph down, he says there is no definition for a lie that serves to make it true. And in the fourth paragraph, he says we cannot make a definition for what the ego is, but we can say what it is not. And at that point, he goes into describe the state of the miracle. This is the course in choosing the right mind and choosing the miracle, but not into trying to analyze the ego. And we think we need to know what it is so we can avoid it. But if we just get in the right mind, it's not an issue. It dissolves. At what point did we all, all of us that are one, decide that we wanted to choose to experience life in this form? It's a strange question. It's another version of the one we just were talking about. The course says that the ego has the first question. The first question was, what am I? Now, the Holy Spirit has got a good answer for that. The Holy Spirit comes immediately into the mind. And the Holy Spirit's answer, of course, is you are the Holy Son of God Himself, infinite, perfect, and created in the likeness and image of your Father. But remember... Why would we just know that? We do know. It's buried though. Remember last night in the storybook I said about how the mind ran from the light in an instant of terror? Because the ego believes that God's going to get you. Because you've really pulled it off now. You've done a terrible thing. So the mind, in a sense, was terrified and moved into the darkness away from the light. And the ego gave an answer to that question too. What am I? It's like, here you are, you're a... A body. A world. A body. A body in a world, you know. And kind of like, that's its answer. And not only that, but you can make yourself. And so for an instant, we believed... Ego. For one instant, that's all it is. The Course says, the Course calls it the unholy instant. It's the instant. Now, if we talk about time, here's the unholy instant where that tiny belief was believed in. And here comes the Holy Spirit as simultaneously as the answer to that. Right there in the mind. In other words, God placed the answer to the insanity right where the insanity was. He didn't put the answer out in the world. Because that's not where the puff is. The puff's in the mind. So he placed the answer right where the problem was. But the mind is so terrified of that light, that it kind of moved out towards the form. And got engaged in bodies and survival and, you know... All kinds of delusions. Yeah, Bill's got a lesson 223, which is, God is my life. I have no life but His. I was mistaken when I thought I lived apart from God. There were different entities that moved in isolation, unattached and housed within a body. Now I know my life is God. I have no other home and I do not exist apart from Him. He has no thoughts that are not part of me and I have none but those which are Him.