1. The Holy Spirit needs a happy learner, in whom His mission can be happily accomplished. ²You who are steadfastly devoted to misery must first recognize that you are miserable and not happy. ³The Holy Spirit cannot teach without this contrast, for you believe that misery is happiness. ⁴This has so confused you that you have undertaken to learn to do what you can never do, believing that unless you learn it you will not be happy. ⁵You do not realize that the foundation on which this most peculiar learning goal depends means absolutely nothing. ⁶Yet it may still make sense to you. ⁷Have faith in nothing and you will find the “treasure” that you seek. ⁸Yet you will add another burden to your already burdened mind. ⁹You will believe that nothing is of value, and will value it. ¹⁰A little piece of glass, a speck of dust, a body or a war are one to you. ¹¹For if you value one thing made of nothing, you have believed that nothing can be precious, and that you can learn how to make the untrue true.

2. The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth is true. ²This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one. ³Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. ⁴Consider all the distortions you have made of nothing; all the strange forms and feelings and actions and reactions that you have woven out of it. ⁵Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to. ⁶The contrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet you do not see it. ⁷The simple and the obvious are not apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns because of them.

3. All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that all this is not true. ²To those unhappy learners who would teach themselves nothing, and delude themselves into believing that it is not nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness:

³The truth is true. ⁴Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there. ⁵Let Me make the one distinction for you that you cannot make, but need to learn. ⁶Your faith in nothing is deceiving you. ⁷Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs. ⁸You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth. ⁹And you will love it because you will understand it.

4. Like you, the Holy Spirit did not make truth. ²Like God, He knows it to be true. ³He brings the light of truth into the darkness, and lets it shine on you. ⁴And as it shines your brothers see it, and realizing that this light is not what you have made, they see in you more than you see. ⁵They will be happy learners of the lesson this light brings to them, because it teaches them release from nothing and from all the works of nothing. ⁶The heavy chains that seem to bind them to despair they do not see as nothing, until you bring the light to them. ⁷And then they see the chains have disappeared, and so they must have been nothing. ⁸And you will see it with them. ⁹Because you taught them gladness and release, they will become your teachers in release and gladness.

5. When you teach anyone that truth is true, you learn it with him. ²And so you learn that what seemed hardest was the easiest. ³Learn to be a happy learner. ⁴You will never learn how to make nothing everything. ⁵Yet see that this has been your goal, and recognize how foolish it has been. ⁶Be glad it is undone, for when you look at it in simple honesty, it is undone. ⁷I said before, “Be not content with nothing,” for you have believed that nothing could content you. ⁸It is not so.

6. If you would be a happy learner, you must give everything you have learned to the Holy Spirit, to be unlearned for you. ²And then begin to learn the joyous lessons that come quickly on the firm foundation that truth is true. ³For what is builded there is true, and built on truth. ⁴The universe of learning will open up before you in all its gracious simplicity. ⁵With truth before you, you will not look back.

7. The happy learner meets the conditions of learning here, as he meets the conditions of knowledge in the Kingdom. ²All this lies in the Holy Spirit’s plan to free you from the past, and open up the way to freedom for you. ³For truth is true. ⁴What else could ever be, or ever was? ⁵This simple lesson holds the key to the dark door that you believe is locked forever. ⁶You made this door of nothing, and behind it is nothing. ⁷The key is only the light that shines away the shapes and forms and fears of nothing. ⁸Accept this key to freedom from the hands of Christ Who gives it to you, that you may join Him in the holy task of bringing light. ⁹For, like your brothers, you do not realize the light has come and freed you from the sleep of darkness.

8. Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be free of darkness. ²The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave you asleep. ³The vision of Christ is given the very instant that it is perceived. ⁴Where everything is clear, it is all holy. ⁵The quietness of its simplicity is so compelling that you will realize it is impossible to deny the simple truth. ⁶For there is nothing else. ⁷God is everywhere, and His Son is in Him with everything. ⁸Can he sing the dirge of sorrow when this is true?