1. Who punishes the body is insane. ²For here the little gap is seen, and yet it is not here. ³It has not judged itself, nor made itself to be what it is not. ⁴It does not seek to make of pain a joy and look for lasting pleasure in the dust. ⁵It does not tell you what its purpose is and cannot understand what it is for. ⁶It does not victimize, because it has no will, no preferences and no doubts. ⁷It does not wonder what it is. ⁸And so it has no need to be competitive. ⁹It can be victimized, but cannot feel itself as victim. ¹⁰It accepts no role, but does what it is told, without attack.

2. It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible for sight a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the sounds you do not like, although it cannot hear. ²It suffers not the punishment you give because it has no feeling. ³It behaves in ways you want, but never makes the choice. ⁴It is not born and does not die. ⁵It can but follow aimlessly the path on which it has been set. ⁶And if that path is changed, it walks as easily another way. ⁷It takes no sides and judges not the road it travels. ⁸It perceives no gap, because it does not hate. ⁹It can be used for hate, but it cannot be hateful made thereby.

3. The thing you hate and fear and loathe and want, the body does not know. ²You send it forth to seek for separation and be separate. ³And then you hate it, not for what it is, but for the uses you have made of it. ⁴You shrink from what it sees and what it hears, and hate its frailty and littleness. ⁵And you despise its acts, but not your own. ⁶It sees and acts for you. ⁷It hears your voice. ⁸And it is frail and little by your wish. ⁹It seems to punish you, and thus deserve your hatred for the limitations that it brings to you. ¹⁰Yet you have made of it a symbol for the limitations that you want your mind to have and see and keep.

4. The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. ²You hate it, yet you think it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost. ³This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. ⁴This is the secret oath you take again, whenever you perceive yourself attacked. ⁵No one can suffer if he does not see himself attacked, and losing by attack. ⁶Unstated and unheard in consciousness is every pledge to sickness. ⁷Yet it is a promise to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return.

5. Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that it will suffer pain. ²It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret, in agreement with another’s secret wish to be apart from you, as you would be apart from him. ³Unless you both agree that is your wish, it can have no effects. ⁴Whoever says, “There is no gap between my mind and yours” has kept God’s promise, not his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. ⁵And by his healing is his brother healed.

6. Let this be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and not apart. ²And he will keep the promise that you make with him, because it is the one that he has made to God, as God has made to him. ³God keeps His promises; His Son keeps his. ⁴In his creation did his Father say, “You are beloved of Me and I of you forever. ⁵Be you perfect as Myself, for you can never be apart from Me.” ⁶His Son remembers not that he replied “I will,” though in that promise he was born. ⁷Yet God reminds him of it every time he does not share a promise to be sick, but lets his mind be healed and unified. ⁸His secret vows are powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises he shares. ⁹And what he substitutes is not his will, who has made promise of himself to God.