1. The slave of idols is a willing slave. ²For willing he must be to let himself bow down in worship to what has no life, and seek for power in the powerless. ³What happened to the holy Son of God that this could be his wish; to let himself fall lower than the stones upon the ground, and look to idols that they raise him up? ⁴Hear, then, your story in the dream you made, and ask yourself if it be not the truth that you believe that it is not a dream.

2. A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as Himself. ²And in that dream was Heaven changed to hell, and God made enemy unto His Son. ³How can God’s Son awaken from the dream? ⁴It is a dream of judgment. ⁵So must he judge not, and he will waken. ⁶For the dream will seem to last while he is part of it. ⁷Judge not, for he who judges will have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. ⁸Nor can he know the Self he has condemned. ⁹Judge not, because you make yourself a part of evil dreams, where idols are your “true” identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid in terror and in guilt upon yourself.

3. All figures in the dream are idols, made to save you from the dream. ²Yet they are part of what they have been made to save you from. ³Thus does an idol keep the dream alive and terrible, for who could wish for one unless he were in terror and despair? ⁴And this the idol represents, and so its worship is the worship of despair and terror, and the dream from which they come. ⁵Judgment is an injustice to God’s Son, and it is justice that who judges him will not escape the penalty he laid upon himself within the dream he made. ⁶God knows of justice, not of penalty. ⁷But in the dream of judgment you attack and are condemned; and wish to be the slave of idols, which are interposed between your judgment and the penalty it brings.

4. There can be no salvation in the dream as you are dreaming it. ²For idols must be part of it, to save you from what you believe you have accomplished, and have done to make you sinful and put out the light within you. ³Little child, the light is there. ⁴You do but dream, and idols are the toys you dream you play with. ⁵Who has need of toys but children? ⁶They pretend they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and think and feel and speak for them. ⁷Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those who play with them. ⁸But they are eager to forget that they made up the dream in which their toys are real, nor recognize their wishes are their own.

5. Nightmares are childish dreams. ²The toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real. ³Yet can a dream attack? ⁴Or can a toy grow large and dangerous and fierce and wild? ⁵This does the child believe, because he fears his thoughts and gives them to the toys instead. ⁶And their reality becomes his own, because they seem to save him from his thoughts. ⁷Yet do they keep his thoughts alive and real, but seen outside himself, where they can turn against him for his treachery to them. ⁸He thinks he needs them that he may escape his thoughts, because he thinks the thoughts are real. ⁹And so he makes of anything a toy, to make his world remain outside himself, and play that he is but a part of it.

6. There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. ²Seek not to retain the toys of children. ³Put them all away, for you have need of them no more. ⁴The dream of judgment is a children’s game, in which the child becomes the father, powerful, but with the little wisdom of a child. ⁵What hurts him is destroyed; what helps him, blessed. ⁶Except he judges this as does a child, who does not know what hurts and what will heal. ⁷And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made. ⁸Yet is the real world unaffected by the world he thinks is real. ⁹Nor have its laws been changed because he does not understand.

7. The real world still is but a dream. ²Except the figures have been changed. ³They are not seen as idols which betray. ⁴It is a dream in which no one is used to substitute for something else, nor interposed between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. ⁵No one is used for something he is not, for childish things have all been put away. ⁶And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy, because that is the purpose that it has. ⁷Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. ⁸And the forms that enter in the dream are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love.

8. Forgiving dreams have little need to last. ²They are not made to separate the mind from what it thinks. ³They do not seek to prove the dream is being dreamed by someone else. ⁴And in these dreams a melody is heard that everyone remembers, though he has not heard it since before all time began. ⁵Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar that abides forever deep within the Son of God. ⁶And when he hears this song again, he knows he never heard it not. ⁷And where is time, when dreams of judgment have been put away?

9. Whenever you feel fear in any form,—and you are fearful if you do not feel a deep content, a certainty of help, a calm assurance Heaven goes with you,—be sure you made an idol, and believe it will betray you. ²For beneath your hope that it will save you lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and uncertainty, so deep and bitter that the dream cannot conceal completely all your sense of doom. ³Your self-betrayal must result in fear, for fear is judgment, leading surely to the frantic search for idols and for death.

10. Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety and have not attacked yourself. ²So do your childish terrors melt away, and dreams become a sign that you have made a new beginning, not another try to worship idols and to keep attack. ³Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in the dream. ⁴And so they bring the dreamer full release from dreams of fear. ⁵He does not fear his judgment for he has judged no one, nor has sought to be released through judgment from what judgment must impose. ⁶And all the while he is remembering what he forgot, when judgment seemed to be the way to save him from its penalty.