1. Attack is always physical. ²When attack in any form enters your mind you are equating yourself with a body, since this is the ego’s interpretation of the body. ³You do not have to attack physically to accept this interpretation. ⁴You are accepting it simply by the belief that attack can get you something you want. ⁵If you did not believe this, the idea of attack would have no appeal for you. ⁶When you equate yourself with a body you will always experience depression. ⁷When a child of God thinks of himself in this way he is belittling himself, and seeing his brothers as similarly belittled. ⁸Since he can find himself only in them, he has cut himself off from salvation.

2. Remember that the Holy Spirit interprets the body only as a means of communication. ²Being the Communication Link between God and His separated Sons, the Holy Spirit interprets everything you have made in the light of what He is. ³The ego separates through the body. ⁴The Holy Spirit reaches through it to others. ⁵You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does, because you do not regard bodies solely as a means of joining minds and uniting them with yours and mine. ⁶This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. ⁷Of itself it has none.

3. If you use the body for attack, it is harmful to you. ²If you use it only to reach the minds of those who believe they are bodies, and teach them through the body that this is not so, you will understand the power of the mind that is in you. ³If you use the body for this and only for this, you cannot use it for attack. ⁴In the service of uniting it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion is. ⁵This is God’s way of making unlimited what you have limited. ⁶The Holy Spirit does not see the body as you do, because He knows the only reality of anything is the service it renders God on behalf of the function He gives it.

4. Communication ends separation. ²Attack promotes it. ³The body is beautiful or ugly, peaceful or savage, helpful or harmful, according to the use to which it is put. ⁴And in the body of another you will see the use to which you have put yours. ⁵If the body becomes a means you give to the Holy Spirit to use on behalf of union of the Sonship, you will not see anything physical except as what it is. ⁶Use it for truth and you will see it truly. ⁷Misuse it and you will misunderstand it, because you have already done so by misusing it. ⁸Interpret anything apart from the Holy Spirit and you will mistrust it. ⁹This will lead you to hatred and attack and loss of peace.

5. Yet all loss comes only from your own misunderstanding. ²Loss of any kind is impossible. ³But when you look upon a brother as a physical entity, his power and glory are “lost” to you and so are yours. ⁴You have attacked him, but you must have attacked yourself first. ⁵Do not see him this way for your own salvation, which must bring him his. ⁶Do not allow him to belittle himself in your mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and thus escape from yours. ⁷As part of you, he is holy. ⁸As part of me, you are. ⁹To communicate with part of God Himself is to reach beyond the Kingdom to its Creator, through His Voice which He has established as part of you.

6. Rejoice, then, that of yourself you can do nothing. ²You are not of yourself. ³He of Whom you are has willed your power and glory for you, with which you can perfectly accomplish His holy Will for you when you accept it for yourself. ⁴He has not withdrawn His gifts from you, but you believe you have withdrawn them from Him. ⁵Let no Son of God remain hidden for His Name’s sake, because His Name is yours.

7. The Bible says, “The Word (or thought) was made flesh.” ²Strictly speaking this is impossible, since it seems to involve the translation of one order of reality into another. ³Different orders of reality merely appear to exist, just as different orders of miracles do. ⁴Thought cannot be made into flesh except by belief, since thought is not physical. ⁵Yet thought is communication, for which the body can be used. ⁶This is the only natural use to which it can be put. ⁷To use the body unnaturally is to lose sight of the Holy Spirit’s purpose, and thus to confuse the goal of His curriculum.

8. There is nothing so frustrating to a learner as a curriculum he cannot learn. ²His sense of adequacy suffers, and he must become depressed. ³Being faced with an impossible learning situation is the most depressing thing in the world. ⁴In fact, it is ultimately why the world itself is depressing. ⁵The Holy Spirit’s curriculum is never depressing, because it is a curriculum of joy. ⁶Whenever the reaction to learning is depression, it is because the true goal of the curriculum has been lost sight of.

9. In this world, not even the body is perceived as whole. ²Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions with little or no relationship to each other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos. ³Guided by the ego, it is. ⁴Guided by the Holy Spirit, it is not. ⁵It becomes a means by which the part of the mind you tried to separate from spirit can reach beyond its distortions and return to spirit. ⁶The ego’s temple thus becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit, where devotion to Him replaces devotion to the ego. ⁷In this sense the body does become a temple to God; His Voice abides in it by directing the use to which it is put.

10. Healing is the result of using the body solely for communication. ²Since this is natural it heals by making whole, which is also natural. ³All mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical, or not mind, is a fragmented or sick interpretation. ⁴Mind cannot be made physical, but it can be made manifest through the physical if it uses the body to go beyond itself. ⁵By reaching out, the mind extends itself. ⁶It does not stop at the body, for if it does it is blocked in its purpose. ⁷A mind that has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has turned against itself.

11. The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. ²Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind that is working through the body, but not in it. ³If the mind believes the body is its goal it will distort its perception of the body, and by blocking its own extension beyond it, will induce illness by fostering separation. ⁴Perceiving the body as a separate entity cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. ⁵A medium of communication loses its usefulness if it is used for anything else. ⁶To use a medium of communication as a medium of attack is an obvious confusion in purpose.

12. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. ²How can you do both simultaneously with the same thing and not suffer? ³Perception of the body can be unified only by one purpose. ⁴This releases the mind from the temptation to see the body in many lights, and gives it over entirely to the One Light in which it can be really understood. ⁵To confuse a learning device with a curriculum goal is a fundamental confusion that blocks the understanding of both. ⁶Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind in it. ⁷This can be accomplished only if the mind extends to other minds, and does not arrest itself in its extension. ⁸This arrest is the cause of all illness, because only extension is the mind’s function.

13. The opposite of joy is depression. ²When your learning promotes depression instead of joy, you cannot be listening to God’s joyous Teacher and learning His lessons. ³To see a body as anything except a means of communication is to limit your mind and to hurt yourself. ⁴Health is therefore nothing more than united purpose. ⁵If the body is brought under the purpose of the mind, it becomes whole because the mind’s purpose is one. ⁶Attack can only be an assumed purpose of the body, because apart from the mind the body has no purpose at all.

14. You are not limited by the body, and thought cannot be made flesh. ²Yet mind can be manifested through the body if it goes beyond it and does not interpret it as limitation. ³Whenever you see another as limited to or by the body, you are imposing this limit on yourself. ⁴Are you willing to accept this, when your whole purpose for learning should be to escape from limitations? ⁵To conceive of the body as a means of attack and to believe that joy could possibly result, is a clear-cut indication of a poor learner. ⁶He has accepted a learning goal in obvious contradiction to the unified purpose of the curriculum, and one that is interfering with his ability to accept its purpose as his own.

15. Joy is unified purpose, and unified purpose is only God’s. ²When yours is unified it is His. ³Believe you can interfere with His purpose, and you need salvation. ⁴You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God. ⁵Therefore it is not true. ⁶No more are any of its seeming results. ⁷When you see a brother as a body, you are condemning him because you have condemned yourself. ⁸Yet if all condemnation is unreal, and it must be unreal since it is a form of attack, then it can have no results.

16. Do not allow yourself to suffer from imagined results of what is not true. ²Free your mind from the belief that this is possible. ³In its complete impossibility lies your only hope for release. ⁴But what other hope would you want? ⁵Freedom from illusions lies only in not believing them. ⁶There is no attack, but there is unlimited communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness. ⁷The power of wholeness is extension. ⁸Do not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your mind to creation in God.