26.02.06
0703 - There is no world!
Posted in the Branch at 7:20 pm by Kathleen 
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from Issue 007 — Jun 2002
Of all the precepts given to us by the Course in Miracles, this one must be the most uncompromising and challenging. We are told that everyone eventually must come to know that there is no world.
Firstly, to look at this statement in a purely abstract manner is to see that if the world is indeed unreal then it is a lie and the opposite of truth. The natural state of the mind is abstract, the Course reminds us, but we have taught ourselves to make things concrete and particular. Our very real need is to return our minds to their natural state, and to see the truth clearly in any particular instance has enormous transfer value for us.
The world is a lie and the opposite of truth but since truth, by definition, is all there is, then the opposite of truth is just a ridiculous notion without substance or reality. In your mind, however, this ridiculous notion has taken on the appearance of reality, therefore the world that has grown from this notion is not real.
What it is, in effect, is a record in your mind of the coming and going of life as seen from the perspective of the human being, with which you equate yourself. The human being is born to die. What a cruel fate! There is no meaning there. So every little life span becomes a desperate attempt to establish meaning in the face of certain extinguishment. This is the course of history upon which the world as we see it is based. What does that mean to you? From the vantage point of being here, right now, where you stand, what does the course of history, as you know it, add to or detract from your sense of the importance and reality of your own existence right now?
If you believe that you as a human being are born to die for some inexplicable reason, then the most that you can hope for is to become part of history.
That is the ultimate goal of your existence here. You must be remembered, or else your existence is devoid of meaning. So you strive to live a life that will be important enough or special enough to be remembered and therefore will be the validation of you.
Who cares, if you are not going to be here anymore?
And what if the whole human race were to suffer permanent amnesia? Where would you be then? Or anyone, for that matter? The whole world, as you see and think of it, faces total destruction, at any moment, from the action of your realisation of the truth of life as an eternal being-ness. In effect, the whole world can only be sustained by memory and a belief in the passage of time. Memory, we are told, is a skill we have taught ourselves. It was not given to us at our creation because in our natural state of present moment awareness, in communication with our Creator, mind in Mind, there is no need for memory because everything is known. We made up memory as a tool to sequence each present moment actuality into a series of patterns that in fact are our stories. We hang them together like the moving pictures that we watch on a movie screen. Everyone knows that these moving pictures are actually still shots that are quickly processed through a projector to give the impression of one unfolding stream. We do the same thing with the screen of our minds. Sequence, remember, play through, project out. This is our world.
But in actual fact the only time anything is really happening is when it happens, in that moment, which is now. What we term “the world” is a memory pattern. That is all that history is. What we remember ourselves and what we are taught to remember. This can be totally collapsed into the present moment, and has no power over us beyond the power we give it with our own mind. We are, at any moment, entirely free and saved from all we thought was the world.
Memory belongs to time and the passage of time. The past, upon which the world is built; the nebulous future which is, however, stamped with the past before it eventuates; and somewhere in between, the present, fading into insignificance under the weight of past and future which together overshadow the fleeting ineffectual present moment.
Yet the Course in Miracles tells us that this fleeting ineffectual present moment is in fact a Holy Instant and in this Holy Instant all power is contained. To step wholly into this Holy Instant is to step out of time into eternity and from the scope of eternity to look on the world, which is a measurement of life equated with death within a framework of time, becomes totally ridiculous. And something which is seen as ridiculous can no longer be credited with any sense of meaning or therefore justification in being. No one, once they have clearly seen an error, could possibly dream of holding on to it. The dreamer awakens and the dream, the error, becomes totally relinquished in the recognition of it. Once the world is seen as error it is totally relinquished, and what was there all the time is seen, once more, clearly and totally.
And what is there is Life, an eternity of Life being Itself. The Self of Life, the Christ Self, in many forms, as many as can be imagined, but always and ever Itself. We step out of time into eternity: into present moment awareness.
We remember NOW.
And this is the goal of the Holy Spirit’s gentle coaching. To use memory, the skill we taught ourselves, to remember that NOW is all there is. And this life, now, is the truth; and a world as a construction of human beings, or beings of any kind, that die, is the lie.
Kathleen