A significant focus of the Course is on the purpose of sickness and how healing is achieved. The Course’s perspective on sickness is among its most radical ideas, similar to the thought that there is no actual world outside of us as we think we perceive it. In fact, the Course’s perspective on healing could be said to be an extension of the idea that there is no world “out there.” Sickness, like the entire world of illusions, is an effect, both being symptoms of a mind that is not well and thus in need of healing. The healing of each must be where the source of the sickness or illusion is, in the mind, and not in its effects perceived in the body or in the world.
“A major step in the Atonement Plan is to undo error at all levels where it occurs or seems to have effects. Illness, which is really ‘not right-mindedness,’ is the result of level confusion in the sense that it always entails the misbelief that what is amiss on one level, i.e., the mind, can adversely affect another, i.e., the body, though this sequence almost always appears reversed to the body’s eyes. It has been clarified that miracles are the means of correcting level confusion. In reality, all mistakes must be corrected at the level at which they occur. Only the mind is capable of error. The body can act erroneously, but this is only because it has responded to misthought. The body itself cannot bring about anything unconnected to mind, and the belief that it can, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to [in the Course], produces all physical symptoms.
“All physical illness represents a belief that the body can bring about something that isn’t in response to thought, or in this case, misthought. It is the belief, in fact, that the body is completely unconnected to mind in any but a superficial way. This is the basis for the belief that the physical world itself contains a power that is not the result of thought, an autonomous force that can effect and even overwhelm the mind. Ultimately this becomes the belief in ‘magic’ as enchantment, a phenomenon that in reality is simply the power of the mind manifesting mindlessly and therefore harmfully. The entire distortion that brought about such belief in ‘magic’ rested on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter that can control the mind. This fallacy can work both ways, i.e., it can be falsely believed either that the mind can miscreate in the body, or that the body can miscreate in the mind. When you become clear that the mind, which is the only level of creation, cannot create beyond itself, and therefore that the body is safe from miscreation and that the mind can be healed of its own, then neither confusion need occur.”
From the perspective of the Course, sickness can only result from a person’s decision for separation. “Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate.” “Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. Separation is overcome by Union. It cannot be overcome by separating. The will to unite must be unequivocal, or the will itself is separated and not whole. Your will is the means by which you determine your own condition, because will is the mechanism of decision. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or Joy accordingly.”
“‘When I am healed, I am joined in my healing.’ (This) idea remains the central thought on which awakening rests. For healing is the opposite of all the world’s ideas that dwell on sickness and on separate states. Sickness is a retreat from others, and a shutting off of joining. It becomes a door that closes on a separate self, and keeps it isolated and alone.
“Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep oneself apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to apparently make separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh that it cannot surmount. The world obeys the laws that sickness serves, but healing operates apart from them.
“It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. In sickness must a person be apart and separate. But healing is their own decision to be joined again, and to accept their Self with all Its Parts intact and unassailed. In sickness does their Self appear to be dismembered and without the Unity that gives It Life. But healing is accomplished as one sees that the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of the Divine’s Children. Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth. But healing demonstrates that Truth is true and lies are lies.
“The separation sickness would impose has never really happened. To be healed is merely to accept what always was the simple Truth, and always will remain exactly as It has forever been.”
Radically, the Course suggests that the individual who is experiencing illness has decided to be sick in order to remain separate from others. “Sickness is not by chance or accident. Like all attempted ego defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest its purpose is to hide Reality, attack It, change It, render It inept, distort It, twist It, or reduce It to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all attempted defenses is to keep the Truth from being Whole. And the parts are looked upon as if each one were entire within itself.
“Attempted defenses are intentional, and are made with awareness. They are secret enchantment wands you wave when Truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious only because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done.”
“When the ego tempts you to choose sickness, do not ask the Holy Spirit to heal the body. For this would merely be to accept the ego’s belief that the body is the proper aim for healing, when it is only the symptom of health or illness. Ask rather that the Holy Spirit teach you in that moment of choice the right perception of the body, for perception alone can be distorted, a result of wrong thinking. Only perception can be sick, because perception can be wrong. Wrong perception is distorted willing, which wants things to be as they are not.”
“Healing is accomplished the instant the sufferer no longer perceives any value in pain. Who would choose suffering unless they thought it brought them something, and something of value? They must think suffering is a small price to pay for something of greater worth. For sickness is a decision. It is the choice of weakness in the mistaken conviction that it is strength. When this occurs, real Strength is perceived as threat and health as danger.”
Only the mind can be sick, that is, can choose, in a state of wrong-mindedness or judgment, to be separate because of the threat that Union and Truth represent to it. Truly, a state of wrong-mindedness is already a state of sickness, as well as the source of the appearance of sickness in the body. Once the mind chooses separation, it projects its decision to be sick onto the symbol of separation, the body. Bodies are obviously separate and were made in the separation to represent the separation. So for the split mind the body is the ideal thing on which to project the illusion or symptom of sickness. This process mirrors the original process of projecting a world outside of ourselves that began the separation. We then believe that sickness is happening to us rather than it being our decision.
“Wholeness heals because it is of mind. All forms of sickness, even those causing death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. They are thus attempts to reinforce unconsciousness out of fear of consciousness. This is a pathetic way of trying not to know by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual.”
Given that sickness is a deception, a kind of ploy to shift attention away from the source of the problem, and therefore a form of “enchantment,” the remedy is to address healing where the sickness actually lies, which is the mind that has chosen to make its learning aid, the body, suffer in order to remain separate from other minds. Treating symptoms in the body no matter what form the sickness takes, including its seeming level of severity, may only serve to keep true, lasting healing from happening. “Only awakening can be said to cure.” In this regard, the Course considers physical remedies to be magic agents because they imbue the physical with a power separate from the mind. Such agents are not really needed and may perpetuate the illusion of the physical containing a power that can control the mind, even if such agents temporarily seem to allay or eliminate symptoms. This is because the physical cannot in truth affect the mind without the mind’s decision, and so physical agents can’t address the core issue—the decision of the mind to choose separation rather than union with other minds. However, magic agents in the form of physical remedies may be necessary as a temporary measure to keep the split mind from destroying the body through death.
“The acceptance of the truth that sickness is a decision of the mind, for a purpose for which it alone would use the body, is the basis of true healing. And this is so for healing in all forms. A patient decides that this is so, and they recover. If they decide against recovery, then they will not be healed even if their symptoms temporarily subside or disappear. Who is the real physician? Only the mind of the patient themself. The outcome is what they decide that it will be. Special healing agents may seem to be ministering to them, yet these only give form to the patient’s decision for healing, made in their own mind. If the patient chooses to employ such agents, this is merely to bring tangible form to their desires. And it is this the agents do, and nothing else. They are not actually needed at all. The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say with conviction, ‘I have no use for this experience of sickness,’ and every form of sickness would be cured at once.
“What is the single requisite for this shift in perception? It is simply this: the recognition that sickness is a decision of the mind, and has nothing to do with the body. What does this recognition ‘cost?’ It costs the world you look upon, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs: not with the world, but on them who look upon the world and perceive it as it is not. They merely look upon what they choose to perceive. No more and no less. The world does nothing to them. They only think it does. Nor do they do anything to the world simply because they are mistaken about what it is. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea. With the acceptance of this idea is pain forever gone. But with it also goes all confusion about Creation. Does not this follow of necessity? Place cause and effect in their true sequence in one respect, and the learning will generalize and transform the world. The transfer value of one true Idea has no end or limit. The final outcome of this learning is the Remembrance of the Divine.”
What is the role of prayer in the healing process as described? Just as sickness means that the mind has decided to defend itself from union by projecting separation onto the body, true communication means sharing and joining, which is the opposite of sickness. And this healing communication, which prayer is an expression of, can be done with words or silently in thought.
“If the patient must change their mind in order to be healed, what does the teacher of the Divine have to do with the process? Can they change the patient’s mind for them? Certainly not. For those patients already willing to change their mind, the teacher has no function except to rejoice with them, for these patients in their healing have become teachers of the Divine with them. The teacher has, however, a more specific function for those who do not understand what true healing is. These patients do not realize that they have chosen sickness. On the contrary, they believe that sickness has chosen them. Nor are they open-minded on this point. They believe that the body tells them what to do, and they obey. They have no idea how insane this concept is. If they even suspected it, they would be healed. Yet they suspect nothing. To them the separation is quite real.
“To them the teacher of the Divine comes to represent another choice that the patient has forgotten. The simple presence of a teacher of the Divine is a reminder. The teacher’s thoughts ask for the right to question what the patient has accepted as true. As the Divine’s Messengers, Its teachers are the symbols of awakening. They ask the patient for forgiveness for the Divine’s Children in the Divine’s Own Name. They stand for the Alternative. With the Divine’s Word in their minds they come with blessing, not to heal the sick but to remind them of the Remedy the Divine has already given them. It is not the hands of the teachers that heal. It is not their voice that speaks the Word of the Divine. They merely give what has been given them. Very gently they call to their sisters and brothers to turn away from the belief in sickness and death: ‘Behold, you Child of the Divine, what Life can offer you. Would you choose sickness in place of this?’ . . .
“The Truth in the minds of the Divine’s teachers reaches out to the Truth in the minds of their sisters and brothers, so that illusions are not reinforced. Illusions are thus brought to the Truth, rather than attempting to bring Truth to illusions. So are they dispelled, not by the will of another, but by the Union of the One Will with Itself. And this is the function of the Divine’s Teachers in the healing process: to see no will as separate from their own will, nor theirs as separate from the Divine’s.”