The Course presents us with a startling assertion that is one of its core premises: that what appears to us to be the physical world outside of and surrounding us does not actually exist.
“There is no world! This is the central thought the Course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as they can let themself be led along the road to Truth. Each will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again. But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn that there is no world, and who can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form that they can understand and recognize. Some see this lesson suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist, because what they behold must be the Truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world. And some will find it in this Course. . . . If the world you look upon is indeed your own imagining, a screen that takes the forms you project upon it, then you can loose it from all things you ever thought it was by merely changing all the thoughts that gave it these appearances. The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let Thoughts of Life replace all thoughts you ever held of death.”
It is understood that the assertion that the outside world doesn’t actually exist is an extremely difficult idea to accept given the compelling experience we have of a world outside of us, a world filled both with things and with ideas such as suffering, injustice, and insanity, a world seemingly beyond our control. “To be told that what you do not perceive is there may sound like insanity. It is very difficult to become convinced that it is insanity not to perceive what is there, and to perceive what is not there instead.”
“There is nothing outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is in that Realization that the Realm of Heaven is restored to you. For the Divine created only Heaven, and It did not depart from It, nor leave It separate from Itself. The Realm of Heaven is the Dwelling Place of the Children of the Divine, who left not their Creator, and dwell not apart from It. Heaven is not a place or a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the Knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within.”
“There is no world as it appears to be because this world is a thought apart from the Divine, and made to separate the Creator and Its Children, and break away a Part of the Divine Itself and thus destroy Its Wholeness. Can a world that comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere?”
In reality, according to the Course, this world we perceive as a world of things outside of us is a profound miscreation, a powerful mis-projection from our minds onto the blank screen of the world, constructed or made up by those human beings experiencing it, that is intended to convey the idea that the world is happening to them outside of their control, and therefore that they are the victims of this world, and thus not responsible for it, and particularly not responsible for the Power of their thought which gave rise to this world.
“Do not believe this world is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing where it is will you gain control over it. For you do have control over your mind, because the mind is the mechanism of decision.” “You will undertake a journey, because you are not at home in this world. And you will search for your true Home, whether you know where It is or not. If you believe your Home is outside yourself, the search will be futile, for you will be seeking where It is not. You do not yet know how to see within yourself, for you do not believe your Home is there. Yet the Holy Spirit knows it for you, and It will guide you to your Home, because that is Its Mission. As It fulfills Its Mission, It will teach you yours. For your Mission is the same as Spirit’s. By guiding your sisters and brothers Home, you are following Spirit there.”
“The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you perceive within it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you sought when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein is your ultimate release. Just change your mind on what you want to perceive, and all the world must change accordingly.”
“What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood that you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to attack and murder and destroy themselves, to sin and die, are entirely unreal? Could you have faith in what you look upon if you recognized this? And would you even be able to look upon it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are through coming into sanity again. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them [hallucinations] not, and they are gone. And all you need to do to awaken to Sanity is recognize that you made this up. Once you accept this simple fact and take unto yourself the Power you gave your hallucinations, you are released from them.”
“I [i.e., all of us who believe ourselves to be in this world] have indeed misunderstood the world, because I laid my ‘sins’ on it, and perceived them looking back at me. How fierce they seemed! And how deceived was I to think that what I feared was in the world, instead of in my mind alone. Today I see the world in the celestial Gentleness with which Creation shines. There is no fear in it in truth. Let no appearance of my mistaken thoughts obscure the Light of Heaven, shining on the world.”
Since the world that appears to be outside of us is merely our own thoughts and wishes projected onto a blank screen, according to the Course we are completely responsible for everything we perceive and experience, including sickness, disasters, and death. “Your holy will establishes everything that happens to you.” “The world you look upon depicts exactly what you thought you did. Except that now you think that what you did is being done to you. The guilt for what you thought is being placed outside yourself, and on a guilty world that dreams your dreams, and thinks your thoughts instead of you. It seems to bring its vengeance, not your own.”
This proposal may be especially difficult to accept with regard to tragedy suffered by babies, children, and other helpless beings. But this rejection is based on an interpretation that assumes several things. First, it assumes that physical birth is the beginning of life. If we understand that physical birth is merely a continuation of life, then it can be conceived that human beings determine all that they will experience in life while in a state that transcends the stages of life that we label as childhood, youth, adulthood, etc. It also assumes that this proposal means that our consciousness is what determines what we experience, and that the consciousness of a baby or even of a child, being so undeveloped, couldn’t possibly choose what it experiences. However, the parts of a child’s psyche, even a baby’s, that are beyond the conscious level – i.e., their unconscious and superconscious – have just as much access to the power of decision as do the parts of an adult’s psyche beyond the conscious, in that the hidden aspects of the psyche don’t undergo the same maturation process as consciousness does. The parts of the psyche that the Course proposes determine all that a person experiences are in fact beyond the conscious level. On the one hand is the wounded part of the unconscious that chooses, for instance, to be sick because it believes that sickness will give it something of value. On the other hand is the highest part of our psyche – the superconscious – which chooses to move beyond all illusory experiences, including sickness, deciding only for awakening, and reinterpreting all experience in light of the goal of awakening. One Course lesson theme identifies this highest part of ourselves: “My holy Self is Cocreator of the Universe, and I determine all that I experience.”
Finally, our rejection of the idea that we determine all that we experience is based on a judgment about what is good and bad. We judge things we fear as dangerous, and experiences we dislike and don’t understand as tragic, and therefore find repulsive the idea that a child or other helpless being could choose such experiences for themself. If we understand that each one chooses all that they experience based on what their psyche believes they need to experience, then our judgments and labels lose the meanings we have assigned to them out of fear or repulsion. Our limited understanding about life’s events, and the labels we assign them based on this, are meaningless to Spirit. “Destructiveness becomes benign and all things are turned to blessing under Spirit’s gentle Gaze.”
The good news is that if we made up this world, and all that we experience in it, then we can also let it go in exchange for something wholly satisfying, a world in which all that isn’t like the Divine has been removed for us. We can allow Divine Meaning to be projected for us by Spirit onto the blank screen of the world in place of what we made up. What will take its place will be a world full of miracles. But even that’s only a temporary world – the “real world” – given as a gift to us to allow us, in a safe, happy place, the time needed to go through the process of mastering the universal Truth curriculum, learning to see, and awakening from all dreams forever.
“No one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers their initial attack upon themself. No one believes there really was a time when they knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real. They would have seen at once that the ideas that conceive this world as real are one illusion, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious these ideas now appear to be! And no one can remember when they would have been met with laughter and with disbelief. We can remember this, if we simply see the cause of these ideas. And we will behold the grounds for laughter, not a cause for fear.”
The magnitude of this idea that the world we perceive is merely the projection of our own mind, that all the experiences we have in it are our decision, and that this world isn’t outside of us and doesn’t exist in actuality but only in a dream, cannot be overstated as a key premise of the Course. This idea is at the core of the problem of this world, and also how this problem will ultimately be resolved.