You are hampered in your progress by your demands to know what you
do NOT know. This is actually a way of holding on to deprivation. You
cannot reasonably object to following instructions in a course FOR
knowing on the grounds that you do NOT know. The need for the course is
implicit in your objection. Knowledge is not the motivation for learning
this course. PEACE is. As the prerequisite for knowledge, peace MUST be
learned. This is only because those who are in conflict are NOT
peaceful, and peace is the CONDITION of knowledge, because it is the
condition of the Kingdom.

Knowledge will be restored when you meet its conditions. This is not a
bargain made by God,Who makes NO bargains. It is merely the result of
your misuse of His laws on behalf of a will that is not His. Knowledge
IS His Will. If you are OPPOSING His Will, how can you have knowledge? I
have told you what knowledge offers you, but it is clear that you do not
regard this as wholly desirable. If you did, you would hardly be willing
to throw it away so readily, when the ego asks for your allegiance. The
distraction of the ego seems to interfere with your learning, but the
ego HAS no power to distract you, unless you GIVE it the power.

The ego’s voice is a hallucination. You cannot expect it to say “I am not
real.” Hallucinations ARE inaccurate perceptions of reality. Yet you are
not asked to dispel them alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in
terms of their results to YOU. If you do not want
them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your mind
FOR you. Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war DOES
deprive you of peace. Yet in this war there is no opponent. THIS is the
reinterpretation of reality which you must make to secure peace, and the
only one you need EVER make.