What has been given you? The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and
purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid because you were created
out of Love. Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were
created. This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. It was
given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it
live.
You have received all this. No-one who walks the world but has received
it. It is not this knowledge which you give, for that is what creation
gave. All this cannot be learned. What, then, are you to learn to give
today? Our lesson yesterday evoked a theme found early in the text.
Experience cannot be shared directly in the way that vision can. The
revelation that the Father and the Son are One will come in time to
every mind. Yet is that time determined by the mind itself, not taught.
The time is set already. It appears to be quite arbitrary. Yet there is
no step along the road that anyone but takes by chance. It has already
been taken by him, although he has not yet embarked on it. For time but
seems to go in one direction. We but undertake a journey that is
over. Yet it seems to have a future still unknown to us.
Time is a trick; a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures
come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances which
does not change. The script is written. When experience will come to end
your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey from the point at
which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again;
reviewing mentally what has gone by.
The teacher does not give experience, because he did not learn it. It
revealed itself to him at its appointed time. But vision is his gift.
This he can give directly, for Christ’s knowledge is not lost because He
has a vision He can give to anyone who asks. The Father’s Will and His
are joined in knowledge. Yet there is a vision which the Holy Spirit sees
because the mind of Christ beholds it too.
Here is the joining of the world of doubt and shadows made with the
intangible. Here is a quiet place within the world made holy by
forgiveness and by love. Here are all contradictions reconciled, for
here the journey ends. Experience, unlearned, untaught, unseen, is
merely there. This is beyond our goal, for it transcends what needs to
be accomplished. Our concern is with Christ’s vision. This we can
attain.
Christ’s vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it
for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an
idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful
mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no
separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all
happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it
sees.
This can be taught, and must be taught by all who would achieve it. It
requires but the recognition that the world can not give anything that
faintly can compare with this in value; nor set up a goal which does not
merely disappear when this has been perceived. And this you give today;
see no-one as a body. Greet him as the Son of God he is, acknowledging
that he is one with you in holiness.
Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ has vision which has power to
overlook them all. In His forgiveness they are gone. Unseen by One, they
merely disappear because a vision of the holiness which lies beyond them
comes to take their place. It matters not what form they took, nor how
enormous they appeared to be, nor who seemed to be hurt by them. They are
no more, and all effects they seemed to have are gone with them, undone
and never to be done.
Thus do you learn to give as you receive. And thus Christ’s vision looks
on you as well. This lesson is not difficult to learn if you remember in
your brother you but see yourself. If he be lost in sin so must you be;
if you see light in him your sins have been forgiven by yourself. Each
brother whom you meet today provides another chance to let Christ’s
vision shine on you, and offer you the peace of God.
It matters not when revelation comes, for that is not of time. Yet time
has still one gift to give in which true knowledge is reflected in a way
so accurate its image shares its unseen holiness; its likeness shines
with its immortal Love. We practice seeing with the eyes of Christ
today. And by the holy gifts we give, Christ’s vision looks upon
ourselves as well.