1. The answer to this question is – one. One wholly perfect teacher, whose learning is complete, suffices. This one, sanctified and redeemed, becomes the Self Who is the Son of God. He who was always wholly spirit now no longer sees himself as a body, or even as in a body. Therefore, he is limitless. And being limitless, his thoughts are joined with God’s forever and ever. His perception of himself is based upon God’s Judgment, not his own. Thus does he share God’s Will, and bring His thoughts to still deluded minds. He is forever one, because he is as God created him. He has accepted Christ, and he is saved, and can now save his brothers.

2. Thus does the son of man become the Son of God. It is not really a change; it is a change of mind. Nothing external alters, but everything internal now reflects only the Love of God. God can no longer be feared, for the mind sees no cause for punishment. God’s teachers appear to be many, for that is what the world’s need is now. Yet being joined in one purpose, and one they share with God, how could they be separate from each other? (They are separate, perhaps, in form but not in content or purpose.) What does it matter if they then appear in many forms? Their minds are one; their joining is complete. And God works through them now as one, for that is what they are. (Remember: only minds can join; “bodies” cannot join.)

3. Why is the illusion of many necessary? It is only because reality is not understandable to the deluded. Only very few can hear God’s Voice at all, and even they cannot communicate His messages directly through the Spirit Which gave them. They need a medium through which communication becomes possible to those who do not realize that they are spirit. They need a body they can see. And a voice they can listen to and understand, without the fear that truth would encounter in them. So God’s teachers do need a body, for their unity cannot be recognized directly in the world.

4. Yet what makes God’s teachers effective is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body. As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body’s function is but to let God’s Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages that are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of the Source of the messages. From this understanding will come the recognition, in this new teacher of God, of what the body’s purpose really is, the only use there really is for it. This lesson is enough to let the thought of unity come in, and what is one is recognized as one. The teachers of God appear to share the illusion of separation, but because of what they use the body for, they do not believe in the illusion despite these appearances. They believe in oneness.

5. The central lesson is always this, that what you use the body for, it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack (which is the same as sin), and you will see it as sinful. Because you see the body as sinful you also see it as weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use the body to bring the Word of God to those who do not know it, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done, the body is laid by – and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body’s condition. Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy. God’s Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is. He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him.

6. Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. God’s teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God’s teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. A dream is a dream, whether pleasant or unpleasant. It is simply unreal.

Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God’s teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming, and yet surely as theirs.

Notes:

Jesus is one whose learning is complete. Thus did the son of man become the Son of God. Now he has need of his brothers to become God’s teachers to help him with the Atonement, to help him help his brothers remember that they, too, are the Son of God.

Jesus decided for God and he wrote A Course in Miracles to help us decide for God, too. If Jesus made that decision, then so can we, because there is nothing about him that we cannot attain – even that (especially that). He has nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us and Jesus now is that he has nothing else. This leaves him in a state that is only potential in us.

With the help of Jesus, Holy Spirit and our Father, we can join the Great Crusade to save the world. One teacher at a time, one student at a time, one lesson at a time – together, as one, we can do it. Join with us now as we go together as God’s miracle workers to save the world!

My Prayer for You

Thank you, Father, for each and every student/teacher who is using this Course Study Guide,

To learn Your Word,

To share Your Word,

To LIVE Your Word.

May each and every one enjoy each day with

Perfect Happiness

According to Your Word and Your Will.

AMEN