Reason versus Madness

Chapter 21 – 7. Reason versus Madness

Reason cannot see sin but can see errors, and leads to their correction. It
does not value them, but their correction. Reason will also tell you that
when you think you sin, you call for help. Yet if you will not accept the
help you call for, you will not believe that it is yours to give. And so you
will not give it, thus maintaining the belief. For uncorrected error of any
kind deceives you about the power that is in you to make correction. If it
can correct, and you allow it not to do so, you deny it to yourself and to
your brother. And if he shares this same belief you both will think that you
are damned. This you could spare him and yourself. For reason would not
make way for correction in you alone.
 
Correction cannot be accepted or refused by you without your brother. Sin
would maintain it can. Yet reason tells you that you cannot see your brother
or yourself as sinful and still perceive the other innocent. Who looks upon
himself as guilty and sees a sinless world? And who can see a sinful world
and look upon himself apart from it? Sin would maintain you must be
separate. But reason tells you that this must be wrong. If you are joined,
how could it be that you have private thoughts? And how could thoughts
that enter into what but seems like yours alone have no effect at all on what
is yours? If minds are joined, this is impossible.
 
No one can think but for himself, as God thinks not without his Son. Only
were both in bodies could this be. Nor could one mind think only for itself
unless the body were the mind. For only bodies can be separate, and
therefore unreal. The home of madness cannot be the home of reason. Yet it
is easy to leave the home of madness if you see reason. You do not leave
insanity by going somewhere else. You leave it simply by accepting reason
where madness was. Madness and reason see the same things, but it is
certain that they look upon them differently.
 
Madness is an attack on reason that drives it out of mind, and takes its
place. Reason does not attack, but takes the place of madness quietly,
replacing madness if it be the choice of the insane to listen to it. But the
insane know not their will, for they believe they see the body, and let their
madness tell them it is real. Reason would be incapable of this. And if you
would defend the body against your reason, you will not understand the
body or yourself.
 
The body does not separate you from your brother, and if you think it does
you are insane. But madness has a purpose, and believes it also has the
means to make its purpose real. To see the body as a barrier between what
reason tells you must be joined must be insane. Nor could you see it, if you
heard the voice of reason. What can there be that stands between what is
continuous? And if there is nothing in between, how can what enters part be
kept away from other parts? Reason would tell you this. But think what you
must recognize, if it be so.
 
If you choose sin instead of healing, you would condemn the Son of God to
what can never be corrected. You tell him, by your choice, that he is
damned; separate from you and from his Father forever, without a hope of
safe return. You teach him this, and you will learn of him exactly what you
taught. For you can teach him only that he is as you would have him, and
what you choose he be is but your choice for you. Yet think not this is
fearful. That you are joined to him is but a fact, not an interpretation. How
can a fact be fearful unless it disagrees with what you hold more dear than
truth? Reason will tell you that this fact is your release.
 
Neither your brother nor yourself can be attacked alone. But neither can
accept a miracle instead without the other being blessed by it, and healed of
pain. Reason, like love, would reassure you, and seeks not to frighten you.
 
The power to heal the Son of God is given you because he must be one with
you. You are responsible for how he sees himself. And reason tells you it is
given you to change his whole mind, which is one with you, in just an
instant. And any instant serves to bring complete correction of his errors
and make him whole. The instant that you choose to let yourself be healed,
in that same instant is his whole salvation seen as complete with yours.
 
Reason is given you to understand that this is so. For reason, kind as is the
purpose for which it is the means, leads steadily away from madness toward
the goal of truth. And here you will lay down the burden of denying truth.
 
This is the burden that is terrible, and not the truth.
 
That you are joined is your salvation; the gift of Heaven, not the gift of fear.
 
Does Heaven seem to be a burden to you? In madness, yes. And yet what
madness sees must be dispelled by reason. Reason assures you Heaven is
what you want, and all you want. Listen to him who speaks with reason, and
brings your reason into line with his. Be willing to let reason be the means
by which he would direct you how to leave insanity behind. Hide not
behind insanity in order to escape from reason. What madness would
conceal, the Holy Spirit still holds out for everyone to look upon with
gladness.
 
You are your brother’s savior. He is yours. Reason speaks happily indeed of
this. This gracious plan was given love by Love. And what Love plans is
like Itself in this: Being united, It would have you learn what you must be.
 
And being one with It, it must be given you to give what It has given, and
gives still. Spend but an instant in the glad acceptance of what is given you
to give your brother, and learn with him what has been given both of you.
 
To give is no more blessed than to receive. But neither is it less.
 
The Son of God is always blessed as one. And as his gratitude goes out to
you who blessed him, reason will tell you that it cannot be you stand apart
from blessing. The gratitude he offers you reminds you of the thanks your
 
Father gives you for completing him. And here alone does reason tell you
that you can understand what you must be. Your Father is as close to you as
is your brother. Yet what is there that could be nearer you than is your Self?
 
The power you have over the Son of God is not a threat to his reality. It but
attests to it. Where could his freedom lie but in himself, if he be free
already? And who could bind him but himself, if he deny his freedom? God
is not mocked; no more his Son can be imprisoned save by his own desire.
 
And it is by his own desire that he is freed. Such is his strength, and not his
weakness. He is at his own mercy. And where he chooses to be merciful,
there is he free. But where he chooses to condemn instead, there is he held a
prisoner, waiting in chains his pardon on himself to set him free.