The Last Unanswered Question

Chapter 21 – 8. The Last Unanswered Question

Do you not see that all your misery comes from the strange belief that you
are powerless? Being helpless is the cost of sin. Helplessness is sin’s
condition; the one requirement that it demands to be believed. Only the
helpless could believe in it. Enormity has no appeal save to the little. And
only those who first believe that they are little could see attraction there.
 
Treachery to the Son of God is the defense of those who do not identify
with him. And you are for him or against him; either you love him or attack
him, protect his unity or see him shattered and slain by your attack.
 
No one believes the Son of God is powerless. And those who see
themselves as helpless must believe that they are not the Son of God. What
can they be except his enemy? And what can they do but envy him his
power, and by their envy make themselves afraid of it? These are the dark
ones, silent and afraid, alone and not communicating, fearful the power of
the Son of God will strike them dead, and raising up their helplessness
against him. They join the army of the powerless, to wage their war of
vengeance, bitterness and spite on him, to make him one with them.
 
Because they do not know that they are one with him, they know not whom
they hate. They are indeed a sorry army, each one as likely to attack his
brother or turn upon himself as to remember that they thought they had a
common cause.
 
Frantic and loud and strong the dark ones seem to be. Yet they know not
their “enemy,” except they hate him. In hatred they have come together, but
have not joined each other. For had they done so hatred would be
impossible. The army of the powerless must be disbanded in the presence of
strength. Those who are strong are never treacherous, because they have no
need to dream of power and to act out their dream. How would an army act
in dreams? Any way at all. It could be seen attacking anyone with anything.
 
Dreams have no reason in them. A flower turns into a poisoned spear, a
child becomes a giant and a mouse roars like a lion. And love is turned to
hate as easily. This is no army, but a madhouse. What seems to be a planned
attack is bedlam.
 
The army of the powerless is weak indeed. It has no weapons and it has no
enemy. Yes, it can overrun the world and seek an enemy. But it can never
find what is not there. Yes, it can dream it found an enemy, but this will
shift even as it attacks, so that it runs at once to find another, and never
comes to rest in victory. And as it runs it turns against itself, thinking it
caught a glimpse of the great enemy who always eludes its murderous
attack by turning into something else. How treacherous does this enemy
appear, who changes so it is impossible even to recognize him.
 
Yet hate must have a target. There can be no faith in sin without an enemy.
 
Who that believes in sin would dare believe he has no enemy? Could he
admit that no one made him powerless? Reason would surely bid him seek
no longer what is not there to find. Yet first he must be willing to perceive a
world where it is not. It is not necessary that he understand how he can see
it. Nor should he try. For if he focuses on what he cannot understand, he
will but emphasize his helplessness, and let sin tell him that his enemy must
be himself. But let him only ask himself these questions, which he must
decide, to have it done for him:
 
Do I desire a world I rule instead of one that rules me?
 
Do I desire a world where I am powerful instead of helpless?
 
Do I desire a world in which I have no enemies and cannot sin?
 
And do I want to see what I denied because it is the truth?
 
You may already have answered the first three questions, but not yet the
last. For this one still seems fearful, and unlike the others. Yet reason would
assure you they are all the same. We said this year would emphasize the
sameness of things that are the same. This final question, which is indeed
the last you need decide, still seems to hold a threat the rest have lost for
you. And this imagined difference attests to your belief that truth may be the
enemy you yet may find. Here, then, would seem to be the last remaining
hope of finding sin, and not accepting power.
 
Forget not that the choice of sin or truth, helplessness or power, is the
choice of whether to attack or heal. For healing comes of power, and attack
of helplessness. Whom you attack you cannot want to heal. And whom you
would have healed must be the one you chose to be protected from attack.
 
And what is this decision but the choice whether to see him through the
body’s eyes, or let him be revealed to you through vision? How this decision
leads to its effects is not your problem. But what you want to see must be
your choice. This is a course in cause and not effect.
 
Consider carefully your answer to the last question you have left
unanswered still. And let your reason tell you that it must be answered, and
is answered in the other three. And then it will be clear to you that, as you
look on the effects of sin in any form, all you need do is simply ask
yourself:
 
Is this what I would see? Do I want this?
 
This is your one decision; this the condition for what occurs. It is irrelevant
to how it happens, but not to why. You have control of this. And if you
choose to see a world without an enemy, in which you are not helpless, the
means to see it will be given you.
 
Why is the final question so important? Reason will tell you why. It is the
same as are the other three, except in time. The others are decisions that can
be made, and then unmade and made again. But truth is constant, and
implies a state where vacillations are impossible. You can desire a world
you rule that rules you not, and change your mind. You can desire to
exchange your helplessness for power, and lose this same desire as a little
glint of sin attracts you. And you can want to see a sinless world, and let an
“enemy” tempt you to use the body’s eyes and change what you desire.
 
In content all the questions are the same. For each one asks if you are
willing to exchange the world of sin for what the Holy Spirit sees, since it is
this the world of sin denies. And therefore those who look on sin are seeing
the denial of the real world. Yet the last question adds the wish for
constancy in your desire to see the real world, so the desire becomes the
only one you have. By answering the final question “yes,” you add sincerity
to the decisions you have already made to all the rest. For only then have
you renounced the option to change your mind again. When it is this you do
not want, the rest are wholly answered.
 
Why do you think you are unsure the others have been answered? Could it
be necessary they be asked so often, if they had? Until the last decision has
been made, the answer is both “yes” and “no. “For you have answered “yes”
without perceiving that “yes” must mean “not no. “No one decides against
his happiness, but he may do so if he does not see he does it. And if he sees
his happiness as ever changing, now this, now that, and now an elusive
shadow attached to nothing, he does decide against it.
 
Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing form that shifts with time and
place, is an illusion that has no meaning. Happiness must be constant,
because it is attained by giving up the wish for the inconstant. Joy cannot
be perceived except through constant vision. And constant vision can be
given only those who wish for constancy. The power of the Son of God’s
desire remains the proof that he is wrong who sees himself as helpless.
 
Desire what you want, and you will look on it and think it real. No thought
but has the power to release or kill. And none can leave the thinker’s mind,
or leave him unaffected.