How Jesus Survived Christendom

That may be another way of how to look at the rediscovery of the Thomas Gospel, and even more so about the connection between the Thomas Gospel and A Course in Miracles, which is represented in Gary Renard's work. It's a little bit like How Stella got her groove back. In this case however, it's something that took two thousand years. In the years after Jesus's ministry, the stories about him, including the "canonical" gospels, as well as other gospels and related literature, not to mention Paul's letters, began to dominate the scene. These writings date from about thirty years after his death and later and are really an interpretation of him. Then by the 4th century book burnings became quite popular to get rid of literature that was "not approved" by the dominant strains of the young religion, even though some of those books, like the Thomas Gospel, did actually contain original material, but were problematic for the later theologians from Peter and Paul on down, for they were teaching the exact opposite of Jesus in many cases. Burning books was one way for the would-be orthodoxy to assert itself. And that was the time when some priest in Nag Hammadi evidently decided to bury some items from the library of his monastery, to avoid their destruction, the Thomas Gospel among them. In short, with the original sayings Gospels gone from the scene, what was left were stories and interpretations of others generally from the period of 60-120 CE, or somewhere between one and four generations after his life, which were simply declared "canonical" even though they were not the oldest or most original, but because they were judged to agree with the dominant doctrine of the day. This is how collectively "our version" of Jesus came to replace who he was and is, except that it does not work that way.

If we look at these developments from the standpoint of collective consciousness, then we see that the ego is one thought of separation, whose nature is that it appears as "many," quite like the herd of swine, whose name was "legion" in Mark 5:1-21. And so collectively, the ego or the world, must get rid of Jesus somehow, since he's teaching, like his Course would do two thousand years later, that there is no world, and this is not acceptable to the world, and the ego, who is its lord and master. Here is how he puts it in the Course:

But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is. There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again. (ACIM:W-132.6)

The same thought is expressed in a myriad of ways in the Thomas Gospel, (e.g. Logion 1 - if you understand these sayings you will not know death, Logion 2 - once you find the answer you will be "disturbed," "marvel" and reign over all [because you will then understand that the manifest universe is but the product of thought], Logion 13 - the world would have to "stone" you if it heard what Jesus really thought... etc., etc.,) and it is also expressed in the notion that was generally preserved in the canonical literature, that the apostles should take up their cross and follow him. He was not speaking of going on a trip to Disney world with him. He was speaking of "following" him in the figurative sense of "understanding him" to his "Kingdom" that is NOT of this world. So this was always a teaching of what goes on in the mind. He was speaking to giving our minds over to his leadership in lieu of the ego, which is the central choice we need to make, and indeed the only meaningful decision we could ever make in this world. But the world is made as an attack on God (ACIM:W-pII.3.2:1), because it is only the expression, or the manifestation of the ego thought that we should be separate from God.

The resurrection is really the guarantee that Jesus and his teaching would survive not only the crucifixion, but also the hi-jacking of his teachings by Christendom in its myriad of forms. Jesus is awakened at the outset of his ministry not because of a resurrection that happened later, after the crucifixion. In the Gospels we find this reflected in the symbolic passage of the baptism by John in Mark, and the breaking of the sky, and hearing you are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Once that awareness even begins to dawn on us, the rest will follow. As he teaches in the Course, the crucifixion was merely an extreme example of the "last useless journey," for as and when we finally fully realize that spirit is what we are, then our reliance on form in this world where everything is perishable, is gone, and our experiences will merely confirm this growing realization. In the crucifixion story the point merely is the demonstration that the destruction of his physical body was irrelevant, because Jesus is not his body, but he is spirit. And what Christianity calls the resurrection in that sense is his appearance in the body, after what the world considers "death," because - being spirit - he is now able to manifest in a body at will, which also explains the docetic literature, such as the Acts of John, where we find the apostles comparing notes on how Jesus appears so different to them at different times, yet somehow they know it is him.

By the same token then it really does not matter how the literature about him was distorted, he lives on in the hearts and minds of those who sincerely dedicate themselves to follow him, and the example that he lived for us -- that it is possible to make the choice for peace in this world, regardless of anything that seems to "happen" to us. In the Course he reassures us that his crucifixion was just an extreme example (ACIM:T-6.I.2:1), and then he reassures us further down in the text that we are asked to follow his example "in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive." Which alludes to all the thousands of ways in which we can feel attacked, because we identify with so many different forms in the world, and think that our life depends on them, be it your car, your career, your significant other, etc., we all have been through crises in those areas and many others, and felt "crucified." So much so, that we go through extensive mourning over the form that was lost, before it even dawns on us that we are still alive. Here is how Jesus puts it in the Course:

You are not asked to be crucified, which was part of my own teaching contribution. You are merely asked to follow my example in the face of much less extreme temptations to misperceive, and not to accept them as false justifications for anger. There can be no justification for the unjustifiable. Do not believe there is, and do not teach that there is. Remember always that what you believe you will teach. Believe with me, and we will become equal as teachers. (ACIM:T-6:I.6:6-11)

So in spite of the massive distortions by churches and various other teachers and teachings, the teachings of Jesus survived because they can be verified through experience, by actually following him. And outside the church tradition there are untold examples of those who knew him through inner experience, as well as through various myths and legends, some of which were recorded by Selma Lagerlöf, in her book Christ Legends. There are countless other examples in art and literature which we may come to recognize as and when we find ourselves joining with the artist in recognition of the content of their expressions as we are having the same experiences ourselves. At that point it does not matter if we get our information from the canonical gospels, from the Thomas gospel, or from any other sources, such as some of these legends, or a piece of art, but suddenly our soul feels connected, maybe with an artist, who may be long since dead, but in that moment of recognition and joining with the artist, nothing less happens than a joining with Jesus as well, for "where two or three are together in my name, there I am in their midst." That has nothing to do with physical togetherness, but togetherness in spirit. For the same reason, we can also forgive someone long after they are deceased, and experience that togetherness, which can be more intense than anything we ever knew while they were in the body. This level of experience is hard to express, because it always loses in translation to whatever medium the artist used, but again, when we are having a comparable experience ourselves, we will suddenly recognize what the artist was talking about. Eckhart Tolle has talked at times in his presentations and his books, about this inner experience of understanding some of Jesus's sayings, even from the Bible, on an entirely different level, driven by our own inner experience, and through joining with him in the mind, when the meaning of his words suddenly is "revealed to us" and becomes crystal clear, only because we did follow him by doing another step in the direction of his Kingdom, our Kingdom, not of this earth.

The Pursah Logia on Proboards

There is such a thing as the right tool for the right job... and I have added a link just now to the links section of this site, which points to a forum on Proboards, where I collected the Logia of Pursah's Thomas Gospel, I'm going to refer to them over there, because the structure of that board lends itself to keeping them together by title. I'm still working on sorting them in order. From this point on, I will try to always use the link when I speak here about the PGoTh Logia, the Logia of Pursah's Thomas Gospel, e.g. Logion 1

Hopefully this way, I'll manage to keep the commentaries to the Logia more or less together, and people can of course contribute on that site as well. On this site I have consistently used tags for the Logia, whenever I discuss them individually, so that you can always find the comments again. I guess this is an experiment and we'll see how this evolves.

As a practical matter, most of the comments on the Proboards forum go back to a time well before I started writing the book, Closing the Circle. I will not be quoting the texts in full here, but you will be able to look them up on Proboards very easily.
Further, I'm removing the quotes from some of the other translations, just like I did with the book, to avoid any copyright issues. However in the links section on my Xanga page, there is a link to the Thomas translations that are available on-line, but I would like to mention again, that prior to giving Gary her edited kernel of the Thomas Gospel for Your Immortal Reality, Pursah had mentioned to him that her favorite translation was the Marvin Meyer edition, and that edition is not available on-line, but it is a lovely edition from HarperSanFrancisco (Marvin Meyer, The Gospel of Thomas). Many others are available on-line, and for some of those Marvin Meyer is a co-translator

Sorting the Chaff from the Wheat

If there's anything Jed McKenna helps his readers do in The Enlightenment Trilogy, it is exactly that: Sorting the chaff from the wheat. In a world with shelves full of phony spirituality, which is often more useful as a drug to alleviate the pain of this life, or obfuscate it with rose-colored glasses, these books stand out as a hard-hitting alternative. There were always some "bonus materials" which were included in the e-book versions, but which have now been published in print as well, and this little volume is absolutely worth its weight in gold. To give a bit of the flavor, I'll quote some typical statements towards the end of the book:

... Most people get through the day by believing that if they don't break too many rules too much, they automatically get promoted up through the ranks; be it one life and straight to the top or a climb of many smaller steps. This comes to us from Maya's Ministry of Deferral & Procrastination, which promotes a doctrine of plausible denial and applied non-aggression, and where the motto is Rock the Cradle, Not the Boat. (p. 179)

My assistants and proofreaders warn me that people don't like to hear themselves portrayed so negatively. That surprises me. I would think that most folks, if they took a minute to sit down and really think about it, would blubber in joyous relief to find out that what they've been calling life was really just the most meager level of subsistence and that there were infinitudes more to this whole thing then they'd been led to believe. (p. 181)

Although my primary epiphany could be summed up as Truth Exists, it was actually much more complicated than that. The flip side of Truth Exists is This Ain't It. (p. 189)

These quotes are indicative for the quality of the book. It is truly hard-hitting from beginning to end. No sacred cows are spared, and he is consistently funny in the way he points up the fallacies, with which our ego, or "Maya" keep us wrapped around the axle, so we can't see for the life of us what's going on. Meanwhile he delivers among others a very clear expose of why it pays to get in the observer seat, and watch ourselves play the role which we think is our life, for it is the way to bring the ego's machinations to the light, and exposure is the only thing which will de-fang the ego in the long run. It cannot stand the light.

Besides other things, this book, and the entire series always seems helpful again in having a healthy respect for the ego, which can help us towards clarity as to why we do not want to hear the things that either Jesus, or the likes of Jed McKenna had to say, and why also Buddhism has nothing to do with who and what the Buddha was, and what he had to teach, just like Christianity has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus. Simply put, we prefer to keep on dreaming. In the The Book of Thomas this theme is picked up among others in Logion 13, where Thomas after having spoken privately with Jesus, is asked by the other apostles what Jesus said, and he responds that they'd stone him if he told them. Accepting the atonement for ourselves, as the Course calls it, or reaching Human Adulthood, as McKenna calls it, is possible only if we are under no illusion as to why we resist it so much, and get very honest with ourselves and with that Internal Teacher, that quiet voice that will lead us to the truth if we let ourselves be led.

To conclude, I'll cite two priceless paragraphs on Buddhism, from page 47 of the book, noting that these comments apply to a lot more than just Buddhism:

Typical of their insistence on reconciling the irreconcilable is the Buddhist concept of Two Truths, a poignant two-word joke they don't seem to get, and yet this sort of perversely irrational thinking is near the very heart of the failed search for truth. We don't want truth, we want a particular truth; one that doesn't threaten the ego; one that doesn't exist. We insist on a truth that makes sense given what we know, not knowing that we know nothing.
Nothing about Buddhism is more revealing than the Four Noble Truths which, not being true are of dubious nobility. They form the basis of Buddhism, so it's clear from the outset that the Buddhists have whipped up a proprietary version of truth shaped more by market forces than any particular concern for the less consumer-friendly, albeit true, truth. (p. 47) 

I would hardly know what to add to that, so I won't try, except to say, run, don't walk to your nearest bookstore to get this little gem. Jed McKenna's Notebook: All Bonus Content from The Enlightenment Trilogy By Jed McKenna

Stevan Davies on Thomas Sayings in Mark Part II, Unit 4

In this final section of the second article by Stevan Davies on the use of Thomas material in Mark, we are discussing the section Mark 6:1-6, and examining the "Christian drift" in the editing style of Mark, hand in hand with the article, but emphasizing as always the view from a Course standpoint.

Here is the material from Mark (NIV):

Mark 6
A Prophet Without Honor
 1Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. 2When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.
   "Where did this man get these things?" they asked. "What's this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! 3Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph,[a] Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.
 4Jesus said to them, "Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor." 5He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6And he was amazed at their lack of faith.

Davies concludes this is strung together from Logion 31, in the Pursah version: "A prophet is not acceptable in his own town. A doctor does not heal those who know him." In other words, in this case it is not really a matter of altering the meaning of the statement much per se, but dressing it up as a story.

Next comes Mk. 7:14-23, Made up of GTh 14 (c) and 45(b), both of which are skipped in the Pursah version, so I will skip over them here.

Then comes the final clause of Logion 4,"Many of the first will be last and they will become as a single one." Davies sees versions of this in Mk. 9:35, 10:31, 10:43-44 and in all cases, besides the fact that they seem to be based on this text, I don't immediately see any editorial slanting of the meaning in a particular direction. Although clearly this statement has been read in any number of ways, and the pure saying by itself tends to be more thought provoking than having it as a story element. The context tends to sway the reader to a certain way of understanding the statement. Taken in it's juxtaposition in Logion 4, with the statement: "The person old in days should not hesitate to ask a little child the meaning of life, and that person will live," one starts to hear a frequent topic in Jesus's teachings namely that human adulthood is not what it's cracked up to be - think of "except ye become like little children," etc. - and that the seedling of what we really are, the Christ-child lives within us, and will grow within us if we rely on it for guidance, in lieu of our "mature" judgment. That way we will live, for we will return to who we are as spirit, instead of dying in the service of this form which is our body, and which is perishable by definition. The ego always wants to be first, but never is, for it is not an original thought. What Jesus teaches is "I choose the second place to gain the first," (ACIM, Lesson 328) meaning that by choosing to identify ourselves as the created, not the creator (as the ego wants us to be, seeking to play God, and be "first" in that sense), and when we choose to identify with the created, with the sonship, we will be one, because the sonship is one, as God only has one son, who simply imagines being many, by virtue of his belief in the reality of the "tiny mad idea" of the separation.

Next comes Mark 11:15-19, corresponding to Logion 64(b), which I'll also skip here as Pursah skips it in her edition of the text, clearly doubting the authenticity of this very judgmental sounding statement.

The next episode is Mk. 11:22-23, here in the NIV version:

22 "Have[a] faith in God," Jesus answered. 23 "I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.

Based on Logion 48 in the Thomas material, which Pursah does include in her edition. Evidently this is almost the core definition of the miracle, though it has been much misunderstood, usually because of people again taking something literally which should not be understood that way. As some people have said, once you pick up that mountain, what are you going to do with it. But the miracle, the change of mind that makes us choose peace instead of war, love instead of fear, does make the seemingly impossible possible. The physical effects, whatever they may be or not be, are not the point of the miracles, though the world always seeks the physical effects as proof. If, how, and when our change of mind finds expression in form is not our job, but the job of the Holy Spirit. It is our inner choice for peace which will move obstacles out of the way, first inner obstacles, and gradually we'll experience it in our lives as well, but never in the form of the typical ego trap of thinking that forgiveness will pulverize this rock against which we stubbed our toe. That is not the point.

Davies finds allusions to Logion 48 in several other verses in Mark.


Next comes Mk. 12:13-17, again in the NIV version:

13Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 14Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard him say it.
 15On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 16and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 17And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written:
   " 'My house will be called
      a house of prayer for all nations'[a]? But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'[b]"

This corresponds to Logion 100, and except that it is worked up into a story, I don't think the meaning is clouded by the treatment. Evidently it means that you leave the world alone, you do not try to spiritualize the world. So you just do what's normal in the world, Jesus's teachings pertain to what's going on in the mind.


This concludes this series of reviews of Stevan Davies's brilliant work on the evolution from Thomas to Mark, showing how the simple sayings become enhanced and embellished into stories, and often times with a theological slant that is beginning to betray the theological influence of Paul. So where the early Jesus of Thomas is distinctly non-Christian, in the treatment in Mark the shift towards an early Christian interpretation of him under the influence of Paul is in full swing.

I hope these articles were fun to read, as they were fun to write. I am not writing them as a contribution to Biblical scholarship - I leave that to Stevan Davies. The point here is to help us to start to hear how this process works. It is how the ego twists our guidance to its own purposes, and we will stumble upon this issue in our own relationship with Jesus as our Internal Teacher many times, when we hear something, and our ego has a tendency to use such guidance for its own purposes immediately, and see to it that we understand it in a way that has the ego's "imprimatur," so as to prevent that we should ever follow Jesus directly. The Course says the ego always speaks first, and is always wrong. This is what we should keep in mind in learning to listen. And as the Course so clearly says in many places, we can learn to tell the difference by how peaceful we feel inside.

Resurrection before or after Crucifixion?

Since Christianity, the well known religion that was founded in the years following the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth in his name, answers this question one way, namely "after," and since they became the dominant tradition, and at least for a while suppressed all other traditions about Jesus' teachings, and ultimately emerged as the Christian orthodoxy, few people are aware anymore of the vivid dialogue that took place in the first two centuries, or the many "Christianities" then in existence. There were any number of hot topics, but the question if the resurrection came before or after the crucifixion, was a big one, and it was bound up completely with the parallel question, if the resurrection was an event of the mind or of the body. Bart D.Ehrman's book, listed above is one of the best sources on the period, and I've discussed it elsewhere on this blog, because it was one of the sources I used in my book. The apostle Paul spent a fair amount of time musing the question, and came down in favor of the notion that this was about a resurrection of the body.

I think Jesus would beg to differ, if the Thomas gospel is any guide, and a lot of it of course did find its way into the synoptic gospels, but managed to largely be ignored over time. Evidently, the Logia speak entirely from the standpoint of an enlightened teacher, an Ascended Master, or what ACIM would call a Teacher of Teachers. This expectation is set right away in the first Logion, which was really meant to be the introduction and not an actual Logion, but is counted as the first one in the texts. Logion 1 says: "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death." That is the central focus of the notion of the Resurrection, the choice for life (of the spirit), and not death (of the ego, or of the world), or as the Course puts it:

There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true. (ACIM:T-23.II.19)

And elsewhere he explains the meaning of the resurrection:

The journey to the cross should be the last "useless journey." Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as accomplished. If you can accept it as your own last useless journey, you are also free to join my resurrection. Until you do so your life is indeed wasted. It merely re-enacts the separation, the loss of power, the futile attempts of the ego at reparation, and finally the crucifixion of the body, or death. Such repetitions are endless until they are voluntarily given up. Do not make the pathetic error of "clinging to the old rugged cross." The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross. Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose. This is not the gospel I intended to offer you. We have another journey to undertake, and if you will read these lessons carefully they will help prepare you to undertake it. (ACIM:T-4.in.3)

And in the section on the message of the crucifixion he puts it as follows:

The crucifixion is nothing more than an extreme example. Its value, like the value of any teaching device, lies solely in the kind of learning it facilitates. It can be, and has been, misunderstood. This is only because the fearful are apt to perceive fearfully. I have already told you that you can always call on me to share my decision, and thus make it stronger. I have also told you that the crucifixion was the last useless journey the Sonship need take, and that it represents release from fear to anyone who understands it. While I emphasized only the resurrection before, the purpose of the crucifixion and how it actually led to the resurrection was not clarified then. Nevertheless, it has a definite contribution to make to your own life, and if you will consider it without fear, it will help you understand your own role as a teacher. (ACIM:T-6.I.2)

None of this can be understood if you think we're a body, like Paul did, but it makes perfect sense if you think that what we are is spirit, and the son of God, like Jesus does as he speaks to us from the pages of the Thomas Gospel and the Course. At the same time this also makes it clear why this Jesus is the inner Jesus - the one who is present with us whenever we ask him to - and not some historical figure who died on a cross two thousand years ago. In other words having once awakened to the complete inner realization, true knowing, as in gnosis, that our identity is spirit, and that we are thus still and forever as God created us, we are then no longer dependent on any kind of form, including the body. The crucifixion then, Jesus's ability to experience his body dying on the cross without feeling any pain, and in the full knowledge that it was meaningless, was merely the most dramatic confirmation of that realization that it is possible to have. In our ego identity we always identify with form, which is by definition limitation, and that is the essence of the ego thought, never the whole, always just a part of the whole. Spirit works the other way around, always the whole, and there is only the whole, the all, the Oneness of Heaven. There is nothing else. But as long as we cling to the ego we spend a lot of our life in mourning, because all forms do pass away, whereas spirit is unconcerned with form, because forms will adapt to suit the purpose. Spirit is cause, the form is effect, and knowing that changes our attitude about life forever. That is the change of mind Jesus was talking about. (Metanoia in New Testament Greek is a word that means "change of mind," but under the influence of later Christian theology it has too often been translated as "repentance," and thus reduced to a moral concept, that applies to living in the world, whereas Jesus was indicating with his notion of "change of mind," how we could change our entire frame of reference and follow him to a Kingdom not of this world.

In this context, what's been called the Resurrection, namely Jesus's appearance in the body to the apostles was just that, his appearance in the body. He was awakened already at the outset of his ministry, and in that context the crucifixion was merely the "last useless journey" the physical confirmation of his complete awakening, in a demonstration that he could be peaceful regardless of what happened, and that subsequently, being spirit, he could appear to anyone in whatever form was appropriate.

From The Visionaries - Introduction to ACIM

Since this blog revolves around my book Closing the Circle, which brings together the teachings of the book of Thomas, and  A Course in Miracles, it may be helpful to post something about the Course here. With more and more material available on-line it is becoming easier to pull this together, but there's also a lot of 2nd rate stuff on-line that does not add any clarity, so as per usual, you have to know where to look... In the links section of this blog you can find a lot, but below I'm providing two links to outtakes from the 2001 PBS series "The Visionaries" which provided a remarkably good introduction to the Course, which I discovered only recently.

The Visionaries about ACIM I - Part One of a 2001 video produced for the PBS series, The Visionaries, and narrated by Sam Waterston. Filmed at the Foundation for "A Course in Miracles" former location in Roscoe, NY, and at the Foundation for Inner Peace in Tiburon, CA, this segment contains accounts of the origin of the Course by Judith Skutch Whitson, and Gloria and Kenneth Wapnick. They speak about the scribe Helen Schucman and her associate William Thetford.

The Visionaries about ACIM II - Part Two of a 2001 video produced for the PBS series, Visionaries, and narrated by Sam Waterston. Filmed at the Foundation for "A Course in Miracles" former location in Roscoe, NY, and at the Foundation for Inner Peace in Tiburon, CA, this segment contains excerpts from a class held in Roscoe, NY. Additionally, Kenneth and Gloria discuss key concepts that characterize A Course in Miracles as a unique spirituality in the world today. The comments and reflections of some students are included as well.


N.B. As is mentioned at the end of the second episode, these videos were still shot at the old facilities of the Foundation for A Course in Miracles at Roscoe, NY, but they've moved from there in 2000, so that when this was broadcast in 2001, the Foundation was already located in Temecula, Ca.

Autism and Forgiveness

Pursuant to my recent reflections on autism, a friend reminded me of how Dr. Helen Schucman, who was the scribe of A Course in Miracles, was so often able to be helpful to children with mental handicaps. At some point during her particularly lively interactions with the voice of Jesus as she experienced him at that time, he appears to have said to her that people would choose lives in that type of a form, where their mental development appears to be blocked, out of extreme fear of the power of the mind. Thus to break down the analysis which Jesus proposed to Helen even more precisely:

• The first order mental retardation is to choose the ego, and to believe we are an individual, with a private (small) mind, living a life in this dreamworld of time and space, which is a substitute for, and a denial of the life which is our true inheritance as the Son of God.
• The second order mental retardation is to choose a life within this dream world in which ones'  mental development is impaired, so that not only are we in denial of the full power of the mind of the Son of God, but also we choose a situation in which the development of the individual mind seems impaired, as a protection against taking responsibility for even that life.

To be reminded of this particular issue made it clearer yet again for me, that these people are in our lives as a reminder of our own fear of the development of the mind, the power of the mind, and thus by forgiving them for the limitations they chose, we are indeed forgiving ourselves for the limitations we chose. The initial choice for the ego, the tiny mad idea, is a choice for differences, in which we do not have the full power of the whole mind, for the purpose of the ego thought system is to deny who and what we are in truth, and the belief in differences is one fundamental aspect of that defense system. It is the belief that the Son of God is not one and the same, broken into a gazillion pieces, which are all different. And within that realm of differences then, being "abnormal" is a way of being more different than the "normal" animals. And as always, healing is only possible by realizing that the whole thing is grounded in the choice of fear over love, but that this is ultimately always a choice the mind makes, albeit at a subconscious level, that is not within the normal reach of the daytime consciousness of who we think we are in this dream, except that through the forgiveness process, this choice ultimately becomes uncovered, so that the Course process leads to making the unconscious conscious, and thereby empowers us to to make the other choice.

 The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what the form of the attack, this still is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, still is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream. (ACIM:T-27.VIII.10)

and our role in all this is clarified here:

The Holy Spirit needs your special function, that His may be fulfilled. Think not you lack a special value here. You wanted it, and it is given you. All that you made can serve salvation easily and well. The Son of God can make no choice the Holy Spirit cannot employ on his behalf, and not against himself. Only in darkness does your specialness appear to be attack. In light, you see it as your special function in the plan to save the Son of God from all attack, and let him understand that he is safe, as he has always been, and will remain in time and in eternity alike. This is the function given you for your brother. Take it gently, then, from your brother's hand, and let salvation be perfectly fulfilled in you. Do this one thing, that everything be given you. (ACIM:T25.VI.7)

The gift that our brother gives us here is the opportunity to choose love, not fear. And that speeds us on our way home with our brother, so it is a great gift indeed.