The Real World…

A Course in Miracles uses the phrase “real world” about a hundred times. It also refers to the experience of the real world with other descriptive terms like… the world of holiness, the redeemed or saved world, and the happy world. How is the real world different than the regular world we perceive and seem to live in?

The Course also says in many places that it is our mission to save the world (it talks about the world more than two thousand times). Even though at the same time it says that the world we see doesn’t really exist…. so why save it?

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. (Les. 132, par.6)

There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? (Les. 132, par.13)

So what’s going on? How do we get from this world to the real world?

The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. (Les. 132, par.4)

Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God’s Love on earth… As I begin to see, I recognize His reflection on earth. I forgive all things because I feel the stirring of His strength in me… How safe the world will look to me when I can see it! It will not look anything like what I imagine I see now. (Les.60)