A Course in Miracles: WHAT IT SAYS Part I -- The Resplendent Unity of Heaven (Volume 5 Number 2 June 1994) Gloria Wapnick Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.       First, the biblical theology is a dualistic one, for that god creates materiality. The material universe, once it is created, continues to exist outside him as a reality, and a reality with which he is continually involved. Spirit and matter are thus dualistically accorded equal reality, as indeed are good and evil, innocence and sin. Second, we can see that not only is biblical monotheism inherently dualistic, but it is truly polytheistic as well. Students of A Course in Miracles are more than familiar with the sharp emphasis Jesus places in his teaching on form and content, and how the ego uses different forms to conceal the same content of separation and hate. Special relationships are the ego's favorite means for confusing its students as to its real motive, which is always to deny the reality of love and the true God, Whose nature is eternally non-dualistic: non-specific, non-personal, and totally One. However, when one examines the god of the Bible, one finds a person with many different personalities, forever changing into one or the other. He is at one moment kind, merciful, forgiving, and loving; and at others jealous, vindictive, unforgiving, and murderous. These multiple personalities in the biblical god can be understood by a psychologically sophisticated observer as simply being the expression in a single god of the projection of the fragmented mind -- the content of many in one form -- while polytheism is the expression in many gods of the same projection of the fragmented mind -- the content of many in many forms. We can therefore conclude that although the forms of these monotheistic religions differ markedly from the polytheistic and pantheistic ones, their dualistic content remains the same. Thus, in all three theological forms we find the same dualistic expression of the ego's denial of the true God's inherent undifferentiated, perfect, and unchanging Oneness. This is why, though it is stated differently in the text, Jesus uses theology as one of his examples of the "ego's plan for forgiveness," which makes the error of sin real by having its made-up god react to it. Thus, Jesus asks: Can you find light … like the theologian, by acknowledging darkness [sin] in yourself and looking for a distant light [God or Jesus] to remove it, while emphasizing the distance? (text, p. 160; T-9.V.6:3) The radical nature of A Course in Miracles' theology is its uncompromising insistence on the integrity of the Oneness of God, Who has no personality, and cannot recognize as real a separated state that does not exist. Although mystics have written about the experience of Oneness throughout the ages, the theological backdrop of almost all Western expressions of these experiences has been a god who, as we have just seen, somehow creates materiality -- the world and the body -- outside himself; a god who has many human characteristics such as anger, jealousy, judgment, and destructiveness; a deity of specialness who demands retribution and punishment for the so-called wrongs or sins committed against him, or whoever his chosen or favorite people are at the moment. This creator-god has to be supplicated, prayed to, revered, and implored to grant a kindness, a gift, a grace, or a "miracle." Pain and suffering are the columns of smoke that rise from the altars to this god who finds it pleasing that his creations suffer and sacrifice as proof of their love for him. This god who created the physical universe, glorified in the Bible, for no apparent reason allows natural catastrophes to occur in this universe, and sometimes causes them himself when his children disobey him. How then is one to approach such a deity? What supplication or formula can be devised that will end up pleasing him? However erratic the nature of the specialness of homo sapiens may be, it cannot compare in intense unpredictability to the biblical god's, whose behavioral range from mercy to viciousness defies any rational explanation. He is consistently portrayed as arbitrarily roaming between the two, with no justifiable reason given for his cruel and vindictive actions. Any creature who bows down to the creator-god of this world must fear him deeply, because his irrational nature and disposition could cause him to shift suddenly and incomprehensibly from love to rage. The biblical god is not only the creator of the world, but one who directly intervenes to correct the sinfulness that he clearly believes has occurred in the Garden of Eden. A true believer in this god should pause and ask: Why did such an omniscient and omnipotent god permit such sinfulness to occur in the first place? Was he perhaps not all-knowing and all-powerful? Were the creatures, Adam and Eve, that he created marred or doomed to failure from their inception? And, in the words of Omar Khayyam, "Did the hand of the Potter shake?" However one resolves this dilemma, still must this deity be held accountable as an accomplice to the sin of his children. In fact, this god can be seen as having set his creations up for sin by forbidding them to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, knowing ahead of time that they would disobey him. Their sin would therefore necessitate his expelling them from Paradise as punishment for their disobedience, the sinners nevermore to return from this cruel banishment until this god's anger is appeased through their atonement. All this clearly makes the biblical god as insane as his children, for now we are to believe that a part of the All can become separate from it, a clear and logical impossibility that is nonetheless witnessed to by the creator-god's responses and behavior. The culmination of this god's insanity is then presented in the New Testament. There, the writers of the gospels and epistles tell us that he sends his only-begotten son, Jesus, to redeem the world through an atoning death of suffering and sacrifice. The real Jesus, however, asks us in the Course: Can you believe our Father really thinks this way? It is so essential that all such thinking be dispelled that we must be sure that nothing of this kind remains in your mind (text, p. 32; T-3.I.2:8-9). It is important to note that the god of the Bible is simply the projection of the collective ego mind of the Sonship, and his presence can often be hidden in subtle and secular veils. At one point in the Course, for example, Jesus refers to one of these non-religious forms as the god of sickness. Needless to say, there are countless other forms of this god that are the object of the ego's worship, such as "power, fame, money, [and] physical pleasure" (manual, p. 32; M-13.2:6). Have you, as a student of A Course in Miracles, accepted the total removal of such graven images and false thinking from your mind -- regardless of their form -- to allow the Holy One to enter? A thorough mind-searching for such "bitter idols," to use the Course's phrase for the world's images of Jesus, would be a worthwhile endeavor for all Course students who sincerely wish to remember their true Creator and Source. How different all this is from the true, living God Jesus presents to us in his Course! God, our Source, is pure, radiant, and limitless Love, an abstract non-personal Totality, Whose Reality is Mind and spirit -- formless, changeless, forever perfect, forever One. The creations of our Source abide within the vast and limitless Mind that is their Home, and share all the characteristics that this Source contains. The God of A Course in Miracles does not create outside Itself, and since there can be nothing outside perfect Oneness and Wholeness, it must follow that there is literally nothing outside God. In this one statement, therefore, is mostly all of Western religious thought undone, and the incompatibility of this theology with that of A Course in Miracles clearly shown. That is why it is imperative that students of A Course in Miracles not confuse its non-dualistic God with the biblical dualistic figure. Even with a cursory review given to the Course's thought system, it should be clear to all its students that the god of the Bible cannot be reconciled with the true, living God of A Course in Miracles. They rest on mutually exclusive principles and premises. The true nature of Heaven, therefore, is that of perfect non-duality, a Oneness in which there is no differentiation nor individuality, and ultimately, not even two beings called God and Christ, Creator and created. These are dualistic concepts that are meaningful to the dualistic mind of the separation, but can have no meaning to a Mind that is One. This God does not have to be supplicated, prayed to, and implored, for only a mind that believes in duality and scarcity -- the state of the separation -- could have miscreated such a dualistic god, involved with a dualistic world. As Jesus writes about God and prayers: Think not He hears the little prayers of those who call on Him with names of idols cherished by the world. They cannot reach Him thus. He cannot hear requests that He be not Himself, or that His Son receive another name than His (workbook, p. 335; W-pI.183.7:3-5). Moreover, the God that Jesus presents to us in A Course in Miracles does not even know about the separation, the world, the body, or individual personalities, for if such awareness were there, it would make the "tiny, mad idea" real, and the integrity of the perfect God would have been compromised. Passages in the Course that suggest that God is aware of His separated Sons must be understood metaphorically; i.e., Jesus' way of speaking to minds that could never understand the unified Mind of Love that lies totally beyond them. If these metaphoric words are taken literally, the ego would have achieved its goal of bringing truth to the illusion, Heaven to the world, and Oneness to separation and fragmentation. In summary, we state again that it is this inherent non-dualistic nature of Heaven, in which no individuality exists, that is Jesus' basis for teaching in A Course in Miracles that the thought of separation -- the origin of all experiences of individuality -- is illusory and unreal, as indeed must the dreaming world be that arose from this thought. Forgiveness, the Course's correction for all expressions of this "tiny, mad idea," can only be understood in light of Heaven's Oneness, for it undoes the dualistic premises of the ego's thought system that are found within our special relationships. Once again, this process will be explored in Part II of this article. We close now with the conclusion of the chapter in Awaken from the Dream that discussed the state of Heaven, an apt summary to describe the indescribable Oneness of Reality that we never left: Created by Love, in Love, we as Christ are Love. As Thoughts in the Mind of Love, we can never leave this Source. Without beginning and without end, this Love that is Christ flows unceasingly from Itself to Its Source, and from Its Source to Itself. Thus, there is no place where God the Father ends and Christ the Son begins (workbook, pp. 237-38; W-pI.132.12:4). We are forever an Effect, joined with Him Who is our Cause (Awaken from the Dream, first edition pp. 47-48; second edition p. 26). NEXT ?