VI. Reason versus Madness

T-21.VI.1. Reason cannot see sin but can see errors, and leads to their correction. ² It does not value them, but their correction. ³ Reason will also tell you that when you think you sin, you call for help. ⁴ Yet if you will not accept the help you call for, you will not believe that it is yours to give. ⁵ And so you will not give it, thus maintaining the belief. ⁶ For uncorrected error of any kind deceives you about the power that is in you to make correction. ⁷ If it can correct, and you allow it not to do so, you deny it to yourself and to your brother. ⁸ And if he shares this same belief you both will think that you are damned. ⁹ This you could spare him and yourself. ¹⁰ For reason would not make way for correction in you alone.

T-21.VI.2. Correction cannot be accepted or refused by you without your brother. ² Sin would maintain it can. ³ Yet reason tells you that you cannot see your brother or yourself as sinful and still perceive the other innocent. ⁴ Who looks upon himself as guilty and sees a sinless world? ⁵ And who can see a sinful world and look upon himself apart from it? ⁶ Sin would maintain you and your brother must be separate. ⁷ But reason tells you that this must be wrong. ⁸ If you and your brother are joined, how could it be that you have private thoughts? ⁹ And how could thoughts that enter into what but seems like yours alone have no effect at all on what is yours? ¹⁰ If minds are joined, this is impossible.

T-21.VI.3. No one can think but for himself, as God thinks not without His Son. ² Only were Both in bodies could this be. ³ Nor could one mind think only for itself unless the body were the mind. ⁴ For only bodies can be separate, and therefore unreal. ⁵ The home of madness cannot be the home of reason. ⁶ Yet it is easy to leave the home of madness if you see reason. ⁷ You do not leave insanity by going somewhere else. ⁸ You leave it simply by accepting reason where madness was. ⁹ Madness and reason see the same things, but it is certain that they look upon them differently.

T-21.VI.4. Madness is an attack on reason that drives it out of mind, and takes its place. ² 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. ³ But the insane know not their will, for they believe they see the body, and let their madness tell them it is real. ⁴ Reason would be incapable of this. ⁵ And if you would defend the body against your reason, you will not understand the body or yourself.

T-21.VI.5. The body does not separate you from your brother, and if you think it does you are insane. ² But madness has a purpose, and believes it also has the means to make its purpose real. ³ To see the body as a barrier between what reason tells you must be joined must be insane. ⁴ Nor could you see it, if you heard the voice of reason. ⁵ What can there be that stands between what is continuous? ⁶ And if there is nothing in between, how can what enters part be kept away from other parts? ⁷ Reason would tell you this. ⁸ But think what you must recognize, if it be so.

T-21.VI.6. If you choose sin instead of healing, you would condemn the Son of God to what can never be corrected. ² You tell him, by your choice, that he is damned; separate from you and from his Father forever, without a hope of safe return. ³ You teach him this, and you will learn of him exactly what you taught. ⁴ 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. ⁵ Yet think not this is fearful. ⁶ That you are joined to him is but a fact, not an interpretation. ⁷ How can a fact be fearful unless it disagrees with what you hold more dear than truth? ⁸ Reason will tell you that this fact is your release.

T-21.VI.7. Neither your brother nor yourself can be attacked alone. ² But neither can accept a miracle instead without the other being blessed by it, and healed of pain. ³ Reason, like love, would reassure you, and seeks not to frighten you. ⁴ The power to heal the Son of God is given you because he must be one with you. ⁵ You are responsible for how he sees himself. ⁶ And reason tells you it is given you to change his whole mind, which is one with you, in just an instant. ⁷ And any instant serves to bring complete correction of his errors and make him whole. ⁸ The instant that you choose to let yourself be healed, in that same instant is his whole salvation seen as complete with yours. ⁹ Reason is given you to understand that this is so. ¹⁰ For reason, kind as is the purpose for which it is the means, leads steadily away from madness toward the goal of truth. ¹¹ And here you will lay down the burden of denying truth. ¹² This is the burden that is terrible, and not the truth.

T-21.VI.8. That you and your brother are joined is your salvation; the gift of Heaven, not the gift of fear. ² Does Heaven seem to be a burden to you? ³ In madness, yes. ⁴ And yet what madness sees must be dispelled by reason. ⁵ Reason assures you Heaven is what you want, and all you want. ⁶ Listen to Him Who speaks with reason, and brings your reason into line with His. ⁷ Be willing to let reason be the means by which He would direct you how to leave insanity behind. ⁸ Hide not behind insanity in order to escape from reason. ⁹ What madness would conceal, the Holy Spirit still holds out for everyone to look upon with gladness.

T-21.VI.9. You are your brother's savior. ² He is yours. ³ Reason speaks happily indeed of this. ⁴ This gracious plan was given love by Love. ⁵ And what Love plans is like Itself in this: Being united, It would have you learn what you must be. ⁶ And being one with It, it must be given you to give what It has given, and gives still. ⁷ 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. ⁸ To give is no more blessed than to receive. ⁹ But neither is it less.

T-21.VI.10. The Son of God is always blessed as one. ² And as his gratitude goes out to you who blessed him, reason will tell you that it cannot be you stand apart from blessing. ³ The gratitude he offers you reminds you of the thanks your Father gives you for completing Him. ⁴ And here alone does reason tell you that you can understand what you must be. ⁵ Your Father is as close to you as is your brother. ⁶ Yet what is there that could be nearer you than is your Self?

T-21.VI.11. The power you have over the Son of God is not a threat to his reality. ² It but attests to it. ³ Where could his freedom lie but in himself, if he be free already? ⁴ And who could bind him but himself, if he deny his freedom? ⁵ God is not mocked; no more His Son can be imprisoned save by his own desire. ⁶ And it is by his own desire that he is freed. ⁷ Such is his strength, and not his weakness. ⁸ He is at his own mercy. ⁹ And where he chooses to be merciful, there is he free. ¹⁰ But where he chooses to condemn instead, there is he held a prisoner, waiting in chains his pardon on himself to set him free.