VI. The Witnesses to Sin

T-27.VI.1. Pain demonstrates the body must be real. ² It is a loud, obscuring voice whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. ³ Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Him and focusing upon itself. ⁴ Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means to make the body real. ⁵ What shares a common purpose is the same. ⁶ This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who share in it within itself. ⁷ Pleasure and pain are equally unreal, because their purpose cannot be achieved. ⁸ Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. ⁹ And they share the lack of meaning which their purpose has.

T-27.VI.2. Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. ² For either witness is the same, and carries but one message: "You are here, within this body, and you can be hurt. ³ You can have pleasure, too, but only at the cost of pain." ⁴ These witnesses are joined by many more. ⁵ Each one seems different because it has a different name, and so it seems to answer to a different sound. ⁶ Except for this, the witnesses of sin are all alike. ⁷ Call pleasure pain, and it will hurt. ⁸ Call pain a pleasure, and the pain behind the pleasure will be felt no more. ⁹ Sin's witnesses but shift from name to name, as one steps forward and another back. ¹⁰ Yet which is foremost makes no difference. ¹¹ Sin's witnesses hear but the call of death.

T-27.VI.3. This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your memories and all your hopes. ² You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it tell you what it is it feels. ³ It does not know. ⁴ It tells you but the names you gave to it to use, when you call forth the witnesses to its reality. ⁵ You cannot choose among them which are real, for any one you choose is like the rest. ⁶ This name or that, but nothing more, you choose. ⁷ You do not make a witness true because you called him by truth's name. ⁸ The truth is found in him if it is truth he represents. ⁹ And otherwise he lies, if you should call him by the holy Name of God Himself.

T-27.VI.4. God's Witness sees no witnesses against the body. ² Neither does He harken to the witnesses by other names that speak in other ways for its reality. ³ He knows it is not real. ⁴ For nothing could contain what you believe it holds within. ⁵ Nor could it tell a part of God Himself what it should feel and what its function is. ⁶ Yet must He love whatever you hold dear. ⁷ And for each witness to the body's death He sends a witness to your life in Him Who knows no death. ⁸ Each miracle He brings is witness that the body is not real. ⁹ Its pains and pleasures does He heal alike, for all sin's witnesses do His replace.

T-27.VI.5. The miracle makes no distinctions in the names by which sin's witnesses are called. ² It merely proves that what they represent has no effects. ³ And this it proves because its own effects have come to take their place. ⁴ It matters not the name by which you called your suffering. ⁵ It is no longer there. ⁶ The One Who brings the miracle perceives them all as one, and called by name of fear. ⁷ As fear is witness unto death, so is the miracle the witness unto life. ⁸ It is a witness no one can deny, for it is the effects of life it brings. ⁹ The dying live, the dead arise, and pain has vanished. ¹⁰ Yet a miracle speaks not but for itself, but what it represents.

T-27.VI.6. Love, too, has symbols in a world of sin. ² The miracle forgives because it stands for what is past forgiveness and is true. ³ How foolish and insane it is to think a miracle is bound by laws that it came solely to undo! ⁴ The laws of sin have different witnesses with different strengths. ⁵ And they attest to different sufferings. ⁶ Yet to the One Who sends forth miracles to bless the world, a tiny stab of pain, a little worldly pleasure, and the throes of death itself are but a single sound; a call for healing, and a plaintive cry for help within a world of misery. ⁷ It is their sameness that the miracle attests. ⁸ It is their sameness that it proves. ⁹ The laws that call them different are dissolved, and shown as powerless. ¹⁰ The purpose of a miracle is to accomplish this. ¹¹ And God Himself has guaranteed the strength of miracles for what they witness to.

T-27.VI.7. Be you then witness to the miracle, and not the laws of sin. ² There is no need to suffer any more. ³ But there is need that you be healed, because the suffering and sorrow of the world have made it deaf to its salvation and deliverance. T-27.VI.8. The resurrection of the world awaits your healing and your happiness, that you may demonstrate the healing of the world. ² The holy instant will replace all sin if you but carry its effects with you. ³ And no one will elect to suffer more. ⁴ What better function could you serve than this? ⁵ Be healed that you may heal, and suffer not the laws of sin to be applied to you. ⁶ And truth will be revealed to you who chose to let love's symbols take the place of sin.