VI. The Secret Vows

T-28.VI.1. Who punishes the body is insane. ² For here the little gap is seen, and yet it is not here. ³ It has not judged itself, nor made itself to be what it is not. ⁴ It does not seek to make of pain a joy and look for lasting pleasure in the dust. ⁵ It does not tell you what its purpose is and cannot understand what it is for. ⁶ It does not victimize, because it has no will, no preferences and no doubts. ⁷ It does not wonder what it is. ⁸ And so it has no need to be competitive. ⁹ It can be victimized, but cannot feel itself as victim. ¹⁰ It accepts no role, but does what it is told, without attack.

T-28.VI.2. It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible for sight a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the sounds you do not like, although it cannot hear. ² It suffers not the punishment you give because it has no feeling. ³ It behaves in ways you want, but never makes the choice. ⁴ It is not born and does not die. ⁵ It can but follow aimlessly the path on which it has been set. ⁶ And if that path is changed, it walks as easily another way. ⁷ It takes no sides and judges not the road it travels. ⁸ It perceives no gap, because it does not hate. ⁹ It can be used for hate, but it cannot be hateful made thereby.

T-28.VI.3. The thing you hate and fear and loathe and want, the body does not know. ² You send it forth to seek for separation and be separate. ³ And then you hate it, not for what it is, but for the uses you have made of it. ⁴ You shrink from what it sees and what it hears, and hate its frailty and littleness. ⁵ And you despise its acts, but not your own. ⁶ It sees and acts for you. ⁷ It hears your voice. ⁸ And it is frail and little by your wish. ⁹ It seems to punish you, and thus deserve your hatred for the limitations that it brings to you. ¹⁰ Yet you have made of it a symbol for the limitations that you want your mind to have and see and keep.

T-28.VI.4. The body represents the gap between the little bit of mind you call your own and all the rest of what is really yours. ² You hate it, yet you think it is your self, and that, without it, would your self be lost. ³ This is the secret vow that you have made with every brother who would walk apart. ⁴ This is the secret oath you take again, whenever you perceive yourself attacked. ⁵ No one can suffer if he does not see himself attacked, and losing by attack. ⁶ Unstated and unheard in consciousness is every pledge to sickness. ⁷ Yet it is a promise to another to be hurt by him, and to attack him in return.

T-28.VI.5. Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that it will suffer pain. ² It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret, in agreement with another's secret wish to be apart from you, as you would be apart from him. ³ Unless you both agree that is your wish, it can have no effects. ⁴ Whoever says, "There is no gap between my mind and yours" has kept God's promise, not his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. ⁵ And by his healing is his brother healed.

T-28.VI.6. Let this be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and not apart. ² And he will keep the promise that you make with him, because it is the one that he has made to God, as God has made to him. ³ God keeps His promises; His Son keeps his. ⁴ In his creation did his Father say, "You are beloved of Me and I of you forever. ⁵ Be you perfect as Myself, for you can never be apart from Me." ⁶ His Son remembers not that he replied "I will," though in that promise he was born. ⁷ Yet God reminds him of it every time he does not share a promise to be sick, but lets his mind be healed and unified. ⁸ His secret vows are powerless before the Will of God, Whose promises he shares. ⁹ And what he substitutes is not his will, who has made promise of himself to God.