The Fifty Miracle Principles
of A Course in Miracles
by Kenneth Wapnick
Principle 49
The miracle makes no distinction
among degrees of misperception. It is a device for
perception-correction, effective
quite apart from either the degree or the direction of the error.
This is its true indiscriminateness.
This is just a restatement of the first principle -- "there is no order of difficulty in miracles." It is an elaboration of that same idea, that the miracle corrects the error, regardless of what it looks like, whether it seems to be a loving expression or a hateful expression, whether it seems to be a cosmic expression or just a purely individual expression. It does not make any difference, because errors are all the same. It is not the body that the miracle heals but our misperceptions of others, most especially our misperception that others are victimizing us. Rather, they are our brothers and sisters. If we accuse them of victimizing us, it is only because we have first accused ourselves of victimizing ourselves or others. As workbook lesson 134 says, whenever we are tempted to accuse anyone of anything, we should first stop and ask ourselves: "Would I accuse myself of doing this?" (workbook, p. 243; W-pI.134.9:3). This is one of the central themes of A Course in Miracles. It is one of those lines which summarizes the whole message of the Course. We are the victims only of our thoughts. This means that we can change them and not be imprisoned by others. Therefore, we have not victimized anyone, ultimately not even God, and this undoes the whole ego thought system.
This miracle principle is such a central part of the Course's teaching. Once we believe there are certain things in the world that are better than others or worse than others, we are falling into the trap. That would be the same trap, then, as talking about the resurrection of the body. This is a subtle way of making the body real and making the body the focus of attention. The body can be used by the Holy Spirit or by Jesus as a way of getting His message through. That is how the Course came through. But the idea is not that the body is real, It is just that it is serving a useful purpose.
A workbook lesson that is worth looking into is lesson 184, which talks about all the various names that the world has used as a substitute for the Name of God. All these names are symbols. But then the last half of the lesson explains that it would make no sense if we were asked to live in this world, take a teaching function, and yet go beyond all the names of the world. It explains how the Holy Spirit uses the symbols of this world to get His message through and how the basic pattern is to continue to go from the light we know as reality back into the darkness of this world, so that we bring a different message into the world -- in other words, to be in the world and not of it. So, A Course in Miracles is not against using the symbols of this world -- quite the opposite. It is just saying that they are symbols, and we should never lose sight of that fact nor the truth that is beyond the symbol. Recall the aforementioned section, "Beyond all Symbols" (text, p. 531; T-27.III). But remember, the Course does not say that you jump from one end of the carpet to the other, because that would just throw you into a panic. You go slowly, step by step.
Q: The text talks about everyone as experiencing at some time being out of the body. Do you think this refers to out-of-body experiences?
A: No, I do not think it does. It does not quite say it like that. It says an experience of being beyond the body (text, p. 361; T-18.VI.11). That could include out-of-body experiences, but what it is really talking about in that context is experiencing joining with something beyond the body, whether you are joining with a beautiful painting, a beautiful experience with a piece of music, or joining with a person if only for an instant, or identifying with some idea where you feel joined with something beyond the body. Now, that could include the out-of-body experiences some people have, but I do not think that it would be restricted to that.