Question 23 from
The Most Commonly Asked Questions About 
A Course in Miracles

By Gloria and Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.

 

Chapter 2:  THE NATURE OF THE SEPARATION


23) Does enlightenment or resurrection mean freedom from the body? 

No, because the mind is not imprisoned in the body, but only in its own decision to identify with the ego thought system; hence, enlightenment can be understood as awakening from the dream, a process occurring only on the level of the mind. As the Course says: "Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all" (W-pI.188.1:4). Therefore, it can be understood as the acceptance of ourselves as God created us, and the recognition that no change is necessary because in truth the separation from God never occurred. This recognition is what A Course in Miracles means by accepting the Atonement for oneself. Moreover, the Course's definition of resurrection is the awakening from the ego's dream of death, as is seen in the manual's answer to the question, "What is the resurrection?" where the process of "overcoming" death is clearly placed in the mind, since death has nothing to do with the body: 

Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the  meaning of the world. It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the world's purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement  for oneself. It is the end of dreams of misery, and the glad awareness of the Holy Spirit's final dream.... 

The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely (M-28.1:1-4; 2:1-2; italics ours).

And from "The Message of the Crucifixion" in Chapter 6 of the text, where Jesus speaks of himself and his importance to us as a model, we read: 
Your resurrection is your reawakening. I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your mind of what is already in it. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true forever (T-6.1.7:1-3; italics ours).
The emphasis that both these passages place on the mind clearly points to it, and not the body as the site of resurrection (or the process of forgiveness). It is the split mind that is the source of all dreams, and therefore it is only there that correction is needed and can be truly efficacious. 

Therefore, one can be enlightened and still have the appearance of remaining in the body, as did Jesus for example, being fully aware that his reality was outside the dream of bodies.  Resurrection, thus, only means freedom from the belief that we actually exist within a body and are a body. It is the culmination of the process, once again, that occurs only on the level of the mind, because the ego's dream of separation exists only there and nowhere else. Ideas always remain within their source, as Jesus frequently teaches in the Course, and so the idea of a separated world and body has never left its source in the split mind. 

Reproduced with the kind permission of Gloria and Kenneth
Wapnick and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles
 

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