Question 41 from
The Most Commonly Asked Questions About 
A Course in Miracles

By Gloria and Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.


Chapter 3: APPLICATION AND PRACTICE


41) What does A Course in Miracles mean by "releasing your brother"? How can I save him if the world is an hallucination in my mind?

The reader should recall our earlier discussion in question 5 of Jesus' use of metaphor in the Course.  In other words, students of A Course in Miracles need to allow themselves to be led beyond the form of its words to their underlying content. This is a process that occurs slowly over time, beginning with a more literal understanding of the Course's teachings. At first, therefore, phrases like "releasing your brother," or parallel ones about being your brother's savior, or the workbook emphasis on being the light of the world, help students undo their negative self-image such as is summarized in workbook
Lesson 93:

You think you are the home of evil, darkness and sin. You think if anyone could see the truth about you he would be repelled, recoiling from you as if from a poisonous snake. You think if what is true about you were revealed to you, you would be struck with horror so intense that you would rush to death by your own hand, living on after seeing this being impossible (W-pl.93.1).
It is a healing correction to be told that our thoughts about ourselves are not true, and that not only are we loved by God as an extension of His Will (as the rest of the lesson makes clear) but that we have the power to heal and bless others as well. It is only as we progress in our work with A Course in Miracles that it becomes clear that the process of "releasing" one's brother has nothing to do with our brother, but everything to do with ourselves. Indeed, this process of forgiveness can have nothing to do with our brother because in truth it is our dream, and he is but a figure in this dream. In one rather strong passage, Jesus asks his students:
What if you recognized this world is an hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? (T-20.VIII.7:3-5)
In other words, our world and lives are our dreams, just as our sleeping dreams -- with all their figures and events -- are present only in our dreaming minds that in a sense are but hallucinations, too. Moreover, since the content of the ego's dream is fear, hate, victimization, and unforgiveness, all dream figures will have the above themes scripted throughout the dreaming we call "life." Therefore, there is no one to forgive because, again, all the people in our lives are simply made-up figures in our dreams. Who needs to be forgiven is ourselves -- for dreaming in the first place instead of remembering our Identity as Christ, awake in God.

Our function of "releasing our brothers" through forgiveness relates to a function and process that truly occurs only within our minds -- the home of dreams -- although it is experienced by us as occurring between two separated individuals. By choosing Jesus as our teacher instead of the ego, by listening to his voice of forgiveness instead of the ego's voice of attack, we join with him as expressions of the Alternative that is in everyone's mind. And thus we become the reminders to our brothers that they can make the same choice we did, and thus be released from their guilt since we both scripted each other into our respective dreams. Therefore, we can choose either to be symbols of guilt or forgiveness for one another. This process of healing through forgiveness is summarized in this wonderfully clear passage from the manual for teachers, which discusses the role of the teacher of God when confronted by sickness:

To them [the sick] God's teachers come, to represent another choice which they had forgotten. The simple presence of a teacher of God is a reminder ... They stand for the Alternative. With God's Word in their minds they come in benediction, not to heal the sick but to remind them of the remedy God has already given them.... Very gently they call to their brothers to turn away from death: "Behold, you Son of God, what Life can offer you. Would you choose sickness in place of this?" (M-5.III.2:1-2,6-7,11-12)
Therefore, we save the world and everyone in it by saving or changing our thoughts about the world. By releasing ourselves from our own guilt, we release the world because we are one with it, since it is our projection. That is what the Course means by saying that we "arose with him [Jesus] when he began to save the world" (C-6.5:5). Our minds are one, and Jesus' remaining one with the Holy Spirit becomes the shining reminder in the Sonship's mind to do the same. Our making that choice allows us to be Jesus' manifestation to our brothers, just as he is the Holy Spirit's manifestation for us all (C-6.5:1-2). It is this call to remember and to choose that is the true release that heals.

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

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