OrEd-T-21.7-Reason and Correction.1
59. Reason values only the correction of errors. Reason cannot see sin, only errors, and it leads to their correction. When I think I sin, reason tells me that I only call for help. If I accept the help I called for, I will believe that help is mine to give, and giving help, undo the belief in sin. For uncorrected error deceives me about the power that is in me to make correction. If the power in me can correct, and I do not allow it to do so, I deny correction to myself and to my brother. If my brother shares this belief, we both will think that we are damned. We could both be spared from this, for reason would not make correction in me alone.
60. Correction cannot be accepted or refused by me without my brother, but sin would maintain it can. Yet reason tells me that I cannot see my brother, or myself, as sinful, and still perceive the other innocent. No one looks upon himself as guilty and sees a sinless world. And no one can see a sinful world, and see himself apart from it. Sin maintains that I am separate. But reason tells me that this must be wrong. How could it be that I have private thoughts if I am joined? And how could thoughts that enter into what seems like only mine alone, have no effect at all on what is yours? If minds are joined, this is impossible.
61. God does not think without His Son, and no one can think only for himself. Only if both were in bodies could this be true. Nor could one mind think only for itself unless the body were the mind. For only bodies can be separate and therefore unreal. The home of madness cannot be the home of reason. Yet if I see reason, it is easy to leave the home of madness. I do not leave insanity by going somewhere else. I leave it simply by accepting reason where madness was. Madness and reason see the same things, but it is certain that they look upon them differently.
62. Madness is an attack on reason that drives reason out of mind, and madness takes its place. Reason does not attack, but takes the place of madness quietly, replacing madness if it is the will of the insane to listen to reason. But the insane do not know their will. For they believe they see the body, and let their madness tell them the body is real. Reason would be incapable of this. And if I would defend the body against my reason, I will not understand myself or the body.
63. I am insane if I think the body separates me from my brother. It must be insane to see the body as a barrier, between what reason tells me must be joined. I could not see the body if I heard the voice of reason. There can be nothing that stands between that which is continuous. And if there is nothing in between, how can what enters one part be kept away from the other parts? Reason would tell me this. But, I will think what I must recognize if this is so. But, madness has a purpose, and believes it has the means to make its purpose real.
64. If I choose sin instead of healing, I would condemn the Son of God to what can never be corrected. I tell him by my choice that he is damned, separate from me and from his Father forever, and with no hope of safe return. This is what I teach him, and will learn of him exactly what I taught. I can only teach my brother that he is as I would have him be. And what I choose that he be, is also my choice for myself. I will not think this is fearful. It is a fact, not an interpretation, that I am joined to him. How can a fact be fearful, unless it disagrees with something I hold more dear than truth? Reason will tell me that this fact is my release. Neither my brother nor myself can be attacked alone. But neither can we accept a miracle instead, without the other being blessed by the miracle and healed of pain.
