Ch. 17. II. 1 – 5. Jesus: “Can you imagine how beautiful those you truly forgive will look to you? In no fantasy of the ego have you ever seen anything so lovely. Nothing you see here, sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness. And nothing will you value like unto this, nor hold so dear. Nothing you remember that made your heart sing with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. For you will see the Son of God!
You will behold the beauty the Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and which He thanks the Father for. He was created to see this for you, until you learned to see it for yourself. And all His teaching leads to seeing it and giving thanks with Him. This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the real world, bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has been forgiven and there are no fantasies to hide the truth.
The bridge between that world and this is so little and so easy to cross, that you could not believe it is the meeting place of worlds so different! Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that even touches on this world at all. This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, beyond all ugliness into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection.
This step, the smallest ever taken, is still the greatest accomplishment of all in God’s plan of Atonement! All else is learned, but this is given, complete and wholly perfect. No one but Him Who planned salvation could complete it thus. The real world, in its loveliness, you learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone, and no one and nothing remain still bound by them, and by your own forgiveness you are free to see.
Yet what you see in the forgiven world is still only what you made, but now with the blessing of your forgiveness laid upon it. And with this final blessing of God’s Son upon himself, the real perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose. The stars will disappear in light, and the sun that opened up the world to beauty will vanish. Perception will be meaningless when it has been perfected, for everything that has been used for learning will then no longer have a function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible will still occur.
The perception of the real world will be so short that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world and have been made ready for Him.
The real world is attained simply by the complete forgiveness of the old, the world you have been seeing without forgiveness. The Great Transformer of perception will undertake with you the careful searching of the mind that made this world, and uncover to you the seeming reasons for your making it.”