T. 19. I. 1 – 5. Jesus: “We said before that when a situation has been dedicated wholly to truth, peace is inevitable. The attainment of peace is the criterion by which the wholeness of your dedication can be safely assumed.
Yet we also have said that without faith, peace will never be attained, for what is dedicated to truth as its only goal, is brought to truth by faith. This faith encompasses everyone involved, for only thus can the situation be perceived as meaningful and as a whole. And everyone must be included in your faith; or else that faith is limited, and thus your dedication incomplete.
Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal the Son of God. And he is healed because you offered faith, giving your brother to the Holy Spirit and releasing him from every demand your ego would make of him. Thus do you see him free, and in this vision does the Holy Spirit share!
Since the Holy Spirit shares your vision, He has given it to your brother, and so the Holy Spirit heals through you. It is this joining Him in a united purpose that makes this purpose real, because you have chosen to make it whole. And this is healing. The body is healed as well, because you came without the body, and joined the Mind in which all healing rests!
The body cannot heal, because it cannot make itself sick. It needs no healing! Its health or sickness depends entirely on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it for. It is obvious that a segment of the mind, the ego, can see itself as separated from the Universal Purpose. When this occurs the body becomes its weapon, used against this Purpose, to demonstrate as ‘fact’ that separation has occurred. The body thus becomes the instrument of your illusion of a separate self, acting accordingly; seeing what is not there, hearing what truth has never said and behaving insanely, being imprisoned by insanity.
Do not overlook our earlier statement that faithlessness leads straight to illusions! For faithlessness is epitomized by the perception of a brother as a body, since the mindless body itself, the very symbol of separation, cannot be used to unify. If, then, you insist on seeing` your brother ‘as a body,’ you have established a condition in which uniting with him becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to him has separated you from him and kept you both apart from being healed.
Your faithlessness has thus opposed the Holy Spirit’s purpose, and brought illusions, centered on the body, to stand between you. And the body will seem to be sick, for you have made of it an ‘enemy’ of healing and the opposite of truth!
Surely it cannot be difficult to realize that faith must be the opposite of faithlessness. Yet the difference in how they operate is less apparent, though it follows directly from the fundamental difference in what they are. Faithlessness would always limit and attack; faith would remove all limitations and make whole. Faithlessness would destroy and separate; faith would unite and heal.”