T. 31. II. 3 – 6. Jesus: “In the ego’s dream, the leader and the follower emerge as separate roles, each seeming to possess advantages you would not want to lose. You see yourself divided into both these roles, one or the other, forever split between the two. So in your mind their fusion into one brings hope of satisfaction and of peace. For every friend or enemy now becomes a means to help you save yourself from this!
Perhaps in the relationship, you call it ‘love.’ Perhaps you think that it is ‘murder justified’ at last! You hate the one in whom you see the leader’s role when you would have it. And you hate as well his not assuming it at times when you would let the follower in you arise and give away the role of leadership!
And this is what you made your brother separate from you for, and taught yourself to think that this his purpose is. Unless he serves it, he has not fulfilled the function that was given him by you. And thus ‘he merits death,’ because he has no purpose and no usefulness to you. And what of him? What does he want of you?
What could he want, but what you want of him? Herein is chosen life as easily as death, for what you choose, you choose as well for him. There are two different calls that you can make to him, as he to you. Between these two there is a choice indeed, because from each of these there is a different outcome!
If he be ‘the leader’ or ‘the follower’ to you it matters not, for either way, by seeing him as separate, you still have chosen death! But if you hear in him the call for death or call for life; for hate or for forgiveness and for help, what you choose to hear is not the same in outcome! Hear the call of darkness in your brother, and you are separate from him, and lost. But hear the other, hopeful call, and you join with him, thus in your answer is salvation found!
The voice you hear in your brother is but your own! What does he ask you for? And listen well! For he is asking what will come to you, because you see in him but an image of yourself, and hear your own voice requesting what you want!
Before you answer, pause to think of this: ‘The answer that I give my brother is what I am asking for. And what I now learn of him is what I learn about myself.
Then let us wait an instant and be still, forgetting everything we thought we heard before; remembering how much we do not know. This brother neither leads nor follows us, but walks beside us on the selfsame road.”