1560: A Course In Miracles, Dr. Robert Rosenthal

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Welcome to the show. This is Jason Hartman, your host. And every 10th episode we do something kind of special, kind of different. What we do is we go off topic. So regardless of which show it is on the Hartman Media Network, whether it be one of the financial shows, economics, real estate, investing, travel, longevity, all of the other topics that we have, every 10th episode we go off topic and we explore something of general interest, something of general life, success, value. And so many of our listeners around the world in 164 countries have absolutely loved our 10th episode shows. So that's what we're gonna do today. And let's go ahead and get to our guest with a special 10th episode show. And of course on the next episode, we'll be back to our regular programming. Here we go. Hey, it's my pleasure to welcome Robert Rosenthal to the show. He is the co president of the foundation for Inner pe. And I first want to tell you before anything, we are not talking about religion today. This is not a religion, okay? This is a course that I discovered many years ago and it really had a great impact on my life. Here's what happened. I'll just tell you my little story about it. In my 20s, like many people in their 20s, I was looking for answers and just really fascinated by a lot of things. I used to study philosophy and just different stuff, a lot of stuff. As I was doing that, I came across a great book. Maybe it was recommended to me by possibly Dennis Waitley, I'm not sure. And it is the book called Love is Letting Go of Fear by Dr. Gerald Jampolsky. And it was a little tiny book, but very profound, very impactful book. And it talked about, or Gerald did when I followed up on his work, it talked about this thing called A Course in Miracles. And I started reaching out and learning about this and it was quite fascinating to me. Now we have the man who probably understands it more than anybody else here with us today, so it's a pleasure to have him. Bob, welcome. How are you?

I'm great. Jason, how are you doing? Good.

It's good to have you. And you're coming to us from Northern California, right?

Yes, I am, that's correct.

Good stuff, good stuff. Well, you know, the first thing I'd like to ask you is kind of to my comment earlier, are we talking about religion here?

Yeah. No. In no way, shape or form could you conceptualize a Course in Miracles as a religion. You know, there's no priests, there's no hierarchy, there aren't even any dogmas to follow, you know, like taking communion or confession. A Course in miracles is best understood as a self study course. It's, it's just, it's the books and you work with them in whatever way you choose. We hear stories all the time about someone who gets them very intrigued, looks at it, goes, hey, I don't think this is for me. Sticks it on the bookshelf. Ten years later, is looking at the bookshelf and goes, oh, what was it about that? And suddenly, you know, the next 10 years of their life are devoted to the course. So it kind of meets us where are. And sometimes where we are is not ready for it.

Have any religious groups or anything picked it up? Because I seem to recall many years ago going to, I don't know, a seminar or a. I don't want to call it a church, but tell me about that. Is there anything like that?

Well, unity churches have picked it up and in fact, back quite a few years ago, it was the source of a real schism in unity where half the people didn't want it there because they thought it muddied the message of unity. The other half thought it was an amplifier of the message of unity. I'm not going to weigh in on that one. I mean, the course stands on its own whether someone endorses it or not. In fact, one of the things that I'm constantly having to do in our organization is sort of hold people back. Oh, look, we could market this. We could have many millions more users and we have to say that's not our job. Our job is to publish it, distribute it, make it available and discuss its message so people can understand it better.

Good stuff. Well, let's dive into the message and we'll go back to some of this stuff. So for those of you watching on video, you'll see this. But if Not. And you're just listening on audio. We'll try and make it, you know, very clear to you what we're. What we're looking at. So this, as I recall many years ago from reading this, I think it starts off with this, right?

No, no, this is chapter 16. But it is a consistent. No, it's a consistent theme. This message shows up all through.

Good. So let's read the message. This is a course in how to know yourself. You have taught what you are, but have not let what you are teach you. Sounds a little double talk ish there, but what does that all mean?

It's very typical of how the course's language works and that it does force. It's very difficult to just read it and sort of scan it and move on. It throws these passages at you where you have to kind of pause and go, wait a minute. You have what you are, but have not let what you are teach you. And yet it's right here we have taught. That is, we put out in the world what we think we are. Would be a better way to phrase it, perhaps. But we have not allowed what we really are to teach us what we really are. Now, what are we? A Course in Miracles says, we're one mind, we're one self. That self is nothing but love. It is practically indistinguishable from what the course calls God, Although that concept of God is closer to a Hindu Brahmin idea. You know, it's just all that is all that can be, all that can ever be. So the course is saying, yeah, you're living this fiction of what you think you are and what the world is. And within this fictional world, you discover all of these pursuits and things you think you want. You want certain relationships, you want certain homes, boats, cars, income levels, you name it. You want fame, fortune. And the problem is, at the end of the day, even if you get it, you're gonna die. You know, your body will. Will poop out on you. And so what the course is advocating is that you can discover a different aspect of self that is always there, always peaceful, always loving, if you can get out of the way and let it through. And, you know, there's the trick. A Course in Miracles says we haven't left our true nature. We can't do that. You know, we were created to be this thing, and we don't have the power to change that, but we certainly have the power to be a little bit psychotic, a little bit insane and go, no, I'm not that. I'm something Else, I always joke that, you know, if a dog thought it was a cat, it would never be happy playing with balls of string, just like a cat would never be happy chasing after a car. You know, each one has to be true to itself in order to find real happiness. And that is a goal of the course.

So the message here is be true to oneself.

Yes, but with the caveat that what you think that self is probably is inaccurate.

Look, there's a great line in the course, something to the effect of fear. Not that you'll be lifted up and hurled into reality. We can only progress at a rate that feels comfortable for us. You can't learn through fear. Fear will scare you. Fear pushes us back into what the course calls the ego mind, which is what most of us identify with. Oh, let's make plans for the future. Let's figure out how we're going to handle this. And what the miracle is, essentially, is you don't know how to handle it. But there's something within you, equally within everybody else, you're not special, that can do a much better job of figuring it out for you.

So one of the things that I think is just incredibly impactful, maybe one of the more or maybe the most impactful line in the entire course is something that to some extent, we're all seeking security, right, Whatever that means. You know, in Western culture, a lot of times it means, like, financial security. Later in life, it almost always means health security. Maybe it's ego security, whatever this is, right? This concept of security, as I'm going to put it. And there's a very freeing statement, and it's on the next slide, okay? And I think this is just profound. It's just totally profound. And it speaks to. And I don't want to turn it to that slide yet. It speaks to attachment and inner peace. I think when one internalizes this statement, and it's probably been said many other ways throughout the eons, but here it is. This one is one I really, really like, okay? And it is, nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. Nothing real can be threatened. Now, many of us, and certainly myself, I at times feel threatened. Like, oh, gosh, you know, someone's gonna take my money away or take my security away or make me look bad or something like that. But the course just teaches you that really nothing can be threatened and nothing real, you know, whatever we think real is. Right? But nothing unreal actually exists anyway. Right? So tell us about this. Unpack this quote.

Yeah. So this is in the introduction, on the very first page of the text of A Course in Miracles.

This is the one I was thinking.

This is the one you're thinking of? Yes. So right there, and it's a three line summary and encapsulation of the entire message of A Course in Miracles, which is essentially a binary. Look, there's only, only reality exists, only truth with a capital T exists. You can't threaten that. Therefore, if you're coming from that place of truth, you begin to see that all those other things, those security needs you were talking about, they're just no longer material. I'm not saying you don't want them and you don't go after them, but they no longer run your show. They're no longer priorities. They're no longer. Oh my God, I've got it. You know, there's no such thing as a bucket list and A course in miracles, let's put it that way. Then you go to the other side of it. Nothing unreal exists, which, you know, it's just simply the, you know, the corollary, if you will, that if you're standing in that place of reality, then nothing, you're invulnerable, you know, nothing else can touch you. And we do get our challenges and we get our lessons, you know. But I agree with you. I actually think Jay Z and Beyonce incorporated this into one of their songs a couple years back.

Talk about a pop culture reference.

Yeah.

Interesting. Interesting. Well, you know, this is tremendously freeing, this concept. And, you know, just to take it to sort of the practical world, if you will. We've all heard the stories, maybe we've experienced them. You know, that job we didn't get, that promotion we didn't get. Or maybe we got laid off or fired or we lost a bunch of money or something happened that would seem, quote, bad, unquote. But it turns out to be, as you know, many would call it, that saying, a blessing in disguise.

Yes.

And sometimes, you know, sort of losing your money or losing that job, we realize there's like a whole other path that is actually turns out to be a path we really like. And, you know, it's fulfilling. I mean, we've all heard of the person, you know, now we're still sort of in the world. I'm going to use that phrase because I think that's used in the course a lot. But just in the world, the concept of, you know, the person who gets fired from their job is massively depressed about it. Turns out they make a fortune doing something else. Right. And they're much happier. So we've all heard that. But that's in the world concept. But even not in the world. And maybe you want to address that in the world statement. I don't know if I'm getting that right from memory of the course, but.

Well, you know, I mean, in the same introduction. This is the very end of this short introduction. In the same introduction, it says, basically, your job is not to create. Establish what is already real that's already there. Your task is to remove the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance, which is your natural. In other words, this huge, vast treasure chest of oneness, love, light, peace, all the good stuff. Happiness is your true reality. But you've erected blocks. You've erected false gods, idols. And the idea is, if you're chasing after an idol, you're not going to be able to find what is really there. Now, some of us have to chase a lot of idols before we finally get to the point of, you know what? I think I'm going to stop. I mean, the line that sparked the course was Bill saying to Helen, there must be a better way. Because their department at Columbia was intense and backbiting and competitive. And he said, there must be a better way. And he was shocked when she said, I'll help you find it. You know, a couple months later, the course starts coming through. I don't think they were looking for.

The course, mind you, and most people don't know what you're referring to. These are the two scribes.

Yes, exactly. Thank you.

And interestingly, they. They're referred to as scribes, not authors. They didn't write the course. And here's where maybe you get this, like, affiliation with religion. Right. So maybe. Do you want to explain that and speak to that a little bit?

Yeah. So it's pretty clear that the. And I put it in quotes, because this is a subject of some debate, even among course students, that the author is Jesus because he addresses the disciples. And when I said this, this is what I meant. Suffice to say the course presents itself as a reinterpretation of the Christian message. Therefore, it is using Christian terms like God, like Christ, like atonement, like forgiveness, like heaven. But it's repurposing them. It's giving them completely different definitions. This gives a lot of students real problems. I mean, you know, I was born Jewish, I was bar mitzvah, I don't practice much. But reading a book where it's talking about Jesus and disciples and the Crucifixion, that did not come easy. And I probably would have put it aside if I hadn't encountered some pretty astounding, what I call miracles, miraculous occurrences very early on that sort of shook me and said, pay attention, there's something here. Because, you know, it's like a mathematical algorithm. If you're applying algorithms and they don't work, then they're not true, they're not real. Whereas when you take something that's completely out of left field and apply it and suddenly everything makes sense, that's probably truth. And I think that that's a good characterization. I mean, the course is very clear. It's not about theology. It's not about trying to establish itself as a universal religion. It's about getting us to a certain experience. And once you've had that experience, it's very difficult to credit the world in which we think we live with all of its security needs, as you called them, Jason, quite accurately, by the way.

And where does the ego come into this? I think the course said the ego and the true self. Was that the dichotomy?

That's the dichotomy, yeah. And we would have to spell self with a capital S because the course loves capital. So. So the ego is kind of like this weird side effect when an aspect of God, oneness, what the course calls the Son of God. And it does use this. This patriarchal language because it's, you know, trying to correct the Bible, not correct, reinterpret the Bible. It says that, you know, when that which is all there is somehow limited itself and condensed itself into this much, much smaller space, time. This side effect arose in particular once we saw ourselves as in a physical body. And the course calls that the ego. This is not the Freudian ego, but there is a similarity. And a Course in Miracles could not have been written prior to Freud because it uses a lot of Freudian concepts like the defense mechanism, dissociation, projection, repression. So the ego is what we tend to identify as ourselves. The ego is that nothing unreal, Ex. That's the ego. The ego doesn't exist. You know, in the Clarification of terms section at the end asks, you know, what is the ego? And one of the answers is nothingness in a form that looks like something. And the course is very clear. The ego dies. The ego will not last past death, just like the body dies, but that there is again that within us, which is our reality, our capital S self, that can't be killed it because it was never born. It doesn't Live in the body. The body. You know, I use the analogy sometimes of a game of Monopoly. You know, you can sit down and play Monopoly and you move your piece, the car, the hat, whatever, around the board, but never do you confuse yourself with the piece. You never go psychotic and say, oh, yeah, the car is me, and my only task in life is to buy up as much property as possible. And I realize this is sort of apropos of your field.

Because most of.

Our listeners are real estate investors.

I know, I know you want Boardwalk and Park Place. I get that. But you never delude yourself.

We prefer Baltic Avenue.

Baltic is a gem.

Those have better rent to value ratios, but. Okay, that's great.

Pay attention to this, man. But, yeah, but we never confuse ourselves with our playing piece. You know, it's kind of like a virtual reality simulation. Or for those who've seen the movie the Matrix. The movie the Matrix, you think you're in this reality, and it's very compelling, and it throws a lot of very compelling things at us that we want to pursue, but ultimately, they're all mirages. They all go poof. At the end of the day, that is super fascinating.

And so.

It sounds like what you're saying, just correct me if I'm wrong, that we do a lot to satisfy the ego. Okay. Because it's part of all of us. Right? We do a lot. I mean, some people spend their whole lives chasing all these squirrels that are.

What most people do.

Most people. Yeah. And spend their whole lives chasing all these squirrels that they, you know, that are. That are like the ego. Right. And they're all going in different directions. But I mean, some of that is real. I mean, it's not all fake. Right. And the interesting thing that's hard for me to reconcile is, you know, a lot of people, I think, give the ego a bad rap, in essence. And if you read. And I have a feeling just by where you live and from what I know of you so far, you've probably read Ayn Rand. Okay. You know, that would be.

I actually have not. I'm sorry.

It's interesting, I would think almost that you have. And so, you know, that's like a complete opposite of what I'm saying here. But see, without some degree of ego, it doesn't seem like there'd be any progress, because that's like a motivating thing.

You need a placeholder to be here. Okay. You know, so there is a certain contingent within the course community that says, well, you know, reality is real. Nothing here is real. I Don't have to do anything. I don't have to. You know, I'm just gonna sit here and kind of, you know, run out the clock. We'll pass the ball back and forth and, you know, make them do a full court press to get it out of our hands. That's not what the course is saying. The course is saying that we have all erected so many of these obstac at so many different layers that we don't even know what they are. So when we sign on, we basically have signed onto a curriculum that we don't even know what it is at first, but we sense that there's a truth to it, and when we start applying it, things just start working better. No, no, that doesn't mean you give up everything. I mean, I tell people. A course in miracles came into my life at the age of 20. For five years, I studied it avidly. Then my first wife, whose older brother was a Jesuit priest, and she was raised Catholic, and the course's Christian terminology was a total nonstarter for her. I kind of parted ways for a little bit. It was always the cornerstone of my world. But we come in and out, sometimes we have to do things. So I tell people, yeah, I got the course at 20. It tells us that special relationships are the ego. That is, where you make the other person special and they make you special. And, wow, isn't that special? But at 20 years old, I wanted a special relationship. I probably wanted many of them. And it takes a certain amount of experience before you can go, you know, I'm barking up the wrong tree. To use your squirrel analogy there. This tree doesn't have a squirrel in it. I better go find another tree. But if you've barked up, you know, 10, 12, 100 different trees, and none of them have a payoff at the end that lasts, at some point, you might consider that maybe your whole paradigm is off.

Yeah, that's a great point. Great point. Stephen Covey used to talk about how, you know, people climb the ladder of success, and then they get. Get toward the top and they realize, oh, it's leaning against the wrong wall.

I wanted to go on that wall.

Very interesting, very interesting. So Gerald Jampolsky talks about how the ego puts up these barriers that get in the way of true happiness and fulfillment. And you alluded to that, but, yes. You want to mention anything more on that?

That, well, you know, look, the ego is intent on its pseudo survival. It's not real, but it thinks it's real, and it needs to convince you that it's real. And it needs to convince you that not only is it real, it is your real self. That little voice in your head that's constantly talking to you and rehearsing things, that is the voice of ego. That's not the voice of spirit. So the ego, it's kind of like a whack a mole game. You know, you whack one of its moles and you think you're there and then another one pops up somewhere else. Oh, I got the money thing down, but relationships really suck. I'm not getting that down. Let me do the relationship thing now. You know, my. My wife divorced me and took half my money. In other words, there's always in the ego's world, and I do stand by this. There's always something that's not working. And if you can't see it, it's not because it's not there, it's because you're choosing not to look. Again, that doesn't mean, oh, my God, if you're a course student, you have to give away all your money, stop having sex, you know, stop eating n food. No, not at all. But if those are your absolute goals in life, then yeah, there might need to be a little bit of stepping back and reconsidering.

That's all really, really interesting. I mean, the course is so insightful into so many of these things. It really is an amazing piece of work. You know, how long is the course? I mean, I remember it being this thick book, but you mentioned at the beginning, you said the books of the course. And I do remember, I think there were multiple books, right?

Yeah. So it was originally published as three volumes. It came as a text and then there was a break and then it came as a workbook which has 365 lessons. People now think, oh, they're, you know, you have to do one each day. No, the course is only instruction is don't do more than one each day. And then there's a manual for teachers. But the trick is we're all teachers, we're all students. The only real qualification for being a teacher is going through the workbook and doing the lessons properly. But what happened is eventually it was like, well, this is kind of cumbersome. Three books. We just put them all in one.

Are the scribes still around?

No, no. Helen died, 1981. Bill, 1988. The woman who runs our organization, Judy Sketch Witson, is the last of sort of the original four who were there studying it together and took it to publication.

I mean, I have a can I just share one story about the publication that'll give people a sense of how upside down this seems and yet how powerful it can be. So they had this original group of four, the two scribes, Judy and someone named Ken Wapnick, who had met the scribes they had gotten. You know, they're doing these meditations. They're doing what they call internal. Asks, what do you want us to do with this? Publishers are coming to them, we want to publish it, but each one wants to abridge it or get rid of certain things. They're finally told the only people who are supposed to publish it are people who are devoting their entire lives to it and who will not cut anything, not extra anything. And they look around and they realize, oh, I guess we're the ones who are supposed to publish it. This is 1975, 76. And they're like, well, how are we going to get the money? And, you know, the message was, make the commitment first and trust. The very next day, Judy gets a call from someone in Mexico who says, you know, I've been looking at your course in miracles. I'm very excited about it. I would like to see it translated into Spanish, and I'd like to pay for its publication. And Judy says, oh, my God, that's amazing. That would be great. But do you have any idea how much that is? And this guy says, yeah, I just sold a large property in Mexico, and you have a check coming to you in the mail for $60,000 now in 1976. That's a lot of money today in 1976. You know, I don't know what the conversion would be, but it's got to have been at least 10 times much. With that money, the first publication happened, they didn't go out and raise it. They didn't beat the bushes. They didn't canvass people and say, can you make a donation? The need was there, the money came, and that pattern has showed up over and over and over for us.

Fantastic. Well, let's jump to another concept here, and I'll change to another visual. Tell us about this one. This refers to forgiveness.

Yes. To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past and those that were given you. Forgiveness is a selective remembering based not on your selection. So if all you really are is love and the goal is to unblock that awareness, you need to remember only the loving thoughts and let go of everything else. But we're not able to do that because we're so confused. We don't even know What a loving thought is. We think that, you know, falling in love with someone is a loving thought. We think that giving to a charity is a loving thought. Now, it might be, but we don't know. So the course introduces this very different concept of forgiveness, where forgiveness is essentially the release of the mind from the past. We are prisoners of our past. Let's face it. We interpret everything in terms of past experience. The problem there is we each have a different past, so we're all interpreting things differently. Which means that there's 7 billion and counting different versions of truth on the planet. So knowing that you look around, is it any surprise there's so much conflict and division? Of course there is. How could there not be? The course through forgiveness, given to this higher consciousness, if you will, allows us to let go of that which is not true. The unloving thoughts in the past, the judgments that we made based on our own experience and received something different in its place. And that process is what the course calls forgiveness. A selective remembering based not on your selection.

Okay, interesting. So you just reminded me, Bob, of a quote I heard once for a different course I was taking, where the instructor, she said, human beings are the only beings for whom being is an issue.

That's so true.

Isn't that so good? We don't know that for sure since we're not. I'm not reading the mind of my dog, but, you know, I.

But he looks pretty content as long as you're feeding him and taking him for walks, right?

I mean, most of the time. Most of the time, yeah. So, you know. But think about that concept, right? Human beings are the only beings for whom being is an issue. And as we were talking before, I was thinking, you know, all of this, like, ego stuff, you know, whenever we've had a sleepless night where we're tossing and turning because we're upset about something that happened that day or, you know, somewhat before that. You know, it's. It's always this attachment stuff you got, you know, and that's really what the ego does, is it causes us to have faulty attachments.

I think it works through attachment and aversion. So this is borrowing from Buddhism here, but we get attached to certain things and we're averse to others. We want to maximize pleasure. We want to avoid pain. But in the process of doing that, you're making them both very real for you, and you're limiting the range of what you might otherwise experience. There are so many stories within the course community about a relationship that's stuck in A grievance where one of the parties decides, I'm done with this, but I can't talk to the other person. I'm just releasing it in my own mind. And all of a sudden the whole relationship shifts. There's no discussion about what happened before. There's no, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. It just shift. It's no longer what it was. And that, I think, demonstrates the power of the mind. The mind is primary, not the world out here.

So as we talk about this concept, you know, it sounds great to say forgive and forgive and forget is usually how the.

But, you know, is that always appropriate? Are there some things that others do that are just unforgivable? Distinguish that for us?

It's always appropriate, but you may not be able to get there or be ready for it. So, you know, one of the common questions in the course community, especially from newer students, well, what about Hitler? You know, do we forgive Hitler? Well, you know what? I respond to that as well. Did Hitler do anything to you directly? And if Hitler did and you're still holding that memory, are you hurting Hitler? He's dead. He's been dead a long time. You're the one holding on to it. I think it's a Buddhist story about refusing to forgive is like picking up a hot coal, holding it in your hand for a really long time in order to then throw it at the person you're not forgiving. You're always damaging yourself first. So really, we can understand forgiveness in a very selfish way. Now, that doesn't mean you can't learn a lesson. If someone burned you multiple times, you may not want to do a deal with that person in the past if they've betrayed you. But do you want to hold on to that hot coal of grievance that sears in you, and that clearly is doing nothing to hurt them. And you know what I mean. I was a psychotherapist for over 30 years. I worked with people who were deeply abused. I mean, in ways that nobody could even imagine. And we always had to distinguish between the therapy, which was about helping them to feel better, and the legal system. Because sometimes they get to a point of, you know, screw it, I'm going to sue the bastard. And I would say, are you sure you want to do that? The legal system works in a very different way. Can you imagine yourself on the stand and you're being asked on cross examination about your entire sexual history and made to look like a fool? No, that's not going to be healing for you. So ultimately, we Want to be willing to forgive everything, even if we're not ready to do it in a given moment. Does that make sense?

It does. I'd ask you to distinguish for us, what is the difference between you talked about the legal system and Hitler and so forth. What is the difference between forgiveness and accountability? Is there a difference?

Good question. Accountability is not a concept that the course would come to accept. Perhaps our own accountability to our higher self and to what the course calls God. I think that, you know, as you do this more and more, it just simply becomes more difficult to not behave in ways that are ethical and accountable, you know? So, for example, something came up the other day where it looked like someone in our organization could cut a corner to save a little bit of money. And at first I was like, well, that's intriguing. Then I thought, wait a minute. If we do that, basically what we're saying is we don't trust that this. This, you know, that the George Lucas force that brings to us what we need. We don't trust that it can provide for us. We think that we have to do a sneaky little maneuver in order to, you know what, save a couple thousand dollars a year. I mean, come on. That's not us. So it becomes more difficult. The first two qualities of the teachers of God are trust and honesty. Now, that's not just Boy Scouts. It's saying that if you don't trust, you're relying on your own past, and stuff's gonna happen. The only place to put your trust is in your real self, and honesty flows from that. If you're being dishonest to yourself or to someone else, you're not playing in the realm of truth.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And also, you don't have to have a good memory.

No, not at all. In fact, just the opposite. As you get better at this, you know, selective remembering, you want to be able to forget stuff, right?

Oh, well, on the forgiveness part, I was talking about the honesty part.

Yeah, yeah.

Abraham Lincoln quote. You know, if you're honest, you don't have to have a good memory or something.

No, very, very true. Yes.

Okay, so here's another concept. Same topic.

Yeah, this one's a little more complicated, I guess. I'll read it. Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others. All illusions save this one, must multiply a thousandfold. But this is where illusions end. I love that last line. This is where illusions end. So in the world of the ego, where we're playing the ego's game of whack a mole and chase the squirrel. There's only one thing that we can do that will bring us to the end of illusions, where truth is revealed and suddenly things look really nice and people are behaving really well to us, even though we're not doing anything different, or at least we don't think we are. So forgiveness is the dream within the dream. Let's think of it this way. Forgiveness is like a lucid dream. You wake up within the dream. You haven't really woken up yet, but you're so close that you no longer invest in. You no longer attached to things in the dream. You're no longer averse to them. In fact, if something quote unquote bad comes up, you kind of look at it and you go, wait a minute, what's the learning here? Where is this? Showing me an attachment that I haven't seen. And if it is, which it will. Okay, what do I now do about that? So forgiveness is, you know, kind of the dream that ends all dreaming. The dream that ends all dreaming.

That is a big one to understand.

It's a big one.

Yeah, right. It definitely is.

And if you don't understand it, don't worry.

Read the book.

Yeah, well, you know what we say about the course is it's a living book. Look, it seems to grow where we grow, and those of us have been doing it a long time. I mean, it's been in my life 44 years, and I'm only 45 years old. So. No, you know, it does seem to. I mean, you look at it and go, wait a minute, I underlined this before. Why this wasn't that important. Now I'm seeing this as being much more important.

That almost reminds me of Richard Bach's a great little book, the Messiah's Handbook.

Oh, wonderful.

Isn't that good? Yeah. And he would say that the book falls, you drop the book, you open it up. That page is the lesson, the exact.

That's what you need.

And the stories of how the course comes into people's lives are amazing. Someday I'd like to collect them and put them in a book.

Yeah, good stuff, good stuff. Okay, so here is our last concept. Take us through this one. This is a. This is a longer.

Yeah. And this is another tough one. And it will provoke some resistance, which is just shows you where your attachments are. So it says, quote, the body is a limit imposed on the universal communication that is an eternal property of mind. But the communication is internal. Mind reaches to itself. It is not made up of different parts which reach each other. It does not go out within itself. It has no limits and there is nothing outside it. It encompasses everything. It encompasses you entirely. You within it and it within you. There is nothing else anywhere or ever. So this is a very nice bookend with those first two quotes we looked at about the nature of the self. And nothing real can be threatened. Anything unreal exists. What it's essentially telling us is that our true reality is mind. In fact, there are several places in A Course in Miracles where it says, you are an idea. Ideas can't leave their source. You know, if I think of a great joke and I share it with you, Jason, I don't lose the joke. We both have it and now we both can share it with other people and the idea propagates even more. So if we are an idea and that idea is love and nothing but love, when we accept that and teach only love as the course tells us, we are sharing truth. The body, on the other hand, hand is this limit in that, oh, well, I stop here, you know, these hands, this face, I'm in this room. Therefore, it's a limit on communication that is just an inherent property of mine. So this quote is essentially telling us that, yeah, mine isn't out there. If you're searching out there, you're like that story about the drunk looking for his keys under the street lamp. And the person comes along and says, let me help you find them. Where did you lose them? He says, well, I don't really remember. Then why are you searching here? Well, this is where I can see. No, you can't find them where. Where they're not. So if we're searching out in the world, we're never going to find the idea of the self that is the real self. And it's not made up of different parts. In other words, there's no other person out there that can bring to you something that you don't already have the potential for within you. Mind does not go out. There's nothing outside of it. It encompasses everything. But this might be the biggest stretch of all. And, you know, I'll just dangle it as a teaser, you know, here's the Zen Cohen, if you will. There is nothing else anywhere, ever. The body is a limit. If you want to understand that, you might need to work with the course for a while. And that said, let me just plug my. I'm a writer and I wrote specifically a book to introduce the principles of the course to those who don't care to Hear about Christ and God and everything. And it's called From Nevermind to Evermind. The basic idea being the ego mind is a nevermind. It doesn't exist. It's offering you stuff that never did exist. And ultimately, we need to want to learn to say to it nevermind. In its space, there's the Evermind.

That's great. So From Nevermind to Evermind by Robert Rosenthal.

Yes.

Fantastic. Good stuff. Give out your website, or is this a nonprofit organization?

Yeah, the organization I work for is a Not for profit. Yes. All right, so two websites. So if you want to learn more about the course, the Foundation's website is acim.org, aCIM being abbreviated a Course in Miracles.

All right, wrap it up with a closing thought for us, Robert.

Well, what I would say is, look, we're all on the same quest, as per that first slide. Everyone wants to know who they are, what they are as. And I like to joke, you know, the entire spiritual quest can be encapsulated in the lyrics of the country song. We're looking for love in all the wrong places. And we keep doing that over and over and over again. And if you believe in reincarnation, we're doing it lifetime after lifetime after lifetime. There are many ways to stop this. A Course in Miracles is very clear. It's not the only path, but it might be your path. If you feel like checking it out, go right ahead and do so. I'm not here to proselytize. I'm just here to tell you a little something about it.

Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for sharing this. I'm going to close with this quote on the screen, which is the one I like so much. You know, nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. That's fantastic. Robert Rosenthal, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks for inviting me, Jason. It was a real pleasure.

My pleasure.

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