Vast Illusion

Vast Illusion

Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic. Yet there is a plan behind appearances that does not change. The script is written. When experience will come to end your doubting has been set. For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.

(Workbook Lesson 158)

The concept of time is central to the thought system of A Course in Miracles, from a metaphysical point of view as well as our experience in the everyday world. And yet time is clearly the most difficult area in the Course to understand. This is so not only because of the subject matter, but because the Course for the most part refrains from an in-depth discussion of a concept that is beyond the comprehension of a temporal-spatial mind. However, in one passage Jesus specifically states that to understand the Atonement plan, one must understand the concept of time that the Course sets forth. This book therefore discusses the various aspects of time that are the foundation for the Course's teachings of forgiveness.

A Vast Illusion weaves together in three parts various passages from the Course to present a coherent statement of time. The first part discusses the holographic though illusory nature of time. The second deals with the plan of the Atonement, the role of the miracle and forgiveness, and the time collapse they foster. The third part discusses the end of time, and includes the Course's concepts of the real world, the Second Coming, the Last Judgment, and finally God's last step.