A Course in Miracles (ACIM) deals in depth with the unreality of the physical world. It does not deny its existence but emphasises that the physical world exists only on the mental plane—in our minds. We have been given creative powers by God but, in creating or “miscreating” the world of form, we were only able to bring into seeming existence a temporary world, where everything eventually decays. This is a characteristic of the world in which we live. But ACIM stresses that we don’t really live here at all, we are just having a dreamlike existence, which takes place solely in the mind and the purpose of our existence is to awaken from the dream and return, in our awareness, to Source.

“There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought…”  Workbook Lesson 132. Jesus goes on to explain why this world cannot be real. “There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real?…”

KNOW THE ONE, BY KNOWING THAT NOTHING ELSE REMAINS TO BE KNOWN
God and I in space alone and nobody else in view.
“And where are the people, O Lord,” I said,
“the earth below and the sky o’er head
and the dead whom once I knew?”

“That was a dream,” God smiled and said,
“A dream that seemed to be true.
There were no people, living or dead,
there was no earth, and no sky o’er head;
there was only Myself — in you.”

“Why do I feel no fear,” I asked,
“meeting You here this way?
For I have sinned I know full well —
and is there heaven, and is there hell,
and is this the Judgment Day?”

“Nay, those were but dreams,”
the Great God said,
“Dreams that have ceased to be.
There are no such things as fear or sin;
there is no you — you never have been —
there is nothing at all but Me.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox has also been quoted as saying:

So many gods, so many creeds!
So many paths that wind and wind,
When just the art of being kind,
Is all this sad world needs.”