Last year I gave a workshop entitled “When 2 + 2 = 5,”(1) which contrasted the ego’s world of 2 + 2 = 4 with the 2 + 2 = 5 world offered us by Jesus. The current article expands on certain themes from that class.

The inspiration for the workshop, and therefore this article, comes from Dostoevsky's seminal Notes from Underground, which could be described in part as the spiritual father of mod­ern existentialism. The heirs include men of the stature of Nietzsche, Freud, and Camus. Dostoevsky's hero, if one can use that epithet for such a tormented and angry, though insightful soul, is the mouthpiece for the Russian author's views on becoming free of society's constraints -- the world in which we are imprisoned by the rigid laws of 2 + 2 = 4. As the rebellious Underground Man states:

“For goodness sakes,” they'll yell at you, “you can't rebel, this is two times two makes four….“Good Lord, what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic, if for some reason I don't like those laws and this two times two makes four….Oh absurdity of all absurdities!…what kind of will of one's own is that going to be, when things come to tables and arithmetic, when there will be only two times two makes four around? My will or not, two times two would still be four…. an insufferable thing. Two times two makes four is, in my opinion, nothing but an impertinence, yes, sir. Two times two makes four looks like a dandy, struts like a cock of the walk blocking your way, and spits. I agree that two times two makes four is a wonderful thing; but if we are to praise every­thing, then two times two makes five is sometimes a most delightful little thing.(2)

But let us return to the Beginning, without which one cannot understand the ego's thought system and the significance of 2 + 2 = 5, the Holy Spirit's correction for the ego's material world of 2 + 2 = 4.

The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an aware­ness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within (T-18.VI.1:4-6).

The first in time means nothing, but the First in eternity is God the Father, Who is both First and One. Beyond the First there is no other, for there is no order, no second or third, and nothing but the First (T-14.IV.1:7-8).

As it [love] is one itself, it looks on all as one. Its meaning lies in oneness. And it must elude the mind that thinks of it as partial or in part….Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds Them Both for­ever as the same (W-pI.127.3:2-4,7-8).

And then something seemed to happen -- the “tiny, mad idea” or the original error.

The language of myth allows us to describe what appeared to shatter the pristine unity of reality. It was as if God's Son sud­denly decided he was other than perfect Oneness, with an iden­tity that established him as an independent entity, transforming oneness into separation from his Source, the primordial world of 1 + 1 = 2 in which he selfishly exists solely for himself, without concern for the Other.

This is how A Course in Miracles describes the original error, when separation took the place of unity, fragmentation substituted for wholeness, and the ego usurped God's role on the throne of creation:

First, you believe that what God created can be changed by your own mind.

Second, you believe that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or lacking.

Third, you believe that you can distort the creations of God, including yourself.

Fourth, you believe that you can create yourself, and that the direction of your own creation is up to you.

These related distortions represent a picture of what actu­ally occurred in the separation, or the “detour into fear” (T-2. I.1:9-2:1).

“You have usurped the place of God. Think not He has forgotten.”… An angry father pursues his guilty son. Kill or be killed….The stain of blood can never be removed, and any­one who bears this stain on him must meet with death (M-17. 7:3-4,10-11,13).

You who believe that God is fear made but one substitu­tion. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of illusion for truth; of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become so splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still is what it was. That one error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it, and every special relationship that you have ever made is part of it (T-18.I.4).

So fear was made, and with it came the need for gifts [the second dream] to lend the substance to a dream [the first dream] in which there is no substance. Now the dream seems to have value, for its offerings appear as hope and strength and even love, if only for an instant. They content the fright­ened dreamer for a little while, and let him not remember the first dream which gifts of fear but offer him again. The seem­ing solace of illusions' gifts are now his armor, and the sword he holds to save himself from waking. For before he could awaken, he would first be forced to call to mind the first dream once again….Yet if he thinks that he must first go through a greater terror still, he must see hope in what will now appear the “better” dream (The Gifts of God, p. 120).

In Lesson 76, “I am under no laws but God's,” Jesus under­scores the same thoughts by poking fun at the world's laws that we hold so dear:

We have observed before how many senseless things have seemed to you to be salvation. Each has imprisoned you with laws as senseless as itself. You are not bound by them….Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws you have set up to save you. You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs. You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off dis­ease and death. You really think you are alone unless another body is with you….These are not laws, but madness (W-pI. 76.1:1-3; 3; 5:1).

No law the world obeys can help you grasp love's mean­ing. What the world believes was made to hide love's mean­ing, and to keep it dark and secret. There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well (W-pI.127.5).

In the world of 2 + 2 = 4, we actually think we know what is best for us, for we use our past experience in the world, or the “wisdom” of others as our guide for decision. A Course in Miracles continually reminds us of this, and in Lesson 24, “I do not perceive my own best interests,” we read:

In no situation that arises do you realize the outcome that would make you happy. Therefore, you have no guide to appropriate action, and no way of judging the result. What you do is determined by your perception of the situation, and that perception is wrong. It is inevitable, then, that you will not serve your own best interests (W-pI.24.1:1-4).

The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world's learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. Who is in a position to do this? Who except in grandi­ose fantasies would claim this for himself?

Remember how many times you thought you knew all the “facts” you needed for judgment, and how wrong you were! Is there anyone who has not had this experience? Would you know how many times you merely thought you were right, without ever realizing you were wrong? (M-10.3:1-4:3)

Another example of our arrogant ignorance -- Socrates was quoted by Plato as saying that he was the wisest of men because he knew he did not know anything -- is our belief that we under­stand the causes of pain and suffering. Whether it is the physical and mental pain all people feel, or global issues of suffering, our egos would have us think that we know their causes, be they medical, psychological, social, educational, economic, political, or astronomic. In other words, the causes of pain can always be found in the world of 2 + 2 = 4, the world of science. And so we will always be wrong since there is no world out there to be causative, any more than there is a world that can have effects:

The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning….There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release….There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach (W-pI. 132.4:1-2; 5:1; 6:2-3).

…it is very hard for you to realize it is not personally insult­ing that your contribution and the Holy Spirit's are so extremely disproportionate. You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing (T-18.IV.7:4-6).

Once you were unaware of what the cause of everything the world appeared to thrust upon you, uninvited and unasked, must really be. Of one thing you were sure: Of all the many causes you perceived as bringing pain and suffering to you, your guilt was not among them (T-27.VII.7:3-4).

It is Jesus' purpose in his course to help us loosen -- gradu­ally and gently -- the identification with the thought system of insanity so we can remember there is a sane law in the mind that transcends the ego's seemingly immutable laws and helps us remember we are mind, and mind alone. When we call upon God's Voice for help, we are answered by the Holy Spirit's law of 2 + 2 = 5 -- the law of forgiveness that tells us we forgive oth­ers for what they have not done to us; from the world's perspec­tive, a law of non-sense if there ever were one!

Our big temptation is to believe in the world and its laws. Indeed, the body itself was made to be the medium of such belief, for it was constructed -- its sensory apparatus, neuro-logical innervations, and brain -- specifically to witness to the reality and power of the world around us, and the sacrosanct nature of its laws. After all, it is the brain that processes the sen­sory input from the world and concludes that 2 + 2 = 4, just as a computer operates solely according to the programming of its programmer -- change the program and the computer operates differently. Yet there will be no incentive to change the program as long as we believe that it works. And so we do not seek to change our programming until we reach the point of recognition that our lives have failed, realizing on some level that we are being imprisoned by a programmed mind (or will) that we expe­rience to be not our own:

An imprisoned will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a bet­ter way. As this recognition becomes more firmly estab­lished, it becomes a turning point. This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight (T-2.III.3:4-8).

The miracle is the first step in giving back to cause the func­tion of causation, not effect. For this confusion has produced the dream, and while it lasts will wakening be feared (T-28. II.9:3-4).

Coming back to the theme of pain and suffering, nowhere is the difference between our two equations more dramatically seen than in understanding the causes of our distress -- both indi­vidually and societally. As we have seen, our decision for guilt is the sole cause of pain, coupled with our wish to be unfairly treated. Thus, Jesus cautions us: “Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated” (T-26.X.4:1). Following the ego's dictates, we happily choose to be unfairly treated so as to blame others for our perceived sins, ensuring their sin would be punished and our sinlessness rewarded: “In this view, you seek to find an innocence that is not Theirs [God's and Christ's] but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else's guilt” (T-26. X.4:2). This exemplifies the ego's law of winners and losers: you lose so I gain. Yet, this law is but one more illustration of the ego's use of magic, the attempt to solve a problem where it is not.

The distinction between 2 + 2 = 4 and 2 + 2 = 5 is the same distinction as between magic and the miracle. Magic treats only the external, following the laws of 2 + 2 = 4, which are true only within the world of illusion. However, the miracle corrects the illusion by recognizing it as such:

A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false (W-pII.13.1:1-3).

It is essential to note that there is in fact only one special relationship, which is between the mind's decision maker and the ego; and one holy relationship, which is between the mind's decision maker and the Holy Spirit. That is all. All relation­ships -- special or holy -- that seem to exist in the ego's world of 2 + 2 = 4 are but shadows or reflections of the mind's choice. That is all. Jesus' repeated exhortations in his course that we forgive our brothers must therefore be understood symbolically as words that meet us in the condition in which we think we exist (T-25.I.7:4). In other words, since we are unaware of our minds -- the home of the ego and Holy Spirit -- we are equally unaware that our bodily existence is truly an illusion: a projec­tion or extension of the decision for the special or holy relation­ship. And so Jesus speaks to us as if we were here; judging and forgiving, separating and joining. Yet he teaches us, too, to see our experiences here as outside pictures of an inward condition (T-21.in.1:5): projections or extensions of the mind's decision. Thus instructed, we are able at last to choose again and take our place among the teachers of God:

A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his inter­ests as apart from someone else's (M-1.1:1-2).

God's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning. Yet are His laws reflected everywhere.…

Here, where the laws of God do not prevail in perfect form, can he yet do one perfect thing and make one perfect choice (T-25.III.2:1-2; VI.5:1).

Considering again Dostoevsky's Underground Man, we can see how the Course provides a more right-minded alternative to his embittered alienation. Still holding to the rejection of the world's equation of 2 + 2 = 4, the kinder and gentler teacher of God does not reject those who err in identifying with its insanity. By judging those who oppress the benighted world, Dostoevsky's protagonist ends up an oppressor as well, for he has misjudged the “enemy.” His angry rebellion need not be directed at the world's thinking, insane though it may be, for it is but his mind's thinking that needs to be recognized and chosen against. All people suffer from the single oppression of choosing to be beholden to the ego's harsh and unyielding thought system of separation and judgment -- its law of one or the other: salvation is achieved through pursuing one's own interests at the expense of someone else. And so it is the mind's identification with the thought system of 1 + 1 = 2 that needs correction, not the pro­jected certainty of the world of 2 + 2 = 4.

Forgiveness and the miracle are the terms A Course in Miracles uses to describe the process of shifting from a percep­tion of separate interests to the vision of shared interests. For this alone undoes the ego's thought system of one or the other: the principle of kill or be killed that is the shibboleth of the ego's world of 2 + 2 = 4. Thus Jesus asks us to give up our grievances by looking at them with him. He invites us to release the tempta­tion to “perceive ourselves unfairly treated” (T-26.X.4:1) and to make no judgments we would not apply to all people. He teaches us to become like him, which means perceiving no significant differences among the seemingly separated members of the Son­ship. Instead, we see everyone as one, for all of us share one split mind -- the ego, the Holy Spirit, and the decision maker with power to choose between them -- thus re-aligning ourselves with the one Will of God and His Son: His sacred law of 1 + 1 = 1. And so we pray:

Father, I thought I wandered from Your Will, defied it, broke its laws, and interposed a second will more powerful than Yours. Yet what I am in truth is but Your Will, extended and extending. This am I, and this will never change. As You are One, so am I one with You. And this I chose in my cre­ation, where my will became forever one with Yours. That choice was made for all eternity. It cannot change, and be in opposition to itself. Father, my will is Yours. And I am safe, untroubled and serene, in endless joy, because it is Your Will that it be so.

Today we will accept our union with each other and our Source. We have no will apart from His, and all of us are one because His Will is shared by all of us. Through it we recog­nize that we are one. Through it we find our way at last to God (W-pII.329).

FOOTNOTES:

1.Available in audio cassette (T-117) and CD (117) albums.

2. N.Y.: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969; pp. 12f, 31, 33.

3. While Dostoevsky writes, two times two makes four or five, I have adopted the more conventional expression, two plus two equals four or five.