"The physical world exists only because man can use it
to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally."
~ Urtext of ACIM

QUESTION: "How was Man "placed" in the physical world?"

ANSWER: This article addresses the consistent confusion as to what it means to say that this world is an illusion, or that time and space are illusions, within an ACIM context. My experience with the Course is that its message is an unabashedly life affirmative one. While it certainly indicts the mistaken version of the world (and of our reality) common to the egoic mindscape, I find that its description of our authentic relationship to both world and Self affirms the holiness and grace of this earthly realm and of our potential worldly experience.

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Given that I often hear questions regarding the quote above about man being "placed" in the world of space-time, I thought it might be useful to offer this analysis of what the Course actually means by that very important concept, that is, what exactly that phrase refers to.

I will show that the Course describes both man's initial, pristine experience of space-time, and a subsequent, qualitative shift in man's awareness of space-time, and how  that introduced an illusory experience of both the realm and his own identity.

It is the onset of this mistaken, illusory version of both self and realm that the Course refers to as having seemingly “placed” or confined man “within” the physical world.

This distorted experience of self and world is described in the Course as the Separation.

Before I begin, I'd like to offer these underlying thoughts that I have found especially helpful to my understanding of the Course, and that I find informs every encounter with its message:

The meaning most fruitfully assigned to the Course's use of the term 'illusion' is that it addresses the mistaken nature of my relationship to that which I experience, rather than being descriptive of the elements, themselves.
Further, every distorted relationship - or illusion - originates with a distorted sense of identity.

Let us take these key ACIM Urtext selections that address the world of space-time:

"The world WAS a way of healing the Separation, and the Atonement is the GUARANTEE that the device will ultimately do so";

"Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF.

“The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary.”

I find that these passages present a major epistemological statement regarding both the nature of the Separation, and the nature of the "physical world."

The first selection addresses what I refer to as the utility of the world, the failsafe design, that allows even the misperceived version of the world to be used by Holy Spirit as a device to heal the Separation.

It is perhaps useful to keep this sentence in mind as we proceed:

"The world WAS a way of healing the Separation, and the Atonement is the GUARANTEE that the device will ultimately do so."

So the Atonement assures that the world we experience will ultimately serve its designed utility as a device to heal the Separation.

Turning now to the space-time paragraph, it is certainly a bit daunting, but so very rich! So much is wrapped up in just a few sentences. Let us go through the sentences one by one to see what we can discover.

"Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF."

He is telling me that neither 'space' nor 'time' are what He chooses to speak of, but rather, that He is addressing the concept of BELIEF in space-time. It is this BELIEF that is the key concept here.

The third sentence describes our mistaken relationship with the space-time realm, revealing the built-in utility of even this mistaken relationship with the world, and importantly, revealing as well, the initial cause and result of that mistaken relationship:

"The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally."

Its utility is to correct UNBELIEF, which was error's cause. The result of the unbelief was to seemingly "place" man within "the physical world", and make him feel confined to a body, and at peril from what he misperceives of space-time.

As is often the case with what I read in the Course, I find it helpful to go to the end of the passage and work backward for clues as to the clearest understanding of the thought. So here, if we start in earnest with the fourth and final sentence of the paragraph,

"As long as man knew he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary."

I am told here that the whole device (of using the physical world to correct man's UNBELIEF) only became necessary when man forgot that he "did not need anything".

So man's prior awareness of his perfect condition, free of need, was impacted by a forgetfulness that led to his experience of needs.

A related passage that clarifies the point about needs and the Separation is this one:

"Until the Separation, which is a better term than the Fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them."

Now working back, again, across the last two sentences,

"The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man knew he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary."

I find that man's “forgetting of what he knew” is a working definition of UNBELIEF, the first cause, as it were, that led to man's prevailing and illusory space-time BELIEF.

This forgetting is what is described as the sleep that fell upon Adam in the Garden,  from which:

"The history of man in the world as he saw it has experienced no genuine or comprehensive re-awakening, or re-birth."

At this point, I can almost equate the three concepts:

UNBELIEF = space-time BELIEF = Separation

The passage's paradoxical framing of BELIEF and UNBELIEF is easier to grasp if we remember the Course's admonition that the mind cannot serve two masters. In that sense, his distorted BELIEF about space-time becomes the nature of man's UNBELIEF.

Further, I am told that man's space-time BELIEF is what originally "placed" him within the physical world, which is nonetheless adorned with endless means to coax his memory. I understand that to mean that man became ensnared specifically by the onset of "space-time BELIEF", and became seemingly rooted in a dense and illusory experience of the physical world, including his identification with the body.

So, are we done?

Not quite. Let's really mix it up now; get in and swim among its thoughts.