III. Beyond All Symbols

T-27.III.1. Power cannot oppose. 2 For opposition would weaken it, and weakened power is a contradiction in ideas. 3 Weak strength is meaningless, and power used to weaken is employed to limit. 4 And therefore it must be limited and weak, because that is its purpose. 5 Power is unopposed, to be itself. 6 No weakness can intrude on it without changing it into something it is not. 7 To weaken is to limit, and impose an opposite that contradicts the concept that it attacks. 8 And by this does it join to the idea a something it is not, and make it unintelligible. 9 Who can understand a double concept, such as "weakened power" or "hateful love"?

T-27.III.2. You have decided that your brother is a symbol for a "hateful love," a "weakened power," and above all, a "living death." 2 And so he has no meaning to you, for he stands for what is meaningless. 3 He represents a double thought, where half is cancelled out by the remaining half. 4 Yet even this is quickly contradicted by the half it cancelled out, and so they both are gone. 5 And now he stands for nothing. 6 Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot be must stand for empty space and nothingness. 7 Yet nothingness and empty space can not be interference. 8 What can interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that there is something there.

T-27.III.3. The picture of your brother that you see means nothing. 2 There is nothing to attack or to deny; to love or hate, or to endow with power or to see as weak. 3 The picture has been wholly cancelled out, because it symbolized a contradiction that cancelled out the thought it represents. 4 And thus the picture has no cause at all. 5 Who can perceive effect without a cause? 6 What can the causeless be but nothingness? 7 The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent and has never been. 8 Let, then, the empty space it occupies be recognized as vacant, and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as idly spent, a time unoccupied.

T-27.III.4. An empty space that is not seen as filled, an unused interval of time not seen as spent and fully occupied, become a silent invitation to the truth to enter, and to make itself at home. 2 No preparation can be made that would enhance the invitation's real appeal. 3 For what you leave as vacant God will fill, and where He is there must the truth abide. 4 Unweakened power, with no opposite, is what creation is. 5 For this there are no symbols. 6 Nothing points beyond the truth, for what can stand for more than everything? 7 Yet true undoing must be kind. 8 And so the first replacement for your picture is another picture of another kind.

T-27.III.5. As nothingness cannot be pictured, so there is no symbol for totality. 2 Reality is ultimately known without a form, unpictured and unseen. 3 Forgiveness is not yet a power known as wholly free of limits. 4 Yet it sets no limits you have chosen to impose. 5 Forgiveness is the means by which the truth is represented temporarily. 6 It lets the Holy Spirit make exchange of pictures possible, until the time when aids are meaningless and learning done. 7 No learning aid has use that can extend beyond the goal of learning. 8 When its aim has been accomplished it is functionless. 9 Yet in the learning interval it has a use that now you fear, but yet will love.

T-27.III.6. The picture of your brother given you to occupy the space so lately left unoccupied and vacant will not need defense of any kind. 2 For you will give it overwhelming preference. 3 Nor delay an instant in deciding that it is the only one you want. 4 It does not stand for double concepts. 5 Though it is but half the picture and is incomplete, within itself it is the same. 6 The other half of what it represents remains unknown, but is not cancelled out. 7 And thus is God left free to take the final step Himself. 8 For this you need no pictures and no learning aids. 9 And what will ultimately take the place of every learning aid will merely be.

T-27.III.7. Forgiveness vanishes and symbols fade, and nothing that the eyes have ever seen or ears have heard remains to be perceived. 2 A power wholly limitless has come, not to destroy, but to receive its own. 3 There is no choice of function anywhere. 4 The choice you fear to lose you never had. 5 Yet only this appears to interfere with power unlimited and single thoughts, complete and happy, without opposite. 6 You do not know the peace of power that opposes nothing. 7 Yet no other kind can be at all. 8 Give welcome to the power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of symbols and of limitations. 9 He would merely be, and so He merely is.