The Quiet Answer

experiments in listening

I’m going to start off with a religious quote, but don’t get the wrong idea — this is an essay about what I’ve learned about applying the scientific method to religious doctrine. The truth must be true, no matter what anyone thinks about it. If what’s written below is true, it should be verifiable by experiment.

[I]f God gave an answer there must be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills already has been done.

Thus it must be that time is not involved and every problem can be answered now. Yet it must also be that, in your state of mind, solution is impossible. Therefore, God must have given you a way of reaching to another state of mind in which the answer is already there.

~ A Course in Miracles — Chapter 27, Section IV, The Quiet Answer

“If God gave an answer…” Wait a sec — if there is a God, you mean! If there is a God who gives answers! And if “what He wills already has been done.” These are some mammoth ifs, but the Course just puts them out there like you already assume all this. The logic of the Course is impeccable if you accept its starting points, but what I like about A Course in Miracles, and why I’ve been able to stick with it for 35 years, is that it doesn’t ask you to believe, it just invites you to experiment.