“Whoever has come to know the world has found a corpse. And whoever has found a corpse, of that person the world is not worthy.” - Gospel of Thomas, Saying 56
There is a variant — Saying 80 is nearly identical, the only difference being that it uses “body” (soma in Greek) rather than “corpse” (ptoma): “Whoever has come to know the world has discovered the body, and whoever has discovered the body, of that person the world is not worthy.” On the Greek behind the word: the Naassenes, according to Hippolytus, spoke of the spiritual body as a “corpse” — the reason being that the spiritual essence is “buried” in the body as a corpse is buried in a tomb (Refutation v.8.22). So “corpse” here carries a double valence: the world as dead matter, and the soul entombed within it.
Saying 27 — “If you fast not from the world, you will not find the kingdom; if you keep not the Sabbath as Sabbath, you will not see the Father.” Saying 28 — “I stood in the midst of the world, and I appeared to them in flesh. I found them all drunk, I found none among them thirsting; and my soul was afflicted for the sons of men, for they are blind in their heart and they do not see. For empty came they into the world, seeking also to depart empty from the world. But now they are drunk. When they have thrown off their wine, then will they repent.” Saying 110 — “He who has found the world and become rich, let him deny the world.” Saying 111 — “The heavens shall be rolled up and the earth before your face, and he who lives in the living One shall neither see death nor fear; because Jesus says: He who shall find himself, of him the world is not worthy.” Saying 112 (Lambdin translation): “Woe to the flesh that depends on the soul; woe to the soul that depends on the flesh.” Saying 21 — “You, then, be on your guard against the world. Arm yourselves with great strength lest the robbers find a way to come to you.” John 15:18–19 — Jesus says to the disciples: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” John 17:14–16 — The High Priestly Prayer: “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” John 12:31 — “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.” John 14:30 — “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me.”
John 8:23 — “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.”
John 16:33 — “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” 1 John 2:15–17 — “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life — is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” 1 John 5:19 — “We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.”
James 4:4 — “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
Matthew 16:26 / Mark 8:36 — “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
Luke 14:26 — “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
Matthew 6:24 — “No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Luke 9:60 — “Leave the dead to bury their own dead.”
“I stood in the midst of the world, and I appeared to them in flesh. I found them all drunk, I found none among them thirsting; and my soul was afflicted for the sons of men, for they are blind in their heart and they do not see.” GOSPEL OF THOMAS, SAYING 28
The World
Sīc trānsit glōria mundī — “Thus passes the glory of the world.”
The World of Illusion & The Illusion of the World
“The world is not an objective reality; it is only a dream, a projection of our belief in separateness.”
The creation of the false, illusory material world as a place to escape God’s Love The ego projected the thought of separation out of the mind, thereby protecting itself from love. This projection gives rise to the material world-cosmos and body- —as a defense in which the ego hides its guilt and fear of God's avenging wrath.
God did not create this world - you did
Now we come to the hardest teaching. The one that the ego recoils from most violently. The one that, if you truly take it in, changes everything.
God did not make this world. We did.
"God made it not. Of this you can be sure. What can He know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the afraid, the suffering and lonely, and the mind that lives within a body that must die? You but accuse Him of insanity, to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality. He is not mad. Yet only madness makes a world like this." - ACIM
The Unreal World
The World of Illusion
The Matrix
The World is unreal, is illusion
The world is the unreal creation of the insane mind, it is a realm of separation that attempts to attest for the reality and power of separation.
The world is our place to “hide out” in. We are trying to play a really long game of hide and seek with god. And we are trying to really be hidden and never found…
”How can this unfair battle be resolved? Its ending is inevitable, for its outcome must be death. How, then, can one believe in one’s defenses? Magic...must help. Forget the battle. Accept it as a fact, and then forget it. Do not remember the impossible odds against you. Do not remem- ber the immensity of the “enemy,” and do not think about your frailty in comparison. Accept your separation, but do not remember how it came about. Believe that you have won it, but do not retain the slightest memory of Who your great “opponent” really is. Projecting your “forgetting” onto Him, it seems to you He has forgotten, too.””
This world is not the kingdom
It is a dream, sometimes beautiful and sometimes dreadful
Sickness, death, violence, fear, … do not exist in the Kingdom
Only that which is eternal is real
Only the Son, The Christ is real
It is not a negative thing to see this world as fallen and an unreal place of death and lies - for in that realization is the dawning of one’s true nature, true home
As Christ in the Kingdom, the Father Creator who never created anything but perfection and infinite love
The person of the world is deeply disturbed when they hear someone who believes/knows this world is a carcass
For they cling to this world, the world their ego created and attempts to hide out in
They may say that what you say is negative or dark or so pessimistic but the truth is actually the exact opposite. They are clinging to the world and wanting to believe that the world is real, and that the things that happen here are real, and all that goes with it is the actual real Insanity and inversion of truth and reality in goodness and beauty
The teachings of Christ Jesus, Yeshua, and the course and miracles, the curriculum is all intended to change your fundamental perception of oneself in the world in reality so that one perceives correctly truly.
It’s about fundamentally changing perception belief in, therefore, feeling emotion, thought, action, the daily moment a moment life you live in actions you make things you do Therefore the reality you create it’s about becoming miracle minded Christ minded to where you embody Christ within this world and bring God the father light through you
Obsession with the Body & The World
The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world....It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by other bodies, born into the world outside the body, lives a little while and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different [from each other] and can be told apart. The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real. It puts things on itself that it has bought with little metal discs or paper strips the world proclaims as valuable and real. It works to get them, doing senseless things, and tosses them away for senseless things it does not need and does not even want. It hires other bodies, that they may protect it and collect more senseless things that it can call its own. It looks about for special bodies that can share its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies that would hurt and torture it.\\
the body’s “main concern” and “guiding rule” are its own safety, comfort, and pleasure. Another passage expresses the same sentiment and even provides the same list:
“What plans do you make that do not involve [the body’s] comfort or protection or enjoyment in some way?’ Imagine going on a vacation and not arranging a place to stay, not locating a bed to sleep in, and not bringing money to buy food with. The body is the doer on the stage of the world, and a great deal of its doing is for the sake of its own safety, comfort, and pleasure. It owns the whole loop. The body is indeed “the central figure in the dreaming of the world.”
The body, seeking of pleasure and making separation real
“The ego promises us joy through bodily pleasure. This tricks us into making separation real.” -RP
the body was invented as physical proof of separation. It surrounds the mind and appears we are in our own private prison cell. “Proving” that we are indeed separate and alone.
Pleasure is that drug that temporaily feels good - enslaving our mind to obsession with the physical-material Pain does the same thing - just the opposite.
“Pain demonstrates the body must be real....Its purpose 1s the same as pleasure, for they both are means to make the body real. What shares a common purpose is the same.”
For an infinite spirit to think it is trapped in a tiny body is profoundly painful. “It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and not find pain....[This] is but the inevitable result of equating yourself with the body, which is the invitation to pain.”
“To you it [the ego] teaches that the body’s pleasure is happiness. Yet to itself it whispers, ‘It is death.”
Physical pleasure enmeshes us deeper into the belief in the reality of the body and the world - perhaps this ego-reinforcement is why we find pleasure pleasureful.
Imagine if you have every physical desire fufliled as frequently and intensely as you desire - would you not still feel unfulfilled?
The Course is NOT saying that pleasure is sinful or bad in itself. non-attachement
in the midst of our pleasure, to simply observe it, and understand that what really drives it is the attempt to prove our separateness,
Library of Light Edition 1.0 — Last revised: April 2026