Life Is Not For The Living

Q: There are many references of "living things" in the Course. What are "living" things? Animals of all sorts? If so, why is the Course separating out animals/living things from the rest of the perceived world if it is only an illusion anyway? Are "living things" not illusions?

Here are three examples from the Course where "living things" are mentioned:

"There is no living thing that does not share the universal Will that it be whole, and that you do not leave its call unheard. Without your answer is it left to die, as it is saved from death when you have heard its calling as the ancient call to life, and understood that it is but your own" (T-31.I.9:1-2).

"Father, our Name is Yours. In It we are united with all living things, and You Who are their one Creator. What we made and call by many different names is but a shadow we have tried to cast across Your Own reality. (W-pI.184.15:1-3).

"And the world responds in quickened chorus through the voice of prayer. Forgiveness shines its merciful reprieve upon each blade of grass and feathered wing and all the living things upon the earth" (S-3.IV.2:2-3).

A: When the Course references "living things" it doesn't mean living things the way we as bodies (mistakenly) designate living things (E.g. things that breathe, seem to be born, or undergo photosynthesis etc.). The Course would include all the seeming fragments of the sleeping Son of God - not just the animate, but also the inanimate, for the simple reason there is no animate or inanimate. They are the same. They are nothing.

This passage is unequivocal: "There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion" (T-23.II.19:1-3). Since everything in the world is an illusion and not part of Heaven, nothing here is truly living, not even those things that fit our biased and limited definition of living. There is certainly an illusion of life as we experience it, but "The body neither lives nor dies" (T-6.V.A.1:4), and this would be true whether we are talking about the human body, or the "body" of atoms that make up a rock.

A defining attribute of life is that it is eternal (T-4.IV.11:7), which would automatically exclude everything in the world of time and space, which all eventually "die" or decompose even if that process takes decades as with most bodies, or millions of years as with certain substances.

The underlying metaphysics of this Course are inescapable: There is nothing here (W-pI.132.6:2), there is nothing outside of God. Literally nothing. "You cannot make nothing live, since nothing cannot be enlivened" (T-7.VII.5:3). In other words, nothing comes from nothing (the thought of separation).

Sometimes the language of the Course specifically refers to living things as we would define them (E.g. birds and blades of grass, as mentioned in your quote above), but does so only because Jesus knows it would have meaning, would be an expression of communion and joining, to many of us at different points along our journey. Ultimately, however, when the Course uses "living things" it means all things that think they have life outside of Heaven... and that belief is held by every seeming fragment of the split mind no matter if it identifies itself with a body or a grain of sand.

True life comes from God, and that is the life of the spirit which is immortal and eternal. (The 50 Miracle Principles, p. 22, by Kenneth Wapnick)