To Be or Not to Be: Hamlet, Death, and “A Course in Miracles” [VIDEOSTR]

Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.

The conflict expressed by Hamlet in his famous soliloquy frames the presentation of A Course in Miracles‘ unique approach to the universal problem of death. The Course teaches that death dominates the world made by the ego because the ego’s “life” itself was extracted from death: the death of God. Therefore, death becomes the centerpiece of our experience and the problem with which everyone has to deal. All conflict and concern surrounding death, then, is part of the ego’s strategy to keep death real, and to conceal its true origin by subsequently claiming that it is part of God’s plan to punish us for our sin of separating from Him, as seen, for example, in biblical accounts.

The correction of the ego’s deception is Jesus’ teaching that ideas leave not their source, and that death is never anything other than a thought that has never left our minds. The fear of death disappears when we bring that fear to the love of Jesus, and recall its strategic purpose in the ego’s plan to keep us separate from that love and from our true Identity as spirit. At that point death becomes a gentle laying aside of the body, the mind’s purpose for it now fulfilled.