Schopenhauer on The Will of God

The philospher Schopenhauer concludes in his book “The World as Will and Representation” that we create the violent state of nature, for he maintains that the individuation that we impose upon things, imposed upon a blind striving energy that, once it becomes individuated and objectified turns against itself, consumes itself, and does violence to itself.

His paradigm image is of the bulldog-ant of Australia, which when cut in half, struggles in a battle to the death between its head and tail.

Our very quest for scientific and practical knowledge creates a world that feasts upon itself. This marks the origin of Schopenhauer's renowned pessimism: he claims that as individuals, we are the unfortunate products of our own epistemological making, and that within the world of appearances that we structure, we are fated to fight with other individuals, and to want more than we can ever have.


( A Course in Miracles)

There is no substitute for the Will of God. In simple statement, it is to this fact that the teacher of God devotes his day.


Each substitute he may accept as real can but deceive him. But he is safe from all deception if he so decides.

Perhaps he needs to remember, "God is with me. I cannot be deceived." Perhaps he prefers other words, or only one, or none at all.

Yet each temptation to accept magic as true must be abandoned through his recognition,not that it is fearful, not that it is sinful, not that it is dangerous, but merely that it is meaningless.


Rooted in sacrifice and separation, two aspects of one error and no more, he merely chooses to give up all that he never had.


And for this "sacrifice" is Heaven restored to his awareness