I need do nothing

Faust (or 'Faustus,' Latin for "auspicious" or "lucky") is the protagonist of a classic German legend. Though a highly successful scholar, Dr. Faust is unsatisfied, and makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The best known theatrical version of the legend was written by German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

At the end of Goethe's play, Dr. Faust laments a life spent in pursuit of knowledge, "I now do see that we can nothing know."

This is similar to A Course in Miracles when it states, "When the light comes at last ... or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it always comes with just one happy realization; "I need do nothing."

All too often, it seems, there is a temptation to remember and to use the phrase "I need do nothing," out of context, and as an excuse to do nothing. I've heard it a lot over the last decade of meeting and talking with various Course students online.

The marvelously courageous Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about the Faust quote, "I now do see that we can nothing know," as follows:

"That is the answer to a sum, it is the outcome of a long experience. But as Kierkegaard observed, it is quite a different thing when a freshman comes up to the university and uses the same sentiment to justify his indolence. As the answer to a sum it is perfectly true, but as the initial data it is a piece of self-deception. For acquired knowledge cannot be divorced from the existence in which it is acquired. The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. Such a man knows that the call to discipleship is a gift of grace, and that the call is inseparable from the grace. But those who try to use this grace as a dispensation from following Christ are simply deceiving themselves."

— The Cost of Discipleship [emphasis added]

I emphasized the sentence, "For acquired knowledge cannot be divorced from the existence in which it is acquired," because it applies to the Course statement, "I need do nothing."

To put it as simply as possible, the statement, "I need do nothing," is a genuine realization only after awakening. That is the apparent meaning in context, both expressly and rationally. The circumstance of the realization is the success of a Holy Instant, which is the brief transcendence of time. "I need do nothing," is true outside of time and in eternity. Within time it is simply false.

Reading A Course in Miracles as a whole makes this clear.

-  oOo   -

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky