The body is the instrument the mind made in its efforts to deceive itself. (W-pII.4.2:1-2)

The mind wanted to believe that it could be special and separate. It wanted to believe that it was something other than itself.

Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all? To sense is not to know. (W-pII.4.1:4-9)

Then the mind gave the body senses so it would not know. What is there to see or hear or touch in oneness?

And then the ego used the body and the senses to pretend (the body can do nothing except at the bidding of the mind) that there was some sort of creative ability in matter that the mind did not control. If the body could seem to get sick, grow old, die, have pleasure, have pain, taste, hear, speak, and see organically, of its own accord, then it must be separate from the mind, independent and autonomous. If it is separate, there is no oneness. And that keeps the ego “alive.”

But the Course tells us the body is nothing and can do nothing of itself. It is a learning tool and nothing more. What really happens is that the mind decides what the body is going to feel, do, say and think and then that is what appears to happen. The mind instructs the body, and then immediately forgets it did that. The body just reports what the mind told it to report.

For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. (T-28.V.5:6-7)

You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. (W-151.3:5)

And this is all part of the great deception that says the body is real and we are the body.

Much like physical pain, sickness, aging, physical pleasure etc. are used by the ego to make the body seem real, emotions, preferences, opinions, mental health etc. are used by the ego to deceive us into believing that the personality self is real and that we are that self. Pain is a screeching “witness” to the “reality” of the body. A witness, we as mind made up, to serve that purpose. Emotional reactions are screeching witnesses to the “fact” that we are the personality self we made. It is difficult to deny such “sensations.”

The Holy Spirit will take us on a journey that will persuade us that we are neither the body nor the personality self, when we are ready. He will show us how and why we made up those parts of the ego thought system. When we finally realize that those physical and emotional sensations, which we made by denying our spiritual vision, are ego deceptions and we do not have to participate in them, we will have finished a large part of our forgiveness process. We will be free of the physical and emotional suffering that is an integral part of the ego’s thought system.

I will never attack your ego, but I am trying to teach you how its thought system arose. (T-4.I.3)

How not real are our bodily senses?

Rejoice you have no eyes with which to see; no ears to listen, and no hands to hold nor feet to guide. Be glad that only Christ can lend you His, while you have need of them. They are illusions, too, as much as yours. And yet because they serve a different purpose, the strength their purpose holds is given them. And what they see and hear and hold and lead is given light, that you may lead as you were led. (T-24.V.5:1-5)

The whole body delusion with all of its moving parts is a huge topic. More later.