“The Garden of Eden, or the pre-separation condition, was a state of mind in which nothing was needed. When Adam listened to the “lies of the serpent,” all he heard was untruth. You do not have to continue to believe what is not true unless you choose to do so. All that can literally disappear in the twinkling of an eye because it is merely a misperception.” (T-2.I.3)

The ego did not initiate separation. Ego is nothing; it has no power to do anything. Ego is simply an activity of the mind reflective of the idea that separation exists. The decision to believe the thoughts generated by that activity is what creates “the detour into fear”—the belief that separation actually has occurred.

In truth separation has not occurred. Differentiated forms which are experienced by the mind are appearances in the mind, which itself is an extension of God’s Mind, a segment of God’s Infinite Being individuated from the Whole so that a subject (“I”) can know objects (the world of form). This is the mechanism of creation, the means by which That which is infinite can know the finite. It is a process undertaken within God Itself, and has nothing to do with ego or the separate self as cause.