Spiritual Traditions and Communities

Contents

• ?

A Course in Miracles

A Course in Miracles (also referred to as ACIM or the Course), is a book considered by its students to be their "spiritual path".According to Dr. Helen Schucman and the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP), Dr. Helen Schucman and Dr. William Thetford "scribed" the book by means of a process coming from a divine source through a form of channeling which Schucman referred to as "inner dictation".Schucman described the divine source of her channeling as none other than the person of Jesus Christ.

The teachings of the Course have been compared to the fundamental premises of Eastern religion, it utilizes, however, a traditional Christian terminology. J. Gordon Melton notes that it has been most popular among those who have been disillusioned by organized Christianity. Melton and Wouter Hanegraaff have called it the most obvious choice for the single text that is "sacred scripture" in the New Age movement. Since it first became available for sale in 1976, over 1.5 million copies have sold worldwide in sixteen different languages.

Summary
The philosophy of the Course is monistic and contains some theological elements also found in traditional Christianity, Eastern religions, mysticism, psychology, and New Age spirituality. It is monistic in its position that ultimate reality consists of nothing more than God's love. ACIM asserts that the creative power of the human mind is causally responsible for everything that appears to us as the physical world.

ACIM teaches an inner awakening to "the awareness of love's presence" in both self and others. ACIM is a 'received' spiritual teaching, and in this sense it is similar to various sections of the Bible that were 'received' through various types of visions. Schucman and Thetford "scribed" the Course in the first person of Jesus Christ, speaking of his birth, miracles, apostles, experience in Gethsemane, crucifixion, resurrection, portrayal in the New Testament, and the way he has been characterized by Christianity. The Course is an inspired scripture in the lineage of the Bible, but possessing a greater authority. It demonstrates this in over eight hundred biblical allusions in which its author feels no compunction about selectively affirming certain biblical themes while freely correcting others.

The Course focuses upon gaining a better understanding of 'forgiveness'. The workbook endeavors to illuminate the various aspects of forgiveness with daily lessons. It teaches that it is a student's responsibility to correct his or her understanding or perception of his or her fellows, so that a student might correctly perceive the truly holy nature of everyone he or she meets. Once correctly perceived, this frees a student from his or her mistaken belief in victimhood. How can one be a victim when one no longer perceives victimization? The Course teaches that 'Correct perception of your brother is necessary (to correct a student's misperception of his or her separation from God.)'

The Course combines Freudian and Jungian psychology with traditional Christian ideology. The Course representation of the 'Holy Spirit' bears some similarities with the Jungian concept of the collective unconscious, and also with the Freudian representation of the subconscious mind in that all three concepts point to the striking subconscious commonalities of the human psyche that may come from a common source. The Course also acknowledges the human tendency to develop defense mechanisms, such as denial/projection and attack/defend, to keep from the awareness that which is feared. After first laying out a system of inner dynamics that has much in common with traditional Freudian psychology, The Course then claims to offer a certain means of reconciling this system of inner tensions that typically arises from inner conflicts between conscious and subconscious goals. The Course proposes to accomplish this by fundamentally redirecting the energies of the mind towards reconciliation with one's fellows, with one's self, and with one's God via the art of forgiveness and the consequent relinquishment of guilt.

ACIM has been considered the single text qualifying as "sacred scripture" in the New Age movement, yet author Hugh Prather says it is atypical. The Course has been characterized as a Christianized version of non-dualistic Vedanta where the physical world is just an illusory chimera that can only offer violence, sorrow and pain. Students of the Course seek the ultimate goal of existence in a radically different mode of being than that found in this world.

Origins
The Course was originally "scribed" in a collaborative venture by Dr. Helen Schucman and Dr. William Thetford. In the early form of ACIM (commonly known as the "Urtext") the "Voice" described them as scribes taking down the words of Jesus. According to Wapnick, Jesus was a symbol of God's love and not the historical Jesus of Nazareth". The nature and tone of the "Voice" of The Course, however, strongly implies that this "Voice" was in fact the "Voice" of Jesus referred to in the New Testament. In 1976, the Course was distributed as a three volume set, which had evolved from the original notes and comprised of the three sections of the Course: the Text, Workbook, and Manual.

For the first 19 years of its circulation the book was published, printed and distributed directly by the students of the work. In 1995 the printing and distribution of the work was licensed to Penguin Books for five years. The teachings of the book have been supported by such mainstream commentators as Oprah Winfrey in her interviews with author Marianne Williamson, and are supported by some "new age" churches such as the "Unity Church".

Drafting the Course

William ThetfordIn 1965, Helen Schucman, an associate professor of medical psychology appointed to the faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, experienced a series of particularly vivid dreams. Soon thereafter, she began to hear a "Voice" she identified as Jesus which would speak to her whenever she was prepared to listen. Schucman reported that she heard from the Voice the words, "This is a course in miracles. Please take notes." Schucman then began to write down what she described as a form of "rapid inner dictation." Over the next seven years, she filled nearly thirty stenographic notebooks with words she received from the Voice. The collaborative venture between Helen Schucman and William Thetford would ultimately evolve into the the Course. Eventually the manuscript totaled 1,500 pages and was placed into black thesis binders. Schucman and Thetford did not want their co-workers, professors in the psychology department at Columbia Medical Center, to know about the existence of the Course. They were embarrassed and considered it their "guilty secret." This process was a collaborative venture between Schucman and William Thetford, a faculty member at Columbia who was her superior and colleague. Schucman and Thetford worked together in private offices in "an air of secrecy," as they both believed that their professional reputations at Columbia would be adversely affected if their professional peers found out about the Course. Thetford was encouraging, and in their spare time at work, Thetford typed as Schucman dictated aloud from her notes as well as directly. Revisions were made including, for example, the omission of various references to their personal lives. The manuscript went through two additional drafts, one edited by Schucman alone, and the subsequent one edited by both of them. In the third draft, the manuscript was split into chapters and sections, to which they added titles and headings. This material eventually became the Text.

Editors
When Schucman experienced some personal difficulties and hesitance after hearing the "inner voice," Thetford, her work supervisor and friend, contacted Hugh Lynn Cayce at his Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to seek his advice and counsel, and Schucman met with Cayce before she began to record the Course.

The earliest known draft of the original manuscript reads more as a journal than as a study guide and contains material related to the personal lives of Schucman and Thetford (as in the authors' application of the abstract principles to concrete events in their lives) that was later edited out prior to the work's initial publication. Some of the material edited out appears to have been some extraneous theories about sex which may have been edited out in the hope of maintaining a greater focus on the primary aim of the material (forgiveness) in the published edition. One such section of the Urtext states that "...[a] miracle worker MUST understand (the proper use of sex)."The earliest known draft of the work is commonly referred to as the "Urtext").

A copy of the third draft was given to Cayce in 1970, along with a draft of most of the Workbook.

This more "polished" copy of the manuscript is commonly referred to either as the HLC (after Hugh Lynn Cayce) or the JCIM edition and in 2000 it was published under the title, "Jesus' Course in Miracles".

Father Benedict Groeschel, who had studied under Thetford and had worked with Schucman, arranged for an introduction of Kenneth Wapnick, a psychologist, to Schucman and Thetford in November 1972. In 1973 Schucman and Thetford presented the third draft of the complete manuscript to Wapnick and Groeschel. Wapnick subsequently became a teacher of the Course, co-founder and president of the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (FACIM), and a director and executive committee member of the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP).

Wapnick was a clinical psychologist, who between 1967 and 1972, directed a school for disturbed children and served as chief psychologist at Harlem Valley State Hospital. In 1972 Wapnick abandoned his Jewish faith and sought to convert to Catholicism so he could become a monk. Groeschel, who was a former priest, then a member of a Franciscan order, and who also had a doctorate in psychology, heard of Wapnick's conversion, which interested him, and so they met.

Wapnick reviewed the draft and discussed with Schucman further revisions that were needed to place the book in final form. Over the next thirteen months, Wapnick and Schucman edited the manuscript again, substantially rearranging and deleting material, altering chapter and section headings to make them more consistent with the sections to which they referred, and correcting various inconsistencies in paragraph structure, punctuation, and capitalization. This editing process was completed in approximately February 1975.

Distribution

Judith Skutch WhitsonThe Foundation for Inner Peace (or FIP), was originally called the Foundation for Para-Sensory Investigations, Inc. (FPI)., and was founded on October 21, 1971, by Robert Skutch, and Judith Skutch Whitson. Robert Skutch and Judith Skutch Whitson were married at the time of its inception, and have since become directors. Robert Skutch was a businessman and writer, who had been a writer for many years of television plays and advertising copy. Judith Skutch Whitson was a teacher and lecturer at New York University on the science of the study of consciousness and parapsychology. On May 29, 1975, Douglas Dean, a physicist engineer, introduced Schucman, Thetford and Wapnick to Judith Skutch Whitson. Soon thereafter, they introduced her to the Course and the four of them met regularly to study, discuss, and share their common enthusiasm for it. At some point in 1975 Schucman appears to have authorized Judith Skutch and Ken Wapnick to initiate the process of copyrighting ACIM and to assume responsibility themselves for the resulting copyright.

In mid-July of 1975, Skutch Whitson met briefly with her doctoral adviser, Eleanor Criswell, who had a small printing company called Freeperson's Press. Criswell advised Skutch Whitson that she would be willing to assist in having the manuscript published, took responsibility for the manuscript pages and in August of 1975, they were taken to a Kopy Kat copy center in Berkeley to be reproduced. In August 1975, Skutch Whitson organized a reception at 2000 Broadway in San Francisco, where Schucman and Thetford were introduced to a number of people. During this time period a number of copies were distributed, 100's, according to Skutch Whitson and Skutch. The first edition of 100 copies of the Criswell edition was bound with a yellow cover with a copyright notice. Robert Skutch filed the copyright for ACIM for FIP on November 24, 1975, swearing to a date of first publication as October 6, 1975 in the form of the Freeperson Press edition. Zelda Suplee, director of the Erickson Educational Foundation, a friend of Skutch Whitson, was given a copy of the uncopyrighted manuscript by Skutch Whitson, prior to the publication of the Criswell edition. In 1976 Reed Erickson, a wealthy transsexual philanthropist, received a copy of the manuscript which he used as a basis for study by a group in Mexico. Erickson was the primary financial backer of the first hard bound edition of the Course donating $440,000 for this printing. Later that year the FIP began to publish the Course in a set of three hardcover volumes. Five years later in 1981, Schucman died of complications related to pancreatic cancer.

In 1983 control of the copyright was transferred to the FACIM as headed by Wapnick. In 1985 the FIP began publishing the three volumes in a more manageable single soft-cover volume, but without any editorial content changes. In 1992 the FIP published a second hardcover edition which contained some editorial content additions and minor changes. Amongst these changes were the addition of a verse numbering system and also the addition of a "Clarification of Terms" section which had been written earlier by Schucman. It was Schucman's desire that a non-profit foundation publish the work.In 1995 FIP entered a five year printing and distribution agreement with Penguin Books for $2.5 million which expired in December of 2000. Currently some copies of some of the earlier draft versions of the book are available both online and through private publishers.

Litigation

Original logo of FIP, later adopted by the FACIMDue to a suit by Penguin, and FIP, brought against the Church of the Full Endeavor for their limited independent publication of selected portions of The Course, it was found that the contents of the FIP first edition, published from 1976 through 1992, as well as the contents of all earlier draft copies, are public domain. The evidence in this case turned on the discovery of an early recorded statement by Judith Skutch Whitson that, "(Prior to 1976) we printed hundreds of copies of (the Criswell edition of ACIM on a Xerox machine).

(The Urtext draft of the Course is now available online. See below.) However those parts of the FIP 2nd edition which were added in the second hard-bound edition remain under copyright. Items still under copyright include the verse numbering system and the Clarification of Terms section. Also as a result of the earlier litigation, later in 2005 the US Trademark Office canceled both the Servicemark on "A Course in Miracles" and the Trademark on the acronym, "ACIM".

Terminology
A notable feature of The Course is its unique choice of language. Author Robert Perry explains: "the meaning that we assign to words grows out of the meaning we see in life--in ourselves, in others, [and] in the world," but the Course is designed to transform the student's thought system, and the lexicon it utilizes is aimed specifically toward this end. "A student of the Course must relearn language," Perry says, and "eventually, all the words treated by the Course trigger and reinforce the Course's perspective in the student" Some notable examples are listed below:

"Atonement"

Atonement, as used in the Course, is not related to punishment in any way. Rather, it is the undoing of errors (along with their results), errors being those human beliefs which are opposed to God's real thoughts.
"Fantasy" and "ego"

The Course broadens the application of the word, "fantasy" from a psychological process of imaginary scenarios to one responsible for existence itself: thoughts, behavior, and even the entire world. The end result is that the ego is removed from the student's understanding of language. In the Course, the ego is a false "insane" belief in a false identity; a separate mind living in a separate body. The Course considers the ego in complete opposition to God, fearing its individuality will disappear into God's Love and Oneness, therefore the ego's goal is to conquer and kill God by persuading one to constantly attack. (see also Psychological egoism)
"Miracle impulse"

A "'miracle impulse" is a naturally occurring creative impulse originating in spirit, as described in The Course. Miracle impulses are experienced in the mind and manifest in phenomenal reality as expressions of love and creativity.