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WHAT IS A COURSE IN MIRACLES
A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is a self-study
system of 'spiritual psychology' contained in a 1250-page, three volume
book, which was first published in 1976. The Course combines profound
spiritual teachings with far-reaching and practical psychological
insights.
The Course aims to help us remove the blocks to the awareness of love's
presence and to start listening to our inner teacher, the 'Voice for God.'
The Course Begins With..
"This is a required Course. Only the time you take it is voluntary.
Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means
only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course
does not aim at teaching the meaning of love… for that is beyond what can
be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness
of loves presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love
is fear… but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. This course
can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God."
How A Course In Miracles Was Written
Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford were an unlikely team in scribing A
Course in Miracles. As career-oriented psychologists working closely
together at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, they were attempting
to develop and strengthen the Center's Psychology Department. While their
professional interests and goals for the department were compatible with
each other, their personalities certainly were not. Helen's overtly
critical and judgmental stance was juxtaposed with Bill's quiet and more
passively aggressive personality, and they clashed constantly.
It was therefore a rather startling event when, in the Spring of 1965,
Bill delivered an impassioned speech to Helen in which he said that he was
fed up with the competition, aggression, and anger which permeated their
professional lives, extended into their attitudes and relationships, and
pervaded the department. He concluded and told her that "there must be
another way" of living—in harmony rather than discord—and that he was
determined to find it. Equally startling, and to their mutual surprise,
Helen agreed with Bill and enthusiastically volunteered to join him in a
collaborative search to find this other and better way.
It was as if Helen had waited all her life for this particular moment,
which triggered a series of internal experiences for her that carried
through the summer. These included heightened dream imagery, psychic
episodes, visions, and an experience of an inner voice. The experiences
also became increasingly religious, with the figure of Jesus appearing
more and more frequently to her in both visual and auditory expressions.
This period of preparation culminated on the evening of October 21,
1965, when the now familiar voice of Jesus said to Helen: "This is a
course in miracles, please take notes." Troubled, she called Bill
immediately, and he reassured her that she was not going mad. He suggested
she write down what was being dictated to her, and that he would look at
it with her early the following morning at the office. Helen did just
that, which is how the scribing of A Course in Miracles began. As Helen
later described the experience:
"The Voice made no sound, but seemed to be giving me a kind of rapid,
inner dictation which I took down in a shorthand notebook. The writing was
never automatic. It could be interrupted at any time and later picked up
again. It made obvious use of my educational background, interests and
experience, but that was in matters of style rather than content.
Certainly the subject matter itself was the last thing I would have
expected to write about."
The actual process of the scribing was not difficult, and for the most
part flowed rather smoothly. Helen would write down words dictated by the
"voice" in shorthand notebooks, and whenever she and Bill had time during
a very busy schedule, she would dictate to Bill what had been dictated to
her. Bill would then type it directly from Helen's dictation, acting as
transcriber. It was truly a collaborative venture between them. It also
ensured that the Course—the answer to their question to find "another
way"—would be absolutely faithful to the words and message Helen received
from the "voice" she identified as Jesus. The process took seven years,
and was completed in October, 1972.
Although the scribing itself was relatively effortless, it did engender
tremendous anxiety in Helen, though less in Bill. As Helen wrote:
"It made me very uncomfortable, but it never seriously occurred to me
to stop. It seemed to be a special assignment I had somehow, somewhere
agreed to complete. It represented a truly collaborative venture between
Bill and myself, and much of its significance, I am sure, lies in that. I
could neither account for nor reconcile my obviously inconsistent
attitudes. On the one hand I still regarded myself as officially an
agnostic, resented the material I was taking down, and was strongly
impelled to attack it and prove it wrong. On the other hand I spent
considerable time in taking it down and later in dictating it to Bill, so
it was apparent that I took it quite seriously. I actually came to refer
to it as my life's work. As Bill pointed out, I must believe in it if only
because I argued with it so much. While this was true, it did not help me.
I was in the impossible position of not believing my own life's work. The
situation was clearly ridiculous as well as painful."
And as Bill recalled:
"The material was something that transcended anything that either of us
could possibly conceive of. And since the content was quite alien to our
backgrounds, interests and training, it was obvious to me that it came
from an inspired source. The quality of the material was very compelling,
and its poetic beauty added to its impact."
As to the impact of A Course in Miracles on Bill, he said:
"It changed my life totally. I recall typing the first fifty principles
on miracles that came through Helen in the Fall of 1965, and realized that
if this material was true then absolutely everything I believed would have
to be challenged—that I would have to reconstruct my whole belief system.
At the time, however, I thought that would be impossible; I didn't know
how I could do it. Yet I felt that was a requirement, since the material
that came through Helen in the beginning phase seemed so authentic and
genuine. I went into shock for a brief period, wondering how it would be
possible to make such an abrupt change in my perception of life and the
world. Later I realized that God is merciful, and does not ask us to make
changes so abruptly, that there would be adequate time to gradually begin
to shift my perception. I think what was important was my willingness to
change, not mastery of the material."
When once asked his definition of A Course in Miracles, Bill replied:
"To help us change our minds about who we are and what God is, and to
help us let go, through forgiveness, our belief in the reality of our
separation from God. Learning how to forgive ourselves and others is
really the fundamental teaching of the Course. The Course teaches us how
to know ourselves and how to unlearn all of those things which interfere
with our recognition of who we are and always have been."
Helen chose to conceal her spiritual journey from almost all of her
friends, and all family members, except of course from her husband Louis.
They would have been incredulous if they had known of her hidden life and
scribing, which also included two pamphlets—"Psychotherapy: Purpose,
Process and Practice" and "The Song of Prayer"—that were dictated to her
after A Course in Miracles was completed. Helen also took down well over a
hundred poems, published posthumously in 1982 as The Gifts of God by the
Foundation for Inner Peace.
While generally ill at ease with the Course, Helen was more
uncomfortable with the poetry, which at times reflects a closer and more
personal relationship with Jesus. Because the poems gave her secret away,
she did not wish them to be published during her lifetime. In addition,
she wanted to preserve her anonymity as scribe of A Course in Miracles,
firmly maintaining that it should stand on its own, with the true author,
Jesus, remaining its sole inspirational figure. She knew that any public
recognition of her role would distract from this focus.
Helen retired from Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in 1977, and
died in New York City on February 9, 1981. Bill retired from the Center in
1978, and moved to Tiburon, California and later La Jolla. He died on July
4, 1988, during a visit to the Foundation for Inner Peace in Tiburon.
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