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A Course in Miracles
A Course in Miracles, Combined Volume, Third Edition as published by Foundation for Inner Peace.
Author	Dr. Helen Schucman: Scribe
Language	English
Genre(s)	Spiritual
Publisher	The Foundation for Inner Peace
Publication date	1976
Media type	softcover, hardcover, paperback mme, and kindle, sony & mobipocket ebooks
ISBN	978-1-883360-24-5 Soft cover

A Course in Miracles (also referred to as ACIM or the Course) written by Dr. Helen Schucman and Dr. William Thetford that describes a purely non-dualistic approach to spirituality. Schucman dictated the book based on an inner voice,^[1][2][3][4] which she described as coming from a divine source, specifically Jesus Christ.^[5] The book uses traditional Judeo-Christian terminology,^[4] but is not aligned to the doctrines of any religions or denominations. J. Gordon Melton notes that it has been most popular among those who have been disillusioned by organized Christianity.^[4][5] Since it first became available for sale in 1976, over 1.5 million copies have been sold worldwide in nineteen different languages.^[6][7]

The Combined Volume, Third Edition of A Course in Miracles, is the only edition that contains in one place all of the writings that Dr. Helen Schucman authorized to be printed. It is published solely by the Foundation for Inner Peace, the organization chosen by Dr. Schucman for this purpose.

Contents 1 Summary 1.1 Structure 2 Origins 2.1 Overview of origins 2.2 Drafting the Course 2.3 Editors 2.4 Distribution 2.5 Litigation 3 Terminology 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Summary

ACIM integrates ideas from Christianity, Eastern religions, mysticism, psychology, and Platonism, viewing reality as monistically consisting of a single thing, the love of God and the physical world as a projection in the mind.^[8] ACIM focuses on cultivating awareness of love in the self and in others.^[9] Believers in ACIM consider it an inspired scripture using Biblical terminology, but possessing a greater coherence by dint of its consistent source.^[8]

[edit] Structure

Helen Schucman and William Thetford wrote ACIM from the perspective 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. ACIM is split into three sections, described as an initial text, a workbook for students and a manual for teachers. The workbook focuses on applying different aspects of forgiveness through daily lessons, designed to correct the student's perception of the world. ACIM teaches the physical world, based on separation, is a dream we made as a replacement for the Oneness of God and Heaven. However when we allow our mind to be guided by the Holy Spirit the world becomes our classroom to learn forgiveness and undo our illusion of separation.^[10] ACIM also integrates the teachings of Freudian and Jungian psychology with the terminology of Judeo-Christian tradition. The book describes a system of an unconscious mind, defense mechanisms and subconscious goals, then claims to offer a means of reconciling conflicts within this system through forgiveness and the relinquishment of guilt.

[edit] Origins

[edit] Overview of origins

The Course was originally written in a collaborative venture by Schucman and Thetford.^[1][2][3] 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 Kenneth Wapnick, Jesus was "a symbol of God's love and not the historical Jesus of Nazareth".^[11] In 1976, the Course was distributed as a three volume set,^[12] which had evolved from the original notes and comprised the three sections of the Course: the Text, Workbook, and Manual.^[11]

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.^[13] 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 Thought" churches such as the Association of Unity Churches.

[edit] Drafting the Course

In 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,^[13] experienced a series of particularly vivid dreams. Soon thereafter, Schucman dreamt that Jesus spoke to her; she began to hear a "Voice"^[11] which she identified as that of Jesus^[14] which would speak to her whenever she was prepared to listen.^[11] 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."

Between 1965 and 1972, Schucman 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 Course.^[1][13] 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 University Medical Center, to know about the existence of the Course. They were embarrassed and considered it their "guilty secret."^[13] This process was a collaborative venture between Schucman and William Thetford, a psychology faculty member at Columbia University who was her superior and colleague.^[11] Schucman and Thetford worked together in private offices in "an air of secrecy,"^[13] as they both believed that their professional reputations at Columbia would be adversely affected if their professional peers found out about the Course.^[13] 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.^[11] The manuscript went through two additional drafts, one edited by Schucman alone,^{[citation needed]} 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.^[11] This material eventually became the Text.

[edit] Editors

When Schucman experienced some personal difficulties and hesitance after hearing the "inner voice," Thetford, her work supervisor and friend, contacted Hugh Lynn Cayce (son of the celebrity psychic Edgar Cayce) at his Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, Virginia to seek his advice and counsel. Shucman later met with Cayce before she began to record the Course.^[13]

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)."^[15] 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,^[11] along with a draft of most of the Workbook.^[11] This more "polished" copy of the manuscript is commonly referred to either as the HLC (after Hugh Lynn Cayce) or the JCIM edition. In 2000 it was published under the title, "Jesus' Course in Miracles".

Father Benedict Groeschel, who studied under Thetford and worked with Schucman,^[13] arranged an introduction of Wapnick to Schucman and Thetford in November 1972.^[13] In 1973, Schucman and Thetford presented the third draft of the complete manuscript to Wapnick^[11] and Groeschel.^[13] 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).^[13]

At the time, Wapnick was a clinical psychologist who directed a school for disturbed children and served as chief psychologist at Harlem Valley State Hospital from 1967 through 1972. In 1972, Wapnick abandoned his Jewish faith^{[citation needed]} and sought to convert to Catholicism so he could become a monk. Groeschel, a priest and a member of a Franciscan order, and who also had a doctorate in psychology, heard of Wapnick's intended conversion, which interested him, and so they met.^[13]

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, and correcting various inconsistencies in paragraph structure, punctuation, and capitalization.^[11] This editing process was completed in approximately February 1975.^[13]

[edit] Distribution

The Foundation for Inner Peace (or FIP) was originally called the Foundation for Para-Sensory Investigations, Inc. (FPI)., and was founded on October 21, 1971,^[14] by Robert Skutch,^[11] and Judith Skutch Whitson.^[13] Robert Skutch and Judith Skutch Whitson were married at the time of its inception, and have since become directors.^[14] Robert Skutch was a businessman and writer, who for many years had been a writer of television plays and advertising copy.^[13] 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.^[13] 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.^[11] At some point in 1975, Schucman appears to have authorized Skutch Whitson and Ken Wapnick to initiate the process of copyrighting ACIM and to assume responsibility themselves for the resulting copyright.^[14]

In mid-July 1975, Skutch Whitson met briefly with her doctoral adviser, Eleanor Criswell, who had a small printing company called Freeperson's Press.^[13] Criswell advised Skutch Whitson that she would be willing to assist in having the manuscript published and took responsibility for the manuscript pages, and in August 1975, they were taken to a Kopy Kat copy center in Berkeley, to be reproduced.^[13] In August 1975, Skutch Whitson organized a reception at 2000 Broadway, San Francisco, where Schucman and Thetford were introduced to a number of people. During this time period, a number of copies were distributed--hundreds according to Skutch Whitson and Skutch.^[13] The first edition of 100 copies of the Criswell edition was bound with a yellow cover and a copyright notice.^[13] 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.^[14] Zelda Suplee, director of the Erickson Educational Foundation,^[16] 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,^[17] 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.^[13] 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.^[18]

In 1995, FIP entered a five-year printing and distribution agreement, which expired in December 2000, with Penguin Books for $2.5 million. Currently some copies of some of the earlier draft versions of the book are available both online and through private publishers.

[edit] Litigation

Due to a suit by Penguin Books 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 in the 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)."^[6]

(The Urtext draft of the Course is now available online. See below.) However, those parts of the FIP second edition that 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, later in 2005 and as a result of the earlier litigation, the United States Patent and Trademark Office canceled both the Servicemark on "A Course in Miracles" and the Trademark on the acronym, "ACIM".^[19]

[edit] Terminology

A notable feature of The Course is its unique choice of language. Author Robert Thompson 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.^[20] "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."^[20] 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 that are opposed to God's real thoughts. Atonement can also be viewed as the release of any guilty thoughts and feelings a person may have, with the intent being to more easily live in the present moment.

"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.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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• Foundation for Inner Peace
• A Course in Miracles at the Open Directory Project

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