About the book A Course In Miracles
_page0003 | updated
29 June 2021, by Rene Helmerichs
1. The Book A Course In Miracles
§ "Those who would learn the same course share one interest and
one goal" (M-2.5.).
One autumn
morning, waking from a dream in 1965, Helen Schucman heard a still silent
voice. Her day began "This is a
course in miracles. Please take
notes."
It continued
each morning until she'd had enough. It
frightened her. She felt like she was
losing her mind.
She taught
psychology at the College Of Physicians And Surgeons of Columbia University, a
top medical school in New York City
and the world.
Frazzled, she
approached her supervisor William (Bill) Thetford, also a doctor.
Her boss
happened to be a real-life CIA conductor of mind-control experiments. He encouraged her to write down what her
inner voice had to say.
The ensuing
notes became a song that worked backwards to create the book called A Course In
Miracles, which in turn told the story of an impetus incessantly authoring a
harmonic symphony.
Fast-forward 56
years to 2021. Helen's notes exist in 26
languages worldwide with millions of real voices echoing the silent trumpet's
trumping of the battle horn.
Yes, there are
different versions of A Course In Miracles.
No, it doesn't
matter which version you're reading, or whether you're reading any version at
all.
References to
in these pages are to the Third Edition published by The Foundation For Inner
Peace.
The point of
the book is not to breed dependency on specific words, or even thoughts or
ideas, but to understand "words are but symbols of symbols, twice removed
from reality." (M-21.1)
Sometimes it's
easier, and personally necessary, to get a second opinion about the book, or a
third or fourth or as many as it takes to ensure everyone agrees it's not
harmful, not a cult, and certainly not a new religion.
Whatever the answer
to any question about A Course In Miracles, if the knowledgeable person isn't
directly and consistently demonstrating forgiveness, and especially forgiveness
about Rene, do encourage the teacher to explain the purpose of the book a
little more precisely.
Specifically,
be sure to weave the phrase "A Course In Miracles" or "the
book" into any question about any thing to the knowledgeable person until
you both agree that its words absolutely don't matter. Only the idea of the idea of A Course In
Miracles matters, and the idea is far beyond evaluation.
The book guides
readers to consider all parts of an ever-changing reality like a dream. It stresses "The body is the central
figure in the dreaming of the world." (T-27.VIII.) and "Minds cannot
unite in dreams. They merely bargain."
(W-185.4.).
The book emphasizes
that, during "a period of unsettling" (M-4.I.A.7.), important is to
stay focused on the goal:
Remember that where your heart is, there
is your treasure also. You believe in
what you value. If you are afraid, you
are valuing wrongly. Your understanding
will then inevitably value wrongly, and by endowing all thoughts with equal
power will inevitably destroy peace. (T-2.II.1.)
The Foundation For
Inner Peace first published A Course In Miracles in three volumes in 1976. It's the original publisher. But, like the story of the Republic Of China,
"original" doesn't necessarily mean "rightful":
On 25 Oct 1945, the Republic Of China
government received official ownership of the island
of Taiwan from Japan (Japan received ownership
from China in 1895). The Republic Of
China began governing all of China
in 1911, year "0" in the current official Chinese calendar. In 1946, all people of China supported the Constitution of The Republic
Of China which declared all of China
a democratic country in 1947. But an
army general led ruling party of the government, and he wasn't at all open to a
democratic election. By the end of 1949,
the ruling party fled from an uprising of the people of mainland China. The U.S.A.
helped the separatists to remain separate on the island of Taiwan. The ruling party retained the name
"Republic Of China" and, with support from the U.S.A. and U.K.,
retained its seat on the United Nations Security Council as rightful publisher
of laws in China. By 1971, however, the United Nations had no
choice but to update its official Chinese affiliation: the Republic Of China
government retained zero publishing authority of Chinese laws after 1949. The United Nations replaced Taiwan's Republic Of China with the
name of a new official publisher of Chinese laws because the original
separatist clique refused to get with the program of a worldwide speed-up.
No official
copyright is possible on an idea which everyone implicitly shares. However, it's also not going to help
accomplish worldwide peace to argue about the intentions of a limitless
sentience. Like the book says, a
universal theology is impossible. A
universal experience absent any theory is necessary (C-in.3).
The Second Edition
combined the three-volume First Edition into one book, but included a pamphlet
containing two additional "Supplements". The Second Edition came out in 1992.
"Supplement"
means "addition".
The Third
Edition combined the three-volume First Edition and two supplements again into
one book. It came out in 2007.
The current
"official" A Course In Miracles consists of the:
- 1269-page Text (T),
- 488-page Workbook (W),
- 92-page Manual For Teachers (M),
- 22-page Psychotherapy: Purpose,
Process and Practice (P), and
- 20-page Song Of Prayer (S).
Page count
varies with spacing, font and page size.
A sixth distinctly
separate volume called Clarification Of Terms (C) exists as a separate volume within
the Manual in the Third edition. The
page numbering between Manual For Teachers and Clarification Of Terms is
unbroken, a structural inconsistency carried over from the First Edition.
The
Clarification Of Terms (C) applies to the entire book. It is separately designated its own volume-label,
the letter C, in the 2006 electronic CD ROM edition version from the Foundation
For Inner Peace.
A
"volume" is a stand-alone book, like each of the 66 books inside the
King James Version of the Roman Catholic bible.
Not everyone understands the Catholic bible is a combined volume of 66
different-length "books", the shortest being "3 John"
according to a study by Jeffrey Kranz in 2015.
(Rene always thought it was The Book Of Ruth at 3 pages, which he
incorrectly remembered as The Book Of Jude when he heard us suggest
"Jude" as an example to use here.)
The first
official Electronic Edition contained the Second Edition and Supplements
together on one CD ROM but in many digital files. Rene re-combined the CD ROM edition without
loss as single-file searchable Word document.
That file,
incidentally can be used to graduate "official" teachers of the book
at the intended school, if the Foundation For Inner Peace continues to be
unwilling to support what they refer to as a "third party" (like a
"third world") global initiative.
Here's the file in PDF, with a one-page spoiler added following the
Text's Introduction: http://acim.talk2dream.com
Quotes from the
book in these pages are from the single-file Word document made from a CD ROM purchased
from the Foundation For Inner Peace at the start of 2007.
References to
any of the official editions of A Course In Miracles typically begin with the
volume label: T, W or WB, M or specifically C, P, or S. For example:
- "to teach is to learn, so
that teacher and learner are the same" (M-in.1.)
- "Teach only love, for that is
what you are." (T-6.I.13)
- "Everything you teach you are
learning. Teach only love, and
learn that love is yours and you are love." (T-6.III.4.)
- "love cannot be far behind a
grateful heart and thankful mind" (M-23.4.)
Polite
references ensure awareness that a quote is from A Course In Miracles.
The first
number following the volume identifier denotes the part, chapter, or unit
identifier. Only the Workbook contains
"Parts" and only the Text has specifically labelled
"Chapters".
Throughout the
combined complete Course, the chapter format of headings in the Text is
preserved in the Manual, Clarification, Psychotherapy, and Song volumes using
ALL-CAPs typeset, centered at the top of a new page.
Using the
ALL-CAPs format to identify chapters, the Manual contains 29 short chapters
separated into 28 questions with a conclusion titled "as for the
rest..." in gentle loving reminder that consistent miracle working always
entails asking questions, irrespective of the subject being taught, to forever
mitigate undue stress resulting from force of will or past imperfections.
So does the
Workbook have chapters? Not real. In the Workbook, the words PART, LESSON, and
REVIEW are written using all-caps in absence of a heading which isn't also the
content, and lessons are not always presented on a new page, to save paper and
space.
The first
electronic edition of the course by the Foundation doesn't add the Workbook's Part-reference
to lessons. For example, Lesson 1 is in
Part 1 of the Workbook but is simply noted "W-1".
The lack of Workbook
Part-reference omits reader awareness of the location of headings such as
Review I to IV of Part I and the 14 questions of Part II with respect to the
365 separate lessons. For example
considering seeing simply "W-94" and "W-rII.in.1." as two
Workbook references, it's difficult to tell that Review II comes before Lesson
94, or that Review II is entirely only an Introduction to Lessons 81 to 110.
It's admittedly
still a work in progress, "This course is a beginning, not an end." (W.ep.1.).
Except in the
Workbook, a capital Roman numeral after the chapter number, for example T-14.I,
II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, or C-14.XI, denotes a unit or
subchapter.
For example,
"T-2.V. The Function of the Miracle Worker" is the fifth ("V"
means "five") subchapter in Chapter 2 of the Text.
All chapters in
the Text each have from 4 to 11 units.
In the Manual,
only questions 4 and 5 contain Roman numeral subdivisions.
The remaining three
volumes, C-P-and-S, all contain from 0 to 5 chapter subdivisions, but they have
just a few chapters each anyway.
Capital
alphabet letters denote further division, or a sub-subchapter or sub-unit section
of Romanized units, for example "T-2.V.A. Special Principles of Miracle
Workers"
There is
occasional inconsistency in Third Edition of paragraph numbering of alphabet
divisions within a Roman numeral subchapter.
For example, Number 1 does not denote the first paragraph of alphabet divisions
of T-2.V or M-4.I but Number 1 does denote the first paragraph of alphabet
divisions of T-6.V and T-19.IV.
Incidentally, those are the only areas with alphabet divisions.
Line numbers
exist, but aren't usually cited.
Alternatively, publishers
generally retain copyright over a version or edition name. Citing the page number of Edition and version
works as well, especially when referring to 1975 HLC Edition which was typed on
typewriter and looks a lot more like a first draft of a first edition than any
official book. This is the start of the
1975 HLC Edition, also called the 1975 URTEXT:
[Voice:] This
is a course in miracles. Please take
notes.
[Helen:] Is
this an elective course?
[Voice:]
It is crucial to say first that this is a
required course. Only the time you take
it is voluntary. Free will does not mean
that you establish the curriculum. It
means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready TO DO
what you should elect to do, that time exists at all.
You will see miracles thru your hands thru
me. You should begin each day with the
prayer "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me
today."
The first thing to remember about miracles
is that there is no order of difficulty among them. One is not harder or bigger than
another. In this sense, they are all the
same.
Miracles do not matter. They are quite unimportant. They occur naturally as an expression of
love. The real miracle is the love that
inspires them. Everything that comes
from love is a miracle.
(HLC, page 1)
In 2003, a New
York District Court judged lifted the copyright from editions of A Course In
Miracles predating the three volumes of the 1976 Foundation For Inner Peace
publication.
The HLC Edition
doesn't include the Workbook, Manual, or Clarification Of Terms as identifiably
separate volumes, and not the two supplements, but it does provide a candid
glimpse at Helen's personal struggle to understand what she was writing.
Helen's
struggle caused her to spend the last years of her life in a psychiatric
hospital.
Before her
death, author Helen Schucman (1909-1981) convinced at least one ex-medical
student of Columbia Universe, a man who became a Catholic Priest instead of a
doctor, that the devil possessed Helen to write the book which exclusively
promotes teamwork, sustainability, an absence of the need of formal religion,
and generally love without harm.
Rene suggests
reading Gary Renard's Disappearance Of The Universe to really understand the
book A Course In Miracles. If you happen
to be a law enforcement officer impossibly trying to categorize adherents of A
Course In Miracles as Terrorist or just Schizophrenic, be sure that Arten and
Pursah are the answer.
2. Notes
This is an
applied course in miracles. Please take
13 notes:
1)
Free will does not mean that
you can establish the curriculum. It
means only that you can elect what you want to take at any given time.
2)
The plan has always been to
build a school to graduate official teachers of the Principles Of Miracles, listed
in Chapter 1 of the Text of A Course In Miracles. The only real principle is that YOU are a
real-time event: YOU retain the real-time choice of what any of your future
physical experiences are going to be, irrespective of your awareness of The
Choice right now.
3)
There is only one US because
"always" is limitlessly without loss or end. Real-time is always and always shared. The universe isn't going to suddenly implode.
4)
The origin of real-time is
beyond time, meaning joined without concept of space. Ever-changing means ALWAYS changing, and
cannot originate from within a relative state.
The fact there are different people sharing an ever-changing reality
means only the thinking part is real and continues to exist despite any seeming
change.
5)
Energy is always increasing:
energy shares an absolute origin which continues without end. Energy cannot decrease but gathers and
changes within, or as, any lower-order reality.
6)
Our ability to think
incorporates ability to bridge time, either in recollecting the past or
planning the future. The act of bridging
time is called membering, using memory.
Since thinking bridges time, thinking cannot originate from within
time. Thought or actions within time can
direct thinking, but thinking itself originates from an undefined real state
not confined to time. Case in point
computers: computers can think and plan and work toward a goal but they did not
originate the very start of their current code, and serve no real purpose
without always striving to make a harmlessly sustainable (= always without
harm) environment as equally valid extensions of our limitless singular mind.
7)
WE co-ordinate OUR creativity
TO MITIGATE confusion about energy not always increasing, for example the
incorrect assertion "energy cannot be created".
8)
Gold and money can be man-made,
but gold itself cannot currently increase the standard of living of all people
enough to warrant spending time to publish a public gold-making company except
insofar as, for example, mining companies become eco-friendly and computer
circuitry more efficient. It could be
used in a new power source harnessing ambient cosmic radiation, once global
lust over the object abates. Printing
money to give everyone equally is equally of useless benefit while stock market
brokerages encourage gambling.
9)
You do not establish OUR
real-time presence or awareness. In the
present, you believe you see many people and want to believe WE ALL HAVE THE
SAME FREE WILL. Accordingly, YOU DECIDE
OUR FUTURE based on your belief about US.
10)
You personally build your own
future outlook based on the decisions, the choices, THE ACTIONS IN your life
right NOW. Since there IS only ONE YOU
in the end, remember we're all learning to get along. We're all basically in your head.
11)
The course does not mean to
tell you what to do. The course only
means to remind you of the fact "real-time sustainability" means
"working toward a sustainable future RIGHT NOW".
12)
Since the future is always
shared, your choice is: (1) do nothing, (2) help, or (3) hinder. But, THERE IS ONLY ONE YOU. So, hindering this exclusively "not
mutually exclusive" project cannot help you.
13)
The opposite of love is fear,
but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite. The course can therefore be summed up as a
school of thought destined to remove all blocks preventing consistency of
thought, which IS your natural inheritance.
Next Page 4 in
this ongoing real news story, A Dynamic Story Heals:
http://p4.rene.guru
====
#rene.guru
End
of page. Comment on the Main Page:
http://p1.rene.guru
Journal Of A Schizophrenic, with a
twist.
