A Course in Miracles
What is it, who wrote it, and who owns the rights to it...
Diving into the basics of A Course in Miracles…
“A Course in Miracles (also referred to as ACIM or the Course) is a self-study curriculum for spiritual transformation. The book describes a non-dualistic metaphysics with the concept of forgiveness given practical application in daily living.”1
The basic teaching of The Course is: only love is real, everything else is fear, an illusion of the ego. This was parodied in the “fear/love” timeline scene in Donnie Darko. Presidential candidate Marianne Williamson’s 1992 book “A Return to Love: Meditations on A Course in Miracles” probably outsold its original reference material. And then she became Oprah’s spiritual advisor and is one of the most beautiful women to have ever run for President of the United States.
If I remember correctly, according to “ACIM,” atonement is our purpose in life, and the catalyst for miracles. Through true forgiveness and the work of atonement we achieve unity with God and bring heaven to earth.
I got my hands on the book in 2021 when I was researching charlatanism and the self-help industry. I wanted to satirize the narcissism of self-help books, but I was sucked in by this one. The text and workbook completely swept me away. I still wound up using it in my research process.
I was especially inspired by the stylistic overuse of capitalization and copyright symbols, which I parodied in a script that I performed in 2022 with my [redacted] as our fake German wellness institute, The Goaz Institut© for Wholly Self Centering™️, wherein we peddle our cure-all one step trick to fix all of life’s problems.
After having a year of distance from the text I realize that A Course in Miracles is heretical and representative a neo-Pelagian individualism like most new age spirituality, but it still could be worth looking into. It does suit a “culture of narcissism”, reflecting what Lasch was writing around about the same time that it was written. When I was reading it I referred to it as “brainwashing”, but it changed my life. I undid psychic knots and witnessed many miracles. Plus I learned how to meditate and tap into psychic ether in a more controlled way.
A Course in Miracles has no author, it is a channeled spiritual text published by The Foundation for Inner Peace. “The Voice” first contacted the anonymous scribes in 19652. In 1972 the edited text was given as a gift to the psychic Edgar Cayce’s son, Hugh Lynn Cayce, president of the parapsychological Association for Research and Enlightenment. This edition of the text is called the HLC, the Hugh Lynn Cayce edition. This book was stolen from its archival locker, photocopied, distributed (“online and elsewhere”), and returned in 1999. That edition of the text is referred to as the JCIM (“Jesus’ Course in Miracles”), which the original authors would not approve of.
The Foundation for Inner Peace was originally called the Foundation for Parasensory Investigation, founded by Judith “Judy” Skutch Whitson. She changed the name of her organization in 1975, after she met the couple behind A Course in Miracles. She brought the book to the public.
There is no author of A Course in Miracles but “The Voice.” The Voice was revealed, on her deathbed, to have been channeled by clinical psychologist Dr. Helen Schumann. She said it was not her, but Jesus, who wrote the book. Helen was raised in an upper class Jewish household at the turn of the 20th century. Her family encouraged her to explore other faiths and decide for herself what she believed.
And she did, trying Catholicism, Judaism, Southern Baptist teachings, atheism and agnosticism before she was an adult, the latter of which she adhered to in her adult years.3
So she was agnostic and channeling “The Voice” of Jesus Christ? She was a scientist, after all. Her untimed natal chart features a nodal Gemini moon and Jupiter in Virgo.
She and her colleague at Cornell University Medical Center, fellow clinical psychologist Dr. William “Bill” Whitson, created the book together. She recorded The Voice, which was contacting her through dreams and meditations, and Bill transcribed. The idea originally came to them in June 1965. I would pay top dollar for a copy of the urtext cassette. A friend once told me her mom used to play the official cassette tapes in their car in the Pacific North West, but I want to hear Helen channeling The Voice!
Helen began having intense religious dreams in October 1965. Three months later, January 1966, they began to transcribe "The Voice”, who said: “This is a course in miracles please take notes.” Helen said it was Jesus’ voice but was too intimidated to name. It is referred to as “The Voice” throughout the text, which is filled with Christian syntax (along with the Judeo-Christian concept of “atonement”, there’s often references to Holy Spirit or “Spirit”, Easter, Crucifixion, heaven, and forgiveness).
There are many different editions, and a stollen edition, so the copyright status is a mess. Because it is a spiritual text, having it copyrighted was contentious, but Helen said that Jesus asked her to copyright her text with The Foundation for Inner Peace in 1975, to avoid the original message of the text being tampered with. The first copyrighted edition printed for distribution by the original writers was an edition of 300 photo-offset copies, published with The Foundation for Inner Peace in 1975. This is known as the Criswell-edition.
The Foundation for Inner Peace’s copyright was found to be invalid, and the Criswell-edition of A Course in Miracles entered the public domain in 20034. This is likely due to the JCIM scandal— the text was already freely circulating in the late 90s. Apps and websites have this open source text available for free, but the giant official book published by The Foundation for Inner Peace feels at once clinical and biblical. It feels heavy and important to hold. Also, there are parts of the Criswell-edition which are not public domain.
While reading the text and doing the workbook, I used some of the official apps to keep up with the exercises, especially while traveling, since the book is actually bigger than a Bible, and with thinner pages to boot. I also would write the “Lessons” on my arm, or make them my phone background, or have an unofficial ACIM app that sent me reminders to meditate at the top of the hour every hour that I was awake.
A Course in Miracles consists of three books: The Text, The Workbook, and a Teacher’s Manual for A Course in Miracles. It is recommend to completely read The Text before starting The Lessons in The Workbook. The Lessons are daily meditations that increase in frequency and time as the days progress over the timespan of about a year. I impatiently did both at the same time. I never looked at the Teacher’s Manual, to be fair. There’s a lot going on.
I have about one chapter left of The Text, which consists of two volumes, thirty chapters, and over 1000 transparently thin pages. I also am almost finished with the Workbook of 365 lessons. I put the book down when I started my Master’s in Sacred Art, reading The New Testament, and praying the Divine Office in 2022. Without A Course in Miracles, my relationship to religion would be totally different.
Still, to write more about the topic, and to finish the course, I’m considering finishing reading the text and restart the workbook from the very first lesson, as the original authors intended. Although, while doing research for this post, I read that Helen said the real work starts after Lesson 50, with Lesson 51, so I might restart there. But maybe I will finish reading The New Testament first, since it seems to be an important predecessor to A Course in Miracles. But who knows, I only have about 50 pages left of ACIM.
https://openacim.org/
i am sooo glad you're back!!!
would love to hear your line of thought on self help/charlatanism that led you to this in the first place sometime!!