ARCIM

How A Course in Miracles Came Into Being

The original A Course in Miracles (ACIM or “the Course”) was written during seven years, from 1965 to 1972, with a final short section added in 1975 just prior to its first official publication. The writing of the Course was a collaborative project directly involving three individuals:

Jesus - A Course in Miracles

Jesus

The human being known historically as Jesus of Nazareth, or Jesus (the) Christ (Hebrew – Yeshua, Arabic – Isa), who authored the Course;

Dr. Helen Schucman

Dr. Helen Schucman, a clinical and research psychologist and professor of medical psychology at New York’s Columbia University, who hand-scribed the Course as Jesus in non-physical form spoke it word by word to her, while she was completely conscious, whenever she had time to devote to this notetaking over the course of those seven years; and,

Dr. Bill Thetford

Dr. Bill Thetford, also a professor of medical psychology at Columbia University as well as director of clinical psychology at New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, and Helen’s colleague and academic supervisor, who typed out Helen’s handwritten notes of the Course during the seven-year process, and who studied the teaching with her.

There are two entire books describing in detail how A Course in Miracles came into being: Journey Without Distance by Robert Skutch and Absence from Felicity by Kenneth Wapnick. In both books it is described how Helen had a series of dreams prior to the beginning of the Course project in which Jesus introduced himself to her and she came to know who he is, in particular the sound of his voice. This was important because Helen immediately recognized Jesus’ voice when his dictation of the Course to her began a couple of months after the series of dreams ended. In one of these dreams Helen found a hidden treasure chest, within which was a book with the name “Aesculapius” (the Greek god of healing) in gold letters on the spine of the cover. Helen realized some time later that this book was what became A Course in Miracles.

It is obviously extremely unusual for a book to claim to be authored directly by Jesus. Such a project would logically be possible given Jesus’ capacity as a human being even two thousand years ago. But it would seem that there would have had to have been extraordinary conditions in place that would have brought about the engagement of such a project. Jesus does indicate in the Course that such conditions are in place at this time in humanity’s journey, necessitating this teaching being available to human beings at this time. It then becomes the responsibility of the discerning reader to determine how real the claim of Jesus’ authorship of the Course might be, and how helpful the content of the Course might also be in any individual’s experience of this time in the journey of humanity, and in their personal journey.

Bill’s original typed-out version of the Course became known as the “Urtext,” distinguished from Helen’s original handwritten notebooks full of the notes she had hand-scribed from Jesus, known as Helen’s “Notes.” Bill’s typing was done in regular meetings with Helen, separate from her sessions with Jesus in which she sat quietly receiving and writing down the material spoken to her by him. In these separate meetings with Bill, Helen read her handwritten notes to him, and he typed as she spoke. In this process Helen and Bill lightly edited the material to correct obvious errors and to improve use of language, sometimes according to specific instructions from Jesus through Helen.

Sometimes Helen spoke words or sentences for Bill to type that she had crossed out in her notes. While reading her notes aloud to Bill apparently she felt that she had earlier erroneously crossed out such words or sentences in her notes. It was later discovered that at other times Helen did not read to Bill for him to type out certain words or passages that were written in her notes and not crossed out, possibly because she felt that they were too personal to have typed into the Urtext or because she otherwise felt uncomfortable with them. As a result of these omissions there are approximately 10,000 words that are in Helen’s Notes but not in the typed-out Urtext. There are also a few sections of words in the Urtext that are not in Helen’s Notes, sentences Helen dictated to Bill as she herself was hearing them internally from Jesus at the time Bill was typing. The Urtext that Bill typed out also came to have a number of handwritten notes along with Bill’s typing, written in Helen’s handwriting apparently in between her meetings with Bill.

A Course in Miracles Came in Three Parts

Part 1:
Text

The first part is the “Text,” which provides the “thought foundation” or main worldview / thought system of the Course. The Text is the longest part, and took three years to complete, from October 1965 until October 1968.

Part 2:
Workbook for Students

The second part of the Course became the “Workbook For Stu-dents,” a set of 365 lessons or exercises designed to put the principles presented in the Text into practice. The Workbook is the next longest part of the Course, and took twenty-two months to complete, from May 1969 until February 1971.

Part 3:
Manual for Teachers

The third and final part of the Course became the “Manual For Teachers.” The Manual is a set of questions that students of the Course might have and answers that teachers of the Course might consider providing. It is the shortest part of the Course, and took six months to complete, from April until September 1972.

Eventually during the seven-year writing process it became clear to Helen and Bill that the Course would have three parts: The Text, Workbook for Students, and Manual for Teachers. A short final section of the Course called “Use of Terms” or “Clarification of Terms,” a kind of addendum, was written from September to December 1975.

Already after the completion of the Workbook, beginning in the summer of 1971, Helen and Bill spent fourteen months carefully going over the Text to insert what they came to feel were the natural breaks in the 250,000 words and 950 typed pages of continuous text. At the end of this process the Text emerged with thousands of paragraphs in 255 sections spread across thirty-one chapters. The Workbook and Manual had no need for such a process, as the Workbook was already divided into its 365 lessons designed to be studied over the course of a year (at least), and the relatively short Manual was already structured in its question-and-answer format.

Once the project of writing A Course in Miracles was completed in 1972, Helen felt called upon to go through the entire Urtext and type it out again, including the additional notes that she had handwritten in the typed pages, no doubt seeking to make sure that the typed-out Urtext version of the Course felt faithful to her handwritten Notes from her sessions with Jesus. No copy of this second typed version (“Helen’s version”) of the Course has been made public as of the publication of A Renewed Course in Miracles.

Helen and Bill then went over Helen’s typed version together to edit it according to indications from Jesus to prepare it for publication. These were that:

  1. The published Course should be applicable to all human beings, i.e., to the general reader. This meant that passages that had been dictated by Jesus that were specific to Helen’s and Bill’s lives and relationship, and wouldn’t be meaningful for general readership, should be removed. Bill was asked by Jesus to be in charge of deciding which passages should be removed.
  2. Scribal and other errors remaining in Helen’s version should be corrected.
  3. Helen’s handwritten Notes should be the touchstone for what was included in the final published Course.

Once this process was completed, the 1,500-page edited typed manuscript of the Course sat in a file cabinet and was shown to approximately four people in the ensuing months. This included the American psychic Edgar Cayce’s son, Hugh Lynn Cayce, who was the director of the Edgar Cayce Center in Virginia, and who had been consulted by Helen and Bill in the summer of 1965 during Helen’s dream process with Jesus. A copy of the Text portion of this third typed-out version was later found in the library of the Cayce Center (aka The Association for Research and Enlightenment, or A.R.E.), and this then became known as the Hugh Lynn Cayce (HLC) version of the Course. Variations of this version when it includes the Workbook for Students and Manual for Teachers, which remained largely as they were in the Urtext, is also known as the “Original” as well as the “Sparkly” version.

Another person the Course was shown to during this time was Kenneth Wapnick, a psychologist, counselor, and therapist whom Helen and Bill had recently met and who expressed a strong interest in seeing the material. From September 1973 until January 1975, Kenneth worked with Helen to edit the Course one more time. Together they added chapter and section titles to the Text, and reduced the material by approximately 48,000 words, while significantly reformulating the early chapters of the Text. Apparently, these major changes in what was cut from the manuscript and in the reformulating of the early chapters of the Text were ultimately decided upon by Helen, who felt that those chapters didn’t read as smoothly and beautifully as the rest of the Course, possibly because they had come at the beginning of the project before the process had settled into its state of flow. Helen and Kenneth’s version of the Course became the official published version, known as the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) version.

Spiritual researcher Judy Skutch learned about the Course in the spring of 1975, and worked with Helen and Bill to get the Course published. Judy became a founder and the chairperson of the board of “The Foundation for Inner Peace,” a newly formed organization created to be the independent publisher of the official A Course In Miracles from Helen and Kenneth’s version. This FIP version of A Course in Miracles was copyrighted by FIP shortly before it was first professionally printed and published in 1975-1976. However, approximately 300 copies of this version of the Course were printed and distributed freely before the official publication date, and these copies were not copyrighted. It may be noted that when the official FIP first edition of the Course became available, the public had no knowledge of the existence of the earlier typed versions of the Course, i.e., the Urtext and Helen’s version, as well as the HLC version of the Text.

Two of the three collaborators in the writing of A Course in Miracles passed on in the years following its original publication, Helen Schucman in 1980 and Bill Thetford in 1988.

Kenneth Wapnick co-founded the “Foundation for A Course in Miracles” (FACIM) in 1983 to help students of the Course deepen their understanding of its thought system, conceptually and experientially.

Over the years after the original publication of ACIM, FIP became aware of several issues in the first edition that needed addressing. Because the FIP version was the fifth typed copy of the Course (including the Urtext, Helen’s version, the HLC version, and Helen and Kenneth’s twice-typed FIP version), and because none of these versions had been professionally proofread, it had been discovered that some material from the Notes and Urtext had been inadvertently omitted from the first FIP edition. It had also been noticed by readers that typographical errors remained in the first FIP edition. Therefore in 1992 the FIP published the second edition of the FIP ACIM to address these issues. The new FIP edition was compared to both the Notes and the Urtext versions of the Course. Almost a hundred sentences and six entire paragraphs which had not been included in the first edition of the FIP ACIM were added, though the significant changes that had been made in the early chapters of the Text in the first FIP edition were not revised to reflect the Notes or Urtext. In addition, a numbering system for sections, paragraphs, and sentences was added to the second FIP edition.

Also in 1992, Marianne Williamson published A Return to Love, which drew on her experiences with ACIM, and her book became a New York Times bestseller. This brought the Course into much broader public awareness than had yet been the case.

Around the year 2000 three of the pre-FIP versions of the Course – the Notes, the Urtext, and the HLC version – came into public awareness via the internet, and all of these are currently available in both physical and digital formats. In addition, a pre-FIP version of the Course is available online through the website of FIP (acim.org). In 2003, the first FIP edition of ACIM was determined to be in the public domain.