A Course in Miracles, or ACIM as it is commonly called, is a spiritual textbook that guides its readers to a profound shift in perception. The book was channeled over a 7 year period by a course in miracles Helen Schucman, who dictated the content to her psychotherapist Dr William Thetford. Its poetic language has led to comparisons with some of the world’s most famous literature.
The Text
The Course’s text is complex, poetic and deeply spiritual. Its thought system is intellectually sophisticated and combines spiritual inspiration with deep psychological understanding of concepts like belief systems, defense systems and perception. It is written more like a web than a string of beads, with ideas woven in and out of each other in profusion. To understand any particular passage, it is necessary to look at the whole material around it. Reading the Course without referencing its entire context can lead to a great deal of confusion. It can also lead to the trap of reading by projection, in which each new passage is read through the filter of one’s overall understanding.
The course was channeled by Helen Schucman over a 7-year period between 1965 and 1972 while she was a professor of Medical Psychology at Columbia University. She claimed to have received it as a kind of mental dictation from a voice she identified with Jesus. While the book uses Christian terminology, it is essentially a restatement of the core wisdom found in all world religions.
The original edition of the Course was transcribed and typed by Schucman with help from her colleague Dr. William Thetford, who edited out personal information and made certain that the material was cohesive and readable. It was published in 1976 under the title A Course in Miracles and has since been translated into over 25 languages.
The Workbook
A self-professed secular atheist, Helen Schucman began having a series of inner visions and heightened dreams that culminated in an experience in which she heard an inner voice say: “This is a course in miracles. Please take notes.” The next evening she did just that, beginning a seven-year process of inner dictation that resulted in the three-volume work of A Course in Miracles, published in 1976 by the Foundation for Inner Peace. It has since sold millions of copies, gaining a scriptural status in the minds and hearts of thousands of believers.
The Course is both an intellectual and experiential teaching, and it offers a new way of looking at the world. Its message is that the only thing real is what God created, and that all of life is a manifestation of love. It is not a religion but a spiritual teaching, and it encourages its students to find their own way home.
Its 650-page Text is the philosophical foundation of the Course, and its 500-page Workbook contains 365 daily transformative meditations. The manual for teachers, which provides additional insights useful to advanced students, completes the set of materials. The workbook has a very poetic and profound language, written in blank verse. Its thought system is intellectually sophisticated, integrating spiritual inspiration with deep psychological understanding of such phenomena as the belief and defense systems, perception, and identity.
Although the workbook is designed to be used with the Text, it can stand alone. It is a book of healing, and it focuses on changing the way that you see the world. Its purpose is to release your ego so that you can experience an experience of God’s love, peace, and joy.
Its goal is to help you remember that you are not what your ego tells you you are, but that you are the eternal Son of God. The Course uses Christian language, but it is not a religious book. It is a restatement of the core wisdom found in every major world religion, and it teaches that there is one way to salvation: through forgiveness.
The Manual for Teachers
A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is a spiritual textbook that challenges many of the values held by traditional Western religion. Its admonishments against judgment and condemnation are a clear departure from Christianity, and its teaching that Jesus was not incarnate, nor did He die on the cross for the sins of mankind, is at odds with most denominations. This has made ACIM both popular with people seeking alternatives to religious traditions and troubling to those in traditional Christian circles.
The first edition of the Course was printed and bound by the Freeperson Press, a small privately owned printing/publishing company in San Francisco, California. Eleanor Camp Criswell, the owner/manager of Freeperson Press, worked with Helen Schucman to print and bind the Course. It was published in three volumes in 1976.
Schucman authored the course through a process known as inner dictation. She would sit in a quiet room and write down the words that she heard in her mind, word for word. This scribing process lasted seven years, from 1965 to 1972. She then read the transcribed text back to her supervisor, William Thetford, who typed it into a manuscript. Personal information was omitted, and the 1500 pages that remained were what became the Course.
The Course is divided into two volumes: the Text, which presents the philosophical foundation of the course; and the Workbook, which prescribes a daily transformative practice. The Text contains the main lessons, which are presented in a conversational tone that invites novice students into a dialogue with the author. The Workbook is more practical, with a step-by-step approach to applying the principles of the course in daily life.
While the Workbook is accessible to beginners, the Text requires a deeper understanding of the philosophy behind ACIM, as well as a willingness to question the values one holds as a core belief system. The Complete and Annotated edition provides a new level of accessibility, with footnotes that clarify challenging passages, and an appendix containing 33 cameo essays that outline ways to apply these teachings in everyday life. This version also restores the original sequence of the material, enlivening the conversation and providing a more direct experience of the author’s presence.
The Society
In 1965 Columbia University clinical psychologist Bill Thetford decided that there must be another way to deal with the stress and conflict he and his colleagues were experiencing. He turned to his colleague, Helen Schucman, and told her, There must be a better way and I’m determined to find it. She agreed to help him. During the next seven years she dictated to him each morning, after which he typed her shorthand notes and wrote what later became A Course in Miracles.
When the manuscript was finished, it was given to Hugh Lynn Cayce, son of Edgar Cayce. When he read it he thought it should be published, and so it was. It was also at this time that Schucman met Ken Wapnick, who believed the text needed some additional editing. He and Schucman divided the work into three volumes: The Text, The Workbook for Students, and The Manual for Teachers.
These original editions are often referred to as the Urtext. In the early 2000s a version was printed by CIMS called the Thetford Edition, and distribution of this book was interrupted because of copyright litigation with a separate group that had previously published it as Jesus’ Course in Miracles. This edition was released through Diamond Clear Vision Publishing in California, and contains the complete Text volume from the UR Text, along with the nearly untouched Workbook and Manual volumes.
One of the reasons why this edition is so popular among Course in Miracles students is its conversational tone. This original edition invites the student into a discussion with the Author, and even advanced students have found that reading this version brings a fresh clarity and new understanding to their study.
Another reason is that this version includes the original definition of a miracle, which states that it is an event that “is inexplicable by what appears to be natural or scientific laws. It therefore gets attributed to some supernatural or praeternatural cause.” This differs from other definitions, which often describe miracles as events that violate the law of nonviolation. While these other definitions are not without value, they do not have the added value of allowing us to understand that freedom from fear is really what a miracle is all about.
