A Course in Miracles

When Marianne Williamson (not the author of A Course in Miracles) wrote her own book, "A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles in A Course in Miracles, Oprah Winfrey promoted Williamson on her show, and the book skyrocketed. To understand Marianne Williamson, one must understand A Course in Miracles.

A Course in Miracles
by Mike Oppenheimer

This new Revelation began in 1965 when Helen Schucman, an Associate professor of Medical Psychology at Columbia University in New York, began receiving channeled messages from a speaker who would later identify himself as Jesus Christ.

The messages began with the words, "Please take notes," this is not optional. So Helen Schucman a atheist Jewish psychologist began writing and for the next ten years the voice is said to have dictated "in an inaudible voice" over 500,000 words contained in the three volumes. This was done through the process called automatic handwriting, (in which a spirit entity guides the hand )and clairaudience, (hearing from a disembodied spirit) Schucman wrote this hefty volume, and she claims the source of the words was Jesus Himself.

The Course is a spiritual/psychological book put in a systematic teaching consisting in three books (altogether1,188 pages).: a 622-page Text, a 478-page Workbook for Students, and an 88-page Manual for Teachers.

Dr. William Thetford, was one of her colleagues a clinical psychologist at Columbia University. While he never heard the voice, he was instrumental in the publication of the Course. Raised in the Christian Science church, Thetford believed the Course was a representation of the "original teachings of Jesus" ("The Holy Encounter," Sept./Oct. 1990, p. 5).

Schucman and Thetford met Dr. Kenneth Wapnick of the Foundation for Inner Peace In 1972. The Copyright for the Course was turned over to Wapnick and his organization in 1975. In September of the same year the publication of the first edition of A Course In Miracles began. Schucman died in February 1981 and Thetford in 1988.

The primary reason for the Course is the "Correcting of the errors of Christianity.... To foster spiritual development through the study and practice of A Course In Miracles, a set of three books channeled by Jesus. ...to teach the Course's reinterpretation of traditional Christian principles such as sin, suffering, forgiveness, Atonement, and the meaning of the Crucifixion..." (Foundation for A Course In Miracles, "Forgiveness," p.3- 4). from Mike Oppenheimer, Let Us Reason Ministries, A Course in Miracles

The New Age, Politics, and the Department of Peace

by Ray Yungen
(from For Many Shall Come in My Name)

Although the social/political element may not be overtly New Age in nature, it has served as a magnet for bringing together transformed New Agers and the socially concerned. Like the human potential movement, this segment grew out of the tumult of the 1960s when various civil rights movements sprang up from the counterculture. Never before had so many people demonstrated concern over such issues as the environment or the treatment of various minority groups.

In the 1970s and 1980s, many who had sought purely political means for world betterment in the 1960s became disillusioned with that route and endeavored to link planetary betterment with spiritual transformation. They saw simple protest was not accomplishing their goal. They were convinced that in order to perfect the world, they had to perfect the people first. Getting in tune with one’s inner divinity was seen as the key to effecting that change on a wide scale. Meditation also seemed like an easier commitment than marches and resistance. They believed that any effort to save the world and end social evil would fail without the element of higher consciousness. Click here to continue reading.