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A modern Miracle: Critical comment on the Course in Miracles
A modern Miracle
Or: The ruthless logic of A Course in Miracles
Anton van Harskamp, Bezinningscentrum Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam
And seekest thou great things
for thyself? Seek them not … (Jeremiah 45,5)
There is a hype in the field where spirituality and mental
health become intertwined: A Course in Miracles. An
increasing number of people has become fascinated by this book
with its curious title.This group does not only include frequent
visitors of New Age Centers, but also spiritual Do-It-Yourselvers
and those who study 'The Course' with a couple of friends.
We are talking about a book of monstrous size: 1249 pages in
india-paper edition, a guidebook for spiritual study. The purpose
of the book is to let go of our regular thought-system about
ourselves, the world and God. We have to learn how to radically
change our way of perception and thinking in order that our life,
which is controlled by struggle, deep-seated dread and feelings
of guilt, makes room for a life full of love and harmony.
The increasing interest in this piece of writing - or ACIM as
experts would say - might be called a modern miracle.This can be
illustrated by looking at the origin and the nature of 'The
Course’. It also appears from the central message of 'The
Course': the uncommon optimistic belief that a perfect life is
something that is within our reach. The questions I will address
in this essay are the following: what is it that 'The Course'
bases this belief on and does it also bring into practice an
optimistic attitude to life?
The origin and nature of 'The
Course'
Insiders in the world of New Age knew about the existence of
the book since 1972, because thousands of copies had been
circulating in the United States before its actual publication in
1976. At first no information was available about the source of
the text, not within 'The Course' itself, nor within the movement
that had come into existence because of it. However, the incrowd
knew that the origin of the book lay with a certain Helen
Schucman.This fact had been made known in 1984 by a woman named
Judith Skutch, one of the driving forces behind the movement 'The
Course' had engendered.
Helen Schucman (1923-1981) was Associate Professor in medical
psychology at ‘The Columbia Presbyterian Medical
Center’ in New York City. It is a curious fact, at least for
outsiders, that although she had written the text, she claims
that the content of it was not from her. The book is considered
to be the product of ‘channeling’.
Channeling is a relatively well-known practice in the world of
New Age. It is the coming through of information from a spiritual
source which lies beyond the normal world and human conciousness.
So the messages express themselves as verbal revelations.
’Channeling’ takes place in many different ways. The
spiritual intermediary can be in ecstacy and actually show signs
of being in ecstacy. This usually happens in a group of people
who know each other well. It also happens that a medium, sitting
in a comfortable chair, passes on the messages of a spiritual
entity to hundreds of people at the same time. A famous example
of this are the Californian sessions of Jach Pursel. In name of
the spiritual being Lazaris, this ex-employee of an
insurance-agency would pass on practical pieces of practical
wisdom on how to deal with anger, guilt, depression and other
emotions. These were sometimes illuminated with examples from
quantum physics, something that made the entire show even more
spectacular. This would all take place in the congress hall of
some fancy five-star hotel, in a usually cheerful mood, before an
audience of predominanly white people in their thirties and
forties. The audience would be relatively diverse, from stylish
upper-middle-class to traditionally hip.
Helen Schucman’s case was less remarkable. Or was it
really? The literature sketches the picture of a tormented
person. D. Patrick Miller, journalist and dedicated student of
'The Course', author of an informative book about the story
behind 'The Course', reports that she suffered from personality
dissociation. He apparenlty meant that mystical and rational
tendencies lived side by side in her character. Having grown up
in a Jewish-religious environment and with a father who showed
interest in esotericism, she developed into a scientific
psychologist with a rational-empirical perspective on reality,
not only when it came to her profession but also in other
matters. Nevertheless, she often had mystical experiences,
whereas she considered herself to be an agnostic in religious
matters. She said herself that she had to overcome strong
inhibitions when writing down the often patently obvious
religious texts of 'The Course'.
Typical of her was that although she was fully part of
academic life she also suffered greatly because of it. The same
can be said about William Thetford (1923-1984), a Professor of
Psychology. Although he remained on the background, he played a
substantial role in the coming about of 'The Course'. During her
entire adult life Schucman had a tensed, 'platonic’
relationship with this man who was formally her Head of
Department. Reading 'The Course', one might feel the aversion to
the silent but harsh competition of the in acadamic circles not
unusual habit to consider criticism of the greatest significance,
as a result of which people ‘profile’ themselves by
heavily criticizing other people’s work. Schucman and
Thetford suffered because of this and decided that a new era of
cooperation with each other and their colleagues was necessary.
It was in this mood of "we shouldn’t treat each
other this way", that the from childhood mediumistic
talented Schucman began to hear ‘a soundless voice’,
which urged her to make notes. Encouraged by Thetford she
started, however reluctantly, to make notes. This was in 1965,
the beginning of a period of well over 7 years in which she,
supported by Thetford who typed out all of her notes, produced
the theoretical foundation of 'The Course' (669 pages in print),
a workbook with 365 lessons, one for each day of the year (488
pages) and a manual for teachers (92 pages). The Voice, also
called ‘The Boss’ by Schucman was sometimes agressive
and disturbing, but there was no question of ecstacy. She was
able to interrupt the soundless Voice to answer telephone calls
and take care of other daily activities. From the writings of
many of the most enthusiastic students of 'The Course' appears
that they believe that it is exactly this recalcitrance and the
fact that she would sometimes object t he Voice that supports the
authenticity of the text.
The essence of the content of this message is at the same time
literally childishly simple and complex. Simple, because 'The
Course' appeals to a primeval feeling, a feeling that especially
children know very well: this world is not real, we all live in a
dream! Complex, because the message tells us that this insane
world, full of death and misery is not real, but an illusion,
created in our minds. The reason for us constanly creating this
so-called reality in our minds is that we consider ourselves to
be seperated from others and from God; as separate ego’s.
According to 'The Course' we can only find true inner peace when
we realize that love is the only reality and everything that is
‘not love’ is not real. Only then we are capable of
forgiveness and of unconditionally loving everyone we meet, also
the ones who (seem to) harm us. However, and this is a very
special aspect of the doctrine of 'The Course': we are talking
about the evil things we and them have never done! After all: all
evil is but an illusion! Apart from that, the miracle mentioned
in the title will only happen when we truly change the way we
think and perceive the world around us, which will result in us
no longer thinking of ouselves as separate human beings, apart
from others and from God. This means that we will no longer be
controlled by feelings of fear and guilt and that we will indeed
be able to radiate love.
I will go into the content of the book a little bit further
on. Now I will continue with the character of 'The Course'.
Odd, irritating, laughable, or...?
The sixty-four thousand dollar question is of course: who does
‘The Voice’ belong to? Who is this ‘soundless
speaker’? This brings us to an aspect of the book that
probably many people find not only odd, but irritating or even
laughable. While Schucman has always been very unresponsive about
this, it is clear that according the the book the Voice is Jesus
Christ! It has to be said that there is disagreement among
experts whether we are talking about the historical figure or the
so-called universal spirit of Christ, in other words,
everyone’s deepest spiritual identity. Whatever the case may
be, Jesus Christ is according to the book undeniably present (cf.
M. 59).1 This can be supported by the fact that the
Voice mentions Christmas and talks in the first person about the
death on the cross. By the way, this death on the cross would be
a by human beings projected illusion. (T.36, 91v, 95, 284)
Almost as irritating, or in accordance with personal mentality
as laughable, may come across the fact that, for example God as
source of love and the Holy Spirit are referred to as being male.
But it is especially all the seemingly christian concepts,
because next to the central concept of forgiveness, the text is
teeming with concepts like sins reconciliation, redemption, Holy
Spirit, The Kingdom of God, Heaven and sin.
At a cursory reading, one might get the impression of a
christian book. This was not only repellent to atheists, but also
to people who had abandoned the dogmatic and church-oriented
christianity and were looking for something else. This group
represents a large part within the New Age movement. The
linquistic usage is also shocking to christians, since at a
slightly less superficial reading of the text one has to come to
the conclusion that the message is very much
‘unchristian’. By the way, critics as well as the
dedicated students of 'The Course' agree with each other on this
matter. To name some of the diferences: the world of time, of
matter, of separate human bodies has not been created by God.
Considering the illusionary reality of evil 'The Course' even
indicates that the essence of the world made - or to use a
fashionable word, constructed -, by us, human beings, is a world
of fear and guilt. As such our world is an attack on the God of
love and peace (W. 413, M. 36v.). In that world there is sin in
abundance, but au fond it does not exist, since God’s love
can never be truly harmed or hurt. Redemption is for that reason
purely an awakening, a coming to ourselves of our spirit.
That concerning some differences in doctrine. Also when it
comes to religious behaviour the differences with the christian
religion are immense. Praying, for example, is in 'The Course'
only a meditative concentration, a practitioning for forgiving
oneself and others, and not an expression of a personal
relationship with God. According to the book, liturgy has no
meaning whatsoever for living in truth. The same goes for
institutions (churches). To put it briefly, we encounter a
substantial number of non-christian beliefs in what seems to be
christian terminology. It is conceivable that this is by first
introduction to the book a source of irritation. According to the
above-mentioned D. Patrick Miller, many of the most dedicated
students of 'The Course' at first had great difficulties with the
‘christian’ language.
There are yet other characteristics, and that is putting it
mildly, which may cause astonishment. Part of the book, and
especially the second part of the workbook, is written in
Shakespearean blank verse, in the so-called iambic pentameter, in
which every line consists of five iambs, an unstressed syllable
followed by an stressed syllable: the result of Schucman’s
great passion for Shakespeare and her desire for profound, poetic
language. Possibly this is also the reason that the Dutch scholar
on religion, Wouter Hanegraaff observed that if there is one text
in the world of New Age that may be called a sacred scripture
then it is 'The Course'. There is no other text for which the
believers have so much respect and veneration.
For non-believers this veneration is incomprehensible,
especially when we compare the book to the 'real' bible. In this
new-religious bible we find no stories about people of flesh and
blood, nothing about prophets who are great and faint-hearted at
the same time, no stories about kings who were heroes and evil at
the same time, no image of a God who at times seems to be almost
human but remains a mystery all the same. We find no Psalms that
lament, beg, cry out; there are no horrifying apocalyptic
visions. On the contrary, the main text is a sequence of
apparently timeless insights and pieces of wisdom. Of course
always spoken by a superior 'I' or 'We', a pluralis divinitatis
that adresses the 'you' in a constantly mild and paternal tone:
‘You believed that...’, ‘Your perceptions are
distorted because...’, ‘Whatever lies you may believe..’
etc, directly followed by corrections, often in seemingly
profound ‘one-liners’, such as ‘Darkness is
lack of light as sin is lack of love.’ (T.11); ‘You
can accept insanity because you made it, but you cannot accept
love because you did not.’ (T.243).
It is exactly this almost endless variation on some
universally meant insights in life that, as might be expected,
brings readers of the book, in any case this reader, in a mood in
which bewilderment and boredom take turns. In the long run,
however, boredom prevails. This feeling however is
‘punished’ by 'The Course': 'good’ students will
start to see things differently. They will see that boredom will
no longer exist, which is the result of the insight that even
‘a slight twinge of annoyance’ is nothing but
‘a veil drawn over intense fury.’ (W.32)
This type of argumentation is typical. Emotionally charged
moods as boredom, doubt and anger simply cannot have their origin
in the reality surrounding the individual. They are solely the
product of the individual’s own thinking and certainly not
of a book as 'The Course'. This ‘thinking’ is, so says
the ideology, nothing more than an attack of the ego on reality
(T. 31v., W32 vv.). Something that may cause irritation is not
the observation that behind that boredom may hide anger; everyone
with a bit of common sense understands that. No, the point is
that this argumentation has been revealed by a creature that is
according to the book of a divine nature. It is also a statement
about the essence of reality, on the level of religious ontology.
This excludes refutation a priori; even the making of slight
distinctions is impossible. It is this quarding against so-called
negative feelings and critiscm, that makes this book, one would
imagine, indigestable to many people.
Ignore? Disregard?
Meanwhile another important question demands to be answered:
Why pay attention to a book that comes across as astonishing if
not irritating or laughable? Why waste our energy on a movement
of students that people with ‘common sense’ regard a
movement of other-worldly people? Apparently, the Humanities do
also not regard this attention and energy as necessary. Apart
from a single religion sociologist or a scholar in the field of
religious studies, the established academic world does not engage
in studies of 'The Course', nor in the movement around it. The
same applies even stronger to the world of the church and
theology. There have been some attacks from American
fundamentalist circles, in particular from the on the internet
active opponents of sects, e.g. the ‘Christian Ministry
Report’. And there is a apologetic treatment of 'The Course'
by the American evangelical philosopher of religion, John P.
Newport. Other than that, the church and theology, while feigning
indifference, are ignoring the book.
However, that does not seem to be a sensible thing to do. This
phenomenon I have been talking about is not per definition
socially and/or culturally insignificant. There are signs that in
the near future, 'The Course' will attract not thousands but
millions of people. I will try to illustrate this point by
providing some facts.
The book has sold over a million copies of the original
english text. The publication, initially taken care of by the
‘Foundation for Inner Peace’ founded by a couple of
friends of Schucman, has been taken over by the reputable
publishing company Viking Penquin, a branch of Penguin books!
What’s more, the book has been translated into Spanish,
German, Portugese and Hebrew, while still other languages are in
process (among others a Dutch one, which will be published by
Ankh-Hermes in November 1999). What is striking is that the book
is not only available in bookshops which specialize in esoteric
subjects, but is also prominently available in the
‘regular’ bookshops. There is also a number of books
available that either comment or build on 'The Course'. There is,
for example, an extremely detailed concordance of the book,
written by one of the most eminent experts on the subject, the
psychologist Ken Wapnick. In Dutch there are at least four
(translated) books avaible that were either written as a comment
on or as a result of the book.
In the United States a real movement has come into being
because of 'The Course', including a large number of study
groups, publishing companies and periodicals. Within the movement
two groups of people can be discerned, namely the
‘moderates’, who focus on the more easily obtainable
psychological effects of 'The Course', and the ‘strictly
orthodox believers’, who want to adhere to the underlying
doctrine. Significant for a full-grown religious movement is the
fact that there are formal churches, where the insights of 'The
Course' are being preached, this in spite of the anti-church
sentiments of the book. Several communities have even come into
being because of 'The Course'. However, these are considered
sectarian by the majority of the students.
Apart from that there are over a thousand of study groups
outside the United States. And last but not least, the internet
offers a surprisingly wide range of forums and sites. Perhaps the
book will not ever be as popular as James Redfield’s The
Celestine Prophecy, because of the fairly high level
of complexity, but it is likely that the book will gain in
popularity, which will presumably last longer than James
Redfield’s bestseller.
Gnosticism
Besides all these quantitative facts, there is something else
to be considered, something that may seem very curious but is
certainly not insignificant. In the book we seem to find a
variant of the classic rival of christianity of the first three
centuries A.D.: gnosticism. In particular there seems to be a
connection with the so-called school of valentinianism, the
strongly speculative variant of gnosticism, named after the
philosopher Valentine, who, himself of Egyptian descent, worked
in Rome in the middle of the 2nd. century A.D.
Relying on the classical work of Hans Jonas about gnosticism,
we may view this variant as an intellectual school, in which the
problem of good and evil are being treated strictly monistic.
Characteristic for this kind of gnosticism is among other things
that good and evil are being explained in terms of knowledge and
ignorance, in evocative language also in terms of light and
darkness. We can only grasp this when we realize that gnostic
knowledge is not information that is about reality outside him or
her. Rather, knowledge from a gnostic viewpoint is pre-eminently
participating knowledge. This type of knowledge denotes a
situation in which the subject with all of his or her abilities
is united with the known object. This is a situation that is
difficult to express in our language, characterized as it is by
on the one hand a schematic representation of seperate speaking,
thinking and feeling individuals and on the other hand objects
like natural things and people. This way we are inclined to view
gnostic knowledge as mystical ecstacy. Be that as it may,
knowledge in valentinian gnosticism is in any case not only the
business of the knowing subject, but also of the known object.
Viewed from the deepest religious-metaphysical level, in other
words from the divine from which everything originates, this
means that knowledge and ignorance are ontological positions of
the highest order. They say something, to put it differently,
about reality as such.
It is possible for valentinian monism to express itself in
more than one way. One of these ways is based on the terrifying
thought, that from the perspective of the divine, from the source
from which everything originates, evil and darkness form the
necessary way by which the divine comes to himself in a cosmic
process of redemption. Whereas this thought - namely that all
evil originates from the divine self - cannot be discovered in
the statements 'The Course' makes about reality as such, it is
indeed clearly present on a psychological level. This is because
everyone has to go through ignorance to come to redemption.
Psychologically, this is according to 'The Course' a passage
through the realistic illusions of fear, anger and guilt in order
to arrive at true humanity. I will return to this a bit further
on.
Another way in which valentinian monism expresses itself is in
the description of reality as such. This we do encounter in 'The
Course’. It is the surprisingly simple and far-reaching
thought that evil, including guilt, sin and suffering form a
veil, a veil of illusions that can be taken away by knowledge.2
Immediately in the preface, we read that the reality of
subjects as well as objects in essence knows only one area, that
of knowledge (X). Other than in our usual way of thinking and
perception, 'The Course' sketches knowledge as a situation in
which there is a direct and total union with the essence of the
known objects, without interference of the senses, reason or
interpretation (cf.T 40 ff.,74).3This is also the case
in gnosticism.
We also encounter ignorance, in valentianism the total
opposite of knowledge, time and time again in 'The Course',
described as ‘perception’or our thought system. These
words do not only point to a subjective, intellectual activity,
but more importantly to the reality outside every individual,
reality as we experience it in ordinary life. The crucial lesson
that might be hard to understand for outsiders is: we do
experience our lives as ‘real’, but we have to learn
that ‘Everything you see is the result of your own
thoughts.’ (W26) An essential concept is projection. Our
projection, that is our inclination to place what is inside us
outside, is the creating principle of all we perceive: ‘Projection
makes perception’, it says in the preface: ‘We
look inside first, decide the kind of world we want to see
and then project the world outside, making it truth as we
see it ‘(XI). Because this world, created in our own
minds, is so vulnerable, we are constantly attacking and
defending ourselves and inevitably we feel constantly guilty
about the fact that this illusionary project turns out to be a
major dissapointment over and over again. And so the central
message of 'The Course' is, in countless variants, that we should
see through this mechanism and that we should remember who we are
in essence. We have to get rid of the by agression and guilt
characterized mental condition and realize that we are children
of love. This is how we encounter in 'The Course' a variant of
the old gnosticism.
Oprah and Marianne
But does this new manifestation of gnosticism make 'The
Course' meaningful? This is an aspect of the book that makes it
even more curious, because we can be fairly certain that Helen
Schucman did not know the first thing about gnosticism. But
meaningful? Are we not dealing here with an aspect of the book
that is so abstract and so speculative that it is only
interesting to a handful of scholars?
The answer is: no. We may have to agree with those
theologians, who think that the alternative for not only
christianity, but also for secular humanism, is not atheism or
plain materialism, but gnosticim that has repeatedly surfaced
over the centuries. According to this view, gnosticism is the
only real rival of christianity (and of so-called secular
humanism). This certainly applies to our time, according to for
example the theologian J.B. Metz, who claims that the incurable
religious animal 'man', substitutes the christian
‘Gotteskrise’ and the incertainties it has brought
along for a new ‘Gottesförmigkeit’. In other words: by
belief in powers and realities, which have a divine yet immanent
character.
Such a point of view is supported by a remarkable phenomenon.
Not so long ago we were able to see - literally 'see', because it
was on television -, that the ideology of 'The Course', converted
into psychological advice is least of all the business of a small
scholarly or intellectual elite. On the contrary, the central
ideas of 'The Course' turn out to work very well for masses of
people who psychologically and existentially wrestle with the
unsatisfactory and disturbing aspects of modern life, and who
doesn’t? This is about Marianne Williamson, author of
‘A Return to Love’, mega-star in the area of
spirituality and the new way of thinking. ‘A Return to
Love’ is a practical psychological handbook entirely based
on the principles of 'The Course'. In 1992, it was on top of the
non-fiction bestsellers-list of the United States for no less
than seventeen weeks. Williamson herself appeared in that year
twice on the Oprah Winfrey Show, the first time even a whole
hour. And Oprah loved it! She told the viewers that she had
purchased a thousand copies of the book to give to friends and
staff members (and after the hamburger case everybody knows what
kind of effect her opinion about something can have). Meanwhile
the book has been translated into many languages, among others
into Dutch by the publishing company ‘De zaak’.
The book describes situations and problems that are
recognizable to many people. In many ways Willamson’s own
life is exemplary for a specific sort of Western problem area.
Being young, attractive and academically educated, she went
through an almost classic development. She joined the student
protests, had a series of relationships, jobs and houses, but
never had to face any financial difficulties. She was always in
the circumstances in which she didn’t have to worry about
shortages or disease, let alone about poverty. However, she
became more and more insecure and perturbed and she gradually
became aware of an existential boredom within herself. She tried
to calm this restlessness with overeating, drugs and more
relationships, but nothing seemed to work. And that while
everything really had to be o.k.! But that wasn’t all. She
began to be disgusted by herself, but after a while this disgust
swung, as it were, to the world: according to her something was
fundamentally wrong with a world in which people have to suffer
and die. That is when the way of thinking of 'The Course' came
into the picture, because she began to discover that the problem
lay really within herself and by that in the inner world of her
own generation.4 Our generation, she expresses aptly,
is scared to death. The argumentation is: once we were perfect,
we lived in a world full of magic, which we have forgotten. We
have been surpressing our inner self with our so-called common
sense, which presupposes violence, because it creates a world in
which everyone fights anyone to survive. For all our fears, for
ourselves, for others and even for death and meaninglessness
there is really only one solution: we have to learn to recognize
that there is only one true, real and universal power. Until we
realize this, so when we only have faith in goodness and in love,
only then can we return to our potential of love; the only truly
existing potential. This suggests that we can and have to change
ourselves, our way of thinking and perception. Only then can we
change ourselves and the world around us. From these basic
principles she then shows how in practical situations, especially
in the field of relationships, we can get rid of nightmares and
the hallucinations we create ourselves, in order to live a truly
meaningful life.
These opinions are typical for some kind of talkshows - Oprah
Winfrey kept repeating it: We have forgotten who we are - that
have a gnostic, or if you want, a new-religious background. It is
most of all the at first sight total condamnation of 'the' world
and the message that everything can get better by changing your
attitude. No, the gnosticism of 'The Course' is not out of our
reach, it does not remain in the abstract theories of scholars.
We can literally see and hear it every day. This is exactly what
makes 'The Course' meaningful. Reason enough to look, by way of
conclusion, at the possible effect of the basic idea of the
ideology of 'The Course'.
‘Uncanny’
A paradox that the reading of 'The Course' may render is the
following. The outburst of optimism, of the assurance that we, by
a reversal of our way of thinking and perception, can make the
quantum-leap to perfection, may leave us with an
‘uncanny’ feeling. This might have something to do with
what we call the doctrine of creation.
A cornerstone of the whole system is the notion of separation.
According to 'The Course' God created the world in accordance
with his own nature. Everything was of a divine nature, or
rather, as 'The Course' claims everything IS of a divine nature.
People were - are - extensions of God’s inner radiation. But
then there is sin, which is in essence a (false) conviction that
we have broken away from God. It is the conviction, says Wapnick,
that we are a self that is seperated from our true self, which is
the spirit of Christ. According to Wapnick this is the beginning
of all the misery in the world. It creates the illusions of an
autonomous material world, of bodies that exist seperately from
each other in the kosmos, but also of the illusions of how time
passes (cf.T.79. 245f) and last but not least the central
illusion of death (T.4, 416-419, W.445). But this seperation that
is our ego, out little ego, is above all riven by guilt. Guilt,
or this feeling of guilt, according to 'The Course', summarizes
our earthly existence, the foundation of all our feelings that we
are really suffering from loneliness and from the fact that we
are seperated from other people, the world and from God. But
these sort of feelings are so strong and so typical for our
normal ego, that it in secret desires guilt, and is inevitably
even atttracted by it (T.319,M.77). According to 'The Course'
this is the reason why we are so terribly frightened (T.84). And
because we do not realize that we have created this existential
fear ourselves, we project it on the world outside us, and
consequently we tend to view others as threatening creatures.
This leads to a horrible never-ending game of attack, defense,
counterattack and a constantly growing feeling of guilt. 'The
Course' provides an almost endless row of variations on this line
of thought. Wapnick, the master-exegetist of 'The Course’
also does this and to a high degree of sophistication. What is
disturbing about this kind of argumentation is the extremely
unequivocally negative approach to the ‘ordinary’
world. To get a sense of the atmosphere of 'The Course' a
substantial quote follows:
...this world is a symbol of punishment, and all the laws that
seem to govern
are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain
and in pain.
Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of
sorrow and
seperation and death. Their minds seem to be trapped in their
brain, and its
powers to decline if their bodies are hurt, They seem to love,
yet they desert
and are deserted... And their bodies wither and gasp and are
laid in the
ground, and are no more. Not one of them has but thought that
God is cruel.
If this were the real world, God would be cruel. For no
Father could
subject his children to this as the price of salvation and be
loving...Only the
world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilt of it
could conceive of it.
(T.236)
We have to keep in mind two things. First of all, the
therapeutic ‘healing’ for which 'The Course' wants to
be an aid, desires in effect that the students are completely
aware of all the misery of 'the' world, and even that they
constantly meditate on this fact. It is not only the
establishment of everyday reasoning that there are many poor,
hungry and sick people; 'The Course' tries to show us that
suffering is the essence of existence. The beginning of the path
to wisdom, claims the above-mentioned D. Patrick Miller, is the
vision of dreariness given to us by the non-enlightened world,
and he adds that it is the same in Buddhism. But the fact that
'The Course‘ keeps harping on about the same thing makes the
reader - in any case this reader - realize that there is an
obsession of the author of 'The Course' to be discovered; an
obsession with all the misery and suffering that this world
supposedly consists of.5 The certainty that this world
is characterized by sin and evil is so great that there is no
room left for faith in the meaningfulness of ‘ordinary’
life. There is only the spiritual desire to break away from this
world, reverse our way of thinking and perception and build up
another world.
Secondly, we can, however implicitly, read in the quoted
passage that the Story of Creation is totally different from the
christian one. It might be useful to give a moment’s thought
to the fact that 'The Course' seems to argue more rigourously
than christianity does. Driven and moved by the suffering in the
world, 'The Course' says that this world cannot be created by a
God, who is love and peace. And for the seemingly effective
presence of suffering, 'The Course' has a reading as well as an
explanation that suffering resulting from evil does not really
exist, but that this illusion is the product of our minds.
Christianity has a less rigourous, less logical view on this. On
the one hand it says that there is a good reason for our worldly
existence, an existence that is definetly not of a divine, but of
a natural and finite nature, an existence we can enjoy and have
faith in. We may have trust in the meaningfulness of the ordinary
aspects of our lives. On the other hand, says for example the
Dutch theologian H.M. Kuitert, the world as created by God also
knows evil, bitterness and horror without an equal. The creation
is good, says the christian, but at the same time it is
impossible to say this about everything that exists. Some
theologians call this ‘ the bitter mystery of a good
creation’. Is this logical? No, definitely not. But it does
correspond to the more human experience of the mystery and the
ambivalences that belong to life.
This can be illustrated by the vision on man. To 'The Course'
‘man’ is an ego, characterized by guilt, fear and sin
and that is all the result of our own mental vision, namely that
we are literally unique, separate human beings. Characteristic of
christianity
is that every human being is at the same time a holy creature
and morally fallen; in the language of the Reformation: and justified,
and sinner: simul iustus et peccator. This is an
impossible thought in 'The Course'. It is also not logical, it
says that every human being is a mystery and that we can leave
the unsolvable unsolved in the end. However, it does express some
of the realistic ambivalences we sometimes experience. These
ambivalences occur for example when we take a closer look at the
life of a horrible criminal and we, shockingly enough, also
discover a human side to him. Or the other way around: when we
discover dubious aspects of our own character or of the people we
are close to or of other seemingly friendly, civilised people.
These kind of ambivalences are not recognized by 'The Course'.
And this is exactly what makes the book so ‘uncanny’,
because it is constantly trying to prove that suffering and evil
are but illusions. It is so vigourously fighting something that
is really not even there, that you cannot but conclude that
behind all the optimism an obsession with this suffering lurks.
Merciless
The logic of 'The Course' does not only render the book
‘uncanny’, it also makes it merciless. How can this be?
Is the message of 'The Course', compared to christianity, not
uncommonly optimistic and humanitarian? After all, everybody can
make the quantum-leap to a life full of peace, love and harmony
(T. 75 en passim). The possibility of happiness lays within
ourselves. And this is on first sight totally different from
christianity, which says that perfection is not possible and that
the true realization of what an individual is, does not come from
outside, literally not in this time, but it has to be granted to
us. It is a belief, it has to be said, that may result in a
suppressing ideology - something that the history of christianity
shows in abundance. However - and this has to be said as well -
it is also a belief which may result in the consoling thought
that we do not have to give meaning to everything in life and
that there are - in simple words - things that we cannot and do
not have to make sense of.
It is indeed so that the message of 'The Course' appears to be
optimistic and humanitarian. But if you take a closer look you
may come to the conclusion that the road to happiness is
superhumanly heavy. According to 'The Course' we are all seperate
ego's and we should first deal with our own guilt and fear,
something which will only arouse even more guilt and fear (T.53).
Wapnick says that we have to go through - an
of course ostensibly - horrible oppression (cf. T. 394,
W.375v.). Nobody can escape, according to Wapnick, an increase of
feelings of guilt and fear, when he or she decides to throw in
one’s lot with 'The Course'.
You may think that this is rewarded handsomely in the end!
However, it is questionable if this end can humanly be reached.
The same Wapnick also stresses that he has trouble believing the
students who claim that they have gone through 'The Course'
without much difficulty. He says - some call him the
‘pope’ of the movement - that 'The Course' is nothing
less than a rarely completed, lifelong task. The book is
extremely demanding, which is in essence also logical. We have to
remind ourselves that 'The Course' says things two things at the
same time. On the one hand the book repeats over and over again
that all experiences of suffering and and misery, within and
outside us, are the result of suffering that we subject ourselves
to. That is de facto an exeptionally heavy accusation to each of
us. On the other hand, however, 'The Course' does tell us that
each and every one of us has the capacity to see through the
suffering and get rid of it. It is exactly this combination that
imposes us with a truly frightening responsibility. Imagine:
every time we fail on the road to happiness, and of course we
will fail a number of times, we will have to blame ourselves and
only ourselves. And this is what we may call merciless.
The Idea
What idea do we now have of 'The Course'? This: what we
encounter in 'The Course' and the movement around it, is an old
religious ideology that is at the same time new. The impetus to
the ideology is sincere and authentic. The followers are deeply
touched by the evil and suffering in the world.
However, this sensitivity has become so strong that it brings
them to the conviction that everything is suffering. Then they
risk to resemble those people, as the German theologian Dietrich
Bonhoeffer described them in his prison-letters, namely people
who first bring man to despair, so that he believes his luck to
be his bad luck, his health as sickness and his courage to face
life as despair. The most remarkable aspect of 'The Course' is
the paradoxal effort to teach us how to view the apparently
omnipresent evil and suffering as non-existent. This may be
called the totalitarian desire (on a spiritual level) to deny the
ambivalences of life, to deny the possibility that it might not
always be possible to distinguish right from wrong, good from
evil. 'The Course' claims that Truth exists and that it is in
principle possible for human beings to know Truth. To quote from
the preface to the book: Truth is ‘unalterable, eternal
and unambiguous.’ So the religious ideology of 'The
Course' is one that is far removed from christianity. When it
comes tp the ‘last things' and evil, christianity accepts
the fact that it is of the utmost importance to realize that life
will remain a mystery and that some things cannot be rationally
solved.
Many students of 'The Course' consider themselves people who
have bade farewell to or have abondoned the burden and pressure
of a church-oriented christianity. But what has replaced this? A
religious ideology that in the form of an extremely optimistic
view on man, places an incomparable greater burden and pressure
on the individual. It is the burden of creating life ourselves.
Paradoxically by letting go of our own ego, but nevertheless with
our own strength and potential. The pressure results from the
realization that we have to blame ourselves for every second that
we have not reached complete happiness. This all renders 'The
Course' in my opinion ‘uncanny’ and merciless. So: what
should we think about this development to a ‘new-old
ideology’? These words come to mind: bewildering and sad.
Notes
1) References to the texts of 'The Course' will
be rendered by a letter, followed by pagenumber(s): T refers to
‘The Text’, W. refers to ‘Workbook for
Students’, and M. refers to ‘Manual for teachers’.
2) This may lead to the following profound
question: Why is it that we, human beings, have created a world
which may in fact be an illusion, but is an illusion - 'The
Course' emphasizes this time and again - that hurts tremendously
and is purely negative? 'The Course' does not offer an answer to
this question. Only once, in an often quoted passage does 'The
Course' mention that 'Into eternity, where all is one, there
crept a tiny, mad idea at whicht the Son of God remembered not to
laugh (T.586). Because of that instance of forgetting, the
illusion of this world came into being, in essence a world of
evil. Strictly speaking this image could mean that this
world’s foundation does indeed incorporate God. However,
this is not in agreement with the ideology. In fact, the refusal
of 'The Course' to answer the question of what it is that forms
the foundation of the ideology, is logical and consistent, to the
point that it is horrifying. An answer to the question may after
all mean that it is possible for people to attain knowledge about
the origin of the world and evil. But in the ideology this would
only augment evil. This way we have to consider the passage of
the laughter of the Son of God as didactic encouragement. Many
times it is repeated that our original state is one of love,
peace and laughter and that we should learn to laugh about it,
about our ego and about all the illusions of which we suffer.
Everyone that has ever had anything to do with New Age must have
noticed how special the role of laughter is in these circles. It
calls into mind the ‘enlightened’ , the
‘pneumatic’ who benignly smiling, look down from the
heights of their wisdom on the ignorant, those who are attached
to the material world.
3) This is the state which 'The Course' says
she wants to lead the student to. Naturally the book does not
really offer this knowledge, as it is also tied to language and
material manifestation (T. 396).
4) By the way,Williamson does not say anything
about the real ‘heavy’ beliefs of 'The Course'. She
does not mention Jesus Christ as ‘The Voice’ for
instance, too controversial perhaps.
5) The American scholar Catherine L. Albanese
has the same sort conjecture when it comes to New Age in general.
However, she approaches it from a different angle. She talks
about a sort of ‘conspiracy of optimism’, an optimism
that expresses itself in 'The Course' in the belief that all
suffering is au fond an illusion. This is constantly repeated and
with such ardour that one may suspect a hidden preoccupation with
guilt, a symbol of all negative feelings, beliefs and
observations: ‘Original sin lurks at the borders of the new
fields and lands. Guilt, obligation... peek through the new
spiritual wool and flax in the fields.’
Bibliography
C.L. Albanese, 'Fisher Kings and Public
Spaces', in: The Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science, May 1993, 131-143.
E. Babbie, 'Channels to Elsewhere', in: Th.
Robbins/D. Anthony ed., In Gods We Trust: New Patterns of
Religious Pluralism in America (Second Edition), New
Brunswick (USA)/London: Transaction Publishers 1991, 255-268.
A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume,
New York/London etc.: Penguin-Viking/Foundation for Inner Peace
1996.
W.J. Hanegraaff, 'Channelling-literatuur: Een
vergelijking tussen de boodschappen van Seth, Armerus, Ramala en
"A Course in Miracles"', in: Religieuze bewegingen
in Nederland 22 (1991) 9-44.
Id., New Age Religion and Western Culture:
Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Utrecht: Diss.
Utrecht University 1995.
H. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, Boston:
Beacon Press 1963.
H.M. Kuitert, Het algemeen betwijfeld
christelijk geloof, Baarn: Ten Have 1992.
J.P. Newport, The New Age Movement and the
Biblical Worldview: Conflict and Dialogue, Grand Rapids
(USA)/Cambridge (U.K.): Eerdmans 1998.
D.P. Miller. The Complete Story of the
Course, Berkeley: Fearless Books 1997.
K. Wapnick, A Talk Given on A Course in
Miracles, Roscoe: Foundation for A Course in Miracles 1989.
Id., Absence from Felicity: The Story of
Helen Schucman and Her Scribing of A Course in Miracles,
Roscoe: Foundation for A Course in Miracles 1991.
Id. ed., Concordance of A Course in
Miracles: A Complete Index, Mill Valley: Foundation for Inner
Peace 1995.
A.S. Weiss, 'A New Religious Movement and
Spiritual Healing Psychology Bases on A Course in Miracles', in:
A. Greil/Th. Robbins ed., Religion and the Social Order (Volume
4: Between Sacred and Secular: Research and Theory on
Quasi-Religion) Greenwich (USA)/London: Jai Press 1994, 197-215.
M. Williamson, A Return to Love, New
York: Harper Collins 1993.
The English pages of the Bezinningscentrum (including other
articles by Anton van Harskamp): English
site
Comments?: a.van_harskamp@dienst.vu.nl
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