On Outing Shakespeare

Well, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has thrown his hat in the ring on the controversy regarding Shakespeare's identity, and his choice for the role is Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
Of course those of us who have read Gary Renard's The Disappearance of the Universe might have been expecting some such developments. The interesting thing is that this opinion comes from outside the circles of the high priests of Stratford upon Avon, not to mention from outside the clerical circles of wider literary scholarship who have traditionally maintained the myth that Shakespeare was Shakespeare. A book on this controversy which I have earlier discussed on this blog, 'Shakespeare' by Another name: The life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the man who was Shakespeare, by Mark Anderson, and it already had convinced me pretty much, although I was by that time prepared to be open to that kind of development, exactly because of Arten's comments in Gary's book.
Here's how Arten said it;

 ARTEN: Sure. The gentleman who wrote the Shakespeare material was an Earl whose family's crest bore the image of a lion shaking a spear. To honor his family he was sometimes toasted at Court with the phrase, "Your countenance shakes a spear." But this Earl was forbidden by Queen Elizabeth the First, who was a political genius and very controlling, from putting his name on his work. There was a social stigma attached to the stage at that time. Plays, especially comedies, were not considered to be serious literature and were beneath the dignity of royalty.? (from Gary R. Renard, The Disappearance of  the Universe)

We are now probably not far away from a point that anything written about Shakespeare is fairly much irrelevant unless you appreciate that the writer of the words "all the world's a stage" in fact was in fact very much an actor on that stage who had known success and failure spectacularly, with a rich formal education, as well as plenty of lessons from the school of hard knocks, enough so that indeed it allowed him to gain an entirely different perspective, in what is customarily called enlightenment, allowing him to see through the whole charade from another vantage point, which A Course in Miracles describes as the view from "above the battle ground":

   Those with the strength of God in their awareness could never think of battle. What could they gain but loss of their perfection? For everything fought for on the battleground is of the body; something it seems to offer or to own. No one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor could he value the body's offerings. The senselessness of conquest is quite apparent from the quiet sphere above the battleground. What can conflict with everything? And what is there that offers less, yet could be wanted more? Who with the Love of God upholding him could find the choice of miracles or murder hard to make? (ACIM:T-23.IV.9)

It is the sure knowledge that nothing is to be gained from anything in this world, which alone grants us the serenity and the sublime humor with which Shakespeare looks at the world. As Gary has recently observed somewhere, it is also the smile of the Mona Lisa. It is the manifestation of the peace of mind of Logion 42, "Be passersby."
It is like the shift of looking at Moby Dick through the eyes of Jed McKenna, to be looking at Shakespeare through the eyes of the Earl of Oxford, who in worldly terms was a nobleman at the Court of England who was decidedly past his prime, but who had acquired the perspective necessary for the task. It is also like realizing that Thomas Jefferson could not be understood and appreciated unless one realized the multiple levels of complexity and inner contradiction in his life as reflected in his relationship with Sally Hemings. Prior biographies do not only need to be corrected on that point, but entirely rewritten, for the man cannot be understood any other way. His fascinating relationship with Jesus, as evident from the Jefferson Bible, is another dimension of his character that has been widely missed, and treated at best as a curious episode, but not understood for being the central key to his character which it is. So, it seems we are having an interesting time of it with a massive reframing of some very interesting accepted truths in our culture, which turn out to be falsehoods.
In learning to step back from our own life, by adopting that view from above the battleground, it becomes easier to spot these things, for as we begin to understand that the classrooms of our life are in fact just that, it begins to make sense how Edward de Vere was able, as he stepped back from the wreckage to understand the whole story on a new level, including seeing it in the holographic framework of his life's experience and learning, in which Shakespeare's endless anachronisms becomes understandable as it is meaning, or content for which he merely finds the form to express it from the repertoire of his life and learning, Part of this learning involves this experience of déjà vu across time and space, for some people that goes with lively "past life" experiences (General Patton is my fave for that) for others it remains more ethereal, as simply deep insights and joining in an experience which we suddenly recognize at a deeper level.

In and Out of the Hologram, Vivace

As promised, Gary Renard introduced us to his "Arten," aka Cindy on the "Happy Dream" Cruise, and this continues the important story line of his living experience as a demonstration project of the holographic nature of our experiential world which A Course in Miracles proposes. At the end of his first book as Arten and Pursah made it clear who they were in relation to Gary -- having been the apostles Thomas and Thaddeus in the past, while Gary himself had also been Thomas -- they also made it clear that not only would he be Pursah (a woman) in the next life, but he would end up marrying Arten, however Arten in his current lifetime would thus be a woman, who at that time he had not met yet. At some later time Gary reported having met the current-life persona of Arten, and that her identity would be disclosed in the third book, Love Has Forgotten No One, and also that she would participate in this year's Caribbean cruise. And so, having participated in the cruise, I've also met Cindy. Apparently Gary knew she was Arten before she did herself, but she was comfortable with it coming out in this fashion, and she seems to play the part really well. Meanwhile the really nice thing is that they do not make a big deal out of this, for they realize fully that this is all merely part of the dream reality. Needless to say undue hoopla about past life memories can become a major distraction, if it is exploited by the ego to make us somehow special, as is discussed in the Course in the Manual for Teachers, in the chapter 'ARE "PSYCHIC" POWERS DESIRABLE?' here:

The answer to this question is much like the preceding one. There are, of course, no "unnatural" powers, and it is obviously merely an appeal to magic to make up a power that does not exist. It is equally obvious, however, that each individual has many abilities of which he is unaware. As his awareness increases, he may well develop abilities that seem quite startling to him. Yet nothing he can do can compare even in the slightest with the glorious surprise of remembering Who he is. Let all his learning and all his efforts be directed toward this one great final surprise, and he will not be content to be delayed by the little ones that may come to him on the way. (ACIM:M-25.1)

The bottom line here clearly is that since with more and more forgiveness our fear level goes down, and we may well remember some of these abilities including past-life memories, which heretofore in our current living experience had been repressed, but if our ego gets ahold of them and starts exploiting them, we take our eyes off the ball, and forget the one responsibility we have as students of the Course, i.e. accepting the atonement for ourselves. And so, as always, the point is to leave the rest of it to the Holy Spirit, including the use of any such new found talents. Gary gave us a funny description of his own association with the group of Return of the Revolutionaries, which seems to be very prone to inspiring people to take this much too seriously--and again we are reminded of the joke that seriousness causes reincarnation. If nothing else, one thing that should give us pause is the fact that very few people volunteer for past life memories as Hitler, Attila the Hun, or Judas Iscariot, whereas the more popular roles seem to be in high demand. From the point of view of the Course it should be evident that the lifetimes in which we were villains of various sorts are very important lessons indeed, to make us aware of why the ego thought system is really a thought system of murder, which perhaps we would rather give up. For similar reasons, we strongly repress all memories of lifetimes in which we were something that we hate in this lifetime, e.g. men/women, black/white, Jew/Arab, etc. while the very fact that we hate it so much only means one thing, namely exactly that we were it, and do not want to know, so we project it out there in the world as an object of our scorn.

In the discussions in the workshop some interesting points about all this came out, and I would like to summarize them here in my own words. With a look ahead to the new book, Gary pointed out that Arten and Pursah had given him a demonstration of the "in-between" life, the upshot of which clearly was that, just like our own dreaming experience happens in seconds, but within the dream seems to cover vast stretches of time, the in-between life is typically really short, and moreover our "next" lifetime is not necessarily "in the future" in the time scale we tend to conceive of if we focus on our life as bodies in the world. In other words, you could be having a few hours in-between and then continue in a lifetime that is 100 years from now, or 2,000 years ago, the selection of which is predicated on what is the most helpful as classrooms for your progress on the road to salvation. Likewise, within the script we are currently in, we cannot so much change the script as shift to another dimension, based on the forgiveness lessons we have learned. In the end it is really not much different from going to Blockbusters and deciding between a horror movie or a comedy. In that sense the "hologram" is not much more than a large multiplex cinema, where I can see lots of different movies without ever leaving the building, and we only leave the building when our forgiveness lessons are done. And from one lifetime to the next we can change sex, religion, race, etc. so we shift from man to woman, from Muslim to Christian, from Jew to Arab, from black to white an vice versa. All of this makes lots of sense, since the atonement process is really about forgiving our apparent differences in the world and coming to realize experientially that we are the One sonship, that appears as many only because we have embraced the separation thought, the ego, and conceive of our living reality/experience accordingly.

Lastly, there is the important implication of the Course that all of the perceptions within this holographic time/space framework are in the mind, including our own body, therefore it becomes blatantly clear how and why it is possible to experience these shifts, that otherwise seem inconceivable to our conscious awareness which has projected the neat linear appearance of ourselves in time, with a past and a future, and which we call our life. And the shifts within this life to different dimensions with different outcomes are again no different than a DVD with multiple endings to the movie. Thus we do not perse change the script with our actions, as it is already made, and all of our actions are in the pre-recorded script, but by forgiving we can shift to a different experience. Or, as the Course puts it:  "Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world." (ACIM:T-21.in.1:7)

Ascended Whatteh Whatteh?

In The Disappearance of the Universe, Gary Renard describes how his teachers, Arten and Pursah appeared in his life, when one day, when he woke up from deep meditation in his living room in Maine, they were just sitting there on his couch and started a conversation.

They describe themselves as Ascended Masters, who just materialized on his couch at that point, purely to be helpful to him. They also explained that in prior lives they had been the apostles Thaddeus and Thomas respectively, but that they appeared with altered names but in the form they would have in Gary's next life. But wait a minute, it gets worse than that, for by the end of the book, they also explain that Gary will know Arten in this life, though in this life she will be a woman, but he does not know her yet at the time when they tell him this. Furthermore Pursah explains that Gary will be her in his next life, at the end of which she will marry Arten, who again is a man in that life, which is supposed to be Gary's last. Along the same lines they also explain that Gary himself thus was the apostle Thomas earlier.

There is a point to all this. This whole Gordian knot of intertwined lives and personalities, who are having their meetings in Gary's living room, taken together demonstrate the holographic nature of our time-space experience, which boils down to this: we do not incarnate in bodies, but rather "bodies"/"lives" are just like movies, projections in the mind, and the universe of time and space is just a virtual multiplex cinema, where you can potentially wander in and out of lives at will. It takes a while to digest all this, but once you do, it is a whole lot more sensible as an explanation for a wide range of phenomena, out-of-body experiences, re-incarnation included. So it is as Einstein surmised, all of time is simultaneous, and past and present are but a figment of our imagination.

In that context the concept of Ascended Masters also starts to make sense. In his book Gary adduces material from A Course in Miracles, which explains the concept, though the terminology is slightly different--here Ascended Masters are referred to as Teachers of Teachers, but the idea is clear: 

There are those who have reached God directly, retaining no trace of worldly limits and remembering their own Identity perfectly. These might be called the Teachers of teachers because, although they are no longer visible, their image can yet be called upon. And they will appear when and where it is helpful for them to do so. To those to whom such appearances would be frightening, they give their ideas. No one can call on them in vain. Nor is there anyone of whom they are unaware. All needs are known to them, and all mistakes are recognized and overlooked by them. The time will come when this is understood. And meanwhile, they give all their gifts to the teachers of God who look to them for help, asking all things in their name and in no other. (ACIM:M-26.2)

These notions have turned up in many traditions, a.o. the Hindu/Buddhist/Theosophical notions of the Mahatmas, or the Rosicruscian notions of the Order of the Holy Cross, (Fama Fraternitatis), the Theosophical notions of the White Brotherhood, and the Chassidic notions of the unknown 36 Zaddikim who "hold up the world," and so on. Typically Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Quan Yin, etc. are thought included in this group. The notion is actually very simple and straigthforward, if this time space experience is a dream, or in modern psychological terms, a projection, then it is possible to wake up from the dream, courtesy of the process that is traditionally referred to as Enlightenment. It is as simple as realizing that the emperor has no clothes on, and not only is there not there there, but there is no here here either. There is only here and now. Or, as A Course in Miracles puts it, "It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed." (ACIM:T-8.VI.9:7) Fundamentally then, the logic is that we only experience this world because we believe in it, and as long as we believe in it, and that with the process of awakening, there comes a time when it serves no more purpose to be here. At that time however it becomes possible to be present in this dream merely to help others, and that presence can take many forms, it can be totally ethereal or it can take physical form as in the appearances of Arten and Pursah for Gary. In the Christian tradition of course the appearances of the resurrected Jesus to the apostles reflects the same notion.

If you recall the story of the doubting Thomas, who wanted to touch the risen Jesus, in order to believe in him, it is kind of funny that Gary (who, as Pursah explained to him was himself Thomas in a prior life), in his book describes how he wanted to touch Pursah, to make sure she was "real." In the literature this mistake is repeated by the famous encounter of Dr. Samuel Johnson, with Bishop Berkeley, in which Johnson wants to refute the Bishop's point of view that the material is appearance not reality. Johnson kicks a stone and his toe hurts, and he famously exclaims "Thus I refute thee." It is however an example of circular reasoning, for the body is part of that same physical reality, and it is designed to operate in that reality, and the example is merely a case of the physical vouching for the would-be reality of the physical, and therefore it is circular and tautological, and proves nothing. The secret lies in the mind that devises the experiment: what is it looking to prove? If it wants to prove that it's projected reality is in fact "real" then Dr. Samuel Johnson was the perfect manservant to provide that demonstration, but the mind that orchestrates the experiment is not itself part of that reality, it is merely something it perceives, by reason of its vested interest in the reality of that reality, since the mind itself projected it.

In the end, this is why the Course asks: "Do you prefer that you be right or happy?" (ACIM:T-29.VII.1:9) So, if the ego is right then its puppet, Dr. Samuel Johnson has a point, but if Jesus is right, that his Kingdom is NOT of this world, or as he teaches in Logion 42 "Be passersby" then this is all a joke, and it hurts more if you take it seriously. Comedy is really the best relief.

Who is Gary Renard Anyway?

Without a doubt, my book Closing the Circle, would not have been written without Gary Renard, and while I've done reviews of his books here, both The Disappearance of the Universe, and Your Immortal Reality, it may just be time for me to talk about the phenomenon Gary Renard. While we're at it, I might as well mention the fact that Gary does have a website, www.garyrenard.com and he is very proud of it; he thought of the name himself, as he will tell you at the drop of a hat.

Well, by now Gary is a bestselling author, whatever that means, and his books have been translated by now into some eighteen languages, which is impressive also. I myself am translating his work into Dutch, which is my native language. Gary was a low energy kid with scoliosis, which was recognized much too late, who liked to study the guitar. At one point in the seventies he took enough time off from drinking beer, to take Werner Erhart's EST training, which for him proved instrumental in getting his music career on track. He did achieve a modicum of success in the Boston area, being that he is from Massachussetts originally. After retiring from his musical career he moved with his then wife, Karen, to Maine, and attempted to survive by speculating on the stock market with too little capital, something which wasn't always as successful as he might have wished apparently. He had also practiced meditation for a long time, and felt that it was helpful to him.

One day in the early nineties he experienced a powerful spiritual awakening, which started when he came out of his morning meditation, and found two people sitting on his living room couch, who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere. A conversation ensued, in which they revealed themselves as ascended masters, named Arten and Pursah in the story. Gary's books really are his account of his meetings with Arten and Pursah. Disappearance (usually abbreviated as DU) covers about a decade, and Your Immortal Reality (YIR) covers September 2003 through December 2005, and a third book, covering his further meetings with his teachers since then, is now due to appear later this year. By the end of the first book, Arten and Pursah reveal to Gary that they have in previous lives been the apostles Thaddeus and Thomas respectively, and further that in fact Gary himself once was incarnated as Thomas, and that in effect Pursah as she appears to him is who he himself will be in his next life, while Arten is who he will marry in his next life, but will also know in this life, where Arten is a woman, who he hasn't met yet at the time of this conversation in DU. Before we get to this point however, Arten and Pursah introduce Gary in their second meeting to A Course in Miracles, a book which Gary had heard of, but did not know, and which they assure him is the teachings of Jesus in modern form, except they refer to him as J, because too many people have negative associations with the name Jesus.

In a way then, the rest of the meetings really revolve around Gary's own learning of A Course in Miracles, but Arten and Pursah also teach him that the meaning of the Course only comes from experiencing for ourselves how our lives change when we practice what it says, as Gary indeed does, on top of which they impart certain experiences to him which further demonstrate the principles of the Course. One important aspect of all this is in fact the holographic nature of our experiential reality of the universe of time and space, without which the very meetings with Arten and Pursah make no sense in the first place. In other words the books themselves, or rather the stories in them, are the demonstration of the very thing they describe, and thus also are they a demonstration of the metaphysics of A Course in Miracles. A central aspect thereof is the notion that "incarnation" is an upside down perception of the actual nature of the experience, which is that the characters in the dream reality which we think is our life, are actually projections of our mind through which we seem to experience our reality, and we all have the capability of remembering various other roles which we played, and in the book Arten and Pursah help Gary to an experience in which he briefly sees thousands of former and future lives of himself. This also demonstrates a second point, namely that within the holographic model of our experiential world, past and future are the same, and equally illusory, no different from choosing right or left when you walk out the front door, or, you choose one movie or another in a multiplex cinema. In short, again, the story of Gary's experiences is itself the demonstration of a very abstract teaching, which thus comes to life, and through empathy as readers with the main character, who is just a bumbling fool like most of us, who has no idea what to do with his life, we come to a whole new level of understanding of ourselves.

Meanwhile, in all simplicity, most people get attracted to reading The Disappearance of the Universe--the title is fascinating in and of itself-- because of the subtitle, which is: Straight talk about Illusions, Past Lives, Religion, Sex, Politics, and the Miracles of Forgiveness. I mean, what more do you want? Meanwhile the connection is made between the original teachings of Jesus in the Thomas Gospel and A Course in Miracles. In the first book 22 Logia of the Thomas gospel are discussed, the ones Pursah suggests are most easily accessible to a modern reader, and in the second book Pursah presents a "kernel" of 70 sayings which she feels are authentic and original teachings of Jesus, and the point is made throughout that there is a consistency of meaning between those teachings and A Course in Miracles. This last idea is the central notion that led me to choose the title for my own book, for through that bridge between the Jesus of the Thomas gospel and the Course, the circle is closed between 2000 years ago and today.

Thought Experiment with Thomas

While on the one hand the Thomas gospel is simply an odd collection of sayings of Jesus, and hardly a complete presentation of his teachings, it is important to realize that it is truly the most complete document we have before Jesus was posthumously remolded into a Christian by the diligent efforts of Paul, Peter and the gang. It just turns out that our whole understanding of the situation is so molded by the mythologizing of Christianity that has indoctrinated us all with its version of the facts. In Gary Renard's books his teachers, Arten & Pursah, also point out that the Thomas gospel was not a very complete document, mainly, as Pursah explains, because in her incarnation as Thomas she was ultimately decapitated, and never had the opportunity to add certain thing she might have wanted to add, leaving the book somewhat unfinished.

However because the Thomas sayings predate the canonical gospels, and most particularly Paul whose theological veneer has been applied to all of the New Testament, there is reason to try and focus on the Thomas sayings in isolation, and if you're comfortable with the selection of 70/71 sayings which Pursah presents, as I am, then I would suggest you stick to that, because this selection eliminates numerous ambiguities which otherwise spoil the soup. You have now just eliminated all of the theology of Christianity, and so as a pure thought experiment it is now worthwhile to try to understand what Jesus is saying within just the context of those 70 sayings, for in doing so, you will come as close as you could to hearing him without any addition of extraneous stuff that came later.

As a young man I thought I would get to this point by learning Aramaic, Coptic, etc., until I suddenly knew intuitively that if Jesus was indeed who I deep down knew he was, then also he could bloody well speak to me in my own language, and I should not have to learn some abstruse language to be able to understand him better. The way I look at it today, that was truly the Voice of the Holy Spirit, or Jesus if you will, speaking to me--it was an inspired thought. Since then--having once and for all seen the fallacy--I gave up my efforts at that kind of scholarship, although I'm still happy that I can at least read my New Testament in Greek.

What I would like to suggest here then, as an ongoing thought experiment, is to read the Thomas sayings purely in the context of that collection itself, and stopping yourself as much as possible from pulling in the later Christian theology, and try to add essentially nothing to them. Just let them speak for themselves. By the end of this exercise it will be thoroughly clear to you that Jesus was not a Christian, because very simply Christianity had not been invented yet. So he never had a chance to go to catechism class either, for those had not been invented yet either. This, in my view, is the sort of hidden invitation which the Thomas gospel extends to you, its reader. Try it, you might like it!

Spoken Miracles

Visitors to the Yahoo! group on The Disappearance of the Universe will recognize the name of Martha Lucía Espinosa immediately, and know that there was a discussion on the forum about her plans for this upcoming book, which is based on a hint that was contained in DU, namely that the 365 Course quotes contained in that book provide a complete summary of the Course's teachings, which one could use for daily meditations etc. Because of her editorial choice to present these "quotes" as a "sayings collection," I felt a discussion of the book was in order here. Those of us who have really worked with Gary's books are in no doubt that they are inspired material, for they speak to us on so many levels all at once, and they clearly represent yet another dimension to facilitate our learning of the Course, by re-casting it in the framework of Gary's conversations with his friends, the ascended masters Arten and Pursah. Gary's experiences with Arten and Pursah, and with learning the Course, on one level are nothing but a dramatization of our own learning opportunities with the Course, inviting us to empathize, and identify with Gary as Course student par excellence, as he goes through his own slapstick routines of Course learning. Clearly, in preparing this little book Lucía has discovered yet another dimension in which this material operates, which she reflects in her choice of title. Not only was the Course spoken to Helen Schucman, the 365 quotes from the Course were again spoken through Gary's books during his conversations with Arten & Pursah. And Lucía heard the spoken quality in those quotes, in particular also because of the context of the Thomas Gospel  which permeates Gary's work, in as much as his own discovery of having been Thomas in a prior life, as well as Pursah representing the recollection of that lifetime, which is obviously central to the book. Throughout Gary's books the focus is on what "J" really did say, 2000 years ago as recorded by Thomas, and today in the form of ACIM, and to clear away the clutter of subsequent interpretation and distortion, and to get back to what the words were meant to say as they were spoken by the speaker. The Thomas Gospel is fast becoming the symbol of hearing the authentic teaching of Jesus, before the distortions of it began to accumulate in the narrative Gospel tradition which came later, and which was never again to get out from under the heavy editorial influence of Paul, whose first letters are contemporaneous with the Gospel according to Mark, which in and of itself has perhaps the least amount of Pauline influence, but nevertheless already shows some of the influences that were to distort the teachings of the living Jesus into the dead body of Christian dogma (eucharist etc.). Pursah's kernel of the 70 authentic sayings in the Thomas Gospel help us find the "historical" Jesus in pure form, free of the materials that were added on later. In Spoken Miracles, Lucía hears a kernel of the Course, almost as a sayings tradition, which can speak to us in a very direct way as a refresher of the Course - though it could also be an introduction to the Course. The book represents Pursah's Cliff-notes for A Course In Miracles, and as such it is a wonderful way to straighten us out, if we get wrapped around the axle with the ego's complications again. Lucía's own introduction is fascinating, and may serve to make the material accessible to many seekers. No doubt few might have wandered as widely and at such a young age as Lucía has, starting with studying a form of Gnosticism at age 13, but as she meandered through various spiritual and religious traditions, she touches seemingly on anything that is around in the contemporary landscape, including a brush with the dogmatic certainty of fundamentalist judgment and the Leave Behind series, to which Gary also offers some choice comments in the course of his books. The Course itself emphasizes in the first entry of the Manual for Teachers, that God's Teachers come from anywhere and everywhere, from any religion or no religion, and in that spirit Lucía's wide ranging explorations will offer many readers the opportunity to recognize themselves in her, and thus to hear again the still small voice inside, which leads us to truth in the end. Reading the book is a mind-blowing experience, for even if we already realized the rich crystalline structure of the Course, until Gary came along, most of us would have thought a popular introduction to the Course was an impossibility, and a meaningful summarization equally an impossible task, except that it turns out that DU, like a Russian doll, contained this supposedly impossible summarization. It just took Lucía's faithful scribal work to free it up from its rough shape and to polish the diamond. This resulting little gem of a book truly astound us with the brilliance of the Course on yet another level, as impossible as that seems. I've studied the Course for too long to venture a guess how this book would strike someone who came to it without a knowledge from the Course, it seems to me that very much like the sayings of Thomas it would evoke a hunger to know and understand more of the thought system that was being implied more than explained in them, in which case it could lead people to the Course. As a refresher for long standing Course students, it is definitely... well... if I may say so: refreshing! It could be used as the thoughts for the day for a year long refresher program, or also simply read, or you could dabble in it. Last, not least, this book is also a great buy at $9.95, and in a way it provides a more portable Course than the portable Course - the small format edition of the Course from the original publishers, which is still more luggable than portable. So for a weekend trip take this one along if you are traveling light!  And I supect that just like The Disappearance of the Universe itself serves as an introduction to the Course for many people, this little book too may become a first invitation to the Course for a great many people - kind of a no risk trial.

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