Since this blog revolves around my book Closing the Circle, which brings together the teachings of the book of Thomas, and A Course in Miracles, it may be helpful to post something about the Course here. With more and more material available on-line it is becoming easier to pull this together, but there's also a lot of 2nd rate stuff on-line that does not add any clarity, so as per usual, you have to know where to look... In the links section of this blog you can find a lot, but below I'm providing two links to outtakes from the 2001 PBS series "The Visionaries" which provided a remarkably good introduction to the Course, which I discovered only recently.
The Visionaries about ACIM I - Part One of a 2001 video produced for the PBS series, The Visionaries, and narrated by Sam Waterston. Filmed at the Foundation for "A Course in Miracles" former location in Roscoe, NY, and at the Foundation for Inner Peace in Tiburon, CA, this segment contains accounts of the origin of the Course by Judith Skutch Whitson, and Gloria and Kenneth Wapnick. They speak about the scribe Helen Schucman and her associate William Thetford.
The Visionaries about ACIM II - Part Two of a 2001 video produced for the PBS series, Visionaries, and narrated by Sam Waterston. Filmed at the Foundation for "A Course in Miracles" former location in Roscoe, NY, and at the Foundation for Inner Peace in Tiburon, CA, this segment contains excerpts from a class held in Roscoe, NY. Additionally, Kenneth and Gloria discuss key concepts that characterize A Course in Miracles as a unique spirituality in the world today. The comments and reflections of some students are included as well.
N.B. As is mentioned at the end of the second episode, these videos were still shot at the old facilities of the Foundation for A Course in Miracles at Roscoe, NY, but they've moved from there in 2000, so that when this was broadcast in 2001, the Foundation was already located in Temecula, Ca.
Showing posts with label FACIM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FACIM. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Serendipity Strikes - a thought of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch
In high school, the Gymnasium Erasmianum in Rotterdam (and yes, it was founded in 1328), I had the joy of taking optional classes of Hebrew in my final two years. The teacher was a professor of Semitic Languages at Utrecht, and this was a side gig for him. The theory behind the program was that those kids who might want to go and study theology, could thus prepare themselves, since in Holland it was expected that any Pastor of a church prepare the texts for the Sunday sermon always from the original languages. I noticed that I had a class full of people who, like me had no interest in studying theology, but who vaguely understood that Jesus was not a Christian, so that to begin with it made more sense to study the Old Testament in the orginal language, instead of relying on translations which were often heavily biased by later Christian theology.
After graduation I sort of fell into a hole where I could not start college because I had to do my military service first, though I became a conscientious objector and did civil service instead for 18 months. While I was waiting for my assignment I made myself useful at the old school by collaborating with said Hebrew teacher as his teaching assistant. The program was that we studied Torah in the 2nd year Hebrew class, in which I would discuss the textst on the basis of a commentary by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, while the teacher would discuss grammar and syntax in parallel from a modern linguistic standpoint. I have later had comments back from people who were in that class and loved it. And for me it was certainly the basis for beginning to form more clarity about the fact that Jesus stood in a Jewish context, and that Christianity was a later fabrication, but really an extrapolation, an interpretation, that only cited him in name, but had little to do with his teachings.
Even before my Hebrew studies I had begun to collect Judaica, and read lots of things, and who knows perhaps the first impulse for that was given when at age nine or ten some time my parents had Prof. Martin Buber over for lunch one time, who impressed me greatly. I loved his German translation of the Bible, which he did with Franz Rosenzweig, and by age 16 I had read all of his works. A jewish bookseller, Lampusiak had been following my interest in Judaica, and he sort of became my mentor any time I came browsing his store, and we would have lengthy conversations. Anytime I would want to buy a new book in the realm of rabbinical studies, he would sort of give me his equivalent of a rabbinical exam, before he allowed me to buy the book. When I wanted to buy the commentary on Psalms from S.R. Hirsch at the end of my last year of highschool, he made me come back several times before he was satisfied that I knew enough to read it. Subsequently that summer, I bought Hirsch's commentary on the Pentateuch (Torah), in Amsterdam at De Pampiere Waereld, which was an antiquarian bookseller of world-wide fame. I realized the reason these books were so prized was that they were the last few copies of the original editions that had survived the Holocaust. The edition on Psalms still even had the original binding, but the Pentateuch had suffered the fate of many books during the war, when people tore the covers off, so you could not see the titles, and it was hoped that thus the Nazi's would not see that they were Hebrew books, and pick them up to be burned.
Over time my interest in Hebrew studies lessened. And at one point in time, in 1997, I donated a good deal of my library to the Foundation for A Course in Miracles, at that time in Roscoe, New York. My editions of S. R. Hirsch went along, if nothing else because I knew that Ken Wapnick, being a good Jewish boy from Brooklyn, although gone astray in his mother's eyes, would appreciate them. Then in 2000 when the foundation was going to move to its present location at Temecula, CA, Ken called me and said they could not move the books to the new location, so did I want my books back. Ever since then I've had numerous moves, sold and given away a lot of books, but S.R. Hirsch's books stayed with me and I kept asking around to either sell them to a good dealer of Judaica, where I would be assured they'd find a dignified home, or give them to someone who truly would value them.
Fast forward to June 12th of 2009, and I had some business dealings with a lady with last name - you guessed it Hirsch. So spontaneously, I asked her if she was related. Yes indeed, she was a descendant. And so I asked her, how would she like to own an original edition of the works of Samson Raphael Hirsch. She loved it, and I knew these books had at long last found the loving home they deserved.
It gets even funnier. During the same week I was contacted via Facebook, by a distant niece, daughter of my much-reviled grand-uncle Henri Louis ("Hein"). She grew up in Switserland and lives in Montreal, and during a phone conversation was able to explain to me that the Fentener side of my family were Jewish merchants and mariners in the 16th century. I shared with her that in grade school I was friends with a jewish girl, and her father always cracked himself up, that at any time I always seemed to have several businesses going, and he would slap his knees and say, you've got to have jewish blood! The niece meanwhile seemed to have rather deep insight into the reasons why both artistic and business talents were woven into the traditions of our family and we certainly had a shared interest in the one place where all of this came together in the printing of African cotton by Vlisco, of Helmond, which since ca 1963 is no longer owned by the family, but she and I still feel that it is in our blood somehow, and both seem to have a vivid interest in West African culture.
After graduation I sort of fell into a hole where I could not start college because I had to do my military service first, though I became a conscientious objector and did civil service instead for 18 months. While I was waiting for my assignment I made myself useful at the old school by collaborating with said Hebrew teacher as his teaching assistant. The program was that we studied Torah in the 2nd year Hebrew class, in which I would discuss the textst on the basis of a commentary by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, while the teacher would discuss grammar and syntax in parallel from a modern linguistic standpoint. I have later had comments back from people who were in that class and loved it. And for me it was certainly the basis for beginning to form more clarity about the fact that Jesus stood in a Jewish context, and that Christianity was a later fabrication, but really an extrapolation, an interpretation, that only cited him in name, but had little to do with his teachings.
Even before my Hebrew studies I had begun to collect Judaica, and read lots of things, and who knows perhaps the first impulse for that was given when at age nine or ten some time my parents had Prof. Martin Buber over for lunch one time, who impressed me greatly. I loved his German translation of the Bible, which he did with Franz Rosenzweig, and by age 16 I had read all of his works. A jewish bookseller, Lampusiak had been following my interest in Judaica, and he sort of became my mentor any time I came browsing his store, and we would have lengthy conversations. Anytime I would want to buy a new book in the realm of rabbinical studies, he would sort of give me his equivalent of a rabbinical exam, before he allowed me to buy the book. When I wanted to buy the commentary on Psalms from S.R. Hirsch at the end of my last year of highschool, he made me come back several times before he was satisfied that I knew enough to read it. Subsequently that summer, I bought Hirsch's commentary on the Pentateuch (Torah), in Amsterdam at De Pampiere Waereld, which was an antiquarian bookseller of world-wide fame. I realized the reason these books were so prized was that they were the last few copies of the original editions that had survived the Holocaust. The edition on Psalms still even had the original binding, but the Pentateuch had suffered the fate of many books during the war, when people tore the covers off, so you could not see the titles, and it was hoped that thus the Nazi's would not see that they were Hebrew books, and pick them up to be burned.
Over time my interest in Hebrew studies lessened. And at one point in time, in 1997, I donated a good deal of my library to the Foundation for A Course in Miracles, at that time in Roscoe, New York. My editions of S. R. Hirsch went along, if nothing else because I knew that Ken Wapnick, being a good Jewish boy from Brooklyn, although gone astray in his mother's eyes, would appreciate them. Then in 2000 when the foundation was going to move to its present location at Temecula, CA, Ken called me and said they could not move the books to the new location, so did I want my books back. Ever since then I've had numerous moves, sold and given away a lot of books, but S.R. Hirsch's books stayed with me and I kept asking around to either sell them to a good dealer of Judaica, where I would be assured they'd find a dignified home, or give them to someone who truly would value them.
Fast forward to June 12th of 2009, and I had some business dealings with a lady with last name - you guessed it Hirsch. So spontaneously, I asked her if she was related. Yes indeed, she was a descendant. And so I asked her, how would she like to own an original edition of the works of Samson Raphael Hirsch. She loved it, and I knew these books had at long last found the loving home they deserved.
It gets even funnier. During the same week I was contacted via Facebook, by a distant niece, daughter of my much-reviled grand-uncle Henri Louis ("Hein"). She grew up in Switserland and lives in Montreal, and during a phone conversation was able to explain to me that the Fentener side of my family were Jewish merchants and mariners in the 16th century. I shared with her that in grade school I was friends with a jewish girl, and her father always cracked himself up, that at any time I always seemed to have several businesses going, and he would slap his knees and say, you've got to have jewish blood! The niece meanwhile seemed to have rather deep insight into the reasons why both artistic and business talents were woven into the traditions of our family and we certainly had a shared interest in the one place where all of this came together in the printing of African cotton by Vlisco, of Helmond, which since ca 1963 is no longer owned by the family, but she and I still feel that it is in our blood somehow, and both seem to have a vivid interest in West African culture.
Friday, October 24, 2008
In Memoriam Joe Jesseph
Joe Jesseph made his transition recently, and from what I understood he left us in a clean and non-dramatic way, through an accident with a head injury, from which he was not to recover. He was an organ donor and kept on life support to harvest any organs that were wanted, and his final remains were disposed of through the mechanism of the Neptune Society.
I post this message here as a public service, since people might wonder why his blog stopped (RalphJos on Xanga), and to simply acknowledge my great gratitude to him for his patience and thoroughness, as well as for the book he left us with, reviewing the psychology of the Course in depth and in the context of psychology overall. I am sure the book will be around for a long time. He was a great help to me many, many times, ever since I met him at the Foundation for A Course In Miracles (FACIM) when it was still in Roscoe, NY in the 1990's.
His book, which I list hereby, A Primer of Psychology according to A Course in Miracles, is destined to become practically a standard work on the psychological system of the Course. Being a psychiatrist in life, Joe had the thorough formal training and experience in the field, to appreciate just how radical Jesus's approach is, as we find it in A Course in Miracles. In this book he presents the Course's psychological system in a formal manner, with one of the key observations being from some of Ken Wapnick's workshops when he says that Jesus would use just one diagnosis, in the formal sense, namely "Son of God, separated type," noting further that our condition is pretty much a textbook case of paranoid schizophrenia, which in the normal medical sense is considered pretty well hopeless, but Jesus' forgiveness program does offer a way out of the maze of illusions. Of course having such a diagnosis in hand, would suggest to us that we should not underestimate the severity of our defenses.
I maintained a dialog with Joe for many years, and I was delighted by his undertaking of this book, particularly also because with my own psychiatrist father I had many interesting discussions on the nature of illness and healing. Very early he taught me that there was of course only "psychosomatic" illness, which was why he chose to be a psychiatrist. He dedicated his life to the spiritual dimension of healing, and I can only imagine he would have been delighted to find a formal approach to the therapeutic system of Jesus, as it is now available from the pages of ACIM. The shift that I witnessed Joe making, and then express through the pages of this book is certainly one that my father was searching for in his life. The transition is that from being a doctor to becoming a healer. All his life my father spoke of the idea that treating the symptoms was not healing, and true healing was making whole, thus expressing what the Course explains with the concept of the unhealed healer, as opposed to the teacher of God/Therapist/healer, who simply represents the thought system of wholeness and healing which Jesus gives us through the Course. Finding the Course I'm sure would have delighted my father, I would not doubt. With that in mind, I'll cherish Joe's book in the meantime.
I post this message here as a public service, since people might wonder why his blog stopped (RalphJos on Xanga), and to simply acknowledge my great gratitude to him for his patience and thoroughness, as well as for the book he left us with, reviewing the psychology of the Course in depth and in the context of psychology overall. I am sure the book will be around for a long time. He was a great help to me many, many times, ever since I met him at the Foundation for A Course In Miracles (FACIM) when it was still in Roscoe, NY in the 1990's.
His book, which I list hereby, A Primer of Psychology according to A Course in Miracles, is destined to become practically a standard work on the psychological system of the Course. Being a psychiatrist in life, Joe had the thorough formal training and experience in the field, to appreciate just how radical Jesus's approach is, as we find it in A Course in Miracles. In this book he presents the Course's psychological system in a formal manner, with one of the key observations being from some of Ken Wapnick's workshops when he says that Jesus would use just one diagnosis, in the formal sense, namely "Son of God, separated type," noting further that our condition is pretty much a textbook case of paranoid schizophrenia, which in the normal medical sense is considered pretty well hopeless, but Jesus' forgiveness program does offer a way out of the maze of illusions. Of course having such a diagnosis in hand, would suggest to us that we should not underestimate the severity of our defenses.
I maintained a dialog with Joe for many years, and I was delighted by his undertaking of this book, particularly also because with my own psychiatrist father I had many interesting discussions on the nature of illness and healing. Very early he taught me that there was of course only "psychosomatic" illness, which was why he chose to be a psychiatrist. He dedicated his life to the spiritual dimension of healing, and I can only imagine he would have been delighted to find a formal approach to the therapeutic system of Jesus, as it is now available from the pages of ACIM. The shift that I witnessed Joe making, and then express through the pages of this book is certainly one that my father was searching for in his life. The transition is that from being a doctor to becoming a healer. All his life my father spoke of the idea that treating the symptoms was not healing, and true healing was making whole, thus expressing what the Course explains with the concept of the unhealed healer, as opposed to the teacher of God/Therapist/healer, who simply represents the thought system of wholeness and healing which Jesus gives us through the Course. Finding the Course I'm sure would have delighted my father, I would not doubt. With that in mind, I'll cherish Joe's book in the meantime.
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