Docetism revisited after the Course

The other day my reading of The Book of Andrew caused a sort of a flash of recognition of the meaning of docetism post ACIM, simply because the details of the story are a bit at odds with the Gary Renard material, but internally the teaching is very consistent with A Course in Miracles. The form of our experience of Jesus is a function of our mind, the content is the Holy Spirit's... and for that docetism is merely a somewhat dated, overly theological explanation.

In parallel, I was working on the translation of Margot Krikhaar's The Great Liberation, specifically the final part of Chapter 6, where she talks about the meaning of Jesus in the Course in the context of the two levels. Margot discusses the issue very much in line with what Ken Wapnick has said about Helen Schucman's experience in this regard, in Absence from Felicity,his biography of Helen. Ken's favorite expression for this phenomenon is: "Jesus is a What that looks like a who, as long as you think you're a who," or in the words of the Course, Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. In terms of our individual experience what this means is that Jesus always seems very familiar, sometimes in surprising ways, but his presence comes with a deep awareness of authenticity and authority, that is beyond question because at some deeper level we recognize our own. Here is what Margot says:

 The ‘paradox’ of the person of Jesus who is so important in the context of a non-dualistic teaching, can newly be explained on the basis of the two levels on which the Course is written. You could say that ‘Jesus’ belongs on level two of the Course—the practical level where the Course meets us in our present experience of ourselves as a person in relationship with other persons. As a result the in and of itself completely abstract love can appear to us as a person. As one who for many in the Western world has become the personification of complete and boundless love: Jesus.

Metaphysically (on level one of the Course) this Jesus is only symbolic. As a ‘person’ he is part of the dream. But as we saw earlier (see paragraph 3.3) in fact everything in the dream is a symbol, and what matters is what the symbol points to, to fear (ego) or love (God). Jesus is a powerful symbol that points directly towards the Love of God. In other words: the form ‘Jesus’ is purely a symbol and not real in and of itself, but the ‘content’ is altogether real. And exactly because of that content is the symbol so powerful and effective.

From a metaphysical point of view, hearing Jesus’ voice means that someone’s mind (like that of Helen Schucman) is able to reach so high that it reaches the very highest levels of consciousness that is possible within the realm of perception. That is the level that lies just below the truth. This level of consciousness therefore is also the highest level of perception, right before it is transformed into knowledge. Knowledge, or Heaven, is not consciousness, but a pure and completely loving ‘being’ or oneness. (Margot Krikhaar, The Great Liberation, Chapter 6.7)

It all boils down to understanding the relationship of content and form, of a non-dualistic reality versus a very dualistic world of perception that we think we live in. The ancient theological struggles over the divinity of Jesus, which rested on such passages as the discussions of the apostles in the Acts of John, about how different their respective experiences of Jesus were (post the resurrection), gave rise to the construct of docetism. Predictably, it was roundly rejected by the church, because it was closer to the truth than the mythology they created about Jesus, as the person who died on the cross, and then experienced a bodily resurrection, in which case he would only have one body and look the same to all. Having said that, the modern explanation based on the metaphysics of the Course contains a way of reconciling both, to a degree which was never before possible. The key insight is the notion that duality is metaphor--everything in this world of appearances is only... an appearance, a perception, and never the truth. Thus the appearance is colored by the mind of the perceiver, as it does not have objective reality of any kind, but the abstract truth that is expressed is the same everywhere regardless of the appearance.

This is how at one point Helen had a dream of Jesus, in which she found that he looked like Bill Thetford. When she expressed her surprise, Jesus responded: "Who else would I look like?" I.e. of course he would appear "somehow familiar" to us. This is the same in the discussion in the Acts of John, he looks different to all of them, but completely familiar and authentic at the same time.
Helen Schucman's Jesus was an ace in advanced statistics, knew his King James Version, was a student of Shakespeare, and for the sake of Bill he also knew the Bhagavadgita very well. He spoke English. After all if Jesus really is who he is, why wouldn't he speak your language? Learning to recognize his voice in whatever form is part of our learning process in the Course in developing our relationship with our own inner teacher.

Through these experiences, and by accepting these differences in form, we learn to tune into content more than form, which is essential to learning to follow the guidance of our own inner teacher, and learning to distinguish his voice from the voice of the ego.

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.

On Giving Birth

What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack the guiltless? What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness? What has been given you, even in its infancy, is in full communication with God and you. In its tiny hands it holds, in perfect safety, every miracle you will perform, held out to you. The miracle of life is ageless, born in time but nourished in eternity. Behold this infant, to whom you gave a resting place by your forgiveness of your brother, and see in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, not to the cross, but to the resurrection and the life. (ACIM:T-19.IV.C.10)

Observant people have often realized that dying is a continual process, that is entirely part of this life. Just look back, how many phases of your life have completely died off, and it feels now as if you were a different person then, and yet, when you lost that job, that relationship, or some other situation, it seemed like death, like a huge loss, like a sacrifice, but the facts prove that it was not, if you learn to forgive and let go. Or, if you want to give in to our sado/masochist tendencies, you can spend the rest of your life beating yourself up about the past and making yourself miserable. We certainly have that option, but it's a choice. Plato discusses the fear of death beautifully in pointing out that we're merely on this side of a door, and cannot see the other side until we pass through, but it's not the end, and he also clearly understand that throughout our lives we pass through such doors of transition in the psychological sense, the death of the body is merely another one of those. Reflecting on this more deeply, we might begin to understand why dying is a psychological process. By the same logic giving birth is a psychological process. It all boils down to the choice between the ego or the Holy Spirit as our teachers, and the choice happens continuously in every moment, except we're not usually aware of it. The essence of the choice is between form and content, between the body or spirit, between manifest and latent, between duality and oneness, murder or love, death or life etc. The point being that forms (Saturn) are constructs of time and space, which only exist temporarily, and sooner or later all waste away, and if we dedicate our lives to preserving form we commit ourselves to dying with them, while the choice for life is the choice for spirit, in which we realize that form does not matter and the Holy Spirit will give us whatever forms to work with that are most useful at the time, until they go and we move on.

In mythology the image of "son" is often used to symbolize the effect of our choices, just like in real life (as any good family therapist will tell you) the children mirror their own choices back to the parents, and this is why children can be so maddening if the parents live in denial in any way shape or form. At some point most parents become aware that children have the annoying habit of learning what you do, not what you say, and to that extent clearly the children are helping the parents grow up, more so than the other way around. The Dutch spiritual teacher J. W. Kaiser (JWK) calls children in this sense our "self of tomorrow," quite in the spirit of "by their fruits shall ye know them." In short, what we experience reflects our choices at this level, and our experience in life in that sense is our son, who reflects back to us what we choose to be. Kaiser's brilliant translation, commentary, and explanation of the Gospel according to Mark, (Beleving van het Evangelie, not available in English). Kaiser understood that what mattered about the story is hardly the manifest content, as Paul and eventually Christianity would have it, but the latent, or inner meaning of the story, which of course merely reflects what is going on in the mind, and which can become clear to us through experience if we ourselves make the inner choice to follow Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, as no doubt he did in order to be able to read the book in the way he did.

The rest is very simple in every situation we have a choice of teacher (in the terminlogy of A Course in Miracles), or "father" in terms of the Biblical myths. Our soul (Mary/Miriam - etymologically meaning "in revolt, in uprising" as per JWK) when it rises up to the dictates of time, and begins looking for "another way" (as did Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford in the developments that led to ACIM- See Ken Wapnick's Absence from Felicity), and in this condition we will realize that we may be "betrothed" to a figure in time (Joseph, again as per JWK), but we are not fulfilled by what the Course calls special relationships, our deepest longing and our life's purpose can only be fulfilled by choosing the Holy Spirit, who thus becomes the Father, of what we ourselves are then becoming, as reflected in the quotation from ACIM above. Forgiveness is the process where this birth takes place, again and again and again, when we choose against the ego past as the father of our life of tomorrow (symbolized by Joseph in the story), and for the Holy Spirit as the father of our "child." And so the way of the spirit is a matter of active choice, choice for content over form, in full awareness that forms come and go, and in letting go of our attachment to them, what is eternal in us will be reborn to us - the theme of Gary Renard's book Your Immortal Reality.

In terms of the Thomas Gospel, there are many sayings which reflect this choice possibility, such as Logion 13, and Logion 42, "Be passersby," which puts us in the position of observer of "our life" so that we can start seeing it, rather than being it, and thereby put ourselves in a position to make another choice through forgiveness, and so letting the Holy Spirit run our life, instead of the ego, which merely wants us to play the hero of the story, and to act on the manifest content, and continue to keep us mindlessly and permanently embroiled in the world. So living in the now in this sense means not responding to situations from the past, but truly approaching every day, and every moment like it is the beginning of the rest of your life, and deciding if you want to continue in ego-hell, which is form first, never mind the content (murder), or choose the Holy Spirit instead, which means content (spirit) first, and leaving the form to Him, and assume the way back to Heaven, where all nice childern (all of us, whenever we're ready) go.

The Original or a Copy?

The central theme that always attracted me to the notion of the Thomas Gospel was the idea that it was closer to the original, than the later descriptions of Jesus which we know from the New Testament. I always like to make clear that there's nothing wrong with liking Paul's version, but I do wonder did he HAVE to call it Christianity? Why not be honest and call it Paulinity? Oh well, it would be a little late to change that now, so let's just leave that as a joke, which is how I intended it: seriously tongue in cheek. But you get my point.

In the last thirty years or so a small but growing group of people are finding a connection to the voice which the recognize as Jesus' through A Course In Miracles, which saw the light in 1975. And it did not take for too long or the book gave rise to whole shelves full of literature. The vast majority of that literature quotes the book for the author's own purposes, and simply uses Course material out of context. No doubt all of this happens with the best intentions, but that does not guarantee anything. The standout among the crowd of Course literature undoubtedly is Ken Wapnick, who originally helped Helen Schucman to prepare the book for print, and who always had an affinity for teaching this material. His books are the standard, and their forte is that they do not EVER add anything to the Course, but essentially always explains the Course with the Course, Ken just knows it so well, he is always able to pull together related materials and help you deepen your understanding. When he does speak about other things, it is in a manner of re-integrating those from a Course perspective, never mixing up the Course. He is also thoroughly modest, because he fully understands that the very point of his teaching work is NOT to add anything to the Course, but simply help people understand it. This is why he's been heard to say when people ask him to write his biography, that it's irrelevant, and he frequently jokes about his workshops, and why people keep coming back, as he says the same thing all the time.

And then there's Gary Renard, to whose work I owe so much. The series title for his books could have been "A Course in Miracles for Dummies," in the understanding that we're all dummies when we start the Course. Gary's claim to fame is that he explains the Course in the vernacular, and that's fair. But it's also the context of the books that makes the Course more approachable, we the readers are simply identifying with the hero of these adventures, and learning the Course along with him. To make it easy and eliminate all sorts of undesirable associations, he calls Jesus simply "J". His books are very much "real life," really the adventure stories of by now about 20 years of Gary's life, as he is learning the Course. They are irreverent, fun, occasionally almost slapstick comedy, and they offer us all plenty of chances to identify with the hero of the story and learn from his experiences.

The rest of the books about the Course tend to run from outright attempts to argue that the Course says things it does not say, even though the book is of amazing consistency, to books which use ideas and concepts from the Course in the context of their author's own presentation, which is OK, though it can be problematic if there seems to be a suggestion that such books represent the Course, when they clearly do not. Like so many people my initial coming to the Course went via another author, Jerry Jampolsky, whose books I devoured within a month in '91, and by that time I was wondering why I wasn't reading the Course itself instead of the numerous quotes in those books, and then, when I did start reading the Course, I found out that it was saying something very different than the way I had found it quoted in those books. In much the same way, Marianne Williamson brought more people to the Course than anybody else, but she uses it in her own way. I'm personally not too interested in most of that "almost" Course literature, and I get much more about say reading Alan Kershaw's biography of Hitler, as a way of realizing just how the ego mind works, and again, looking at it in a very different light.

But, this current experience is also higly illustrative of what happened in the gap between Jesus and Paul. And it should be emphasized that the thing we know as Christianity was only one of thousands of flavors who all considered themselves Christians. If you actually took the trouble to read Paul's letters, you would find there his gradual development of his interpretation of Jesus. And while Christianity may work for many people, if it's Jesus you're interested in, again, as long as you can get the original, why get the copy? The Germans had a beautiful expression for cheap plastic knockoffs arriving from Hong Kong and Japan in the postwar years, "Ganz wie echt aber viel schöner." (Just like the real thing, but much nicer). That says it all. This ties in with e.g. Logion 113 of Thomas, where Jesus says, as the disciples ask him when the Kingdom will come, "It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Behold here,' or 'Behold there.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it." And so the best way for the ego to defend against the Kingdom is to ratchet up the production of knockoffs, so that we should continue not to see it, and be distracted by cheap substitutes of our own making, so much so that the substitutes are wildly more popular. The only difference now is that the Course is widely available, and has already sold millions of copies, not to mention is currently available in 18 languages, although there are knockoffs available too. So if you want to read it, get yourself the 3rd edition from the Foundation for Inner Peace, who are the original publishers authorized by Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford, and fully endorsed by them. Stick to the original.

To come back to Paul one moment, once you start getting it why Jesus is talking about something else altogether, it would also seem understandable why his teaching would get distorted. The gap between Jesus (33CE) and the Pauline letters in itself was only 30 years, and if the Thomas gospel is from 50CE and the letters from Paul starting in 60-65CE, that was 10-15 years out of that total span. The notion of Pursah in Gary's books is by implication that the sayings collection grew from the ca 70/71 she regards as authentic, to the 114 that were found at Nag Hammadi, by picking up extra material that was not originally part of it.
♦

Love Does Not Condemn

This is the book. The subtitle spells it out. In a way, if Ken Wapnick has a magnum opus, this is it. It is not for the faint of heart, but others will inhale this material, for it puts our entire Western spiritual/religious framework into a completely new perspective.

More than many other authors, Ken has the profound erudition in the Western intellectual tradition to understand the full scope of the intellectual context of the Course. For some, this may appear to be of passing interest only, but for many others this is very relevant indeed as our study of the Course deepens. Seen at an abstract level, the Course appears to be Advaita Vedanta for the West and with one very important twist, namely that the manifest world is not lent credence at all, as it does in Advaita by seeing it as a Divine play, but rather as a manifestation, a projection in physical form, of the "tiny mad idea" of the separation only. In other words, the world is only what the perceiver, who conceives of himself as separate from the all, perceives, and is a reflection of the erroneous thought process, that takes physical form only because of the separation thought itself, and has no external cause. This turns out to be crucial, as in a way this leaves even Advaita Vedanta with a compromise to dualistic thinking, granting some limited objectivity to the world of form - i.e. the world, although being seen as an illusion, and a silly play, is not our illusion, but is conceived in the mind of the godhead, etc. therefore my changing my mind is not enough. The Course is completely radical in seeing that the only source of the world is illusory itself, being only the tiny misthought, which it refers to as "the tiny mad idea," as if anything at all could be separate from God. And so our only problem is the healing of our own misperception, and what is needed is our willingness to find "another way" of looking at this world. And thus for A Course in Miracles, it's all in the mind, and therein lies the rub. With this little introduction, I want to simply highlight some of the exciting historical explorations in this book.

The terms for the subtitle were taken from a seventeenth century version of the Book of Common Prayer, which says the following: "From fornication, and all other deadly sin; and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil, Good Lord, deliver us." And anybody who has been around the Jewish or Christian faiths, and their institutionalization of guilt, will immediately appreciate how central these concepts are. At least in the tradition of A Course in Miracles, it is clear how we are to be delivered of these evils, namely by relinquishing our investment in their reality, for as with all demons, they are brought to life and kept alive only by our faith in them, while Jesus teaches only forgiveness of our sins. The explorations of this book really deepen the message of the Course, by demonstrating how Jesus in its pages not only offers correction of certain Biblical passages and concepts, or our interpretation thereof, but how at a much deeper level, it deals with a number of themes peculiar to Western spirituality and religion, and resolves many issues where Western thought has been stuck at various times. And it is important to remember that very much in line with the thinking C.G. Jung expressed on this point, that if we were born in the West, it would probably be helpful to resolve our issues in the context of Western traditions, since we can only resolve the issues on the level where they occur. Jung meant his comments as a counterweight to the fashionable flight to Eastern spiritualities. The title of this book sets the tone immediately in line with the thought system of ACIM, in that it is a teaching of love, and non-judgment, non-condemnation, or, to put it positively, forgiveness. The dedication of the book is worth quoting as well:

To all "Gnostics"--past, present, and to come--who seek to know God through understanding this world's purpose, striving to realize, in the words of the oft-qouted Valentinian formula, that "what liberates is the knowledge of who we were, what we became; where we were, whereinto we have been thrown; whereto we speed, wherefrom we are redeemed; what birth is and what rebirth" (Excerpta ex Theodoto)

Thus in the typical quaint language of that time this highlights a path of inner inquiry, in a spirit we also find in ACIM, expressed in the second century gnostic teacher Valentinus, whose teachings are known to us only in fairly fragmentary form, but bear close resemblance to the Course in some respects. Ken then balances this statements, which a quote from the Course, which explains the title of the book:

The body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and can use it lovingly, respecting what the son of God has made and using it to save him from illusions.
(A Course in Miracles)

For the rest, while there is no way to truly do this book justice in any reasonable length post, I'll offer an overview of its content with a few hopefully helpful comments. Part I, The Introduction covers the necessary background in Gnosticism, the Platonic traditions, the Early Church, and the gradual development of the antagonism between the church and the gnostics in the second century CE. All of these things are really covered in amazing detail, and their chief importance is again to gain an appreciation of how deeply many of the themes of the Course are a precise counter point to patterns woven into the fabric of the Western tradition, and how the Course properly understood proposes a very sophisticated resolution of many long standing philosophic/religious questions, frequently breaking through all categories. Also interesting is the realization how much e.g. the second century Gnostic teacher Valentinus really prefigured the Course, among other things in the myth stemming from his school saying that Jesus was off on the side laughing under a tree during the crucifixion--emphasizing again the resurrection as a spiritual event, not to mention as something that preceded the crucifixion, as many Gnostics in fact believed. Thus Jesus would have known at the time of the Crucifixion that he was not his body, and that even this violence could not affect who he truly was. Therefore he would not have been the vicarous sacrificial offering to a cruel God the father, but rather a wisdom teacher, demonstrating what he taught by living it, namely that that he was not his body, but spirit. What is clear by the end of this introductory section is that by the end of the 2nd century the free intermingling of "gnostic" ideas within the general budding Christian tradition is ending, with a polarization of the Gnostics, emphasizing inner experience of truth, as the more unruly crowd, who begin to be expelled more and more from the now forming orthodoxy, with the Church emerging as the winner, by every available means including book destruction, etc. In this context the Gnostics became mostly convenient scapegoats, against which the Church could define the right belief (ortho-doxy).

In Section IIa, the book develops the versions of the "creation myth" in Platonism, Christianity, and Gnosticism, showing strands both dualistic and non-dualistic thinking, demonstrating in depth how the more inward focused worlds of Gnostic and Platonic thought intermingled with emerging Christian thought. It is in the 9th chapter, about Jesus, that some of the formational themes in the development of early Christianity get an airing, in particular the principal difference between the Gnostic schools seeing the resurrection as an inner development, and something that preceded the crucifixion, versus the then emerging proto-Christian orthodoxy, which with Paul thinks of the resurrection mostly as a bodily event, which happens only after the crucifixion. It is very helpful for us to understand that these different positions were being widely debated in these early years. Another very important discussion is the one about Docetism, dealing with the question to what extent Jesus was or was not his body, or he only appeared in a body, which includes discussions of such gems as the Acts  of John, where the apostles discuss the differences in their respective experiences of Jesus. Again, exploring all of these precedents would give us a deeper appreciation that the later positions of the Course have deep roots in a long tradition, and address issues that people have struggled with for the last 2000 years, even though for long periods of time certain "orthodox" notions appeared to limit the questioning and the debate. As we can understand with the benefit of hindsight, such periods of quiet meant not that all questions had been answered, just more or less effectively suppressed.

This section concludes with a chapter on "Practical Implications," showing how all these different strains of thinking under the broader umbrella of Christian thought, resulted in widely differing lifestyles, again modeling all of the differing attitudes which we may recognize in students of ACIM to different degrees, if they run off half-cocked with a partial understanding of the Course. To start, it is noteworthy how little currency some dominant points of Christian practice seem to get in Gnostic circles, or at least how different they are in their interpretation, this applies to baptism, anointing. The eucharist barely makes a showing. The theme of The Bridal Chamber as an expression of spiritual "marriage" shows up, which prefigures the notion which in the Course gets the name of the Holy Relationship. This part of the discussion is therefore really about religious rites and symbols, then follows a discussion of moral concepts and behaviors, all resulting from different ways of looking at the world and our position in it, and varying from deliberate libertinism to ascetism to moderation, and some of these are truly interesting, such as the Gnostic libertines who essentially reasoned that since the world was not real, it was their sacred duty to break all the moral norms and act out. Ascetism then is the opposite mistake, instead of acting out because the world is unreal, it reflects a resolve of fighting the world and its hold over us, which of course likewise makes the problem real. Finally there is also a tradition of moderation. Next, in a further exploration of Platonism, Plotinus is perhaps the most interesting, for he focuses on a contemplative life, not on doing good deeds so much as through contemplation to arrive at a position where one cannot help but do good deeds.

The last third of the book addresses the position of A Course in Miracles, providing in fact an integration of all of the strands that were left dangling in these various traditions into a very different and amazingly coherent viewpoint, making the Course an intricate cauda to Western philosophical and spiritual tradition. As addressed at the outset, for the Course it is essential to understand that it's all in the mind, and that the world merely is the stage of our physical experience, but only a projection from the mind, not an objective reality. Thus the idea of separation happens in the mind, and this also makes salvation even possible, for if we made a mistake, and the implication is we can correct it, and the Course's position is that we overcome our futility by realizing we did not commit a sin which is incapable of change, but made a mistake which can be fixed. And the fundamental nature of fixing it is in taking responsibility for having made it, even if we seem clueless about the hows and whys and wherefores. The method of the Course is to experientially put us in touch with the minds ability to change--change our mind, or metanoia in NT Greek--so that it teaches us not mere theory, but a path of experience which helps us reintegrate our real self, instead of the proverbial idol worship which is essentially the world of the ego. For the ego always chases something that is not me, some idol outside of me, and that keeps me completely engaged in the world, oblivious to the fact that I have a mind which is capable of change. The Course says about this: "The secret of salvation is but this, that I am doing this unto myself." (ACIM:T-27.VIII.10:1)

In the Epilogue the book finally summarizes the Course's integration of all these strands of Western spiritual tradition as follows:

A Course in Miracles is such a rewrite of Christian theology (as suggested in a preceding quote from Helmut Koester, reflecting on the impact of Nag Hammadi), in the context of the Neoplatonic and Gnostic traditions, cleansed and expanded by the insights of twentieth century psychology. Thus the old wine of traditional Christianity has been reconstituted in new wineskins, its "old schemes" looked at freshly, and presented anew to eyes and ears receptive to the form of its message. Indeed, the Course can be thought of as the zenith of Western philosophical and religious thought, reconciling the paradox that has virtually imprisoned us in thought systems that reflected our conflicted experience in a world from which we could not truly escape. Holding the key that unlocks this prison door, the Course heals these conflicts of the past, freeing us to build upon its foundation a new beginning, turning the corner on a journey that will carry us ever closer to our God.

That paragraph alone would make it all worthwhile. And while some will not have the patience for this voluminous material, it is important to realize that indeed all these "strands" as I called them before, are somehow present in our spiritual DNA, and that indeed A Course in Miracles is an integration of it all, regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not. The Course certainly is intellectually very profound, but it does not demand that we become scholars of comparative religion, philosophy, psychology, let alone all three. The present book is a tour de force that manages to do all this, and for those of us who are so inclined, it offers endless exciting vistas into the deep structure of the Course's thought system and its roots in Western thought. We end up with a paranoramic, or maybe I should say symphonic, view of Western tradition, in which the Course now forms the cauda which picks up all of the loose ends, and brings it to a rousing conclusion. And finally of course it all ends in a whimper, when we do accept the atonement for ourselves, and realize that all of this was "much ado about nothing." Gratitude to Ken Wapnick as its author, and the pre-eminent teacher of the Course is certainly in order.

That Was the Week that Was

I admit it, I borrowed that title from a song by Tom Lehrer. Just for contrast, we might remember his hilarious, sarcastic song, National Brotherhood Week. We've come a long way, baby.

In the last 10 days, I've been having flashbacks to how as a 12 year old I would devour the newspapers, and followed the Civil Rights movement blow by blow, while eating up whatever books of MLK that were available in Dutch. I'd lay sprawled on the floor in our living room, always the first to grab the papers (we had no TV when I grew up). So many years later, I just watched MLK's I had a dream speech for the umpteenth time, on the website of ACIM monk, who adds to it a wonderful quote from Ken Wapnick on the meaning of Jesus' teaching. And then I realize that back while I was sprawled on the floor reading about all this, somewhere in Rotterdam, Holland, Ken Wapnick, who was later to become my principal teacher of A Course in Miracles, was there, for he too recognized the greatness and truth which radiated from MLK, and he was able to join in. So somewhere in idea space, paths crossed even then, which later were to cross again in the physical world, long before I had any clue at all that I would be living in the USA at this time, when Barack Obama became the 44th president. And ACIM monk provided us with a brilliant reflection on the inaugural address too, to which I could hardly add anything, so I won't try.

As I've shared here before, MLK led me to Gandhi, and a deeper understanding of non-violence, so that ultimately I became a conscientious objector when the draft came calling. Subsequently my reading wandered on to Krishnamurti, who in retrospect seems to have been a perfect preparation of the Course, just as much as Johan Willem Kaiser pointed me the way towards understanding that Jesus' teaching was about living his truth, and learning by experience what it was he stood for. His look at Jesus was almost exactly the same thing as the quote from Ken Wapnick which ACIM monk put next to the I had a dream video.  Looking back at this now I see the threads running through that carpet of time, which I call my life, in a way that tells me you can't miss it. No wonder then that I should get involved with the Thomas gospel, for from its pages speaks the living Jesus, and if you take your time with it, it is as if he's speaking to you, the reader, directly, leading us to that inner understanding of the experience of truth which he represents, and wants to share with us. And our relationship with him becomes real when we realize it's in the present tense, and not about some figure in history. In that realization lies the resurrection.

A Vast Illusion

 The discussion of the holographic model of our experiential world, the "universe," in this context would not be complete without mentioning this book by Ken Wapnick, which is the most comprehensive summary of the things A Course in Miracles  teaches about the phenomenal world of time and space, and is therefore also pertinent to a discussion of Gary Renard's work. As the case may be, the very lively dialog that makes up Gary's books actually covers the subject in a casual way, but nevertheless manages to be fairly comprehensive, the only problem being it's strewn all over the books. The problem is similar with the Course itself, because it has a symphonic structure, and if you want to explore this topic, in A Vast Illusion you find it all in one place.

The book dates from 1990 and is based on an original set of classes at the Foundation for A Course in Miracles, when it was still located in Crompond, NY, which at some time had been released as a tape set. In the introduction the book warns that it is not meant for students not familiar with the basic tenets of A Course In Miracles, its purpose being rather to assist the long term student in pulling together into one picture all of the materials about the metaphysics of time from across all three books. As best as possible I'll summarize here what the book covers. It really falls into three parts, I, The Origin and Nature of Time, II, The Plan of the Atonement - The Miracle, and III The End of Time.

This is one of those topics in the Course that makes you realize it was no accident when Helen Schucman, a super bright intellectual herself, said at the end of her dictation experience which produced the Course: " Finally God for intellectuals."  The treatment of this particular topic definitely falls into that category. Yet somewhere along the way you also come to realize that your failure to understand these things is not a limitation of your intellect, but fear. For in the process the Course completely reframes all of what we thought we understood of ourselves, and more often than not do the things we seem to fail to grasp at first become clear in experiences we have based on actually practicing what the Course says. And therein ultimately lies the point of the teaching that:  "No rules are idly set, and no demands are made of anyone or anything to twist and fit into the dream of fear. Instead, there is a wish to understand all things created as they really are. And it is recognized that all things must be first forgiven, and then understood." (ACIM:T-30.V.1: 4-6) In other words as long as we keep hanging on to the ego's narrow framework, we are our own biggest impediment to understanding anything at all. Yet when we do take the leap, suddenly everything appears crystal clear. So different from the ego's obfuscations--which "twist and fit things into the dream of fear"-- and where oftentimes the "mysteries of the faith"  are cited to prevent us from questioning the exact points where the ego does not make sense, what is on offer here is a higher level of understanding that comes as we let go of those contorted answers that tried in vain to fit things " into the dreams of fear." The answers come as we let go of the narrow frame of reference that blocked our sight for too long already.

The first section of the book basically pulls together the underpinnings of the metaphysics of time and space, as they are presented in the Course. The resulting model is a holographic representation which aligns closely with the models of the experiential world that have emerged from quantum mechanics, with one important additional step: the big bang in fact is the physical manifestation of the projection of guilt from the mind, and the practical expression of the separation thought. This may seem baffling at first, when you read it like this, but actually giving it a try and practicing forgiveness as the Course suggests it, can put us in touch with a growing awareness that this whole concept makes sense, and is validated in those experiences.

This automatically brings us to the 2nd part of the book, the Plan of the Atonement, or the forgiveness process as taught by the Course, which is the "plan" of the Holy Spirit to help us let go of the sin, guilt, and fear, which we think define our existence, since after all we think we are really here. To put it differently, the ego thought, the thought of separation culminates in a feeling of loneliness in a bodily identity, combined with a profound existential guilt, that is ultimately grounded in the sense that we "threw it all away," and so we are caught in the Catch-22 of wanting to reaffirm the reality of who we are not (i.e. the role we play in the dream that is this life), spending all our energy on the persistent temper tantrum to prove that we're here and important, all of which reinforces the feeling of guilt about the separation.  The only way out must come from outside that self-reinforcing delusional system, and this is represented in the Course as the Holy Spirit, our memory of Heaven, and Jesus as the manifestation thereof, by virtue of the fact that he has fully identified with the Holy Spirit in remembering who he is in truth, and showing us how we can regain that memory too, by following him in the daily practice of living and the constant application of forgiveness, thus choosing incrementally to return to the original moment of the cosmic choice for the " tiny mad idea"  of the separation, and to make the other choice, for forgiveness, Love and the Holy Spirit, thus undoing the ego's belief system and the world of separation upheld by it.

And part III then covers the culmination of this whole process within the dream in what the Course calls the Real World, i.e. the experience of living in the knowledge of the Atonement, that nothing really happened, and all is forgiven. This also implies living in the full awareness of the primacy of spirit, and according no reality to the physical universe other than as a conduit for teaching, and helping our brothers. The final end of the process is what the Course calls God's Last Step, or the complete return to the oneness of the Father and the Son.

The end result of this whole presentation is a very complete and crystal clear metaphysics, in which it is seen that the entire experience of time and space, is nothing but an occurrence within the mind, which gives expression to the thought of separation, but is never real, only an illusion, upheld only by the strenuous efforts of our ego's to justify it, which we do by continuing to project the cause for the mess of our lives onto other people, starting with our parents, and continuing with all those who are nearest and dearest to us, or if the need arises our enemies, which can justify anything and everything. This illusion seems vast to us, but Jesus in the Course pokes fun at us and our self-importance by referring to the separation idea, as nothing but a "tiny, mad idea."  (ACIM:T-19.IV.C.5:6)

Absence from Felicity

Here is another book that was mentioned in Closing the Circle, and I have sofar not discussed in full on this site. I doubt anyone would read this book unless they were already interested in the Course, and for as much it is a biography, it is really about the Course which would seem to have been the defining event of Helen Schucman's life and work. Actually, the publishers of A Course in Miracles, the Foundation for Inner Peace, have a lot of material now available on-line on their recent new website, and one important audio segment is Helen's discussion of the Voice, which would make it clear to any one why Helen's years with the Course were to her the defining experience of her life.

This biography is very much in depth, and it could only conceivably be written by one who understood Helen and the Course very deeply, not to mention someone who would have to be an accomplished psychologist himself to be able to write this. Since helping Helen with preparing the Course for print, Ken Wapnick has simply become the pre-eminent teacher of the Course, and this book reflects all of that experience, and it exhaustively addresses the need of the Course student who at some point becomes interested in the context in which the Course arose. The essence of the story is simply that besides all of the evident (with the benefit of hindsight) seeds that were present in the lives of Helen and Bill, the fundamental point is that they were in a professional situation that was rife with conflict, jealousies, including a fair amount of tension between the two of them. Professionally Bill was a professor of Medical Psychology at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, and Helen was a Research Professor under him, and they had their offices in the Black building at West 168th Street in Manhattan. So they were in New York, the Empire City, highly symbolic of all the world has to offer, good and bad. And one day they found themselves completely fed up with the professional tensions they had to deal with, and prior to going to a meeting at another facility, Bill voiced this to Helen in the now famous "another way" speech, in which he simply expressed to her that there had to be another way of relating to people and much to her own surprise, never mind his, Helen spontaneously agreed to help him find it. It was not too long after that that the Course started making itself manifest to Helen's mind. The rest is history, as they say.

This book will undoubtedly satisfy any student wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the birth place and process of the Course, and it is fascinating to see how Helen's entire life prepared her for this experience, starting from the fact that she had a long standing and early attraction to Jesus and the Bible. I can almost see her as a young child going to service at a Baptist church with the family's black maid, and all the other ways in which she explored her relationship with Jesus during her life. If there is any story that is my favorite in this book, there is the dream in which she experiences a man who helps her and intuits that this is Jesus, and later when awake asks Jesus, how come he looked like Bill, and the answer is, "Who else would I look like?" In a way this is the essence of the Course, namely it ALL happens in relationships, and depending on whether we see our brothers with the ego or the Holy Spirit, our experience of them will change accordingly, until we truly understand that they are always our best way home, and we learn to recognize our savior in them, and as the Course puts it, learn to "see the face of Christ" in them, which comes only from practicing forgiveness, until we finally have no need any longer to project any guilt onto our brothers.

Also helpful is the fact that through Helen's own experiences we can see all the mistakes we ourselves tend to make in our relationship with Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit, such as trying to use them as Santa Claus, as in Helen's episodes with Jesus's Higher Shopping service, where she felt he helped her find the green panty hose she liked best, or conversely she experienced that if she was on the outs with him, she could not find anything at all. To a greater or lesser degree we've all known such episodes. If you lose something in your house, the chances of finding it are slim to none if you give in to the upset, whereas if your mind is at peace it'll just turn up when you need it. All of these episodes help to underscore the very practical meaning of the Course. Meanwhile Helen's own life also shows us why the Course's primary focus always is on seeing the ego with open eyes, and understanding honestly that it is our own resistance that prevents us from following the Course completely right away. It is a process, and this book can certainly be helpful to many.

Lastly, this book is important for the historical record, now that there are so many bootleg versions of the Course on the market, which are being promoted by unscrupulous individuals, who are achieving little but to obfuscate the message with controversy about the text of the Course itself. No author would appreciate it if the early drafts of their work were made public, and that certainly applies here. The fact that the copyright on the first edition of the Course was invalidated for technical/legal reasons has little relevance either. Once you understand the publication process of the Course, it should be clear to anyone that you always want to work with the current 3rd edition from the Foundation for Inner Peace (www.acim.org), which is the original publisher, established in conjunction with Helen and Bill, and completely faithful to their intentions. The 3rd edition includes the pamphlets that came later, The Song of Prayer, and the psychotherapy pamphlet.

"What It Says": From the Preface of A Course In Miracles

This book is a more recent contribution from Ken Wapnick, but in a lot of ways, next to A Talk Given, it may be one of the more suitable "introductory" books available from his hand, which is the main reason for including it in the reading list in my book. At the same time it is also a very useful recap for long time students.

In short, while I don't believe I quoted this book specifically in Closing the Circle, I included it in the reading list with the thought that it is highly suitable "for further reading." My book tries to be accessible for both people who had not known of the Thomas gospel before as well as for people who had not heard of A Course In Miracles before, in effect bringing the two together. Along those same lines the bibliography is trying to be helpful towards the next step to take. Simply put, if you weren't already a student of A Course In Miracles, it is a bit harder to really see the coherence of the Thomas message in the spirit of Pursah's commentaries to it, and it helps to have that frame work, and this booklet of just 75 pages, which covers the third section of the Preface to the Course is very comprehensive indeed. In fact the only word for it is exhaustive, but in Ken's inimitable style it manages to be not exhausting, but a gem. Ever since his involvement with Helen Schucman in the editing of the Course manuscript, Ken has emerged as the leading teacher of the Course, simply because he does not mix in anything else. He is a very literate person, and can and does draw from his extensive knowledge of literature and music, not to mention psychology, but his fundamental approach always is to explain the Course in it's own terms, without mixing in anything external, except for an example that can help us on our way to integrate this material. He is at it again in this book. It should be noted that in most cases, to write a 75 page booklet about 4 pages of text might seem to be overkill, but the reason it is not is that truly in these 4 pages all the seeds are planted which will flower subsequently in the 1400 pages of the Course itself, and the commentary of this book helps us to see that, for otherwise we might read right over it.

Ken compares this section to the overture to a symphony, or the prelude to an opera, and his commentary makes it clear in detail how essentially all the major themes of the Course's teaching are present in this section, and the groundwork is laid for a more exhaustive treatment later on in the text. So the foundation that is laid here begins from the beginning, which is the distinction of the Level One teaching of the Course, which is introduced with the famous lines, summarizing the Course teaching from the Introduction to A Course in Miracles:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.

It seems so simple, but most of our lives we don't get the obvious, since the ego is all about complexity. To my mind these lines always seem to be a corollary to an old Dutch saying, which in translation would sound as follows: That's why we suffers mostly here, from the suffering we fear, (My translation is slightly poetic, to preserve the rhyme, here it is in Dutch: Daarom lijdt de mens het meest van het lijden dat men vreest). The peace of God thus depends on the ability to tell apart truth and fiction, for our suffering is entirely in the realm of the illusory ego-world of projection, and the truth or realith in us can never be affected or changed by anything external. Learning to understand that viscerally is the bridge that Jesus or the Holy Spirit lead us across if we practice the teachings of the Course, which are the teachings of Jesus in modern form. The next issue which this section of the Course then addresses, is the level of our experience, so if Level One is about the abstract understanding of the difference between Heaven and the world, Level Two is about the level of our daily experience, and learning to tell the ego and the Holy Spirit apart, and learning to choose the miracle of forgiveness instead of the ego's pain.

Throughout this little book Ken connects the abstract concepts of the Course in many ways to our practical experience, such as showing how the scarcity principle, which as an expression occurs only in this section of the Preface (though the words scarcity and lack appear throughout the Course to indicate the fundamental nature of the ego thought system), finds expression in such experiential "facts" of life as addictions (never enough of xyz), and blackholes, which seem to vacuum up matter, which disappears into nothingness at that point. Evidently it is again no accident that not only were Helen and Bill, who collaborated in writing down the Course psychologists, but so is Ken, and his profound ability to help us connect the Course's teachings to our daily experience, with complete intellectual integrity is his abiding contribution to the teaching of the Course, and this little gem of a book will no doubt be helpful to many.