Reader Comments on Did Jesus really dictate A Course in Miracles to Helen?
by Greg Mackie. Read the article.
Although I am generally much more comfortable with Greg Mackie's thoughts on the Course than Ken Wapnick's, I have trouble with this one. There is no evidence that Jesus existed as a 'real' person, and much evidence that he is a borrowed myth that the Jews were exposed to in Egypt. When I first became aware of the fact that Jesus was 'only' a myth, I mourned the 'loss' of Jesus quite poignantly. But then I realized that, as the Course states, 'What dies was never living in reality, and did but mock the truth about myself' (W 248, 1, 6) — which I take to mean that the truth about God and ourselves has never required the intermediary of a human son of God... although this powerful myth has lead many of us to seek higher wisdom.
Like Ken Wapnick, I am uncomfortable with the duality implicit in Jesus dictating the course to Helen — first because Jesus is a mental construct in each of our minds in the first place, secondly because it denies the wonderful inspiration of Helen to channel her love/God's love in the form of the Course, and third because the story about 'channeling the voice of Jesus' relegates ACIM into the whacko nutty religions bin in many people's minds.
—Emily Robertson
I have a lot of respect for Ken Wapnick on some subjects, but on this one I disagree with him. If Ken's account as quoted here is true then we would have to say that Helen wrote the Course. Helen never claimed to have written the words of the Course, and most of the time, in his own teachings, Ken refers to Jesus as the author of the words, and has even referred to Jesus as "a master of words", albeit noticing Jesus is sometimes dismissive of words. Both Helen and Ken were very clear about the distinction between Helen's poetry, for which she did claim authorship, and the Course itself. Moreover, Jesus gave very specific guidance to Helen and Bill on many occasions. It is difficult to reconcile this theory as stated in Absence from Felicity with the facts as we know them, and with many of Ken's own teachings.
—Mary Benton
Dear Greg,
I have been a student of the Course for 15 years. I have studied over the years a very large body of articles, books , and tapes of most of the well known teachers in the Course community. I am extremely grateful for all of your wonderful and dedicated work. You have obviously been a great help to many thousands of us studying the Course. I have no affiliation with Ken Wapnick other than reading and listening to his materials and attending a one day seminar. It is quite obvious to me that the man is an intellectual genius and spiritual giant. The fact that he came into Helen and Bill's lives at that particular time and assisted in editing the Course for publication was obviously no accident! Surely in your evaluation of his work, you must have considered this fact. His perspective on the Course, (i.e. what it says and how it came) does appear somewhat expanded from our own. Has it ever occurred to you that there is a strong possibility that given his place in Course history, and the quality of his work, that perhaps he might be on a higher spiritual level than the rest of us, thus making his interpretation of the Course correct and more threatening to our egos? ( not that Ken would ever even insinuate that about himself!) Given your serious dedication to the Course and it's students, I sincerely hope that you may one day become open to the gift that Ken Wapnick so lovingly offers you and all of the students of the Course.
Respectfully,
—Anne Clinton
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Greg,
Thank you for stating so well the view that Jesus did author the Course as claimed repeatedly in the Course itself.
I seek to have all the information about ACIM I can from "both schools" (Circle of Atonement and Foundation for ACIM). Therefore, I have all of Ken Wapnick's writings. At times, I am concerned about his objectivity. He has created a very pristine intellectual view of ACIM's truth, based on his own psychological needs (as we all would do without the "reality check" of others). His view does seem to require ignoring much of what ACIM literally states. He states many times that the one and only truthful reading of ACIM (which happens to be his intellectual construct of ACIM's truth) requires that we take much of the wording as metaphor.
Perhaps in the fullness of time, I may come to agree with him, since I grant him the potential to perhaps be on a mountain top while I am still on the mountain trail. However, at this point in my journey on the ACIM path, I feel that he puts his own theory above the actual content of the Course itself, creating a new de facto dogma based predominantly on what he claims to be true.
I just cannot fathom a spiritual seeker of many decades not having experienced the direct intervention of the Divine within the illusion. I also do not understand why would such intervention would make the illusion real? This is one of Ken's basic assumptions.
I have become proficient, for example, at lucid dreaming during the night. I KNOW I AM DREAMING, yet the dream continues with me consciously controlling the events and outcome. This does not in any way make my dream "real" to me while it happens nor when I awaken in the morning.
Jesus Christ is a very real presence in my life. In one sense, he is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, yet is very much an actual entity rather than a mere abstraction. Perhaps Ken cannot accept the authorship of Jesus because Ken seems to believe that all "fragments" (separate entities) will someday vanish into a Buddhist style nirvana of non-existence where there is only God and the One Son. If this is true, I can certainly see why the human ego (and most humans) would fight against returning home, since it would mean total non-existence, as we are absorbed into an amorphous blob, like little balls of liquid Mercury being rolled into a larger puddle. No one can be sure, but at this point I suspect that we are each The Christ, and will be there when we are one. Since spiritual truth seems to often involve a paradox (from a human perspective) I can see that we will be ONE yet Many within the ONE.
I want to thank you at Circle of Atonement for providing ACIM students with an interactive site that includes new articles and insight each month. The web site has a sense of being truly alive and filled with heart.
—Will Christie
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