A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume
by Helen Schucman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Helen SchucmanCorporate Author: Foundation for Inner Peace
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-09-01
ISBN: 1883360242
Number of pages: 1333
Publisher: Foundation for Inner Peace
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9781883360245
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Book Reviews of A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume
Book Review: Don't talk about it, read it!
Summary: 5 Stars
I received my copy of this book back in the early 1980s when the Foundation for Inner Peace gave them away for free to those who couldn't afford it which, at the time, I couldn't. After a few false starts over the next few years, I finally read the text, workbook and manual for teachers. And, after much stalling, I was then compelled to do the exercises which I did, daily, for 365 days in a row. This book is useful only to those who are inwardly compelled to read it to the point where it won't let you alone until you do. It states that it is directed to a particular audience. If you are one of them the book will seek you out or, having run across it, you will feel a resonance that will compel you to read it. If it turns you off, don't read it and don't worry. There are as many paths up the mountain as there are people on Earth.
This evening I happened to be browzing Amazon looking for George Carlin DVDs and just wondered how much the Course is selling for these days. I am absolutely shocked to discover that there are various "editions" of it up for sale. That undoubtedly results from the well known copyright feud between Judith Skutch and Wapnick fighting over which one is entitled to sale royalties. Apparently, neither have the means to support themselves with a day job and both have latched onto A Course In Miracles as a lifetime profit center. I know they sued each other and some court accommodation was made allowing each to make enough money to bury the hatchet.
However, neither of these people nor others who claim to be Course preachers and give lectures for profit (Ms. Williamson take note) "based on the Course" are worthy of serious note. Perhaps they skipped the part of the book that contains an absolute injunction NOT to disseminate any summaries of it. I take that to mean either written or oral. Some time ago I checked the web and discovered that Wapnick runs a Course In Miracles retreat center and blatently hawks his summary of the entire Course. I wonder how rich the Virgin Mary would have been had Jesus copyrighted The Sermon On the Mount.
The book also states that it is a SELF-STUDY course and there are reasons for both injunctions. The shift in thinking that the Course generates is "person-specific"; i.e., what the Course describes as "wrong thinking" manifests itself differently in each person. The unique terminology and sometimes complex reasoning it employs need to be studied by each person carefully, in quiet and with much introspection. That can't happen by listening to paid lectures that, by nature, must be concepts filtered through the mind of the speaker, taken out of context and not in the order of learning dictated by the structure of the Course.
Attempting to summarize the Course is patently harmful to genuine seekers of the truth. Reading the text is a painstaking mental process requiring the devotion of much time and sometimes painful introspection. And it is through that ordeal that people learn. Human nature dictates an inclination to take the path of least resistance when presented with a difficult learning task. Presenting the public with what is essentially a Cliff Notes summary of the Course discourages the actual doing of that which is required to grow in understanding and knowledge.
There is also a reason why the true author of this book (you have to read it to find out who it is) has dictated that it be used as a "self-study course". It doesn't teach anything remotely similar to a religion that can be memorized and mimmicked. Different words, sentences, passages and chapters will have different effects on each reader but they are all written and designed to bring everyone together in "right thinking" in the end. No one on Earth has the qualifications to "teach" or summarize the Course and no one in any study group has any right to tell others what is important to them and what is not. It is an ordeal that can only be undertaken alone.
A Course In Miracles is not a book that one can pick up, scan a few chapters, read the last page and then judge whether or not it is suitable for him. A prospective student is one who believes that this entire world is somehow headed in the wrong direction, is very dissatisfied with the usual pat answers, philosophies and religous tenents developed by men over the past thousands of years, possesses a burning desire to learn the truth, is willing to detach significance to every material thing and pre-existing thought that he has and is fearless (or desperate) enough to take a free-fall backwards into space believing that the entire universe is there to catch him. And it is.
Summary of A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume
A Course in Miracles begins...Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
As its title implies, the Course is arranged throughout as a teaching device. It consists of three books: Text, Workbook for Students, and Manual for Teachers. The order in which students choose to use the books, and the ways in which they study them, depend on their particular needs and preferences.
The curriculum the Course proposes is carefully conceived and is explained, step by step, at both the theoretical and practical levels. It emphasizes application rather than theory, and experience rather than theology. Although Christian in statement, the Course deals with universal spiritual themes. It emphasizes that it is but one version of the universal curriculum. There are many others, this one differing from them only in form. They all lead to God in the end.
The Text is largely theoretical, and sets forth the concepts on which the Course's thought system is based. Its ideas contain the foundation for the Workbook's lessons. Without the practical application the Workbook provides, the Text would remain largely a series of abstractions which would hardly suffice to bring about the thought reversal at which the Course aims.
The Workbook includes 365 lessons, one for each day of the year. It is not necessary, however, to do the lessons at that tempo, and one might want to remain with a particularly appealing lesson for more than one day. The practical nature of the Workbook is underscored by the introduction to its lessons, which emphasizes experience through application rather than a prior commitment to a spiritual goal:
Some of the ideas the workbook presents you will find hard to believe, and others may seem to be quite startling. This does not matter. You are merely asked to apply the ideas as you are directed to do. You are not asked to judge them at all. You are asked only to use them. It is their use that will give them meaning to you, and will show you that they are true.
Finally, the Manual for Teachers, which is written in question and answer form, provides answers to some of the more likely questions a student might ask. It also includes a clarification of a number of the terms the Course uses, explaining them within the theoretical framework of the Text.
The Course makes no claim to finality, nor are the Workbook lessons intended to bring the student's learning to completion. At the end, the reader is left in the hands of his or her own Internal Teacher, Who will direct all subsequent learning as He sees fit.
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