Customer Reviews

A Course In Miracles Urtext Manuscripts Complete Seven Volume Combined Edition

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I've spent the last 25 years studying what I now call the "sanitized" version of the Course in Miracles, the one that everyone knows of by now. When reading this Urtext, I realized how much had been taken out of my quarter century of study of the "sanitized" version. I still learned tremendously from the "sanitized" version, but the Urtext has greatly expanded my understanding, and filled in many blank spaces in my paradigms.

I can understand why some of this was left out. According to the "spin" in the "sanitized version", they only removed personal references to Helen and Bill.

However, what I see is that anything that could be perceived as fearful was removed. That is probably a good thing, for the successful launching of the Course many years ago. There are things in beginning of the Urtext that may have "turned off" a lot of people in the beginning, retarding it's success.

In reading "Absence of Felicity", I could see that Helen was anxiety-filled about the Course, and after it was pretty much done, she continued to edit, edit, and edit some more. Here I believe she was removing anything that scared her. Why do I say this? Because virtually *every sentence* of the Urtext had been altered in the finished Course. Every sentence! I originally thought it was because someone came in after and wanted to possess the copyright. Now I believe this was Helen's obsessive/compulsiveness in action. It was like she developed a beautiful complex snowflake, and was now taking away many of the points of that snowflake, whittling it down to something that seemed safer.

Bottom line: For serious students of the Course, Get this! It helps to put pieces together.

Having read the Foundation of Inner Peace's edition of ACIM a while ago, I was surprised to learn that it might not be an accurate reproduction of the original text. In all other cases, I would appreciate the value of multiple editing attempts (the quality of which has been questioned by some), but, in this case, the result often distorts the original message.

Nowadays, you can find free versions of Urtext on the net, but if you are looking for a well-published scrupulously analyzed and annotated alternative, this is the only book that will satisfy your requirements today.

I am much enjoying the unedited version. I have not completed it, not even close. I strongly advise it for everyone studying "the Course"

Even though the author of this book puts forward an air of thorough scholarship, he clearly and carefully omits the fact that by not including in his "studies", the history of the most popular and most widely distributed edition of ACIM, and the only one authorized by Schucman, he is in reality taking aim squarely at ACIM's publisher, the FIP and attempting to paint the false picture that the FIP and its leading role in the publication of ACIM is non-existent.

Real scholars of ACIM, you would do yourself a disservice to fund this effort, which is essentially a propaganda effort by a student of the former Charles Anderson. If you aren't yet familiar with Anderson, look him up in Wikipedia. You will find that he essentially attempted to replace the publisher, FIP with himself, as a self appointed supposed modern day Jesus Christ, "The Master Teacher", and supposed "owner of ACIM", but who never quite succeeded.