The Undreaming Chronicles by Alex Marchand

Most of us come to the Course with some background in formal religion of one sort or another, Christianity, Islam, Judaism are the most prominent, but scientific agnosticism is certainly one of them. Or, as the late Kenneth Wapnick used to joke, Marx was right that religion is opium for the people, but he ignored the fact that communism (a form of scientific materialism) was a religion too. On and on.
Many of us are motivated to take up A Course in Miracles, because we sense very quickly that it untangles some of the seemingly unsatisfactory issues that have come with our previous conditioning. Typically, in a religious context, those tend to be the 'mysteries of the faith,' where we were told that certain things were off-limits, or it was even dressed up as here was where 'faith' came in. In the materialistic/scientific world view these unresolved issues typically manifest as problems that have not been solved yet, and where conflicting hypotheses are being entertained, and we are supposed to (here come the 'mysteries of the faith' again) have faith in the method, and that ultimately these questions will all be answered. If our background and conditioning is more psychological/social, we are stuck with the dawning of contradictions around the real human motivations and talents, from the ridiculous to the sublime, of self-destructive and aggressive behaviors, where we come no further than survival of the fittest, and why everyone ultimately thinks the world revolves around them, and everyone else is dispensable - the Hitler within all of us, something again we never like to look at.

But then we stumble on to A Course in Miracles, or perhaps some other non-dualistic teaching, and gradually it becomes evident that all the seeming contradictions, the annoying 'mysteries of the faith,' are really the result of applying a dualistic interpretation to a non-dualistic reality (teaching), and suddenly all of the seeming contradictions in the teachings of Jesus disappear like snow before the sun, once we realize that he was teaching non-dualism. The theologians who made a Christian out of Jesus, starting with Peter and Paul, really busied themselves perverting the original non-dualistic teaching into a dualistic religion, and exploited the unexplained that resulted from their twisted interpretation as the 'mysteries of the faith,' that could bind believers to the emerging church. This is always the moment when specific teachers become lionized, just like Jesus was 'promoted' to being the only Son of God, completely contrary to what he taught. Within the Christian context, it was perhaps the re-discovery of the Thomas gospel which was the catalyst for returning to the non-dualistic teaching of Jesus. Gary Renard's trilogy (The Disappearance of the Universe, Your Immortal Reality, and Love Has Forgotten No One) deals with this extenstively, and my own Closing the Circle: Pursah's Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles  explores the historical dimensions in depth, and demonstrates how via Thomas we come back to Jesus before he was a Christian, and who sounds remarkably like the author of A Course in Miracles.

It would appear that Ken Wapnick's magnum opus on Freud will be lost in the mists of time, as he was unable to finish it, but we should note that Joe R. Jesseph, Ph. D., a psychiatrist who was on the staff of the Foundation for A Course in Miracles for a long time, and who worked closely with Ken on this project, has already given us A Primer of Psychology According to A Course in Miracles, which really does for psychology what I described above about religion, which is to demonstrate rigorously how the whole of psychology collapses into a simple framework, once the non-dualistic framework is even beginning to be understood by us. Simply put, the key insight is that 'consciousness' so-called is a paranoid schizophrenic phenomenon which is designed to keep us from experiencing reality, so that all theories, psychological or otherwise, that are built on the gratuitous and erroneous assumption that 'consciousness' is the norm and the foundation, must shatter when confronted with reality, which in turn results in the experience of many conflicting theories. In this case the 'mysteries of the faith' simply are revealed as the stubborn belief that the individual reality is a valid starting point, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, and that somehow the whole of  'psychology' will get us anywhere, in spite of all the many contradictions.

Where it will get us is one day to wake up, and begin looking for another way, if we don't buy the story any longer, for it simply does not add up...

In terms of the scientific tradition, the 'mysteries of the faith' are again the many contradictory, not to mention sometimes mutually exclusive theories and hypotheses that never add up to a unified theory of everything, for the simple reason that they rest on the dogma of material reality, which is as irrational as the belief in the reality of the individual, and individual reality. Individual reality is what the sophists wanted, and which Plato rightfully ridiculed them for. After all, there cannot be many truths, as that is a contradiction in terms, and completely undoes the concept of truth in the first place.

Along comes Alex Marchand, a talented graphic artist, who delighted Course students some time ago with his wonderful graphic novel, and one of the best introductions to the Course you could find: The Universe is a Dream: The Secrets of Existence Revealed. Since then he has been up to no good (LOL), and has started to publish a series of books, The Undreaming Chronicles, of which so far books 1 and 2 have appeared, respectively subtitled Revelations from the Holy Planet, and The Library of Time. (Highly recommended to get them in paper form, not in e-book format, or at least get both.). In this new series of books, Alex systematically develops the same vision of how all of the seemingly unresolved issues in the scientific framework disappear like snow before the sun once we shift to a non-dualistic understanding as a point of departure, instead of positing the hapless physical world as the foundation of anything. In short, Alex's contribution resolves the 'mysteries of the faith,' in the materialistic (and Newtonian) religion of science, by offering us a larger, non-dualistic framework, which suddenly resolves all the seeming contradictions, and reveals in full glory how and why 'evolution' and 'creationism' are at loggerheads--because they both are religious myths, which are ways of explaining something that only obfuscate the truth if they are mistaken for the real thing. Alex builds on the work of Thomas Campbell (www.my-big-toe.com), and Brian Whitworth, representatives of a new notion, called "digital physics," which offers a Theory of Everything, and a coherent way of seeing the world as an expression of an idea, not as reality. This is delightful and enjoyable material. Stay tuned.

Advaita Vedanta On My Mind

Somehow the first teachings I explored outside of the Christian mystical tradition I was brought up with, were Lao Tzu and the Tao Teh King, and the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna as well as Sri Ramana Maharshi. In the context of the sort of theosophical atmosphere of my upbringing, these were perhaps obvious connections, and now after studying ACIM for almost 25 years, it seems even more obvious to me now how it all fits together.

Recently, I became aware of Ken Bok's visit with Mooji, in the context of "Il congreso del perdon," in Madrid, Spain in 2012, which apparently included both Advaita teachers (mainly Mooji) and some ACIM teachers, mainly spanish. Ken interviewed Mooji, and one of the interesting features was certainly to notice how the very idiosyncratic idiom of both traditions can get in the way, if you don't watch out.

Evidently ACIM and Advaita would agree on such ideas as: only truth is true, and everything else is false. In many ways Advaita and the Course come very close, and there would be no fundamental disagreement, but there is a vast difference in form that may not be easy to bridge for some. Being fully conversant with the terminology of both is not a trivial task. The Course says "God is, and then we cease to speak..." (ACIM:W-169.5:4) Only the absolute is, all else is but appearance, maya, illusion. Again, Advaita would have no problem with that statement.

Besides the differences in terminology, and in process, it seems to me that at the abstract level of the teaching, there is only one specific issue that really separates the two, and that is the answer to the question which the Course would humorously refer to as: "How did the impossible happen?" I was reminded of this not too long ago by a former advaita teacher in Holland, Jan van Delden, who more recently got involved with A Course in Miracles, in part because of the way it deals with that particular question, and in part because as a path it gives people a level of handholding that is unprecedented in any other spirituality. Curiously, his own process involved mostly Advaita, but also a strong experience of recognition and guidance from Homer's Odyssey, which is nothing but a parable for the "homeward journey' we all have to make, not just the hero from the Trojan war. It is a symbol of our journey home, just as much as the book of Exodus is in the Old Testament, or in fact the gospel story itself. 

Jan shared with me how towards the end of the life of his advaita teacher, Jan told his teacher how he suspected that the dream that is our life in the world is made up by us, that we are the dreamer of the dream - which is an essential concept of the Course, and the very reason salvation is even possible. Namely, if we had an insipid idea, and we're suffering the consequences, we can also choose to change our mind, and the Course in effect offers us the tools to help us change our mind. The Advaita way of talking about the same thing varies between the Godhead playing a game of hide and seek, "who am I," or variations on that theme. (See a discussion of the major variations here.) As Eliot Deutsch points out in his book Advaita Vedanta: "For Advaita Vedanta, then, the phenomenal world is maya, and it is produced by maya. But it is not on that account merely a figment of one's imagination." (Deutsch, p.31) 

ACIM on the contrary says simply: There is no world, as here:

But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is. There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again. (ACIM:W-132.6, highlighting added)

In short, in the language of metaphor, God does not even know about the world, he did not create it, because it is not there, just as much as your dreams at night simply disappear when you open your eyes. To ACIM the thought that God created the world is definitely part of the problem set, because it grants the world an objective reality it does not have.

An Advaita site goes sofar as to criticize ACIM over this issue as follows: 

ACIM's theology is also grounded in the idea that people's experience of the world is a cognitive mistake or error. This is very different than the best of Indian Advaita, which teaches this same idea as a preliminary doctrine but ultimately counsels that the world is a dream or illusion emanated by God (Brahman), not by the ego, and that it is an emanation out of pure Divine playfulness or lila (pronounced “leela”) and loving Grace, not a "mistake." 

(http://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/ACIM_critique.html)

It seems to me there is simply a different teaching approach behind both systems, and this is a clear example of why you can't mix and match, for you'll get duck soup.

Just like ACIM says "God is, and then we cease to speak"  so in Advaita, Brahman is "one only without a second," as the Upanishads would have it. But then the differences arise. The Course sees the world as an "attack on God," (ACIM:W-pII.3.2:1), and how it gets there is that the Son, all the while being one with his creator, entertains a "tiny mad idea," the idea of separation, following which he represses the memory of Heaven (called the Holy Spirit in the Course), and fully identifies himself with the separation thought (ego), and to escape the pain in his mind, because he is driven mad by guilt over his attack on God, he then projects a physical world, that is the expression of the separation thought. In short, all the world is, is the expression of a silly little idea we had, and when we stop fighting it, which only makes it real, we can forgive it, and eventually undo our belief in it, as we remember the reality of who we are in truth and it fades away into the "nothingness from which it came." In short, we never ever were separate from God, but we thought we were because we entertained the "tiny mad idea," and took it seriously. So yes, in the Course the world is maya, and sustained only by our belief in it, because its origin lies in the guilt that arises from the thought of a separate identity, the ego thought.

In Advaita, the way that story of the origin is told, it takes on a little more objectivity, as if Brahman, as Ishvara, had the idea of the world, which grants it some objectivity, almost in spite of the fact that anything besides Brahman is treated as illusory, maya. In a way it is as if Isvara is somewhat of a parallel of the creator God, Ialdabaoth in the gnostic tradition, be it that Ishvara is merely another aspect of Brahman. In the way the Course describes it, Ialdabaoth is a projection of the ego, the separation thought, and is the progeny of Sophia in gnostic myth, or, to describe it more psychologically he is the angry God of the Old Testament, who we fear, because we have projected our guilt over the thought of separation onto him. It is this imaginary God we are running from. The real God is not angry about the separation thought, or the world - He does not even know there is a world, or a "you," ALL of that is a figment of your imagination. Ken Wapnick liked to sum this up as: "The world is a maladaptive solution to a non-existent problem." For there never was any separation, it was only a dream, our only job is to have the "little willingness," to doubt the reality of it and then ask the Holy Spirit, and our inner teacher, Jesus to guide us on the journey home. "It is a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed." (ACIM:T-8.VI.9:7)

On the other hand, when I hear Mooji state it as; "You are the supreme and perfect self. Playing a game of how do I find myself," it is clear that to some degree the distinctions between the two at the abstract level are small and subtle. At that level he is addressing our real Self, just as does Jesus in the Course, (or, more precisely the "decision maker" to use Ken Wapnicks, term - the faculty to choose between ego and Holy Spirit. If you would just add that it was a stupid little game, and to hear in your other ear Jesus saying how we can laugh the consequences of that stupid little idea away with him, the two schools of thought are very close indeed. The reality of it is that different forms and different paths are necessary within this world of differences, and to quote something Jesus said to Helen: you should not judge your brother's path, nor should you take it as your own. And to look at the process of learning the Course, one becomes aware more and more that we all learn it by misunderstanding it first, for the resistance is enormous. So we all constantly misinterpret the Course, because our ego is fighting it, and then we get to correct ourselves again, and again and again. Some of us may go off for a while even making a business out of our misinterpretations, which has given rise to a whole "Course in Miracles Industry," as Ken Wapnick used to call it. It does not matter. They are all ways of working with the material, and we will go deeper and deeper as we go along, and at some point we will realize there simply is no going back, the pain of the ego system is simply too great. The fleshpots of Egypt have lost their appeal for good.

On a practical level, the Course is a path that engages with the world, with your dream life and your relationships, by teaching you to not make decisions with your ego, but to learn gradually that it is all thought, and that what matters is to let go of the ego's urge to think that anything at all must be done, and instead every thought needs to be forgiven first, to the point where we are no longer acting from the ego, but purely under the guidance of our inner teacher. The Course does not teach abandoning the world, but engaging with it, just with a different teacher, the Holy Spirit, not the ego:

You who have tried to learn what you do not want should take heart, for although the curriculum you set yourself is depressing indeed, it is merely ridiculous if you look at it. Is it possible that the way to achieve a goal is not to attain it? Resign now as your own teacher. This resignation will not lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourself, and of the learning outcomes that have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will become an excellent learner and an excellent teacher. But it is not so yet, and will not be so until the whole learning situation as you have set it up is reversed. (ACIM:T-12.V.8, highlighting added)

I discovered Mooji through my friend Ken Bok just now, and I've been listening to some of his YouTube videos intently. It has mobilized my profound interest in Advaita Vedanta all over again, although I was already on that track because of my communication with Jan van Deelden. I find it most helpful to listen and read the Advaita material with the full appreciation that they are different systems, so much so that it can actually be helpful to notice how the same things are approached in different ways. I feel very much at home in the Advaita material, and I'm enjoying re-reading stuff I had rarely looked at for forty years, but the Course is definitely my path, for it helped me with some critical things that no other discipline has ever given me. Which means nothing special, except that it is clearly my path.

To outsiders looking at the Course, the difficulty is equally great. The idiosyncrasies of the Course and its very specific idiom are such that it is easy to misread it. The fact that it is written on such a high level, makes it hard, but also, to the casual reader it is very easy to overlook the levels within the Course. Level one, which is "God is," "Truth is true," "Heaven," "God," "Oneness," "Spirit," and Level two, the level of the world we experience, which is a dream, and all duality is metaphorical, but what we learn with the Course is that, by asking our inner teacher for guidance, we can learn to reinterpret the metaphor, and it can become our classroom, and the vehicle for our journey home. 

I am going to enjoy my re-discovery of the world of Advaita for a while... Thinking back to my first acquaintance with Advaita Vedanta teachers, I remember that it was a conscious decision on my part that I somehow sensed the solution was not to go and meditate in a cave in the Himalayas, but I wanted to be in the world. That was a very deliberate choice, and so it could be no surprise that I ended up finding A Course in Miracles later in life, a path that very much teaches that the journey is right where you are, and that inner change is the only thing that makes a difference:

Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. But though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. Perception is a result and not a cause. And that is why order of difficulty in miracles is meaningless. Everything looked upon with vision is healed and holy. Nothing perceived without it means anything. And where there is no meaning, there is chaos. (ACIM:T-21.in.1, highlighting added)

The Amorality of A Course in Miracles

What has been given you? The knowledge that you are a mind, in Mind and purely mind, sinless forever, wholly unafraid, because you were created out of love. Nor have you left your Source, remaining as you were created. This was given you as knowledge which you cannot lose. It was given as well to every living thing, for by that knowledge only does it live. (ACIM:T-158.1)

 The other day, I had an interesting discussion with one of my Dutch Course friends, about why the word "conscience," or "scruples" does not occur in the course, apart from one mention of "unscrupulous." It seems to me that this is because it is merely an ego-inspired euphemism for "guilt." Particularly in the process of growing up in this world, our "conscience" is conditioned further into a set of moral values, with which we convince ourselves that we can decide good and bad, and thus please the ego's angry, vengeful God, Ialdabaoth. As this evolves it is further "civilized" into religious, philosophical or political mores or ethics. In short, first we cover up the guilt with the euphemism of "conscience," and then we give it social acceptability, because by knowing right from wrong, we become socially conditioned into well adjusted "grown-ups," capable of making our own decisions. Jesus in the Course gently, but firmly, disagrees, and speaks of our judgement as "sharp-edged children's toys," and makes clear that we are hurting ourselves with them, and makes it very clear that we come to his course as spiritual toddlers, who are best off by resigning as their own teacher, and learning to leave judgment to the Holy Spirit.

Resign now as your own teacher. This resignation will not lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourself, and of the learning outcomes that have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will become an excellent learner and an excellent teacher. But it is not so yet, and will not be so until the whole learning situation as you have set it up is reversed.

Your learning potential, properly understood, is limitless because it will lead you to God. You can teach the way to Him and learn it, if you follow the Teacher Who knows the way to Him and understands His curriculum for learning it. The curriculum is totally unambiguous, because the goal is not divided and the means and the end are in complete accord. You need offer only undivided attention. Everything else will be given you. For you really want to learn aright, and nothing can oppose the decision of God's Son. His learning is as unlimited as he is. (ACIM:T-12.V.8:3-9:7)

The ego always, and in all ways, tries to mimic heaven, so as sons of the ego, we believe we have consciousness (mind with a lower case "m"), and we give ourselves a life, driven by our belief in the ego's unholy trinity, of sin, guilt and fear. That belief in sin, guilt and fear is rationalized within the ego system in the form of a "religion," a "philosophy," a "world view," or a "conviction," it can be theistic, atheistic, or agnostic, but in one form or another it makes the world and the individual real, and keeps us focused on the putative life we have in time and space. As an individual who believes they are living in this world our first job then is to preserve the guilt, for the guilt is what makes the separation real, and guarantees our existence as a separate individual. The first step in domesticating guilt is to give it a nice name, "conscience," and a socially acceptable function, typically something like the "golden rule," in one form or another. We stay firmly shackled to the ego as long as we identify with the Hero of the Dream, who conscientiously makes the "right choices," about his (dream) life. And it usually takes us a long time before we encounter a challenge that really knocks us off balance enough to realize, as Helen and Bill did: "There must be another way," and begin the process of learning that we are the Dreamer of the Dream.

The Course says:

Now you are being shown you can escape. All that is needed is you look upon the problem as it is, and not the way that you have set it up. How could there be another way to solve a problem that is very simple, but has been obscured by heavy clouds of complication, which were made to keep the problem unresolved? Without the clouds the problem will emerge in all its primitive simplicity. The choice will not be difficult, because the problem is absurd when clearly seen. No one has difficulty making up his mind to let a simple problem be resolved if it is seen as hurting him, and also very easily removed. (ACIM:T-27.VII.2)

Let's for a moment do a double take on the Course's story of how we got where we are:

1. First there was the oneness of Heaven, God, Spirit, and nothing else, the complete unity of Creator and created, the father and the son.
2. Within that unity this "tiny mad idea" (TMI) seemed to arise, which in one of the gnostic myths is designated as "Sofia" (meaning "wisdom," an evident euphemism for the non-overly bright Tiny Mad Idea).
3. And Sofia has a son, called Ialdabaoth. He is the creator God of Genesis, and this world, the dualistic world of form is described in the gnostic myth as the "after birth." We are the sons of that God, as portrayed in the Bible with the creation of Adam and Eve, and everything that follows.
4. The Course fleshes this sequence out a little further: the Tiny Mad Idea gives rise to the separated mind, which promptly suppresses the memory of Heaven, by repressing the "Right mind," the home of the Holy Spirit, and it identifies with the wrong mind, the ego mind, which is what the Buddhists like to call the "monkey mind," that seemingly never ending hairball of insane thoughts, all driven in the end by sin, guilt and fear. 
5. This separate ego individuality is driven by guilt, and it projects ("sets up," if you will) a life experience with a past (sin) and a future (which we fear), in order never to have to be present to our unexamined guilt feelings. I has also projected an angry god, and a world and a body, where we think we can escape the vengeance of this god.
6. In this individual life we now must make choices, and Ialdabaoth is the paranoid schizophrenic "God" (of this world) that we project, and of whom we are afraid, because we think we killed him in order to gain our individuality. We maintain that guilt by making it seem useful, mostly in the form of "conscience," which properly considered only concerns itself with what is good for the individual, tempered by some cultural rules to prevent total mayhem (such as the golden rule, etc.). 
7. In short, conscience is nothing but our pledge of allegiance to the ego-god, Ialdabaoth, and by making "conscientious decisions" as the ego would have us believe, we constantly reaffirm our pledge of allegiance to this ego-god.  Our "conscience," our guilt, keeps us under the spell of the ego's god, making choices that make the world real, all to prevent that we should ever make the only real choice we have, the choice for the Holy Spirit, for then the ego-charade is up.
8. This goes on until we realize it's deja-vu all over again, and we end up looking for "another way," and that is when we are shown as per the quote above: that we can escape by seeing through the setup of meaningless choices between left and right in the world, to make the only choice that can liberate us, for the Holy Spirit instead of the ego.

The Course therefore is indeed amoral in the sense that it teaches that the ego choices, and our "conscience" is irrelevant, which does not mean that it is immoral, for the guidance of the Holy Spirit is sure to have the best interests of all in mind, and guide us to the most loving choices at all times.

Ken Wapnick and the Course, a refresher

Since the end of December, 2013, Ken Wapnick is no longer with us in physical form. Yet he remains ever present to me. "Harpo" he called me affectionately, as a reminder not to take myself too seriously, and always showing me that laughter is healing, and specifically that the tiny mad idea cannot withstand laughter. We can laugh it away it with Jesus. The last time I saw him in person was at one of the last workshops in the lush environment of Roscoe, NY. I never managed to visit him in the new desert location of Temecula, CA. But I spoke to him on the phone once in a while, and inevitably he pick up the phone with: "Harpo?"

Thanks to some Dutch friends, I was able to attend the first new academy class in Temecula, CA after Ken's passing, from March 8th through 16th of 2014. One of their group had canceled, apparently because Ken would not be teaching. My gratitude knows no bounds that I was able to attend this workshop, "I am not a breadbox," based on Helen Shucman's famous "breadbox" episode, which demonstrated that she intuitively grasped the teachings of the Course even before it had been dictated to her.

Then, a month after the workshop, I had the opportunity to listen to a tape of Ken's last workshop before his illness took him out of commission, "Taking the ego lightly." Again another reminder of how serious Jesus really is about nothing being serious, when he says about the tiny mad idea, and its "real effects," the world, (T-27.VIII.6:4) that: "... together we can laugh them both away,..." Another flashback to Ken's habit of calling me "Harpo," always to remind me to take the ego lightly. A reminder of the voice of the Holy Spirit who is whispering in our ear that this is all a joke.

Subtly, in this last workshop, he also reinforces the Course's debt to Platonic and gnostic mythology, by equating the Tiny Mad Idea (TMI) in the Course, to the gnostic image of Sofia, and how she (it) gives rise to the Demiurge (Ialdabaoth) the ego's God, who we regard as the creator of the world, while the world itself is merely the "afterbirth," the eventual effect in form of the tiny mad idea, but really nothing to write home about.
In that light the gnostic roots of the Course really come alive, and in that sense the Course is a beautiful reminder that the main problem of gnosticism was taking it all too literally all over again, and losing itself in idle speculation, instead of continuing to learn to tune in to that little voice whispering in our ear.

Translating Margot Krikhaar's Second Book "The Great Liberation"

It is a total delight to be working on Margot Krikhaar's second book, The Great Liberation, which to all intents and purposes was the platform for her formal teaching of the Course. The first book was more "girl next door does the Course," and as such invited the reader to look in the kitchen of one who steadfastly practiced the Course and experienced her complete awakening in this lifetime.

Subsequent to the first book, Margot quickly became a prominent teacher of A Course in Miracles in Holland. This second book reflects her thorough preparation for her teaching and the complete integration of her own learning, to which readers of her first book were a witness.

Although this second book is much more rigorous and structured than the first, it retains Margot's delicious sense of humor and her light touch. Early on she describes the two broad categories of how people can get off on the wrong foot with their practice of the Course. Essentially, one is to totally focus on the theory and forget the day to day practice, by which it becomes a vaporous intellectual exercise that is all in your head. And the other is the route of ignoring the theory and working only on an emotional level with all the seemingly reassuring statements in the Course, and misusing them as affirmations or mantras. Naturally there are many variations on these themes.

Margot's treatment of these extremes of reacting to the Course are spot on, based on what I have seen personally in my years working with ACIM. Most specifically though, it made me reflect on my own experiences in my early years with the Course. Personally, I had studied a lot of the "apocryphal" literature and its provenance, and had been acquainted with the Thomas gospel early on, when it was translated for the first time in the late fifties (in Dutch, in 1959). Along with it, I had read a fair amount of Plato, and Plotinus in Greek, and was in the habit of reading my New Testament in Greek, though my primary focus remained on the Gospel of Mark, which I believe to be relatively the least embellished of the canonical gospels. I had also studied some of the early Christian history, and various Gnostic teachers, only to become more confused as I went along.

In my younger years, I'd experienced my parents leaving the very liberal protestant church they had belonged to and where I was baptized (Remonstrant Brotherhood). They left within 2 years after my birth, though they clearly retained a sense of a relationship with Jesus and his gospel but seen in a very different light, and with a sense that his church was within, and not in some building. When the first public presentations about the Thomas gospel took place, I remember a certain level of excitement when they went to a speech by Prof. Gilles Quispel, who was the first translator. There was an excitement about the notion of getting to know how Jesus sounded in the original, before he was turned into a little Christian by Paul c.s. in later years.

My mother had  spent some time with the Oxford movement before settling in the Remonstant Brotherhood for a few years, and my father's spirituality was more widely framed, with religious and spiritual traditions from around the world, including Hindu teachers like Sri Ramana Maharshi, and Sri Ramakrishna, as well as Buddha, Lao Tse, and (then) modern authors from Tolstoy and Dostoyevski, to Romain Rolland, Áldous Huxley, and Herman Hesse. Professionally, he was a psychiatrist, and very much in touch with the spiritual undertones of what he did. Never mind all that, it seemed as if my mother in particular had a very strong sense of awe for certain "mysteries of the faith," and she would convey an attitude that mirrored the "Ours is not to reason why." type of respect. There were questions you weren't supposed to ask. Her conviction seemed to be that revelation was our only hope, but I was never satisfied with that. So, when I finally found A Course in Miracles,  at age 40, it came as quite a relief, and I could wholly appreciate Helen Shucman's famous exclamation: "Finally, God for intellectuals." In the Course there is never a question you can't ask, although Jesus can be quite annoying with his answers, at times pointing out that our questions are not really questions, but trick questions that are really veiled statements.

For me the Course instantly clarified the whole early history of Christianity, about which I've written since then in my book Closing the Circle: Pursah's Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles. For one thing it became clearer than ever how much Jesus was never a Christian, but just bombarded into one by those who came later and exploited his teachings for their own ends, in similar ways to what is happening with A Course in Miracles today. He was certainly never a Gnostic; the later gnostics merely co-opted some of his vocabulary, but to consider Jesus a gnostic in the formal sense would be completely anachronistic.

The big thing for me was that the Course answers every question and explains everything, and never stops its full accounting of the ego system, which only serves to lift the veils of "mystery" which that insane thought system uses to protect itself, and clothe itself in an appearance of meaning, when it has none. At the limits of what can be explained, the Course has established complete confidence and accountability with the reader, and merely states that only experience can go beyond the words, so if they made sense so far, you might want to try to do what the Course is saying. In other words, the whole thing provides a full and complete transparency and accountability, and nowhere appeals to blind "faith," but to experiential validation.

There are times when the ego just short-circuits with the material of the Course, and for a moment it seems incomprehensible, but always those blockages are resolved if we trust our experience, and they can be gone beyond. The answer always is that things must be first forgiven and then understood.

Margot's book is very much informed by her own experiences as we already know from her first book, and the fact that she speaks from that deep knowledge of the Course's process makes this book, while it is a rendering of the Course theory primarily, into a valuable guide for many who are first becoming aware of A Course in Miracles.

Copyright, © 2012 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

Margot Krikhaar Resources in English

As the readership of Margot Krikhaar's Awakening in Love is starting to grow, I wanted to bring together some notes on resources about her in English.

• The publisher, Inner Peace Publications in the Netherlands does have an English language section on their website, where you can find information, not much different than what I'm listing here. The easy way to navigate there is to go to www.innerpeacepublications.nl and to select English. 
• Margot Krikhaar's own website also has an English language section, here: http://www.ontwakeninliefde.nl (click on English) there you will among other things find several articles that are very worthwhile to complement the book, they are (NB. Live links to download pdf's):
• Past the sentinels of darkness
• What happens after physical death?
• The end of time
• A letter to Margot, by Dineke Dekker, which she read at the ceremony on the day Margot Krikhaar was cremated.
• Some reviews are starting to appear on Amazon, and perhaps soon on other ebook sites.

At the time that I started writing this post, Margot was in the terminal stages of breast cancer, and some of the articles, particularly the ones about physical death and the end of time, are really inspired by her process with this illness, and can be very helpful to anyone who is dealing with those challenges, as we all will at one time or another. Since then I've updated the information, because of the new website, and added the new "Letter to Margot."

I am also about to begin work on the translation of Margot's second book, The Great Liberation, which should see the light before the year is out. As I start working on this book, I will no doubt periodically be blogging about it here.

Margot Krikhaar's Awakening in Love Revisited

The first half of this year was for me a time of deep immersion in the translation of Margot Krikhaar's book Awakening in Love, which has now been on the market as an e-book since the fall of 2012 - see www.innerpeacepublications.com and/or visit your favorite e-book site.

Surrounding the book, there seems to be an intensifying conversation for many people about intensifying our work with the Course, and making it more personal. There is no doubt in my mind that the Course is as comprehensive as it is for a reason, but equally the expanding literature around the Course serves a purpose. The standard bearer is of course Ken Wapnick, and the merit of his work is that it explains the Course with the Course, and by seeing every sentence and every paragraph in the context of the overall work, students are prevented from going off-track, which has been the risk of much of the secondary literature.

Gary Renard and some writers who have followed in his wake (Mike Lemieux comes to mind) has the role of popularizer--something everybody thought could never be done--by putting the Course teachings in the vernacular and also by offering the view "in the kitchen" of his own life, of learning by doing, and of forgetting to forgive, and starting over on a constant basis. Next to Gary's growing body of work, Mike Lemieux's Dude, Where's My Jesus Fish provides almost the Cliff notes to DU and YIR, and a lot of humor besides. Laughter is definitely a healing power!

Margot Krikhaar's book is in a category all its own, and she also sticks to the message of the Course. What makes it unique and interesting is that she did it in another language (Dutch), and she only got her start with the Course when it appeared in a Dutch translation, which was not till 1999. However, she must have been really ready. Like many of us, she had explored a lot of things along the way to her encounter with the Course, but when she found it, it was love at first sight. She had had some cursory exposure to it, but it clicked once she had the book in her hands in Dutch. She started from a Catholic upbringing, which is not something I personally identify with, but other than that almost all of her experiences, which she shares with her reader in this book, were very evocative in triggering memories of what I might have been doing at similar stages of life. The book covers Margot's life up to the point of discovering the Course, and what happened afterward through to her experience of awakening. After the current book appeared, Margot quickly emerged as one of the leading Course teachers in Holland, though more recently she has had to give that up for health reasons.

On September 12th, 2012 we had a special evening of my regular NY Course workshop at the New York Theosophical Society on East 53rd Street in Manhattan. That was more or less the starting signal for sales of the e-book. For now the book will ONLY be available as an e-book until volumes justify doing a print edition. The session brought together nearly all of the people who had been directly involved in the production of the translation, starting with the publisher, Annelies Ekeler, and the woman who financed the translation, as well as myself and two proofreaders who had worked on it with me. As I've shared elsewhere on this blog, for myself the project had been a big forgiveness lesson, and I'm sure the same goes for many of the other participants. That's only natural, and the payoff came in new inspiration and an expansion of learning.

Annelies Ekeler, is the dream publisher for this type of material, and IPP is becoming an interesting feature in the Course process in Holland, with both two titles by Margot, and a title from Ken Wapnick, and more on the way. Starting with this book, now also with the reverse, bringing Dutch books to the international market.
Besides being the inspired conductor of the little orchestra of this publishing house, she also is an active teacher herself, and a blogger on the Course, in her native Dutch. I want to share a piece she wrote recently, which I'm translating hereby:

It is not how 'heavy' your life is or the amount of suffering which determines when the mind awakens within itself, it is the mind which determines when the projection of sin, guilt and fear stops. Awakening is not a reward for suffering, or the cleaning up of your karma, nor a reward for many lives of suffering, or a reward for sacrifice, awakening is not the result of giving and taking. Awakening is also not the result of doing your best, working hard, and it also is not a reward from a God who feels especially benevolent towards you. Awakening is also not a special reward for a chosen one, nor is it a reward for daily prayer, contemplation or meditation.

The above catalog of everything awakening is not, can however be useful as forgiveness material, by taking back all of these ego-thoughts in the mind, where they can dissolve into the Oneness of Spirit through forgiveness.

Awakening is the decision of the mind to no longer believe in, or choose for, sin, guilt, and fear, but to forgive these, so that the mind awakens to itself, where it has never left.

I was very happy when Annelies sent me this concise summation as a reminder, and I am happy to share it here at the outset of a year in which we want to study Margot's material in my weekly workshops at the Theosophical Society. These words are a very powerful reminder of the basic nature of the forgiveness process:

1. The problem is not out there, but in here
2. In here I can look at it and decide that it's no longer what I want
3. Now I can ask Jesus or the Holy Spirit for their vision of the situation, and let it go into their hands.

It is never about anything else but practicing how to give up my interpretation of the events, and trust in the better guidance from the Holy Spirit instead. It is simple, but not always easy, or the Course would not need 1,300 pages, nor would we need all the other literature. As it is, I'm thankful for the Course, and the many good books we now have to help us truly practice what the Course says, and Margot's book is high on my list.

Copyright, © 2012 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

St Christopher - Christophorus

This legendary Saint was removed from the roster by the Catholic Church, because the historical accuracy of the story was in doubt. We can presently look at this anew, and recognize that the spiritual accuracy of the story cannot be open to any doubt.

As legend has it, Reprobus was a Roman of giant stature (and of course "Roman" a subject of Caesar, much like "Jew" in the NT materials) symbolizes one who had loyalties to something other than Jesus, and one day he decided to follow Jesus. He ended up making his living ferrying people over a ford in a wild river, because with his stature he could give them the support necessary to do so.

One day a child came to him and wanted to be carried across, and Reprobus took the child on his back, only to find out that the child became heavier and heavier, and finally revealed to him that he was Jesus. And he baptized Christophorus in the wild river, and told him that henceforth his name was to be Christophorus, i.e. "Christ bearer," and advised him to plant his staff firmly in the ground, where it promptly turned into a fruit-bearing tree. And then the legend has it that this miracle converted many. That last part sounds like typical Christian proselytizing, which is hardly the point of the story. If anything the point of the story is that in the words of the Course the path the of Atonement, which seems so unduly heavy to us at times in the end leads to the realization that we're giving up nothing for everything, and in imagery that has strong parallels in the Jesus tradition (some of the Thomas and Q sayings), our barren staff with which we support ourselves (barely) in this world, turns into a fruit-bearing tree that feeds us abundantly, beyond our wildest dreams.

We may also be reminded here of Thomas Logion 90, which in Pursah's rendering says: "Come to me, for my yoke is comfortable and my lordship is gentle, and you will find the rest for yourselves." For indeed, it is the ego in us which finds the thinks that Jesus seems to ask of us to be a heavy burden, but the truth is that the ego in us has to become less so that Jesus can become more, and we momentarily realize that the only burden was the ego's resistance, and that in the world Jesus leads us into all is light and abundance.

Acknowledgment: the spiritual significance of the Christophorus legend was first brought to my attention through the work of Jan Willem Kaiser. (For some more background info the link under the title will connect the reader to a Wikipedia entry on St. Christopher.)

Copyright, © 2007 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said: "If you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." (Jn 8:32)

And in the Course we have:
"
Since you cannot not teach, your salvation lies in teaching the exact opposite of everything the ego believes. This is how you will learn the truth that will set you free, and will keep you free as others learn it of you. The only way to have peace is to teach peace. By teaching peace you must learn it yourself, because you cannot teach what you still dissociate. Only thus can you win back the knowledge that you threw away. An idea that you share you must have. It awakens in your mind through the conviction of teaching it. Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love.
" (ACIM:T-6.3.4)

There are numerous other references to this statement in the Course. In both of these traditions we can see the same Jesus - the statement in John is totally consistent with the clarification he offers in the Course, and in the meantime we should carefully note how this statement has been badly distorted in the teaching of the world.

For once we manage--as Christianity did--to pull Jesus into the world and reinterpret his teaching as a moralistic teaching within a dualistic framework of good and evil, then 'truth' promptly becomes misunderstood in the ego framework as being 'truthful,' i.e. to honor 'how it really happened," when instead the teaching of love is that nothing really did happen, which is the Atonement.

So the supposed virtue of truthfulness in the ego's world means allegiance the truths that set us free (supposedly), are the accusations of ourselves (confession!) or of our brothers (telling the 'truth,' including such 'virtues' as whistleblowing, etc.), in flagrant denial of the fact that the whole thing is a lie. The freedom that is promised in these virtuous actions, is along the lines of 'getting it off your chest,' and similar notions, which feeds into the ego's black-jack system where guilt is OK, as long as we can pass it on to someone else, and we are oblivious to the fact that this keeps the guilt alive, whereas forgiveness truly sets us free. As the Course makes very clear, not only do these kinds of truths not set us free, they are the chains of accusation with which we keep our brothers and ourselves in bondage, be reinforcing the separation. So the self-serving respect for truth on a worldly level is all about making the world and the separation real and thus about making a liar out of Jesus.

The correction he offers in the Course is to make it clear that if we teach love and forgiveness, we must first be accepting it in our own hearts, and thus we learn forgiveness and love by teaching it, and this is the teaching of truth Jesus was and is passing on to us, and asks us to take into our lives and the world. And it has nothing to do with teaching the Course, the Gospel, or any other formal teaching, for it is a teaching that goes beyond words entirely, and it's truth is in the experience of it. That is living in the truth that shall set us free.

There are many passages in the Course which show us how the ego's judgment serves merely to reinforce the bonds of guilt on our brothers and ourselves, and keep us in chains forever. And many passages show us the way out through forgiveness and Jesus' teaching of love, such as the following section from "The Holy Instant":
"
We said before that the ego attempts to maintain and increase guilt, but in such a way that you do not recognize what it would do to you. For it is the ego's fundamental doctrine that what you do to others you have escaped. The ego wishes no one well. Yet its survival depends on your belief that you are exempt from its evil intentions. It counsels, therefore, that if you are host to it, it will enable you to direct its anger outward, thus protecting you. And thus it embarks on an endless, unrewarding chain of special relationships, forged out of anger and dedicated to but one insane belief; that the more anger you invest outside yourself, the safer you become.
It is this chain that binds the Son of God to guilt, and it is this chain the Holy Spirit would remove from his holy mind. For the chain of savagery belongs not around the chosen host of God, who cannot make himself host to the ego. In the name of his release, and in the Name of Him Who would release him, let us look more closely at the relationships the ego contrives, and let the Holy Spirit judge them truly. For it is certain that if you will look at them, you will offer them gladly to Him. What He can make of them you do not know, but you will become willing to find out, if you are willing first to perceive what you have made of them.
"(ACIM:T-15.VII3-4)

Copyright, © 2007 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

Special Relationships - the Ego's Obfuscation of the Holy Relationship

One of the key things to understand, which as always becomes experientially clearer only through working with the Course is that the ego's methodology is very predictable and always the same. It's business is to sell us on duality as a substitute for reality, and does everything in its might to keep our attention fully engaged at that level so as to distract us completely from our reality which is in oneness.

The Course is all about relationships - and that is what is perhaps most unique about the Course that it teaches our relationships are our classrooms to get home - once we invite the Holy Spirit as our teacher. The ego uses relationships to distract us to the maximum extent possible. And preferably dresses it all up in a religious aura, at which point we need to appreciate that the ego's use of religion is as a way to obfuscate and protect from examination the faulty assumptions on which its logic rests. In other words to the ego religion is a defense mechanism, and it uses the cloak of spirituality to prevent exposure of its premises.

The culmination of the ego's relationships is surely marriage, which in the church becomes a sacrament, and is surrounded with appropriate mythology. This is the elevation of special relationships to new would-be spiritual and religious heights, whereby the ego literally dresses itself up for Sunday. And so on a worldly level it is now the relationship between two bodies, a man and a woman which is being declared sacred, and the celebration of specialness is substituted for the meaning of the Holy Relationship, which would have us see our true Self, "the face of Christ" as the Course calls it in all our brothers. Naturally such sacraments and mysteries of the faith are not open to examination, since the ego cannot bear the uncovering of its unfounded assumptions, lest it should go back to "the nothingness from which it came," (ACIM:M-13.1:2) like all other ego thoughts must when they are brought into the light.

In the world all relationships are designed to be special and exclusive, and serve the purpose of clouding over the one betrayal that we make real by virtue of our worship of specialness and separation, which is the ego thought itself , the thought of separation, the thought that the "tiny mad idea" could really be real, just because of our say so. And so we have the notions of faithfulness, adultery, jealousy, loyalty and so on in the world, between separated individuals, and a whole code of presumably virtuous behavior, as well as institutions to make real our faithlessness and sinfulness by the seeming absolution which is solidly founded on "confessing" our sins and making them very real. And so these institutions elevate the ego's forgiveness to destroy to an art form, and are dutifully maintained by us. We have special relationships pertaining to "intimacy" defined in various ways, marriage being only one of them, but we have business loyalties, brand loyalties, and so on, constantly fooling ourselves with the virtues of being loyal to something that isn't worth being loyal to, while denying our loyalty to our true Self in the process. The Course puts it this way:

"
You do not realize how much you have misused your brothers by seeing them as sources of ego support. As a result, they witness to the ego in your perception, and seem to provide reasons for not letting it go. Yet they are far stronger and much more compelling witnesses for the Holy Spirit. And they support His strength. It is, therefore, your choice whether they support the ego or the Holy Spirit in you. And you will recognize which you have chosen by their reactions. A Son of God who has been released through the Holy Spirit in a brother is always recognized. He cannot be denied. If you remain uncertain, it is only because you have not given complete release. And because of this, you have not given a single instant completely to the Holy Spirit. For when you have, you will be sure you have. You will be sure because the witness to Him will speak so clearly of Him that you will hear and understand. You will doubt until you hear one witness whom you have wholly released through the Holy Spirit. And then you will doubt no more.
"(ACIM:T-15.II.4)

The way forward becomes simple and clear the more we take the trouble to actually look honestly with Jesus at all the hidden assumptions which the ego never wants us to questions, just so as to be able to keep up the charade a while longer. And on the way we end up cracking ourselves up when we see the seriousness with which we maintain all of these presumed worldly virtues, once we start getting it that they are in fact nothing but our pledge of allegiance to the ego system, which does not even work, for it may be "foolproof," but it is definitely not "God proof." (ACIM:T-5.VI.10:6) It is upon us to let the light shine in, which begins with questioning the ego. The path to the Holy Relationship begins when in our relationships we learn to be true to our true Self, by following Jesus, instead of our idol worship of specialness at the altar of the ego.

Copyright, © 2007 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

Do This in Remebrance of Me.

In T-2.V.17:2 the Course says the following:
My request "Do this in remembrance of me" is the appeal for cooperation of miracle workers.

One might wonder 'this' would refer to. Certainly not the construct which Pauline Christianity makes of it, namely the questionable and somewhat cannibalistic celebration of his body, supposedly to remember that he was once with us, in times when he no longer is, as in after the crucifixion.

Such interpretation is the complete opposite of what Jesus teaches in the Course. And, we might add, as Jesus taught, period - as the careful study of the kernel of Thomas which Pursah handed us in Gary Renard's Your Immortal Reality would reveal.

In other words the interpretation given to these words - leaving aside altogether the Pauline theology of vicarious salvation which is also inextricably woven into the theology of this particular gospel passage, from Lk. 22:19, in the Course's terms is certainly not that we should in the future commemorate the erstwhile presence of Jesus' body with us. The cooperation of miracle workers at any time lies in the ability to join with Jesus whenever needed, because the miracle worker would know that he's always present to us whenever we are ready to question the ego's judgment of situations, and depend on his help rather than our own judgment.

A passage in Chapter 7 makes the whole teaching even clearer:
You cannot forget the Father because I am with you, and I cannot forget Him. 2 To forget me is to forget yourself and Him Who created you. 3 Our brothers are forgetful. 4 That is why they need your remembrance of me and of Him Who created me. 5 Through this remembrance, you can change their minds about themselves, as I can change yours. 6 Your mind is so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours. 7 I do not want to share my body in communion because this is to share nothing. 8 Would I try to share an illusion with the most holy children of a most holy Father? 9 Yet I do want to share my mind with you because we are of one Mind, and that Mind is ours. 10 See only this Mind everywhere, because only this is everywhere and in everything. 11 It is everything because it encompasses all things within itself. 12 Blessed are you who perceive only this, because you perceive only what is true. (ACIM:T-7.V.10:4)

Evidently the punch line is in line 7, where he clarifies that he does not want to share his body with us, but rather he wants to share his mind with us. And moreover he wants us to share his reality with others by choosing to join with him at any time and represent his teaching of love in so doing. So the point of this particular statement is to emphasize the reality of his presence to us, whenever we choose the miracle, as opposed to celebrating the memory of his body as some kind of a magical cure, which of course in the ego's sick imagining obviates the need of choosing the atonement for ourselves, by maintaining an idol of Jesus as a magical savior which would leave the ego firmly in charge and removes the threat that we could change our minds by choosing against the ego.

Then in Chapter 8, he elaborates on this further in two passages, of which the first one reads:
quote
When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you think of him you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself. Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another chance at salvation. Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to him and receiving it yourself. For I am always there with you, in remembrance of you.
unquote (ACIM:T-8.III.4)


And in this way he reminds us of the reality of his presence to us in every encounter, if we would merely choose the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and thus recognize our Self in our brothers, by trusting in the spirit in them. And so his presence is with us in every encounter, for every encounter is a Holy Encounter, if we do not let the ego's specialness limit it.

Copyright, © 2007 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

The Gary Myth

When The Disappearance of the Universe first appeared -- I can't resist these puns -- many did not realize how serious it was about being funny, and how much fun is a serious part of the journey home, for those of us who chose A Course In Miracles as our guide. If the problem with the separation thought was primarily that the Son of God forgot to laugh at it (cf. T-27.VIII.6:2), and instead took it, and thus his separate (false!) identity seriously, then learning to laugh at ourselves is quite obviously an integral part of the journey home, as in fact the same section reminds us, when Jesus invites us that, "Together, we can laugh them both away,..." in which "both" refers to the "tiny mad" idea (and its effects), which by dint of forgetting to laugh uproariously at its silliness, now becomes "a serious idea, and possbile of both accomplishment and real effects."

Funnily enough at the time of the appearance of the Disappearance, the established notion was that it was imposible to popularize the Course without compromising it, and yet this book proceeded to do just that, bringing the concepts into the vernacular without one iota of compromise to its core tenets. The lack of seriousness and formality, as well as a host of other (apparently) obvious shortcomings was promptly held against the book and its author in some circles, and clearly it is not for everyone, as is the case with the Course itself to begin with. But for those of us who vibrate to Gary's writing, the book is a welcome expansion of Course literature. I find myself at the point where it is, along with the sequel, Your Immortal Reality, an integral part of my work with the Course, and I make no secret of that.

Implicit in the books, Gary has clearly made the commitment of sharing a lot of his learning experiences with us, allowing us to speed up our own learning through the opportunity to empathize with the slapstick comedy of the "Life of Gary," and have yet another opportunity to begin to see the humor of our own presumed lives for what it is, as we start to make our way home by practicing the forgiveness process of the Course.

Along with all of that, these books also represent a pincer movement on Christianity, in the sense that, by establishing the solid core of the Thomas Gospel, as Pursah does in Your Immortal Reality, the continuity between Jesus of the early days and Jesus now in the Course is shown, through inner consistency of the teaching. It becomes clearer than ever that Jesus teaches what he always taught and will always teach, the point being that Jesus is not the character who lived in the dream 2000 years ago, but Jesus is who he always was, the resurrected son of God, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and the symbol of our ability to remember who we are in truth, as we learn to forget the victim script that is the ego's fundamental ploy for establishing its false identity in the dream in which we firmly believe that we are the effect of the world, and the victim of circumstance. Thus Jesus was not the suffering figure of the Christian mythology which was first conceptualized by Paul, and which was preserved for posterity through the editing process of the so-called canonical books of the New Testament, in a temporarily (for some 1500+ years) successful attempt to hijack the story of his life by re-interpretation for the purpose of religion building, and to immunize the world against his appeal to follow him (in spirit), and to do what he taught.

The dream of victimhood is expressed on many levels in the mythology of our lives, starting from being born from our parents, or being delivered by a stork, if you choose to believe that,  our existence literally "caused" by influences seemingly beyond our control. In a more general sense we think we are the product of either evolution or a supposed creation by an external God.  Both of those models are really rationalizations of the same thing, namely that the body is who we are, and the body is not our fault. We are saddled with it, and it is all we have to accomplish our "heroic"  journey in this life, which is doomed to failure, unless we were to remember that there might be "another way," and choose to find our way home.

If we do seek "another way" earnestly, we must of necessity realize slowly but surely that Help on the journey home cannot come from the other inmates in the asylum (our babbling "friends" as they are described in the story of Job), who also believe this world is our home, and the primary symbol in the Western world of how that Help (Yehoshua=God's Help, or God Helps), shows up is Jesus, or as Gary prefers, J, the J guy, etc.

Arten and Purshah, representing Thaddeus and Thomas in Gary's experience merely testify to the reality of Jesus and his teaching, both then and now. The question is not at all if Arten and Pursah are "real," as some of Gary's detractors have made it out to be, the question is only can we follow in the spirit of Gary's example in our own lives, and accept the Guidance in the form it comes to us, and never mind how many times we fall down, just get up, dust ourselves off, and continue to practice forgiveness. So the question also is not why Arten and Pursah don't show up in my life, such is merely another ego ploy not to accept the Help in the form it is available to me, by whining that I want what Gary has. In reality it is not about the form of Gary's experience, that is as unsubstantial as anything - the stuff that dreams are made of - it is about the content of his story. He shares with us the story of that experience, for those of us who want to walk the same path.

The supposed 'controversy' (those who seek it will find it!) around Gary boils down to another exercise in vicarious salvation, which is perennially the kind the ego prefers. It did in Christianity, and it does now. In making a religion out of Jesus' teachings, Paul and those after him, diverted attention from the fact that "the secret of Salvation is but this, that you are doing this unto yourself," (ACIM:T-27.VIII.10:1) and that we need to change our mind, the Greek word for which was metanoia, which does not mean conversion (to Christianity), but it does evidently mean exactly what it says, changing your mind, just like Jesus still teaches in the Course. In stead by believing that Jesus sacrificed himself for our sins, we would escape from the need to do the hard work ourselves, and we can continue to "believe" the lie that is our so-called life. No wonder Paul became more popular than Jesus, for he promised in effect that we could have our cake and eat it too. The choice now became simply one of do you accept Jesus as your savior (Paul's story that Jesus saves us),  or do you not. And so a new dualism arises between those who think that when they come to the pearly gates, all they need to do is say: "I was with Jesus, honest!" or, alternatively: "I always knew he was a fraud, honest!"

Therefore, as is reflected in a recent article by Dr. Michael Mirdad about the "Gary controversy," the underlying dynamic is the wish to make a religion out of the Course. And we now get two parties who are in each other's hair, and the one party believes that when they come to the pearly gates, all they need to say is: "But I was with Gary, honest!" and the other party will tell St. Peter: "I always knew he was a fraud, I even wrote about it!" And so the attention once again has been diverted from our own need to forgive, and to heal our relationship with God, to something going on outside of us, and the ego wins again.

Instead, the only thing that matters is your own practice of the Course, and if Gary's books work for you, use them. If they don't appeal to you, leave them aside. And if you don't like the Course, choose another path.

Copyright, © 2007 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

The Holy Encounter

As Jan Willem Kaiser wrote at one point "... therefore every encounter between people is holy." (The book in question is not yet avalable in English.)

The Course discusses this concept extensively also in Chapter 8, Section 3, The Holy Encounter, where it says among other things:

quote
When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. 2 As you see him you will see yourself. 3 As you treat him you will treat yourself. 4 As you think of him you will think of yourself. 5 Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself. 6 Whenever two Sons of God meet, they are given another chance at salvation. 7 Do not leave anyone without giving salvation to him and receiving it yourself. 8 For I am always there with you, in remembrance of
unquote


Making the other choice will be facilitated by our growing awareness as we practice the Course, that the ego is never an original thought. In order to choose to be part of the whole, you have to have had the whole first, which the ego then splits off from and denies its existence. So in the world we then make up every encounter we have is a reminder of our self which gives us the choice to act out the ego-choice all over again, and engage in another episode of the ego's soap opera, or to choose the Holy Spirit as our guide to lead us home and our brother with us, as the love we now reflect in our actions is extended through us. Hence lesson 342 says:

quote
Brother, forgive me now. 2 I come to you to take you home with me. 3 And as we go, the world goes with us on our way to God.
unquote (ACIM:W-342.2:1-3)

The Course states in the "Hero" of the Dream section:
quote
How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreams the world has ever had? 2 Is it your wish to let no dream appear to be the cause of what it is you do? 3 Then let us merely look upon the dream's beginning, for the part you see is but the second part, whose cause lies in the first. 4 No one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself.
unquote (ACIM:T-27.VIII.4:1-4)

And so it is in every encounter that we have in the world, we are not in touch with our own choice to see ourselves as an individual first, and thus our brother as a stranger, outside ourselves, whom we accuse of stealing the peace of God from us, and we are intent on getting it back either by seduction (special love) or by attack (special hate). As we act this out, we are seeing only the effect in the dream, and not our choice (for the ego) which caused the dream in the first place.  And so it is we need a reminder that every encounter indeed is a holy encounter, in which we always have the opportunity to "choose once again," and choose to go home with our brother instead of perpetuating the ego's drama.

Should we choose to replace the miracle impulses with physical action, and choose the ego's drama, the Course discusses some of the consequences in the last section of Chapter 1, The Distortion of Miracle Impulses as follows:

quote
Your distorted perceptions produce a dense cover over miracle impulses, making it hard for them to reach your own awareness. 2 The confusion of miracle impulses with physical impulses is a major perceptual distortion. 3 Physical impulses are misdirected miracle impulses. 4 All real pleasure comes from doing God's Will. 5 This is because not doing it is a denial of Self. 6 Denial of Self results in illusions, while correction of the error brings release from it. 7 Do not deceive yourself into believing that you can relate in peace to God or to your brothers with anything external.
unquote (ACIM:T-1.VII.1:1-7)

And so in every encounter we can choose to experience yet once again that we cannot truly relate to our brothers in peace with anything external, however much we try. The important thing about this is that we start to see that there is a continuous opportunity to make the other choice. This realization closely relates to the Course's observation in the section The Ego and False Autonomy:

quote
It is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego. 2 In fact, it is the best question you could ask. 3 There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present. 4 Abstract thought applies to knowledge because knowledge is completely impersonal, and examples are irrelevant to its understanding. 5 Perception, however, is always specific, and therefore quite concrete.
unquote (ACIM:T-4.II.1)

And it is in our relationships that as children from the ego we always seek to reenact the past, and set ourselves up as a victim all over again, firmly believing we are overcoming the past, when in fact we are setting ourselves up to repeat it, unless and until we make the other choice, which breaks us free of our "predestination," and sets us on the way to freedom with our brother. On this path in one form or another we come to what the Course describes as the holiest spot on earth:

quote
The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love. 2 And They come quickly to the living temple, where a home for Them has been set up. 3 There is no place in Heaven holier. 4 And They have come to dwell within the temple offered Them, to be Their resting place as well as yours. 5 What hatred has released to love becomes the brightest light in Heaven's radiance. 6 And all the lights in Heaven brighter grow, in gratitude for what has been restored.
unquote (ACIM:t-26.IX.6)

And so it is that it is in our very relationships, in what is "in front of our face," as the Thomas Gospel expresses it, that we have the sacred opportunity for healing, whenever we choose the Holy Spirit as our guide. The comment about the Distortion of Miracle Impulses that was cited above reflects how the recognition of our Self, which is inherent in every Encounter is immediately hi-jacked by the ego and translated into a transaction at the bodily level, where communication is by definition impossible, and by nature that is the ego's goal to prevent communication, since that rests on unity, and a denial of the separation.

Copyright, © 2006 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

From Thomas to Jefferson, and on to The Five Gospels

Under the title of this essay the reader will find a link to the Jefferson Bible, which is now available on the web in its entirety, including some of the introductory materials. So far my favorite edition of the Jefferson Bible is the one from Beacon Press in 1989, which has an introduction by Forrest Church and an afterword by Jaroslav Pelikan. It is a pleasant edition, and fairly serviceable, but it also has some annoying inconsistencies.

To wit, in the introduction Forrest Church adduces some of the crucial correspondence in which Jefferson provided an accounting for his purpose and his method in the compilation. However, where Jeffersons purpose was clearly an attempt to hear the teachings of Jesus amidst the din of the teachings about him by Paul and those who followed, it was inevitable that he should dismiss the writings of Paul from consideration, as he did the entire Old Testament, as well as most of the rest of the New. Pelikan in his afterword addresses Jefferson's frame of mind in this regard in the context of the Enlightenment, and quotes from a choice passage about Paul in Jefferson's April 13th 1820 letter to William Short, which in the original reads as follows:

... I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to Him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of His disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of His doctrines, led me to try to sift them apart. I found the work obvious and easy, and that His past composed the most beautiful morsel of morality which has been given to us by man. The syllabus is therefore of His doctrines, not all of mine. I read them as I do those of other ancient and modern moralists, with a mixture of approbation and dissent...


Regrettably, while Church does include part of this very letter in the introduction, he truncates it after "... and roguery of others of His disciples," without even indicating with an ellipsis that something was left off, and so, when you try to find the letter Pelikan quotes in the afterword, you will be at a loss for this very relevant material, unless you did as I did and turn to the Internet. Pelikan meanwhile disappoints us a bit by his seeming upset at the daring of the third US President in his editing, which seems unwarranted, since Jefferson's honest purpose was to hear the words of the teacher, without the distortions of later commentators and editors that seemed obvious to him. Other than that, this is a nice edition.

The important point of Jefferson's work and results is first and foremost that anyone who wanted to try to understand Jesus could have done what Jefferson did, and dismissed the theological and interpretive framing of the stories, focusing on the words themselves, and following their own intuition as to the consistency of his teachings. It is very lovely to see how Jefferson even notes that he does not necessarily agree with all of what he thinks Jesus said, but simply focuses on trying to hear the consistency of the material, and leaves off anything that appears spurious. And by doing so he ends up with an edition which now, two hundred years later, and with the benefit of hindsight we should call truly remarkable. One way of looking at just how remarkable it was, is to realize the very high level of correspondence with the Thomas Gospel, which would not be discovered until almost a hundred and fifty years later. And yet we now see that the Thomas Gospel has a higher level than authenticity than the canonical materials, thus indirectly vindicating Jefferson's attempt at least in large part.

Thomas Jefferson in his editing certainly did not fall for the temptation which The Jesus Seminar points out in the introduction to its publication The Five Gospels, which is a remarkable attempt to bring together in one volume the canonical gospels and Thomas, in a very lively new translation, relatively free of theological prejudice. In the introduction on what they call the seven pillars of critical Bible scholarship, they end with warning us for a temptation they describe as follows: "Beware of finding a Jesus entirely congenial to you." (The Five Gospels, p. 5) As students of A Course In Miracles, we might see this admonition as a wonderful corollary to the various teachings in the Course which urge us to come up to Jesus' level in lieu of pulling Jesus down to our level. Christian theology has always busied itself with pulling Jesus down into the world, and explaining him in those terms, the path of spiritual growth does the opposite by listening to Jesus and letting him pull us up to his level. One specific passage in the Course stands out in this regard, in Lesson 80, Let me recognize my problems have been solved, and it goes as follows:

quote
If you are willing to recognize your problems, you will recognize that you have no problems. 2 Your one central problem has been answered, and you have no other. 3 Therefore, you must be at peace. 4 Salvation thus depends on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. 5 One problem, one solution. 6 Salvation is accomplished. 7 Freedom from conflict has been given you. 8 Accept that fact, and you are ready to take your rightful place in God's plan for salvation.
Your only problem has been solved! 2 Repeat this over and over to yourself today, with gratitude and conviction. 3 You have recognized your only problem, opening the way for the Holy Spirit to give you God's answer. 4 You have laid deception aside, and seen the light of truth. 5 You have accepted salvation for yourself by bringing the problem to the answer. 6 And you can recognize the answer, because the problem has been identified.
unquote (ACIM:W-80.1-2)

Or to put it in more philosophical terms, the world's theologies are always dualistic, since they directly or indirectly make the world real, preferably explicitly by blaming God for creating it. Jesus on the other hand teaches pure non-dualism, and his teaching of forgiveness, which we now have in much greater depth in the form of A Course In Miracles, teaches us the way out.
Yet even today compromise of the Course's teachings with various attempts to still make the world real is as widespread as it was in the early days of emergent Christianity.

Meanwhile, to return to our consideration of the traditional textual material, since The Jesus Seminar did put Mark up front - an editorial revision of the New Testament which was long overdue - they might as well have put Thomas ahead of that. This is not mere form. Our reading of Mark most of all would change forever if we should read the Thomas Gospel first. The minimal Pauline varnish present in Mark, such as verbiage about the symbolism of the Eucharist, would soon chip away, and we might see a significant shift in our view of Jesus, in which the Markan account preserves a freshness that is increasingly edited out in the later Gospels.

In summary, The Five Gospels is a remarkable book indeed, and truly perhaps the best source available today to access the historical documents about Jesus. And aside from the undeniable fact of the influence of the King James Bible on the English language, and therefore a certain need to stay conversant with it if only for the sake of literary references, such as those in the Course, this might be my favorite Bible edition, right next to the little gem that is the Jefferson Bible.


Copyright, © 2006 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

Duality all over again

The following started with a thread on Course Talk, in which I took part, titled One in Nature, not in number. Subsequently I decided that it might pay to expand upon my response, since this is an issue that appears to come up with some frequency. The original writer posed that the notion of "One in nature, not in number," might be a way of understanding the Course's concept of oneness on an operational level. It should be evident to attentive readers that much rather it turns the Course teaching on its ear.

Amidst what seems to be a cottage industry of Course interpretation, which makes the silent assumption that the Course should need interpretation, one of the favorite pastimes boils down to finding byways to re-introduce and justify the ego's implied belief in duality, and thus to have your cake and eat it too: appearing to embrace the Course, and honoring the ego and the world at the same time. Besides the clarifications of this issue that can be found in the Course, which are too numerous to repeat here, it may be helpful however to consider some other issues, both historical and current.

As is now evident from internal evidence the original teaching of Jesus was better preserved in the Thomas Gospel than in the so-called "canonical" gospels, where the needs of the story-tellers, and the first stirrings of theological interpretation of Jesus' teaching are beginning to be felt, which finds its origin (within the canonical tradition) in the writings of Paul, whose early work pre-dates the synoptics, but not Thomas. And of course the internal consistency of GoTh reflects a non-dualism that is completely in-line with ACIM.

Historically Paul then lays the ground work for a theological interpretation of Jesus, and lays the foundation for what we call Christianity, including such key notions as the Second Coming meaning Jesus' return to this world, rather than us following him out of it. By striving for a consistent interpretation in ego terms, i.e. consistency in form, the inner consistency of Jesus' teachings, never mind the whole Biblical tradition, is compromised and a forced consistency in form is theologically imposed on the Bible as God's revealed word. One way of looking at it very bluntly is that if the Bible does not have a consistent meaning an emerging priesthood does not have any jobsecurity. Essentially the "mysteries of faith" arise wherever it is impossible to explain a non-dualistic teaching in dualistic terms, and hence these "mysteries" are jealously guarded by the priesthood and not open to question, rather accepting them becomes the basis of their brand of salvation, which as we all know has proven to be highly marketable, in by now some 25,000 flavors. All these varieties of interpretation are ultimately possible only because there can not be a consistent way of explaining non-dualism in dualistic terms.

Much of the misunderstandings around the Course amount to the same issue. The Course is consistent in content, not in form, for reasons it carefully explains, namely our reality is non-dualistic, but we're having this dream of a dualistic existence, and the Course meets us where we are. Now if a Course-theology is attempted to impose a consistency in form on the Course which it doesn't have, the result could conceivably be 25,000 "Course denominations," because the answers multiply once we go down this path (just add yeast, sugar, and some global warming, and give it 2,000 years). Likewise people who make their living interpreting the Course along such lines have need of justifying their interepretations by speaking of Ken Wapnick's "interpretation," when that is the one thing Ken Wapnick does not do. Instead he painstakingly explains the Course on the Course's terms, following strictly and only its strict consistency of content, and allowing for its apparent contradictions in form, by understanding obvious metaphors metaphorically.

Obviously to the ego this is intolerable, and hence the not infrequent, but entirely unjustified notion of Ken's "interpretation" of the Course is given currency. Strictly speaking one could only use that term by either not fully reading the Course in one piece, or if the writer perhaps did not read English very well. And so the groundwork is laid for many possible interpretations, as in fact the Course clearly explains the ego will always do, in pursuing the first law of chaos, that the truth is different for everyone. The prime example of this is surely Robert Perry's book "One Course, Two Visions," the title of which surely says enough.

A recent episode in Miracles Magazine concerning the work of Gary Renard reflects the same issues. If nothing else Gary is very forceful in upholding and presenting the nondualism of the Course and does not compromise that message one iota, and he came under attack in Miracles Magazine by a parade of writers who dedicate themselves to presentations of the Course in which they sneak in non-dualism in various forms and degrees through the side door, as has been proudly documented in the above book, which by its title alone makes a joke of the internal consistency of the Course.

The bottom line on all of this is that the mistakes are the same now as they were two thousand years ago, and simply demonstrate in so many ways how the ego in all of us constantly seeks to compromise the uncompromising nature of reality, in order to hang on to the validity of the self-concept it wants to sell us on. And as long as we keep wanting to be sold on it, we'll buy for it is only our choice that makes and empowers the ego. And as the Course points out, our fondness for it can be understood only because we made it.

Copyright, © 2006 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

The Parable of DU

"The Disappearance of the Universe," or "DU" as it is affectionately known among ACIM literati, is a metaphor, just like anything else is metaphor, once we begin to appreciate that all duality is always metaphor.

And presently we wait with bated breath on the sequel, "Your Immortal Reality," and some exchanges have already begun on-line with people who have read the book already.  I am in fact reading it as I write down these notes.

It may make sense to take a step back and look at the metaphor presented by DU. In it Gary, a lovable, stumbling, and bumbling fellow who is not hard to empathize or identify with, follows his spiritual longings as best he can without making any particularly dramatic headway, until at one point two people show up in his life, seemingly out of nowhere, in order to help Gary make major progress in his spiritual work, and who towards the end of the story reveal themselves as his own self from another (future) incarnation, and formerly the apostle Thomas, as well as well as the former apostle Thaddeus, in the form of one of his future incarnations, who however has a relationship with Gary in this current lifetime in another form, which he leaves for Gary (and us) to guess about.

The point perhaps is that it is our own self and closest friends showing up as help on the path, in whatever form that is most helpful to us, and of course never one that induces fear, and... as some episodes make clear sometimes even without us knowing it. As much as people seem to think that if only they had such apparitions in their lives, then they would really believe, the truth is most of us would call the police. For Gary apparently the fear was low enough that a deeper feeling of recognition set in, and he tuned into his sense of familiarity and trust, instead of fear. Along the way in the story it is evident that even if they're not there physically, they are still helping him in other dimensions. The implication is that as we are healing we do get lots of help, in whatever form we can accept and recognize, though often we don't know it, or at least not right away.

Some of the comments that have been floating around on the forums seem to note the "exclusivity" of Arten and Pursah to Gary, which seems like a spurious comment, for my identities from prior lives would be unique to me as A&P are to Gary, though in the long run of course we represent one self. But the bottom line is the implication of the book is not about
A&P excluding us from the kingdom as such comments imply, but simply that Gary has his A&P, and we all have our own "self" from other times watching over us like a guardian angel, we just may not have a physical experience like Gary did. The message is hardly that he's got it, and we're lost at sea. Rather, if a poor shlepp like Gary can get it, so can we, so there's hope.

So for one thing the message is that if Gary can, so can we, and on another level perhaps we cannot meet Arten and Pursah in the way Gary experienced them but we can meet Gary either through his book or in a workshop, and we all have our own Artens and Pursah's, if we know it or not, right in our own lives, that is the message of hope the book conveys, that we don't go this path alone. Gary is the demonstration of that. And Thomas Logion 52 may be recalled at this point too, for it is a favorite ego trick to ask for something more suitable (to the ego), in order to deny what's right in front of us. Ignoring the opportunity for salvation that's in front of us, until a better one arrives is standard ego fare. To the ego no path will ever be good enough,  unless the ego stays in charge, and that is why it always seeks to have the final "imprimatur," and that is why only dead prophets are safe in its view.

GoTh. 52 (GR version):
The disciples said to him, "Twenty-four prophets have spoken in Israel, and they all spoke of you." He said to them: "You have disregarded the living one who is in your presence, and have spoken of the dead."


Copyright, © 2006 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.

Now about those Tongues

After ten years of talking about the French translation of the Course, which finally arrived this spring, I finally did my first introductory workshop at the Gallery of my friend Samuel Augustin (www.kreyolart.com) on Saturday 08/12/2006. In the process I've started to read the book in French just to get "tuned in" to the French word choices, in order hopefully to make my usage consistent with the translated Course, rather than making it up from English and risk causing confusion.

Like always, this undertaking turns out to be a gift to myself, for suddenly even the first few chapters of the Course are hitting me with a fresh power that really blew my mind. I guess it is easier to read right over what it says in English for you think you know it already. And so, right from the outset,this experience seems to be offering a new twist on the idea that you teach what you need to learn.

I have not yet dared to really start reading the Course in my native Dutch. Something is holding me back, it just seems odd or too pedestrian in Dutch.

Having said that, I am profoundly impressed with the fact that translating is impossible, and would recommend to any foreign language students that if they can do it at all they should consult the English text from time to time. From the notes in all the foreign editions it is clear that the greatest sacrifice is the link to the KJV of the Bible, which seems so organic with the Course in English, but is lost in the translation to any other language.

Other interesting issues turn up as well, such as the fact that Dutch does not really have a viable word for "mind," and so a neologism was created for the purpose of the translation. I'm sure that my further work with the translations will lead to some interesting new observations from time to time.

Copyright, © 2006 Rogier F. van Vlissingen. All rights reserved.