What is the Original Dictation?

In 1975 when Judith Skutch was first introducing A Course in Miracles (ACIM) to humanity, she reports that she was often asked how much of it was channelled and how much was human editing. Judith went on to say there were “virtually no changes” to the original channelled material. Since she also reported that she’d never even seen the original, let alone checked, we can only presume that someone she trusted had told her that. Unless she just made it up. But not long later Helen Schucman was to put essentially the same claim into writing.

Since the outset, the audience of ACIM has asked for and about the “original dictation”, and with each different version released has been assured, “This is it.”

The First Claimant to Originality: Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP)

Until the rediscovery of the Hugh Lynn Cayce version (HLC) in 1999, the FIP version of ACIM was believed to be a substantially faithful copy of the “original dictation” with only a few minor changes. The belief was based largely on advertising from FIP which stated the material was “virtually unchanged”. In the Preface appearing in the FIP version we read Helen Schucman’s own words:

“I would take down what the Voice 'said' and read it to him [Bill Thetford] the next day, and he typed it from my dictation. I expect he had his special assignment, too. Without his encouragement and support I would never have been able to fulfill mine. The whole process took about seven years. The Text came first, then the Workbook for Students, and finally the Manual for Teachers. Only a few minor changes have been made. Chapter titles and subheadings have been inserted in the Text, and some of the more personal references that occurred at the beginning have been omitted. Otherwise the material is substantially unchanged.” [emphasis ours]

Such a statement, if true, would not lead most people to suppose this meant that roughly one hundred thousand editing changes had been made and that approximately 50,000 words were omitted, with much of what remained having been extensively rewritten, often in a way that significantly changed the meaning.

With a wide range of hugely different versions and editions all being presented as “The Original” it is a case of caveat emptor … let the buyer be aware that not all of these versions are equally “original”.

The Second Claimant to Originality: Jesus Course In Miracles (JCIM)

When the HLC was first published by the Course in Miracles Society (CIMS) in February of 2000, I was the board chairperson, so I accept some responsibility for this glaring error. The frontispiece of that JCIM edition bore the words “Original Dictation”. At the time we at CIMS did not really know what the recently discovered manuscript was, how many other early manuscripts there were, or where this one fit into the editing chronology.

We knew only that it was about 10,000 words longer than the FIP edition, and that its first five chapters were about 25% longer.

In August of 2000, however, the Urtext manuscript appeared on the internet and it was some 40,000 words longer than the HLC, and obviously less edited and much earlier.

It was with some embarrassment that I realized that CIMS’s affirmation of originality on the JCIM frontispiece was entirely incorrect. This mistake had been honest in the sense that we just didn’t know — but then we didn’t exercise due diligence in attempting to check either. I left CIMS shortly after the book went to press and why CIMS did not subsequently acknowledge the error I do not know.

The Third Claimant to Originality: Raincoast

In 2006 Raincoast Press printed an edition of the FIP First Edition Text volume, and here is its copyright page. So far as we can tell the only portions of this book that are copyrightable are the words you see here! Insofar as this is an exact reproduction of the first edition of ACIM to go to press, to that extent the claim is actually accurate. Should the reader understand this to be something other than the first printing, then the reader would be, as many readers have been, persuaded that what he has in his hands is the original dictation of the Course, rather than a severely truncated abridgement.

The Fourth Claimant to Originality: Whitmore’s “original” eclectic version

In 2007 a second edition bearing the CIMS imprint appeared. CIMS is the only identification provided in the book, except for an acknowledgement of some editorial assistance from Armando Brons. To know who is responsible for it we have to know who owns that name CIMS and who is responsible for what is done in the name of CIMS.

I’d long quit the organization, and in the intervening years CIMS became something of a secretive mystery entity with a board of directors consisting entirely of people I knew who mostly claimed, when asked, to have nothing to do with the organization any longer. Its president, Gene Ward Smith, quite publically proclaimed in 2007 that “CIMS is Tom Whitmore” and had ceased to be any sort of organization at all.

Calling this the work of CIMS, as if CIMS were some sort of responsible and reputable entity, rather than whomever Tom might happen to consult from time to time, would be misleading. There is no group and there is no organization. Peggy Howland told me she put the Workbook together by comparing the Urtext and FIP versions and selecting the reading she preferred. But where they differed, the Text was Tom’s doing (confirmed by Peggy and Gene and Armando, all three members of the CIMS Board). But Tom says it wasn’t just him and does not put his name in the book. Instead he says that Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford were the editors. They had both been deceased for more than 15 years when this book came out, so they’re not who did this version.

Gene disavowed any responsibility for this version and no one but Tom claimed any responsibility for the organization by that time. The “organization’s” address and phone number are the same as Tom’s law office. There is no CIMS — it’s just a paper corporation which Tom uses rather than his own name because quite understandably he doesn’t want to take responsibility for this remarkably incompetent, substandard and dishonest publication.

Tom — or someone — took the HLC, changed most of its punctuation and emphasis, and merged portions of it with both the Urtext and the FIP version. For some odd reason, however, though he had access to the Shorthand Notes when almost no one else did, he has stated that he did not check the Notes. This makes it, by definition, an “eclectic” version drawing from multiple historical scribal versions, all of them except the “original” written record — the Notes. Yet he claims it is the HLC. It is not. In all it has more than 7,000 changes from the HLC. And of this he said in his Foreword “nothing has been added or omitted” which, except for more than 7,000 exceptions, is true. Later he wrote in Miracles Monthly that the emphasis was not changed and insisted the HLC was the “first” written record of the Course. Of course it is not, it is the third of which we have copies and the fourth of which there are reliable reports. He dropped the highly inaccurate and misleading “original dictation” claim. In its place he put the words “Original Edition”. If properly understood, that assertion is true: this is a highly original new eclectic version. What it is not is “the original Course” by any stretch of even the most fertile of imaginations.

But then the book went on sale, advertised as “The Original Edition.” Well it is an original eclectic interpretive edition, but rather like the Raincoast and FIP claims, the unwary reader would be very unlikely to conclude that all of these versions are in fact very late, heavily abridged, heavily edited redactions of that “original dictation” and not the original Course at all.

Whitmore even claimed Schucman and Thetford as the editors, a claim so outlandishly untrue and misleading that it could make them turn over in their graves. The modifications to their work incorporated in this edition took place more than ten years after both had passed on and in no way, shape or form reflect their work or their editing approach. Helen and Bill certainly could not have been involved. CIMS is but a phantom organization residing somewhere in Tom Whitmore’s law office and the person or persons responsible for this almost unbelievably “original” edition remain, understandably, anonymous.

But for the gentle reader unaware of these curiosities and inclined to believe what’s printed on the covers and between the covers of an obviously well-financed professionally bound book, the situation had become extremely confusing.

Four claimants, four books with significant differences, all claiming to be the original dictation, the original edition, or at least “substantially unchanged”.

The Fifth Claimant to Originality: The Urtext Manuscripts

As quoted above from the FIP Preface, Helen stated that her “original dictation” was typed by Bill “the next day”. In Absence from Felicity and elsewhere Kenneth Wapnick calls that original Thetford Transcript by the name “Urtext” and asserts that it is a proofed, accurate transcript of the “original original” Shorthand Notes. If it is an accurate transcript, then it is identical to the “original dictation”. When a collection of typed manuscripts labelled “Urtext” appeared on the net in late 2000, this was presumed to be that Thetford Transcript of the Shorthand Notes. That was mostly because Wapnick had equated the word “Urtext” to Thetford’s original transcript. It was only later discovered that Wapnick was quite mistaken on that count. While some people had copies of the Notes such that it would have been possible to see if it really was a transcript of the Notes, I didn’t manage to secure a copy for many years and apparently no one who did have access to the material bothered to check. When it became possible for me to check it was quite apparent that the Urtext manuscript is not that original Thetford Transcript and is certainly not a thoroughly proofed complete and accurate transcript of the Notes.

The Urtext was first published in print in late 2008 under the title “Urtext Manuscripts”. Unlike most other editions of A Course in Miracles it doesn’t claim to be the “original dictation” or the “original edition”. But that claim has been made for it by others.

In fact that edition has a lengthy appendix documenting just some of the vast amount of evidence which proves that most, if not all of the Urtext Manuscripts cannot possibly be an orally dictated, proofed transcript of the “original dictation”. By the time it went to press I had finally managed to secure a photocopy of the Shorthand Notes and had read enough of Helen’s handwriting to recognize that the Urtext was also not a highly accurate, proofed transcript of the Notes. It left quite a lot out and also includes quite a lot which is not found in the Notes.

So now it really gets confusing. According to Wapnick the Urtext really is the “original” but according to its publisher and editor, it’s not! This book actually claims to be only what it is, an early edited abridgement of the original dictation.

But this version that doesn’t claim to be “original” is obviously of much earlier and “more original” provenance than all those later versions which do claim to be original.

The reason I would not make that claim for it is that I know it’s not true. What was true at the time of publication is that it was the closest to the original then in print.

How can this circle be squared?

The Sixth Claimant to Originality: The Shorthand Notes Transcripts

In the summer of 2009, I set to work to transcribe the Shorthand Notes and completed the Text volume, where the most substantial and significant differences from other versions occur. Not yet published in print, this has been published on the web. The Shorthand Notebooks contain the real “first” written record of ACIM. But as the reader will see in the transcript, a great deal that appears in the Urtext labelled “dictated without notes” isn’t in the Notes. So while the Notes contains a great deal missing from the Urtext, the Urtext contains a great deal missing from the Notes. This version is then “original” in the sense of being the “first written record” with no editing, but it is not all the original dictation, because substantial segments of that original dictation are not in the Notes but only show up in the Urtext.

Squaring the Circle: Finally the Real Original Dictation

By now it may becoming obvious that none of these versions are the “whole of what Jesus originally dictated to Helen and which Helen put to paper.” In order to claim we have all of what was first dictated to Helen, in its original wording, and without editorial meddling, we must combine the unique material in the Notes with the unique material in the Urtext with the material they share.

Then and only then can a reasonably authentic claim to having all the words originally dictated, in their original order, and with no editorial changes be truthfully and accurately made.

I call this the “original dictation” with this caveat: I know that my primary source material is not the best that exists and is not all of what the Scribes created. What is included here is simply all that is available to me at this time.

There is reason to suppose that it is certainly most of what Helen committed to writing.