A Course in Miracles began with Helen Schucman’s original Shorthand Notes which were transcribed by William Thetford. The material was edited into the Urtext and then the Hugh Lynn Cayce version (HLC) and then the 1975 FIP Abridgement, for a total of five major versions we know of. Schucman’s Scribing has been organized into eleven segments or volumes here. Not all of those volumes exist or are available in all versions. In the HLC for instance, we only have the Text volume, and of the Thetford Transcript we’re not 100% sure we have any, though we think the Song of Prayer and Psychotherapy manuscripts may well be Thetford’s original transcript rather than a later copy. For that reason they are included in both Urtext and Transcript sections. In many cases we have both facsimile copies of the original manuscripts (scanned photocopies) and machine readable, searchable e-texts, though we do not have e-texts for every manuscript as of yet. In the case of the HLC we have a multiple of rather different e-texts which are available.

  • Shorthand Notes

    The Shorthand Notes is a vast collection of more than 3,400 handwritten pages. The Notes includes all or most of the Text, Workbook, Manual, Use of Terms, and Psychotherapy volumes of ACIM, along with five pages of the Song of Prayer, a few Special Messages, the Preface, twenty five pages which precede beginning of the Course, and some miscellaneous unsorted material. Our primary emphasis has been on the canonical material.

  • Thetford Transcript

    The Thetford Transcript is reportedly the first typed transcript of the Notes. It was supposedly typed by Bill Thetford to Helen Schucman’s dictation and proofed, and therefore should be of good accuracy. We have no verified copies of any of that first transcript, however the Urtext manuscripts of Psychotherapy and Song of Prayer are very likely Thetford’s original transcript as they appear to have been orally dictated.

  • Urtext

    While widely claimed to be the original Thetford Transcript, most of the Urtext Manuscripts are very obviously later retypings. Although they display errors typical of visual copy typing, these documents are generally very close to the Notes. We have reasonably complete manuscript copies of the Text, Workbook, Manual, Use of Terms, Psychotherapy, Song of Prayer, Gifts of God and Special Messages volumes.

  • Hugh Lynn Case (HLC)

    The dictation of the Text volume was completed in 1968, and between that time and late 1972, Helen and Bill did some serious editing on the Urtext of the Text volume, removing some 38,000 words and changing a great deal more. The result is known as the Hugh Lynn Cayce version, or HLC, because an early copy was given to Hugh Cayce, the son of the famous American psychic, Edgar Cayce.

  • Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP or Criswell) Editions

    In 1973 Kenneth Wapnick met Helen and Bill and a few months later began editing the HLC with Helen, during which editing Ken reports Helen invariably fell asleep. Another ten thousand words were removed from the Course, a great deal more was rewritten, and quite a bit was resequenced. In August of 1975 this version was first published in a limited Xerox edition otherwise known as the Criswell Edition. While copies of that edition do survive, I’ve not been able to secure a complete copy. By all accounts, the only differences from the FIP First Edition are some minor error corrections. What I do have of Criswell is here in facsimile.