A COURSE IN MIRACLES AND GNOSTICISM Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D. (FULL BIO) By way of introducing the topics to be discussed in the present article, I shall begin with some autobiographical reflections. I was originally introduced to A Course in Miracles in 1973. In the years immediately following my introduction to the Course, much of my work—therapy and lecturing—focused on Roman Catholics in and around New York City. These included priests, members of religious orders, the laity, and religious communities. My work within the New York Archdiocese made it imperative that I become more familiar with the history and theology of Christianity, not to mention the New Testament, and the interface between them and A Course in Miracles. I recognized that such study would help me bridge the gap between orthodox Christian thinking and the Course for those who were coming to the Course from this tradition. As the Course states: It would indeed be strange if you were asked to go beyond all symbols of the world, forgetting them forever; yet were asked to take a teaching function. You have need to use the symbols of the world a while. But be you not deceived by them as well.… They become but means by which you can communicate in ways the world can understand, but which you recognize is not the unity where true communication can be found (W-pI.184.9:1-3,5). And from the manual for teachers: If you would be heard by those who suffer, you must speak their language (M-26.4:3). As the Course and my work in New York Catholic circles became more widespread, so did interest in the Course increase in these circles, both positively and negatively. For some theologians, the Course presented serious problems. In general, these concerns tended to center on the issue of Gnosticism, whose spectre has remained for centuries the reddest of all flags that could be waved in front of someone committed to orthodoxy. The extreme defensiveness I began to encounter when this issue surfaced piqued my curiosity and interest still further, for I recognized that something of importance must be present in the Gnostic material if only because it had aroused such antagonism and resistance in the past, and continued to do so in the present. As my prior knowledge of Gnosticism was superficial, based primarily on reading Jung for whom the Gnostics held a special attraction, I began to explore the subject for myself. I discovered to my surprise and great interest that indeed the Course and many Gnostic writers shared much in common, most especially the Valentinian understanding that the phenomenal world was inherently illusory—a product of our misthought—and therefore had not been created by God. On the other hand, the differences between these two thought systems were as important as the similarities, notably in the implications for our everyday living that were drawn from the shared metaphysical principles of Gnosticism and A Course in Miracles. I discussed this with interested friends, and one of them, the transpersonal psychologist (and psychiatrist) Roger Walsh, suggested I write an article on the relationship between the Course and Gnosticism. From time to time Roger renewed his suggestion. Eventually, I wrote a book entitled, Love Does Not Condemn. This article is an edited version of that book. A final note regarding the purpose of this article: as elaborated below, A Course in Miracles’ true teachings, not always immediately apparent, seem to belie some of its own words. Thus, the material covered in this article also serves to substantiate a deeper understanding of the Course, helping the reader recognize its truly profound contribution to the world. These preliminaries out of the way, we can begin the journey through a veritable treasure-house of philosophical and spiritual gems. In the words of the Viennese conductor Erich Leinsdorf, speaking of first-time listeners to Wagner’s great music-drama Die Walkuere: “I envy all those yet to make its acquaintance.” Love Does Not Condemn A litany from the seventeenth-century Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England contains this petition: “From fornication, and all other deadly sin; and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil, Good Lord, deliver us” (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3d ed., p. 385, #16). “The world, the flesh, and the devil” have been preoccupations of world religions ever since people began reflecting on their existential situation of feeling alone and vulnerable in a world that could be perceived as harmful, evil, and uncaring. Religions, thus, can be seen as attempts to render sensible this otherwise inexplicable and meaningless phenomenal world. They have sought answers to the question of how a separated and physical world, apparently under the benevolent guidance of a loving and non-physical God, can arise in the first place, and then continually manifest pain and suffering. They address the problem of how one is to live in a world of the body, while trying to recall and identify with one’s spiritual Self. In the Western philosophical world, this problem has been addressed since the time of the pre-Socratics in ancient Greece, with Plato being the first to develop an elaborate cosmogony (study of the origin of the world) and cosmology (study of the nature of the world), and then an ethical system and theory of society that was derived from this. His work became the foundation for over two thousand years of theoretical speculation about the nature of spiritual reality and its relation to the world of the body, not to mention having presented a problem that has perplexed Platonists for centuries and centuries. American classicist and Greek scholar John Dillon has stated it this way: Perhaps the chief problem that faces any religious or philosophical system which postulates, as does the Platonic, a primary state or entity of pure and unitary perfection, is that of explaining how from such a first principle anything further could have arisen. Any further development, after all, from a perfect principle must necessarily be a declination of some sort, and it is not easy to see why the supreme principle, if omnipotent, should want this to occur.… [There] is a further problem. Accepting that a world or universe of some sort is thus brought into being, how can we further explain the imperfect and disorderly nature of our world as it now exists? Something, surely, has gone wrong somewhere. There must at some stage, over and above the basic creation, have been a declination, a Fall (in Layton, p. 357; bracketed word added). This article presents two primary approaches to this problem— Gnosticism and A Course in Miracles—and discusses them within the context of the Platonic and Christian traditions. Before proceeding any further, however, a few introductory remarks may be helpful for those relatively unfamiliar with the Course. A Course in Miracles was the result of a decision made in 1965 by two New York psychologists, Helen Schucman and William Thetford, to join with each other to find “another way” (more loving) of relating to people. That moment of joining (what the Course would later term a “holy instant”) served as a signal that triggered off a series of visionary, dream, and psychic experiences in Helen that culminated in her hearing an internal voice who began to “dictate” the three books—text, workbook for students, manual for teachers— that comprise the Course. The dictation was begun in the fall of 1965, completed seven years later, and published in 1976. Briefly stated, the Course teaches that the forgiveness of our projected guilt is the means whereby we remember our oneness with each other, our true Self, and with the God Who created us. This teaching comes within a non-dualistic metaphysical framework wherein God did not create the phenomenal, material world, a term that includes the entire physical universe. Rather, the world and the body are seen to have arisen from the projection of the fundamentally illusory thought and belief that we could separate ourselves from God, and make a world wherein the opposite of Heaven seems to have been accomplished. This belief in the reality of the separation is called the ego by the Course. The world then serves the purpose of protecting the ego thought system of separation and usurpation within its shadows of guilt that ostensibly keep God the “Enemy” away. Thus, our entire experience in this world, within our bodily and psychological selves, is part of an illusory thought system we believe to be reality, yet which remains nothing more than a dream. Salvation is attained through hearing the Voice of the Holy Spirit, awakening us from the dream of separation by teaching us to join with others through forgiveness. This is the process of Atonement, the principle that states that the separation never truly occurred. Though A Course in Miracles teaches that the world is illusory, it does not advocate avoidance of this world, nor its rejection as evil or sinful. Rather, it emphasizes that the mistakes of separation be corrected at the level of our experience here. It urges us to look within our most intimate and meaningful relationships, asking the Holy Spirit— our internal Teacher—to heal them for us. What is encouraged, therefore, is gratitude for our involvement in the world because of its potential to teach us that there is no world. Under the Holy Spirit’s guidance we become grateful for the classroom that is our bodily experience, and for His teaching us the lessons that are found here. Thus, the metaphysics of non-duality is reconciled with our experience of duality. One final note on the Course: Its contextual framework is Christian, with its language and terminology coming from the Judaeo-Christian world of the Bible. Thus, although the nature of God is obviously beyond gender, the Course utilizes masculine terminology to denote God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. In addition, the term “Son of God” is consistently used to denote both Christ (our spiritual Self that God created) as well as the separated self (the ego) asleep within the dream. However, the Course’s message clearly transcends sectarian concerns. It is my contention that concurrent with the rise and spread of Christianity ran a strong thread of truth, counter to the orthodox Christian position. The roots of this thread in the Western world are traceable back to Plato and before, and extend through the great Gnostic and Neoplatonic thinkers to the present day, where A Course in Miracles is among its clearest and purest exponents. This thread reflects a unified spirit, despite its disparate voices. It is the spirit of a wisdom that recognizes the alienation of living in a world that does not correspond to the pure oneness of God, the voice of one experiencing the paradox of the unbridgeable gulf between the perfection of God and His creation, set against the obvious imperfections of this world that are so foreign to one’s true Self. And yet it is a voice that sees salvation from this world as possible if not inevitable. In many ways, therefore, A Course in Miracles can be seen as integrating the Platonic, Christian, and Gnostic traditions, while at the same time correcting and extending them through a far more inclusive vision that utilizes the insights of contemporary psychology to support its universal message of salvation. Of particular interest are the similarities and differences between Christianity and the Course, and more specifically, the behavioral implications of the respective positions of these and the Gnostic and Platonic thought systems regarding the origin and nature of the body and the phenomenal world; in other words, how to meet the challenge stated in John’s gospel of being in the world yet not of it (Jn 15:19; 17:14,16,18). Increased light is shed on the differences between Christianity and the Course when the Gnostic stance is considered. The first major attempt to present an alternative to the orthodox view, Christian Gnosticism developed, in part, as a movement within the emerging Church to correct what the Gnostics considered the orthodox Church’s misunderstandings of the nature of the world and God’s relation to it. This most prominent of all Christian “heresies” arose in the first century A.D., flowered in the second century, and was then for all intents and purposes eradicated by the more powerful Church in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries when St. Augustine and others sounded the death knell for Manicheism, Christian Gnosticism’s virtual last hurrah. A Course in Miracles can be seen as a further correction within a larger context of the Holy Spirit’s correction—the Atonement—of our belief in the reality of the separation from God. Our point of departure is the conviction that A Course in Miracles represents the highest level of contemporary spiritual thought. The Course alone presents a theology—both abstractly and practically—that is without contradiction. This article’s principal argument is that a theology or philosophy that begins with the premise that this phenomenal world is in any way the manifestation of the Will of God, must inevitably fall into the paradoxical trap of placing within the omni-benevolent God an inherent flaw that contains the tendency towards evil, suffering, and death or, at least, a Will that allows it to happen, the traditional Christian theological position. This paradox has been the basic tension underlying the whole Platonic tradition. We see it not only in Plato, but in the great Neoplatonists—Philo, Origen, Plotinus, and St. Augustine—all of whose work is so decisive in understanding the philosophical and religious thought of the early Christians, orthodox and Gnostic alike. Therefore, while there is no adequate rational or empirical means for explaining how this world arose—nor does the Course attempt one— any thought system that concludes that this world is ontologically real, faces the insoluble dilemma noted above. It then must resort either to theological “mysteries” as explanations, or somehow to positing a duality of good and evil within God. On the other hand, American Judaic and Hellenistic scholar David Winston makes an important statement in his introduction to an anthology of Philo’s writings, challenging all theorists within the Platonic tradition, from antiquity to the present: As a matter of fact, no philosophy that declares the intelligible [spiritual] alone to be real and all else relatively unreal…has ever successfully bridged the gap between these two realms (Philo of Alexandria, p. 11; bracketed word added). This gap can never be bridged by the human mind, limited by its rootedness in the spatial-temporal world. In a panel discussion held at Yale University, Hans Jonas, one of the most distinguished scholars in the field of Gnosticism, responded to a question: You say that I have given no answer to the fundamental question of why God was bestirred from his eternal existence into activity. The answer must be that, in the nature of things, there can be no answer to such a primordial query. As Immanuel Kant said, the thought that the Godhead should have rested for aeons and then bestirred itself to the creation of a world staggers the human mind and makes it helpless.… we cannot ask why in the first place some part of eternity is no longer eternity or why time began (in Layton, p. 348). In his excellent study of Plotinus, the French scholar Emile Bréhier poses the same question: The intelligible world, in its turn, granting its existence, is explained by the One. But why should the lower stages of reality exist? Why did the One not remain in its solitude, and why did it give birth to an intelligible world, and the intelligible world to a soul? Why, in short, do the many proceed from the One? (Bréhier, p. 48) A Course in Miracles, although not bridging this unbridgeable gap, has nonetheless successfully resolved the paradox of the One and the many, eternity and time, without the inherent inconsistencies in attitude, if not theory, that have plagued all Platonists, and have marred the history of Judaism and Christianity from their inception. The Course accomplishes this by presenting its thought system on two basic levels. The first of these is metaphysical, contrasting the spiritual reality of Heaven with the illusory, phenomenal world of the ego. The second, remaining only within this world, contrasts two ways of interpreting what is perceived: the ego’s condemnatory judgment of sin vs. the Holy Spirit’s vision of a forgiving classroom in which we learn to see all thoughts and actions as either expressing love or calling for it. Thus, the material world is seen as illusory but not evil, serving the Holy Spirit’s purpose of correcting our purpose in having made it. As is stated in the following passage from the text, which provided this article with its title: The body was not made by love. Yet love does not condemn it and can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made and using it to save him from illusions (T-18.VI.4:7-8). By declaring the phenomenal universe to be the work of the illusory ego, though not inherently evil or sinful, the Course gently resolves the great Platonic paradox of living in an imperfect, visible, and material world, yet knowing of a spiritual world whose Source is perfect and good. The Gnostic schools of the second century, most especially the Valentinian, recognized the incongruity existing between believing in a God of love who yet was responsible for this imperfect and unloving world. As one Gnostic text comments: “What kind of a God is this?” Joachim of Fiore, a twelfth-century Italian mystic, also observed this seemingly ambivalent nature of God in The Article of Belief. David the Psalmist says, “Taste and see how sweet the Lord is” (Ps 34:8), but for Paul “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31). Since almost every page of scripture proclaims both how lovable and how terrifying God is, it is perfectly right for people to ask how such great opposites can be put together, so that a person can rejoice for love’s sake in his fear and tremble with dread in the midst of love. But according to scripture, the just and loving God is like fire, for it says: “Hear O Israel, your God is a consuming fire” (Dt 4:24). Why is the fire which so frequently burns homes and whole cities sought out with such eagerness by those trapped in darkness? Why is it so cherished by anyone who has endured real cold? If one and the same material reality can be so loved and feared, why is it that Almighty God in whom we live and move and have our being (Ac 17:28) is not both cherished for his indescribable loveliness and still feared for his transcendent greatness? (In McGinn, p. 112) Yet the Gnostics, too, fell prey to inconsistencies, as they sought to draw certain practical and moral implications from their metaphysical position: While on the one hand denying the reality of the phenomenal world, they then proceeded psychologically to establish its reality in their minds by making the world the locus of sin. A Course in Miracles, then, coming in our sophisticated age of psychology, strips away the inconsistencies, yet retains the metaphysical understanding of the mutually exclusive nature of Heaven and earth. One of the important stimulants for this article has been the widespread confusion surrounding these teachings of the Course, even though its published history spans only thirty-one years (as of this writing). These errors basically reflect the confusion of the two levels of the Course’s system—the metaphysical and the practical. Briefly stated, the entire thought system of A Course in Miracles rests on the metaphysical teaching that God did not create the phenomenal universe, which was rather part of the ego’s defensive war against God. Therefore, all problems and concerns about our world and our bodies are but smokescreens thrown up by the ego to confuse us as to where the true problem is, i.e., in our minds. This non-dualistic view is the foundation for the Course’s understanding of forgiveness. When seen from this metaphysical perspective, the Course’s teachings on the everyday applications of forgiveness and the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives are suddenly transformed in our understanding. We come to recognize that the traditional language of A Course in Miracles is a veil that but barely conceals the truly radical teachings that are contained behind the words, and whose truths can be discerned in many of the great thinkers of ages gone by. Thus the Course is like an onion, and its layers of language can be gradually peeled away to reveal the core of its central teaching. Traditional Christian theologians—Catholic and Protestant alike— may assert that A Course in Miracles is not truly Christian, for indeed it does overturn most of the basic Christian tenets. In fact, in a written communication to me, Father Bede Griffiths—a Benedictine priest from England who has lived in an Indian ashram for over thirty years, devoting himself to bridging the gap between East and West— observed, and correctly so from my point of view, that the Course and biblical Christianity cannot be reconciled. Another prominent Christian thinker, Father Norris Clarke, S.J., a neo-Thomist philosopher, has declared in a filmed interview that even the claim that the Course is a correction for Christianity is unfounded, as correction implies maintaining the basic framework of what is to be corrected. A Course in Miracles, as he rightly points out, refutes the very foundation of the traditional Christian framework. Nonetheless, this article holds that because of its logical consistency—from a metaphysical ontology to a practical psychology—the Course is the closest we have ever come to knowing a two-thousand-year-old teaching. We are thus comparing the Gnostic position with A Course in Miracles, with special reference to the theology of the early Church in its relation to Gnosticism, as well as to its Platonic antecedents and concomitants. To the student of the Course unfamiliar with these philosophical antecedents, such comparison helps clarify the importance of the Course’s metaphysical and practical teachings in light of the history of philosophy and theology. It is therefore my hope that the reader of this article will come away with at least three benefits: 1) a fuller understanding of the principles of the Course, especially recognizing the important interface of its metaphysics of an illusory world with the direct implications of this metaphysics for our living in this world under the principle of forgiveness; 2) an awareness of the importance of the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions—with special emphasis on Plato and Plotinus—which serve as the backdrop for the Course’s metaphysical and practical stance; and 3) an appreciation of the contribution of the Gnostics towards the development of a teaching that allows us to remember the transcendent love that is our true home. A Note on Theology A Course in Miracles states that “The world was made as an attack on God” (W-pII.3.2:1), a statement that succinctly expresses a whole theological point of view, contains within it the seeds of salvation, and reflects one of the crucial consonances of the Course with Gnosticism, albeit in psychologically more sophisticated terms. At the same time, as we have already seen, this statement represents a principal point of divergence from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, not to mention from Platonism and Neoplatonism. While the Course teaches that “a universal theology is impossible” (C-in.2:5), it is nonetheless true that its thought system most definitely does express a theology, and one that is distinguished from many others. Such distinctions are inevitable in any system of thought, be it economics, psychology, philosophy, or religion. Often people confuse the Course’s emphasis on non-judgment with overlooking differences on the level where differences do exist, seeking to blur its distinctions from other thought systems. This enhances none of the systems, and reflects a confusion of the two levels—the metaphysical and the practical —that comprise the Course’s theoretical position. To state that there are theological (or philosophical) differences between A Course in Miracles and other spiritual paths is not to make a judgment based on value or worth, nor to condemn or reject other teachings. Rather, these differences are simply identified. The Course addresses its reader in this regard: Time has been saved for you because you and your brother are together. This is the special means this course is using to save you time. You are not making use of the course if you insist on using means which have served others well, neglecting what was made for you (T-18.VII.6:3-5). Helen Schucman, the “scribe” of the Course, in the midst of an angry mental outburst against someone she judged to be assuming a spurious spirituality, heard this message: “Do not take another’s path as your own; but neither should you judge it.” The lesson here for all of us is clear. We are asked not to adopt an attitude of “spiritual specialness”— which includes the belief that our spiritual path is better than another’s. Rather, we are urged to remain non-judgmentally involved with the path we feel is our own. In this regard, a comment need be made about the opening lines of the text of A Course in Miracles: “This is a course in miracles. It is a required course.” Sometimes incorrectly interpreted to mean that the Course is required for all spiritual seekers, these lines originally were meant for Helen Schucman and William Thetford, reminding them that this Course was the better way they had asked for, and thus for them A Course in Miracles was required. For the general audience this statement can be understood to mean that if the Course is a person’s path it should be followed; however, if it is not a suitable path, another would be found to serve the same purpose. As the Course says of itself in the manual for teachers: This is a manual for a special curriculum, intended for teachers of a special form of the universal course. There are many thousands of other forms, all with the same outcome (M-1.4:1-2). In this article, therefore, we are concerned with understanding exactly what this “special curriculum” teaches, and its relationship to earlier forms that share many of the same ideas and goals, yet also present very different means of attaining these goals. At a workshop I gave on the Course several years ago, I was asked about Mother Teresa, the Albanian nun who was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for her work among the poor in India and the world. The questioner wondered how I reconciled Mother Teresa with A Course in Miracles. The question specifically centered on the difference between Mother Teresa’s path of suffering and sacrifice within the context of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Course, which makes sacrifice central to the ego’s thought system and not God’s, not to mention the Course’s giving no exclusive salvific role to any one religious institution. Having met Mother Teresa several times, I was very impressed by her sincerity, integrity, and the unmistakable spiritual and peaceful presence that emanated from her. There can be no denying the tremendous effect Mother Teresa has had on the world. For millions of people she has become a symbol of God’s love and peace. Similarly, there can be no denying the effect the Course has already had—even though it is still in its infancy—on those who have been exposed to it. It would seem clear that Heaven is indifferent to how people return to it. Thus, its messengers will use whatever means is most effective for those who seek the peace of God. As the Course’s companion pamphlet Psychotherapy states: If healing is an invitation to God [i.e., the Christ in the person] to enter into His Kingdom, what difference does it make how the invitation is written? Does the paper matter, or the ink, or the pen. Or is it he who writes that gives the invitation? God comes to those who would restore His world, for they have found the way to call to Him (P-2.II.6:1-4). A passage in the writings of Mani, the influential Gnostic prophet of the third century whose life and work we shall consider later, expressively states the same idea, using the simile of royal couriers: The countries and the tongues to which they are sent are different from one another; the one is not like the other. So it is likewise with the glorious Power which sends out of itself all the Apostles: the revelations and the wisdom which it gives them, it gives them in different forms, that is, one is not like the other, for the tongues to which they are sent do not resemble each other (Kephalaia Ch. 154, in Jonas, p. 207n). All theologies are illusory, since they must use concepts and words which, as the Course states, are “…but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality” (M-21.1:9-10). Therefore, according to the Course, they must be unreal since they are “removed from reality.” In the end, theologies will disappear when they have served their purpose of leading us to God—in experience, not thought. The Course teaches that its central teaching of forgiveness, too, is illusory, since its purpose is to undo illusions; in Heaven, the only state of truth, forgiveness is unknown for it is not needed. Similarly St. Thomas Aquinas, in the midst of completing the third part of his Summa near the end of his life—after writing some forty volumes of theology— had what most Church historians consider to have been a mystical experience. Unable to continue in his work, he said to a good friend who sought an explanation for this sudden shift: “All that I have written seems to me like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me” (in Weisheipl, p. 322). If only one form of truth were needed in the world, there would be but one form. The presence of “many thousands” of spiritual paths— many of which conflict theologically with the others—reflects our need for multiple pathways in a world of multiplicity. The Course states further: God knows what His Son needs before he asks. He is not at all concerned with form, but having given the content [love] it is His Will that it be understood. And that suffices. The form adapts itself to need; the content is unchanging, as eternal as its Creator (C3.3:2-5). The ancient Hindu saying that truth is one but sages know it by many names reflects this same principle. Therefore, this discussion of the Course, comparing and contrasting it with Platonism, Christianity, and Gnosticism, is meant to present the Course’s position on the world and the body as a distinct approach and solution to the God-world problem discussed earlier. The theological tenets of A Course in Miracles form the basis for its whole theory of salvation and, specifically, the meaning and purpose of forgiveness. When salvation’s plan—the Atonement—is complete, systems of thought fall away. Together, we leave the world of illusion entirely to enter Heaven “and disappear into the Heart of God” (W-pII.14.5:5). ~BioWapnick.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0
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