The first major critical examination of ACIM appeared in Psychology Today in September 1980, in an article by former Time magazine writer John Koffend entitled "The Gospel According to Helen." Characterizing the Course as the latest item in a "veritable supermarket of cults, religions, and psycho-mystical movements" arising in America, the article cast doubt on the veracity of the Course's genesis story and questioned the reluctance of Schucman and Thetford to take personal credit for their labor.  At the time, Schucman was still alive but declined to be interviewed. "If Christ was so willing to identify himself to a mere mortal named Helen," the article charged, "why are she and Bill Thetford so reluctant to admit their complicity in the Lord's work?"

Written before the rise to celebrity of such publicity-conscious channelers as J.Z. Knight (Ramtha) and Kevin Ryerson, this dated criticism now reads almost like praise. But a substantial degree of perplexity has existed over the paradoxical character of Helen Schucman, leading to the spread of misinformation about her personality and religious background. In a skeptical examination of channeling appearing in The Fringes of Reason, a 1989 special edition of the Whole Earth Catalog, editor Ted Schultz raised the possibility that the Course is a massive artifact of "cryptomnesia," or hidden memory. Using quotes first published in Jon Klimo's book Channeling (St. Martin's Press), Schultz cited two well-known sources from the counterculture of psychology:

... Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy points out: "[Schucman] was raised on that kind of [spiritualist] literature.  Her father  owned a metaphysical book shop.  And transpersonal psychologist  Ken Wilber says, "There's much more of Helen in the Course than I first thought. She was brought up mystically inclined. At four she  used to stand out on the balcony and say that God would give her a sign of miracles to let her know he was there. Many ideas from the Course came from the new thought or metaphysical schools  she had been influenced by. . .

Both Murphy and Wilber were incorrect. According to Schucman's autobiography, her father Sigmund Cohn, a successful career chemist and metallurgist whose parents had been Jewish and Lutheran, evinced no spiritual inclinations himself. in the longest talk she could remember having with him, he answered her childish questions about God with a studied neutrality. Although Schucman's mother dabbled in both Theosophy and Christian Science at different periods, the young Helen was emotionally estranged from both parents; the chief religious influences on her early life were a Roman Catholic governess and a black Baptist maid. Helen was actually baptized in the maid's church in early adolescence, but was disappointed to feel nothing change within her afterwards. In adulthood Schucman would develop a lifelong fascination with the rituals of the Catholic church, but never considered conversion to the faith.

It was Helen's husband Louis Schucman who owned a book shop featuring rare books and Americana. According to Helen he "riffled through some material on mysticism on and off, finding the subject of some interest though hardly worthy of scientific investigation."  Thus there is little evidence of "new thought" or metaphysical schools exerting significant influence on Schucman before the transcription of the Course, as noted in her own writing . . .

Once on a family trip to Lourdes at age twelve, Schucman actually did stand on a balcony one evening and ask God for the miracle sign of a shooting star which, to her amazement, she received. But an inner conflict between religious faith and scientific rationality that would characterize Schucman's later life was apparent even then, for the adolescent girl promptly debunked her own mystical experience:

I stood quite still until the stars had faded away and the sky was dark again. And then I remembered. Our guide had told us that this was the time for meteor showers in this part of the world, and they would be coming pretty often soon, It was not really a miracle at all ...  Perhaps, I said to myself, the water and the hearings and the crutches were all like the meteor shower. People just thought they were miracles. It all could happen that way. You can get fooled so easily.

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Excerpted from THE COMPLETE STORY OF THE COURSE by D. Patrick Miller, copyright 1997,
published by Fearless Books, 1678 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94709.
Reproduced here with the kind permission of the author.
Read "The Continuing Story" online at
www.fearlessbooks.com/ContStoryIndex.html

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