Notes of a Fringe-Watcher

Notes of a Fringe-Watcher MARTIN GARDNER Marianne Williamson and D 'A Course in Miracles' hirley MacLaine, top New Age showbiz guru, has been shoved Saside by a new woman on the block, Marianne Williamson. For several years now Williamson has been preaching up a storm about a massive Course in Miracles, said to have been dictated by none other than Jesus himself. Let's start at the begin- ning. Helen Cohen Schucman (1909- 1981) was a psychologist on the staff of the psychiatry department of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. In the same An "inner v o i c e " commanded Helen Schuc- department was William N. Thetford. man to take notes on a "course in miracles." In her middle years Schucman became Thetford's assistant at New York Totally stunned, Schucman did not City's Presbyterian Hospital, where he even believe the statements she was headed the psychology department. scribbling in her shorthand notebooks. They were an unlikely pair. Thet- When she finally confided to her boss ford, a tall, handsome bachelor, was what was happening, he advised her 14 years younger than Schucman. She to keep scribbling. Her husband, Louis was short, slight, and a professed Schucman, who ran a bookstore in atheist. Suddenly in 1965 a strange Manhattan, seems also to have been thing happened. A silent "inner voice" sympathetic. Thetford, previously an commanded her to take notes for a agnostic, became so intrigued that he "course in miracles." For almost eight began an intensive study of mysticism years (1965 to 1973) the Voice dictated and world religions. at intervals. It was not automatic Schucman would read her notes writing, because Helen was always aloud and Thetford would type them. wide awake. If a phone call interrupted There is some dispute over how much the channeling, the Voice would stop the channeled material was edited. and later take up where it had left off. Thetford claimed such changes were Fall 1992 17 minor. From time to time they would of 300 copies—a photocopy of the ask the Voice questions. Eventually a typescript published in 1975 under the three-part manuscript was produced. imprint of Freeperson Press, San Until her death at 71, Helen refused Francisco. The next year Judy's foun- to be identified as the channeler. Since dation printed 5,000 copies in a then Thetford has also died. hardcover set of three blue-bound Enter Judith Skutch, then the wife volumes, a total of 1,188 pages. of Robert Skutch, a New York stock- Volume 1, 622 pages, is the Course. broker and former writer of television Volume 2, Workbook for Students, is 478 commercials. Born in Brooklyn of pages and describes an exercise for Jewish parents, Judy Skutch became each day of the year. Volume 3, extremely active in psychic circles. Her Manual for Teachers, 88 pages, further Foundation for Parapsychology Inves- explicates the Course. The set has now tigation helped fund Stanford sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Research Institute's research on Uri The Course quickly acquired ardent Geller. She became known as "para- disciples. Psychologist Kenneth A. psychology's den mother." When she Wapnick, a Jewish convert to Roman began to read Helen Schucman's Catholicism, has dedicated his life to channeled manuscript she was spreading the new revelation. His floored, like Paul on the road to Foundation for a Course in Miracles, Damascus. Abandoning her activities in Roscoe, New York, has published in parapsychology (she had taught the six books in which he struggles to topic at New York University) Skutch harmonize the Course with Christian decided to devote all her energies to doctrine. getting A Course in Miracles into print. The Course has spawned a dozen Her organization was renamed the other books and more than a thousand Foundation for Inner Peace, now study groups here and abroad. Thet- located in Tiburon, California. ford coedited Choose Once Again, a Reed Erickson, an American indus- book of selections from the Course. trialist living in Mexico, shelled out Robert Skutch's Journey Without $60,000 for the Course's first printing Distance is a history of the Course. His Messages from My Higher Self was, he claims, produced by automatic writing while meditating. Centerlink issued a disk version of the Course. Steven Halpern, a New Age pianist, set passages from the Course to music. Miracle Distribution Center put Halpern's songs on audio- tape, and Beverly Hutchinson, who also lectures on the Course, is the vocalist. An ad says the songs are "like jewels set in a background of velvet." A wag named Michael Stillwater wrote a small handbook for gardeners titled A Course in Marigolds, published by the Foundation for Dinner Peas. Judy Skutch decided to devote all her Like Mary Baker Eddy, Helen energies t o getting A Course in Miracles into Schucman wrote reams of forgettable print. verse. Judy Skutch issued a posthu- 18 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, Vol. 17 mous selection of Schucman's poems Teach Only Love, Goodbye to Guilt, and in a book titled The Gifts of God. The Children as Teachers of Peace. poems read as if they were written It is hard to believe that intelligent by the author of A Course in Miracles. people could take seriously a work that Before their divorce, the Skutches is little more than a crude rehash of had four children. A daughter, who ideas from the old New Thought is now Tamara ("Tammy") Cohen, had movement, which generated a vast exhibited as a child what her parents literature about a century ago. took to be strong psi powers. In 1985, Initiated by an amusing quack, Phin- Cohen and her mother collaborated on eas Parkhurst Quimby, the movement Double Vision, a book in which each sprouted into a variety of religions, gives an account of her psychic of which the most successful were adventures. Judy Skutch now lives in Christian Science and Unity. Belvedere, California, with her new Like New Thought, which rang all husband, retired Army officer William the changes of today's New Age, Whitsun. including psi phenomena and reincar- The Course had a profound impact nation, the Course swarms with Chris- on many notables in psi circles. Willis tian terminology, but uses it in Harmon, who heads the Institute of Pickwickian ways. "Atonement," for Noetics, called it "the most important example, is not the blood atonement book in the English language." Glen of Jesus. It means "at-one-ment," the Olds, former president of Kent State unity of each of us with everyone else University, was similarly smitten. A and with God. Acceptance of this "at- raft of top parapsychologists praised one-ment" is the equivalent of Chris- the book and testified that its exercises tian conversion and rebirth. had cured their ulcers and other Central to the Course is the Hindu ailments. Other prominent New notion that time and the physical Agers were not so impressed. The world are maya, or illusions. The sole Esalen Institute's cofounder, Michael reality is Love, which is the same as Murphy, had this to say: God. Here is how the Course sums itself up in its brief introduction: But there's much more of Helen in "Nothing real can be threatened. the Course than I first thought. She Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the was brought up mystically inclined. peace of God." At four she used to stand out on The opposite of love, we are told, the balcony and say that God would give her a sign of miracles to let her is not hate but fear. All our major know that he was there. Many ideas decisions are choices between those from the Course came from the new two emotions. We can't fear if we love. thought or metaphysical schools she We can't love if we fear. What every- had been influenced by. one else calls sin and guilt do not exist. The course puts it bluntly: "There is Psychiatrist Gerald Jampolsky was no sin," and "evil does not exist." Sin a distinguished convert. The Course is merely false thinking and percep- banished his agony after a divorce and tion. We can be mistaken, but in God's cured his alcoholism and back pain. eyes we are all guiltless. Even Judas Well known for his work with termi- did not sin, Schucman was told. Sin, nally ill children, Jampolsky has evil, sickness, even death, are illusions written about the Course in books with arising from an absence of love, as such titles as There Is a Rainbow Behind darkness is the absence of light. Every Cloud, Love Is Letting Go of Fear, Here is how Mary Baker Eddy said Fall 1992 19 the same thing in her book Retrospec- places enormous stress on right tion and Introspection: thinking—eliminating the negative, accentuating the positive. Its admoni- [Christian] Science saith to Fear: tions, however, are expressed in such "You are the cause of all sickness; vapid cliches that they make Norman but you are a self-constituted fal- Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller sity,—you are darkness, nothing- seem like profound philosophers. ness. You do not exist, and have Enter Marianne Williamson. Like no right to exist, for 'perfect love casteth out fear.'"... A demon- Schucman, she comes from a Jewish stration of the unreality of evil background. She is 39, a small, fragile destroys evil. brunette, who was born in Houston, where her father is a wealthy lawyer. A college dropout, she became mired Like so many other New Agers, in a series of unhappy love affairs, Thetford likened the unreality of the alcohol and drug abuse, a nervous world to the solipsism that tinges breakdown, and endless sessions with quantum mechanics.

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