Notes of a Fringe-Watcher

MARTIN GARDNER

Marianne Williamson and D 'A Course in '

hirley MacLaine, top showbiz guru, has been shoved Saside by a new woman on the block, . 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 himself. Let's start at the begin- ning. Helen Cohen Schucman (1909- 1981) was a psychologist on the staff of the psychiatry department of '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 circles. Her Manual for Teachers, 88 pages, further Foundation for 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 '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 , 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 ) 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. 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 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 '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. "Somehow," he therapists. She speaks candidly of her said in an interview, "we are perceiv- "wild" youth and "angry left-wing" ing something that isn't there, and it opinions. Reading the Course, she says, is our perception of it which gives it was her "path out of hell." reality." As Shirley MacLaine likes to say, we create our own reality. Williamson's fervent preaching— Forgiveness is another basic con- she has the rapid-fire delivery of a cept of the Course. Once we experience televangelist—soon attracted so many atonement, cast out fear, and love one followers that Time (July 29,1991) and another and God, we automatically Newsweek (March 30, 1992) each forgive ourselves and others. Well, not devoted a full page to her growing really, because there is nothing to fame. This year HarperCollins pub- forgive! lished her book : Reflections on the Principles of A Course The Course's "miracles" are not in Miracles. After said miracles in the biblical sense of she had given away a thousand copies, violations of natural laws. They are the book jumped to the top of the New simply "shifts in perception" that cast York Times "How-to" best-seller list. out fear. However, a disturbing line in the Course reads: "Miracles enable Williamson lives in West Holly- you to heal the sick and raise the dead wood as a single mother with her baby because you made sickness and death daughter India Emmaline. In addition yourself, and can therefore abolish to lecturing regularly in Los Angeles both." I'm not sure just what that and Manhattan, she has founded a means. Like Christian Science, the Center for Living in both cities to help Course abolishes evil only by redefin- victims of AIDS and other serious ing it. As an illusion, pain still remains. diseases. A project of the Los Angeles An old limerick puts it crisply: Center, called "Angel Food," provides meals for victims of AIDS. It is supported by such Hollywood lumi- There was a faith-healer named Neil naries as Shirley MacLaine, Bette Who said, "Although pain isn't real, When I sit on a pin Midler, Richard Gere, and Meryl And it punctures my skin, Streep. Although not an ordained I dislike what I fancy I feel." minister, Williamson likes to "offi- ciate" at marriages and funerals. It was As did New Thought, the Course she who officiated at Elizabeth Tay-

20 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, Vol. 17 lor's recent marriage to Larry leprosy.' " Fortensky. Some converts to the Course are Williamson's theme song is "What loath to admit that the Voice was the the world needs now is love, sweet voice of Jesus, but passages in the love." The word love must appear in Course make this clear, and Helen her book more than a thousand times, Schucman was openly frank about it. in such sentences as "We are all part She spoke of how disturbed she had of a vast sea of love. . . . Love is a been when the Voice first identified win-mode. . . . Only love is real. itself "in no uncertain terms." One Nothing else actually exists. . . . Love reason she gave for remaining anon- is to people what water is to plants." ymous was so "the true author, Jesus," Here are some more gems of would always be the Course's "sole Marianne's mushy metaphysics: "We inspirational figure." are pregnant with possibilities. . . . Williamson also assumes that the Nothing occurs outside our minds. Voice came from Jesus, but she adds ... If God is seen as electricity, then that "Jesus" is merely a metaphor for we are his lamps Gray clouds never the love inside us, not a "person." last forever. The blue sky does. . . . When Time and Newsweek ran their Time does not exist. .. . We're always articles about Williamson, neither had perfect. We can't not be. . . . Sickness the courage to name Jesus as the is an illusion and does not actually Course's author. I sent Time a letter exist." asking why, which was not published; "Jesus saves," Williamson tells us, but I received a surprising letter from does not mean he rescues us from an editor saying that, although they perdition. It means "Love heals the were aware that Schucman claimed mind. The leper was healed by Jesus Jesus as the author, "space limitations" because 'Jesus did not believe in prevented them from mentioning it.

Fall 1992 21 More amusing is the fact that no angels."* Can you conceive of "think- article I've yet seen about the Course ing" without time, and in a place that reveals that Jesus once dictated is not a place? instructions to Schucman on how to One can be a deep student of the construct an electronic machine that Course, Williamson says, and either would heal sickness. Because only love believe or not believe in . can heal, I assume the machine would Whether she believes it the way heal through the love of those who Shirley MacLaine does is hard to manufactured it. Robert Skutch, in his know. At any rate, we are mercifully history of the Course, says that the spared details about Williamson's description of the device was shown previous incarnations. to several "eminent scientists." Unfor- However, like MacLaine, William- tunately, none was able to understand son is aware of her good looks, humor, it. and charisma. Like MacLaine, she What about reincarnation? Like the enjoys tossing around four-letter Course, Williamson waffles. Death is words. Like MacLaine, she is self- unreal because when our bodies die, absorbed and relishing her glitzy fame. our spirit indeed lives on. It is like Like MacLaine, she is forever recalling removing an old suit of clothes, she episodes in her past, as if (for instance) writes, or like a book that never ends. anyone cares to know she was once "The end of our physical incarnation strongly attracted to a gay man. is like the end of a chapter, on some In recent months she seems to have level setting up the beginning of forgotten the Course's lessons. The another." New York Post (February 25, 1992) Again: "We have been alive forever. headed its Page Six column: "Top- We will be alive forever more." Selling Guru Trashed as Tyrant." The Does this mean previous and column pictures Williamson as future lives on earth? Williamson is "becoming a power sponge: abusing vague. She quotes the Course as subordinates, throwing temper tan- saying, "Reincarnation cannot, then, trums, and forcing out highly con- be true in any real sense." Why? nected board members who've "Because there is no linear time. If we brought in celebrities and millions of have past lives, or future lives, then dollars to her work." they're all happening at once." This At one party, says the Post, Wil- is mystifying. Physicists like to define liamson "pitched a hissy" because the time as that which keeps everything host asked Shirley MacLaine to give from happening at once. Can you the fundraising speech instead of her. imagine "living" in a timeless world Also according to the Post, she told a where everything happens at once? talent manager "to go f— himself "Heaven is here," says the Course. because she wasn't properly intro- "There is nowhere else. Here is now. duced to Dolly Parton. She seems to There is no other time." Again: be on a major power trip. She's gotten "Heaven is not a place.... It is merely rid of everyone who disagrees with the awareness of perfect oneness, and her." the knowledge that there is nothing Williamson is quoted as saying: "I else; nothing outside this awareness, should be allowed those reactions. I'm and nothing within." *In her mystifying "glossary" at the close of On the other hand, Williamson can Science ana Health, Mary Baker Eddy defined write, "Angels are the thoughts of "Angels" as "God's thoughts passing to God and in Heaven you will think like man."

22 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, Vol. 17 not perfect." Not perfect? Doesn't the holes in their heads? Course say everyone is perfect? O n May 22, 1992, the New York Williamson has called herself "a Post reported that Random House, bitch for God." Powerful Hollywood offering an advance in the millions, people, reports Page Six, "are saying had signed Williamson for two more the description is two words too long." books: On Women and The Healing of Will the sexy little guru rediscover America. Jacqueline Onassis, a Dou- love, sweet love? And will her follow- bleday senior editor, wined and dined ers, along with other disciples of the Williamson, but Random House got Course, ever succeed in plugging the the contract. •

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