The Things We Hear

(I’m reposting this due to a computer error.)

So I’ve recently been obsessed with the history behind the self-help book A Course in Miracles. The book was chanelled by, or dictated to, or created by the subconscious of, a woman named Helen Schucman. Schucman was just about the exact opposite of who you expect to chanel or write a self-help book. Schucman was a psychology professor at Columbia and, from what I’ve read, deeply uninterested in anything New Agey or occult. One day, after a discussion with her collegue William Thetford about how they could improve things at the psych department at Columbia (from Wikipedia, natch)…

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The next four months were filled with a number of unusually vivid dream sequences and even some unusual waking experiences for Schucman [Apparantly nothing like this had happenned to her before, and these experiences came out of the blue]. Amongst her vivid dream sequences, she began to become familiar with a certain internal character who spoke to her as Jesus in her dreams. Little did she know that the voice of this dream character would soon come to dominate the rest of her life….Finally in October of that year, the transcriptions of what is now known as ACIM first began…. According to Thetford, Schucman was sitting at home on the night of October 21, 1965, when she heard an internal “voice” say to her, “This is a course in miracles. Please take notes.”

Schuman did as she was told; the result was A Course in Miracles. And from what I’ve read, Schucman hated the book. She died bitter and angry, cursing God and life on her deathbed. A secular Jewish woman, she converted to Catholicism in her later years hoping to find peace. She didn’t. She hated the book and hated everything it brought her.

Thetford, on the other hand, fell right into the groove with ACIM, leading workshops and moving out to Marin County, California, Hot Tub Capitol of America (I just made that up, but I bet it’s true, and I mean it with love). It’s also rumored that before he was at Columbia, Thetford worked for the CIA’s Project Bluebird, the precurser to MK-ULTRA, which we’ve discussed before (and will discuss many times again). One of the goals of MK-ULTRA et al. was to create technology to put thoughts in people’s heads, which many people believe they succeeded at. So there’s that, too.

This reminds me Alistair Crowley’s Book of The Law, which was also “channeled,” rather than written, and which he also, according to some, didn’t like very much. There’s also a link to Gloria Naylor’s 1996–Naylor’s book in which she writes about, as per Schucman, suddenly hearing voices in her head. Naylor attributed these voices to the government, not Jesus or Aiwass (Crowley’s source). We actually have two currents overlapping here: otherwise sane people who hear voices in their heads; and writers who have breaks with known reality. Both are more common than you would think and both are worthy of books, or at least blog posts, in their own right.

Reminds me of what my friend said when he gave me some recordings from Abraham, the being channelled through Jerry and Esther Hicks. I asked what he thought about this so-called Abraham. He said he didn’t care. Abraham gave some good advice and that was enough.

These are all the stories I love, despite never know what to believe. Or rather, I love because I don’t know what to believe.

Oh, and by the way, did you know Alisteir Crowley wrote detective novels? I’ve never been able to get my hands on one–in fact, if anyone wants to sell me one at a reasonable price, I’ll take it,