Helen schucman autobiography example

I first met HelenSchucman on Saturday night, November 25, We met at William Thetford'sapartment on the upper east side of New York City, and our meeting wasarranged by our mutual friend Father Michael.

The three of them, alongwith Bill's roommate Chip, had spent the afternoon at a healing serviceof Kathryn Kuhlman, the famous faith-healer, and had been impressed, ifnot worn out, by the intense sincerity of the service. I later learnedhow unusual it was for Helen to agree to go out in the evening, especiallyafter a tiring day. Looking back on that meeting, I can see a certain inevitabilityin the circumstances leading up to it.

Broughtup in a Jewish home and educated for the first eight grades in a Hebrewparochial school called a Yeshivah, I had left God and Judaism behind atthe age of thirteen, determined never to think of religious issues followed a long period of agnosticism that was coupled with a growingand passionate love for classical music, with Beethoven and Mozart headingmy personal pantheon of guides that led me ever more deeply to internalexperiences that I, in my ignorance during that period, scarcely wouldhave termed spiritual.

This period included my graduate education, andvery .surprisingly, a doctoral dissertation on St. Teresa of Avila, thefamous sixteenth century Spanish mystic. A couple of years later (),after the break-up of my first marriage, God "showed up," and I began tofeel a personal Presence that was behind these non-spiritual" years later, after a chain of experiences irrelevant to this book,I found myself visiting a Trappist monastery, the Abbey of Gethsemani inKentucky, very unexpectedly feeling  totally "at home."

The pace of mylife now seemed to quicken markedly.

I felt I should spend part of this timein Israel, and so arranged to go a few days after the holiday. But I amslightly ahead of the story.

Shortly aftermy baptism in September , the chaplain told me that a priest in hisreligious order was very anxious to meet me. This was my introduction toFather Michael.

The circumstances  were far more interesting thanthis, however. Father Michael was a psychologist, and had done part ofhis graduate training under William Thetford and Helen Schucman at thePsychiatric Institute, part of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical three of them became good friends, and in fact, Michael was one ofthe very, very few people with whom Helen and Bill shared A Course inMiracles, even as it was still coming through.

One day Bill wasreading John White's The Highest State of Consciousness, an anthologyin which an article of mine appeared.

When the baptizing chaplainmentioned to Michael that he had recently baptized a psychologist (a phenomenonI think he equated with the imminent announcement of the Second Coming), Michael recognized my name from the article and expressed interest inmeeting me.

I called him,set up a time to get together, and he and I soon became fast friends.

Shortlybefore I was to leave for Israel, Michael told me about two psychologistshe thought I should meet. And so Michael, Helen, Bill, Chip, and I metthat Saturday evening. Most of the time, as I recall, was spent in my tellinghow I came to be where I now was in my life. Helen shared a couple of herearly experiences, and I remember feeling a particularly close connectionwith her.

At one point inthe evening, someone -- I think it might have been Michael -- mentionedthis "book" that Helen had "written," which had to do with spiritual pointed to a corner in his living room where his copy of the manuscriptof the Course was kept in seven black thesis binders.  For some reasonI did not feel I should look at them, although it would have been perfectlyall right with Helen and Bill if I had done so.

The evening endedand I felt that I had just met two very holy people, although I obviouslycould not have recognized then the real importance they would have in mylife.

Ruth had experiencedHelen as very supportive and helpful, as she did Bill. Interestingly enough,this association was within the first year or so of the Course's transmission.

After we droppedHelen off, Michael and I continued to his residence where I spent the we went to sleep, Michael offered me a copy of "Helen's book" toexamine, but again, I did not feel I should look at it.

I then went tobed and yet could not fall asleep, a very unusual occurrence for me. Thoughtired, I tossed and turned for quite some time, trying to figure out whyI was having so much difficulty.

Finally I remembereda dream I had had over a year before. In the dream I was with a group ofpeople, who I felt were considerably younger than I.  A very wisemiddle-aged lawyer then walked in, and took me to a different section ofthe room, which resembled a library, apart from the others.

She then presentedme with me three questions, only the first of which is relevant here. Itasked what I would change, if I could, of any of my childhood answer, which proved to be the correct one, was that I would not changeanything, since all was the way it should be and the past no longer mattered.I awoke at this point, and then finished the dream in a semiconscious,hypnagogic state.  In the dream (which I recognized to be a significantone), the woman-lawyer was a kind of spiritual teacher, for whom I hada great deal of respect, and whose respect and approval I had obviouslygained as well.

Lying in bed atFather Michael's, I suddenly realized that the lawyer was Helen.

Obviously, however, I had no way of knowing thenjust how complex an individual she was. I became quite peaceful, and instantlyfell asleep. When I told Michael about it the following morning, he laughed:"Of course Helen would be a lawyer," referring to Helen's keen analyticand logically probing mind.

I left for Israela few days later, and as it ended up, most of my time was spent in twomonasteries.

I wrote Helen and Bill separate letters in March, from theTrappist Abbey of Latroun, outside Jerusalem. My letter to Bill survives,but this first letter to Helen is missing. In it, Helen remarked to melater, I referred to my desire to read her book, and spelled it with acapital "B," something I never would have consciously done.

Moreover, whilein Israel I had two dreams relating to "Helen's Book." In the first, Iwas standing on a New York City subway platform.

I walked over to a garbagecan and there on top was what I knew to be a very holy book, but not onewith which I was acquainted. In another dream, I was walking along a beach,and found this same holy book in the sand.

I eventually leftLatroun and went to Lavra Netofa, a small and physically primitive monasticcommunity atop a mountain in the region of Galilee, affording a beautifulview of the northern end of the famous Sea.

After two months, and feelingvery much at home there, I decided to remain on this mountain top for anindefinite period of time. But before nestling in, I thought I should visitthe United States to see my family, as well as to look up Helen and my letter to Helen announcing my visit, I wrote:

SinceI shall be remaining here quite some time, I have decided to come to theUnited States for about a month before returning here and settling in.I plan to arrive somewhere around the week-end of May 12 [ andI hope we can get together soon thereafter.

I also look forward very muchto reading your book [here spelled with a lower case "b"]² while inthe States.

I would haveat least said, "Hello, how are you?" And then, "Where's the book?"But obviously I could not wait to see "Helen's" manuscript.

Helen and Billhad adjacent offices within a larger enclosed area, and they sat me downin Bill's office while he went into Helen's. Helen handed me her two favoritesections -- "For They Have Come" and "Choose Once Again" -- which thusbecame my introduction toA Course in Miracles.

I read eagerly,and could scarcely believe what I was reading. Long a lover of Shakespeare,these extremely poetic sections were to me every bit as beautiful as anythingthe Bard had written, and yet I remember exclaiming to Helen and Bill thatunlike Shakespeare, these words contained a profound spiritual message.I could not envision a more sublime integration of form and content, equalingin my mind the perfection of Beethoven's C-Sharp Minor Quartet.

My memory of theexact sequence of events is hazy, but as I began reading the text fromthe beginning I quickly recognized the Course as being the most perfectblend of psychology and spirituality that I had ever seen.

And I am surethat it did not take me very long to realize that A Course in Miracleswas my life's work, Helen and Bill were my spiritual family, and that Iwas not to become a monk but to remain in New York with them instead.

During this period,which seemed to have a life of its own, extending itself from the originalfour-week visit to ten, I was dividing most of my time between being withHelen and Bill -- together and individually -- and my parents.

The latterunderstandably felt considerable discomfort and concern for their "niceJewish son" who had joined the "enemy camp," and who they felt, moreover,had been abducted by a group of very suspect monks. I also traveled aroundseeing many friends, including a trip to the Abbey of Gethsemani.

I thus spent agreat deal of time with my "new family," going over the entire course ofmy life, sometimes in great detail.

I also spent time alone with Bill, and felt a closeness withhim as well. All in all, I was somewhat surprised by Helen's and Bill'sopenness to share with me their difficulties with the Course, and the generalunhappy state of their lives, not to mention with each other.

Thus the honeymoonperiod for me did not last very long, as the other aspect of Helen's andBill's lives also became -- painfully at first -- quite clear.

Here were twokind and wise people, clinical psychologists no less, with whom I was ableto speak openly of my relationship with God and Jesus, and find total er, they were, after all, the two persons responsible for this remarkablebook that I was beginning to see was the center point of my life: the culminationof my past journey, and foundation for the rest of my time here.

But I could alsosee the enormous difficulty both of them experienced living in the world,seeming appearances and professional accomplishments to the contrary.

And,above all, I could see the mess their interpersonal relationship was short, the situation was hardly the spiritual Camelot I thought I hadwandered into. Rather it was, I was beginning to recognize, a complex hotbedof pain and hatred, paradoxically coupled with Helen's and Bill's genuinededication to God and the Course, not to mention a love and concern foreach other.

This paradox intheir relationship, to which I shall return in later chapters, was alsoreflective of the aforementioned paradox within Helen herself: a phenomenonexhibited in her dissociation of two almost entirely separate selves, whatACourse in Miracles terms the right and wrong minds, representing Godand the ego.

It is basedprincipally upon Helen's autobiography, which I present in as correcteda form as I felt the license to do, interspersed with my own comments.³

Part II largelydescribes Helen's meeting Bill and taking down A Course in Miracles,and I draw heavily here upon the personal material given to Helen duringthe early weeks of the Course's scribing.

In addition, I cite relevantexcerpts from Helen's dreams, as well as from letters Helen wrote to Bill,and notes from Bill's journal.

In Part III Ireturn to the period of my association with Helen and Bill, which basicallybegan in , specifically calling upon my personal reminiscences of Helento discuss her two sides, and the ultimate resolution of this this duality was transcended, only the unity of her one Self Parts I and II span Helen's childhood years to the fall of whenshe completed taking down the Course.

Part III of the book covers the finalperiod of her life, , when I was so intimately connected withher.

___________________________________________________
^2.Throughout the book, my additions to quoted material are indicated by brackets[ ], as opposed to parentheses  which will always be from the quotedmaterial itself.
³.Helen and Bill had "appointed" me archivist of all the material relatedto ACourse in Miracles, including Helen's original notebooks and all subsequenttypings of the Course manuscript.

This material has been ed byme under the title "The Unpublished Writings of Helen Schucman, Volumes" These writings also include Helen's above-mentioned autobiography,correspondence between Helen and Bill, and Helen and me, Helen's dreams,undergraduate and graduate school term papers, etc. I quote extensivelyfrom these writings in the chapters to follow.

Absencefrom Felicityised by the Foundationfor A Course in Miracles, Temecula, CA. 
Thismaterial is reproduced here with the kind permission of Dr.

Wapnickand the Foundation.
 
 

GOTO CHAPTER 12 FROM ABSENCE -- "THE EDITING" =>

<=RETURN TO INDEX OF LINKS

<=RETURN TO "THE SCRIBE"

<=RETURN TO WEB SITE FOR KEN WAPNICK

<=RETURN TO INDEX OF LINKS TO WRITINGS OF KEN WAPNICK
 

---

Miracle Studies Navigation Table