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What is A Course in Miracles?
According to Robert Perry, "A Course in Miracles is a spiritual path that shares basic themes with Christianity, Eastern mysticism, and modern psychology. If we are asking, "What category does it fit in?", the Course fits no familiar category. "There is nothing in the world quite like it."

Authors Richard Smoley and Jay Kinney categorize it as Esoteric Christianity rather than New Age. "In its inner 'turning' toward God through the meditation of Jesus Christ, the Course is indeed Christian."

Perry believes that the Course does not fit into a single category but instead fits many seemingly disparate categories. "Each one captures some facet or aspect of the Course." These are the primary categories that Perry sees:


 * 1. An educational course
 * The Course consists of three parts. Perry states that The Text supplies the "theoretical foundation." The Workbook contains a series of exercises, which are intended to help the student apply the Text's ideas on a more practical level. The Manual for Teachers provides support for those students who will go on to teach this course to their own "pupils."
 * He continues with, "A Course in Miracles, however, is not like any educational course. Its goals are profoundly different." He further states that the Course "claims that true learning means the unlearning of everything the world has taught us, so that we at last emerge from the collective fog of society and enter the limitless freedom enjoyed by the world's spiritual greats." "Miracles come to set us free from the bondage of the world; one thinks of Jesus setting people free from paralysis or blindness. In the Course's view, such outer imprisonment ultimately stems from our inner bondage to the human ego. Its miracles, therefore, have the purpose of liberating us from this inner bondage, and thus from the entire human condition."


 * 2. A channeled spiritual teaching, as found in the New Age
 * According to Perry, "the voice says that divinity resides in each person, and that everyone has access to God without having to go through institutions. He says that all is one, and that our task on earth is simply to awaken to that oneness through the series of lessons presented to us by earthly life."
 * Perry quotes Dutch scholar Wouter Hanegraaff, who locates the Course within the New Age but acknowledges that it is "decidedly atypical":
 * "True other-worldliness [where one seeks the ultimate goal of existence in a radically different mode of being than that found in this world] is very rare in the New Age movement. The only unambiguous example in our corpus is A Course in Miracles. According to this text-which has correctly been characterized as a Christianized version of non-dualistic Vedanta-our world is just an illusory chimaera, which has nothing to offer but violence, sorrow and pain."


 * 3. A purported communication from Jesus Christ
 * According to Perry, the Course does not emphasize the claim that it originates from Jesus, "but there is no question that it does make it. The author speaks of his birth, his miracles, his Apostles, his experience in Gethsemane, his crucifixion, his resurrection, the way he is portrayed in the New Testament, and the way he has been characterized by Christianity."
 * "The only way they can come to believe that Jesus authored the Course is through an inward recognition."
 * Perry goes on to note that there is "an immediate obstacle to believing this book was authored by Jesus: The Course's Jesus simply does not square with the traditional Jesus. He does not claim to have a uniquely divine nature, to be the only begotten Son of God, and he does not call for us to believe in him and his sacrifice on the cross."
 * Jesus, as depicted in the Course, "asks us to envision God as an amazingly gracious Father who pours out His love on sinner and saint alike. And he calls us to respond to the world's slings and arrows with an egoless love that mirrors the way God responds to us. Strikingly, all of these elements are central to A Course in Miracles."
 * Jesus, as characterized by the Course, "says simply, "Forgive your brother." No matter what he did to you, how unfair it seemed, or how strongly you feel impelled to defend your interests, forgive him; not out of duty, but out of a profound realization that there is ultimately nothing to forgive. If you do, you will make peace with yourself, you will awaken to an untouched innocence within you, you will realize you are God's beloved Son, and you will help save the world."


 * 4. A new system of psychology, with ties to Freud
 * "A Course in Miracles is deeply psychological. It contains a remarkably extensive and intricate theory of the mind, of its fundamental nature, how it works, what makes it sick, and how it can be healed." "Like Freud, the Course views the mind as a veritable battleground, filled with conflict between the conscious and unconscious, between the base and the noble, between the desire for life and the urge for death. And like Freud, it depicts us habitually relying on defense mechanisms, such as denial and projection, to keep from our awareness that which we fear to confront."
 * The Course's psychological system takes insights that we can read in psychology texts or observe in our daily lives and greatly expands them. For example:
 * "We know that individuals can go insane and have a break with reality. The Course, however, makes the bold claim that this has happened to all of us. We are all mad. We have had a primordial break with true reality, which is limitless spirit. As a consequence of that rupture we have acquired the false delusion that we are separate beings, and this delusion has caused us to hallucinate a world of time and space, which is not actually there."
 * The Course "claims that all fear, without exception, stems from (mostly unconscious) guilt. All fear is, in the final analysis, fear of punishment."


 * 5. An inspired scripture, in the lineage of the Bible
 * Dutch scholar Wouter Hanegraaff writes:
 * "If we were to select a single text as "sacred scripture" in the New Age movement, the sheer awe and reverence with which the Course...is discussed by its devotees would make this huge volume the most obvious choice. Indeed, it is among those channeled texts which refute the often-heard opinion that channeling only results in trivialities."
 * According to Perry, "The Course clearly appears to see itself in the line or lineage of the West's primary scripture. It frequently refers to the Bible (containing over eight hundred allusions to biblical passages), uses terms and symbols from the biblical tradition (about three dozen by my count), and has the same major figure (Jesus)."
 * "The Course, however, sees itself as possessing an authority greater than that of the Bible. It demonstrates this in hundreds of biblical allusions in which its author feels no compunction about selectively affirming certain biblical themes while freely correcting others."
 * Traditional Christianity expresses opposite views of God's relationship with sin as compared to the Course: "He will not allow sin to go unpunished" versus "He will not allow sin to be real." And this reveals the Course's main problem with the God of the Bible. In its view, a God Who allows sin to be real and is then compelled to respond to it with wrath is not a God of Love. The Course agrees with, and often quotes, the biblical declaration that God is Love, but it goes further than the Bible in emphasizing that God is only Love."


 * 6. A path of enlightenment, as found in Eastern spirituality
 * Perry writes that the Course is similar spirituality in the East where the focus is on "the crucial significance of a man who awakens to his oneness with the Divine. This man has freed himself from the tight strictures of his personal ego, with its attendant bitterness, anger, and worry. He has shaken off the illusion that he is a separate self and has awakened to who he really is, which, he discovers, is limitless. He now lives in the awareness that he is one with the All. He has been liberated. He is enlightened."
 * "The teachings re-educate the student's worldview, instructing him that his suffering is due to the illusion of being a separate ego, and that release from suffering lies in awakening to his true unbounded nature. These teachings may also reveal that the entire phenomenal world is an illusion, and that true reality abides in a transcendental realm beyond time and space."
 * The Course "can be seen as joined with the great river of Eastern spirituality that is flowing into Western culture."


 * 7. A literary work of art
 * "The Course presents a rigorously consistent intellectual system." "Yet the Course is trying to do more than just inform; it is trying to transform."
 * "Even the Course as an intellectual system has an artistic quality." It uses poetry. "Its whole goal is to move us into a new perception, for that, in its eyes, is how we wake up."


 * 8. A manual for interpersonal healing and harmony
 * "The Course, in other words, is beckoning us to embark on the ancient quest to find our inmost center. However, it sees this quest as occurring primarily in our everyday relationships, in how we see and relate to other people, and even in conjunction with them. The Course tells us bluntly, "It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone."
 * The Course "says that our happiness lies not in how well we are treated, but in how lovingly we see and treat others. It says that real happiness comes not from coaxing (or manipulating) our partners into doing it right, but from forgiving them for doing it wrong."
 * "This, in fact, is the meaning of the Course's title. Students of this material often see a miracle as something strictly internal, yet the Course itself usually speaks of a miracle as an interpersonal event in which something healing passes from one person to another and joins them together. A Course in Miracles is therefore, quite literally, a course in how to heal others and heal relationships."


 * In Summary
 * These categories describe different aspects of the Course. The Course is more than a sum of these categories when taken in whole. This may act as an introduction to the Course.