What Is A 'Course In Miracles'?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.Here is this week’s question:Dear Dave and TA, What can you tell me about A Course in Miracles?It’s being promoted by Ophra Winfrey and it doesn’t sound quite right.

Tom:

Well, it isn’t right, looking at it from a biblical standpoint, but let me give you a little background.Dave, this is actually Ophra Winfrey’s radio program, and Maryann Williamson, who has probably been the voice of A Course in Miracles, has been promoting this in her books, and what her program is about.So, she is—I think she has a year, and she is teaching A Course in Miracles on the Ophra Winfrey radio, and it’s called, “Ophra and Friends” what is “A Course in Miracles?”

Dave:

Well, Tom, you’ve just taken a good look at it, I’m sure, and I would be relying on my memory, I’m trying to remember—well, this lady was a psychology professor at Columbia--?

Tom:

I think it was ColumbiaUniversity.

Dave:

Okay, and she had this voice that kept persisting, “take it down, take it down” and finally she asked her colleagues, other psych professors, what should she do?And finally, she succumbed to it, and out came this “Course in Miracles,” supposedly dictated by Jesus, who contradicted the Bible.But you had Gerald Jampolsky who was a psychiatrist, and I’m sure he was on Ophra Winfrey; he was certainly on Robert Schuller’s program.

Tom:

O, by the way, Dave, the psychologist’s name was Helen Schucman.

Dave:

Right, thank you, original lady who got this.

Tom:

And she fought it all the way, although she was obedient to write it down, but she had trouble with it.

Dave:

This is “A Course in Miracles,” it said.And among the various things the course teaches, I suppose this will all come out in the Ophra Winfrey Radio—there is no such thing as sin.You’re not a sinner, that’s just a negative way of looking at things.Certainly, Jesus didn’t come to die for our sins, Jesus came to teach us there is no such thing, there’s nothing to be forgiven.And it’s just totally anti-biblical, anti-Christian, anti-Christ.Remember Gerald Jampolsky, he was touched with a peacock feather in the back of his head by an assistant of Muktananda—

Tom:

Yeah, an Indian guru.

Dave:

Right and we talk about him in Yoga and the Body of Christ—an evil man.

By the way, if you know the book, Death of a Guru, Rabi Maharaja’s mother left him, as a little boy, to join Muktananda.She became Muktananda’s sort of right hand woman, I guess.Muktananda, we expose his sexual perversion, his evil in Yoga and the Body of Christ.He’s dead now, but it all kind of ties together.But anyway, when Jampolsky was touched with a peacock feather on the back of his head, he didn’t even know it was coming, it sent him off on a trip like, supposedly, and they call it the “shaktipat.”Shakti is another one of Kali’s names; it means “the force.”Shakti is the universal force, the Star War’s force, and shaktipat, the guru touches you, like we have a few people on TV who are trying to play this game as well.Now, they’ve got it a little bit wrong because in the Bible when you fell in the presence of God, you fell forward on your face; when you are not really belonging to God, you fall in the opposite direction.So, when Jesus said to the soldiers in the garden, I AM, they fell backwards.But that’s the way they fall in these charismatic meetings, they’ve got to have a catcher there to catch them.Anyway, Tom, sorry, I’m taking too much time, but this is the inspirer of the “Course in Miracles” told Jampolsky, this is what you are being prepared for.So he brought the “Course in Miracles” into his practice, his psychiatric practice, and he was one of the heroes that Robert Schuller interviewed on his program, “The Hour of Power” and had him pray, open in prayer.Tom, tying in with what you are talking about here, you get this error going, this delusion, and it just spreads everywhere.

Tom:

And Dave, one of the reasons, I believe, is because it’s so positive, it wants to put away negative.Maryann Williamson, for example, said, well, growing up she had guilt and she had, even though her lifestyle was nothing to be proud of, she says that it was love that transformed her.So, this is all love oriented, this is all a God of love, certainly not anyone who would send anybody to hell, this is not a God who would correct or judge, and so on.It all comes back to loving and being kind, and all these platitudes that have some value, we’re not denying that, but it’s not true in terms of the full counsel of God, what He’s about.

Dave:

And Tom, it’s a long time since I thought of this, but you might have it at your finger tips:Gerald Jampolsky wrote a book about, Nothing but Love or, that wasn’t quite the title.But anyway, this isn’t love, this is what you’re being led into, but it’s not the love of God.

Tom:

Jampolsky, I mean, his reputation was, and he’s the psychiatrist of love.

Dave:

Yeah, well, he wrote this book, inspired by “A Course in Miracles” teach only love.And another book he wrote:Love is Letting Go of Fear.And he used the teachings of “A Course in Miracles” in his psychiatric practice.