ACIM, Spirituality, and Nonduality

           Nonduality is not a spiritual path. It is an awareness and experience of one truth. This rises to conscious awareness of itself, so it cannot be attained. The insights garnered from the experience can be shared, but the experience cannot be taught. However, the awareness of one truth may result in ego going on a spiritual journey. Spirituality is what ego does with a dim awareness of truth. It takes the information that truth is beyond it and shapes it to its reality, resulting in duality: Ego and truth are true. This results in other perceived dualities, like good and bad and right and wrong. The end of its spiritual journey is not ego transforming but falling away.

There has been among A Course in Miracles students from the start a debate about whether the Course is a nonduality teaching or not. The Course does point to nonduality. It states outright that there is only one truth and ego and its world are not real but are mirages. But most of it addresses ego’s illusions. Much of it can be read on different levels depending on what the student has experienced and come to understand. So, in theory, the Course teaches nonduality. In practice, it is a spiritual teaching. And what a student feels it emphasizes is determined by the student’s experience.

Let’s look at its forgiveness practice. In the Course, forgiveness recognizes that what you think another did to you did not occur. Reading this through nonduality, this is a fact because nothing that seems to occur is real. All appearances are mirages. But as a spiritual practice, this idea can be applied by ego because your upset is caused by your interpretation of what another did, not the fact of what they did. For example, you feel a friend insulted you. It does not matter if they intended to insult you because you are not triggered by their words or intentions but by your belief in what you think they said. You projected meaning and this is an illusion. So, in the end, you don’t forgive others but rather your own interpretations.

Perhaps this split in the Course is due to the minds of Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford. They were looking for another way to be with others because they worked in such a contentious environment and their relationship was difficult as well. Dr. Schucman channeled a master teacher with Dr. Thetford as the intended first student. (She channeled but did not apply the Course for herself.) The master teacher, of course, knew about one truth, but Dr. Thetford was yet to see only one truth. But he was ready to learn about the illusions of ego. Eventually, with the master teacher in his mind (his inner teacher), he developed a forgiveness practice in which he used the words “I forgive it all” to any triggered upset. Of course, these are just words and do not mean anything in themselves. But they represented, for him, some action of release in his mind. And by taking responsibility for his own projections of meaning, his relationships improved.

As predicted in the Course, at the end of his life Dr. Thetford came to say joyfully, “I’m there.” This makes it appear that there was cause and effect, that his practice led to his eventual release from ego. But that is backwards. The practice he was inspired to do was an expression of the release he was already in.

We don’t know what exactly Dr. Thetford experienced at the end of his life. Was it just release from ego’s illusions, resulting in what is commonly thought of as a self-realized ego? Or did he have a nonduality experience and see that there is only one truth and all else is a mirage with no meaning? In any case, whether the Course is a nonduality teaching for you depends on your own experience. If you have not seen that all appearing is an illusion, then it is a spiritual practice to express your release from ego’s illusions.

 

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