CLARKE: I think we have now
covered the main points of disagreement between the Course and
Christianity, as the two of us see it, and the time has now come to
move toward a conclusion. Let me gather together into a condensed
summary just how these differences work out.
1) Christianity believes that
God created this material world, out of nothing preexisting,
that it is imperfect but still an image of God and basically good,
and a theater for our moral and spiritual growth toward the full
stature of sons and daughters of God on pilgrimage toward final
blissful union with God in transformed or "glorified"
bodies in Heaven. The Course believes this material world is not the
product of God at all, but of part of the original Christ
consciousness that broke off in a kind of dream of separation from
God (not a real separation) and produced this material world as a
kind of dream world or thought projection as an expression of the
ego's attempt to escape from God. God does not even know of the
existence of this "dream world" because it is in fact
unreal.
2) For Christianity, Jesus is
the Son of God, Second Person of the Triune God, hence
possessing the same divine nature as his Father, who has
freely taken on a real body and human nature, born of Mary, walked
the human journey in a body in this material world in order to show
us how to live as authentic children of God, really died on the
cross to atone for our sins, and rose again in a real but glorified
body to dwell as such forever with his Father and the Holy Spirit in
Heaven. The Course believes that Jesus is not really divine in
nature, but is part of the original Christ consciousness that tried
to break off from God to create the dream world we are living in
now, but was the first one to wake up from this dream and recognize
it as such, and is now a loving teacher who helps the rest of us
wake up, too. Hence he has no real body, nor did he therefore really
die on the cross nor rise from the dead holding on to a real body
forever. All this is only part of the dream world of thought
projection of the ego as separated from God.
3) According to Christianity,
Jesus really died on the cross to atone for human sins, to
teach us both the depth of evil in serious sin and the even greater
depth of divine love as willing to forgive us and restore us to an
even higher union with God. He rose from the dead in a real
but glorified body to carry out effectively this restoration of
us to an even closer union with God than we had before our sins. The
Course, on the other hand, teaches that Jesus never really died on
the cross; his "dream" body was indeed put on the cross
but only appeared to die according to the thought projection of
those who wished to put him to death and so get rid of him and of
God in the process. He therefore did not really rise in a real body,
which was never real in the first place. The Gospel account is just
symbolic of the remembrance of Jesus by his disciples.
4) According to Christian
teaching, the Eucharist is the sacrament of the
transformation of bread and wine into the real body and blood of
Christ, veiled under the appearances of bread and wine, which is the
endlessly repeated memorial of the death of Jesus for our sins that
takes place in the Catholic Mass or Eucharistic liturgy. For the
Course, there cannot be any such real transformation of bread and
wine into the body and blood of Jesus, because he never had such a
real body in the first place. It is only a memorial, therefore, of
the love of Jesus for us.
5) According to the Course,
the nature of the dream world we are now living in is that it
does not represent a genuine reality but only a thought projection
of an apparent separation from God from which arose our illusory ego
and its weaving of this dream of a material world separate from God
as an escape of the ego from its dream of the pursuing vengeance of
God. This dream world was not produced by our present individual
egos, but by one original ego which broke off in its thought world
and then progressively fragmented into the multiple egos we
experience as individual human beings today. But once in this dream
world, we have to live in it and cope with it in a morally
responsible and loving, forgiving way, as Jesus taught us, so that
we may wake up from the dream as soon as the lesson of our schooling
in this "classroom" is completed, and turn back again to
the blissful union with God we never really lost. Christian thinkers
object to the idea that we never really sinned or turned away from
God, and that in a dream world we could have the necessary free will
to make genuine moral decisions or decide to return to God. They
fear the reality and central importance of the moral world would
disappear, since only real persons, they believe, can make authentic
moral decisions.
WAPNICK: Well, I think again
we are quite in agreement over these main points, but I would like
to restate some of the points you made regarding the Course,
especially in relation to the position of Christianity.
To begin with, A Course in
Miracles would certainly disagree that the "final blissful
union with God" occurs in a transformed or
"glorified" body. Its position, as we have seen, is that
bodies keep us separate and in a state unlike our true Identity as
spirit and Christ, God's one Son. Therefore, you would never find a
dichotomy such as St. Paul made between God's only Son, Jesus, and
the rest of us, God's adopted sons.
Regarding Jesus, A Course
in Miracles would not deny that Jesus is divine, as long as it
is understood that so is everyone else as Christ, and that
ontologically there is no difference between us. However, it is also
the case that in Christ there is no individuality. God's one Son has
but one name: Christ. The Course would also not speak of Jesus as
having been part of the "original Christ consciousness that
tried to break off from God," etc. Again, to speak in such a
manner gives the separation a reality the Course emphatically states
never happened. Nor would it even use the word
"consciousness" to describe the state of Christ, since
that is an inherently dualistic term that belies the non-dualistic
unity of Heaven.
Coming to the crucifixion of
Jesus, I would like to add to your comments, Norris. The Jesus of A
Course in Miracles was demonstrating the inherent falsity of the
unconscious thought we hold that we have killed God and His Love. By
allowing the dreamers of the world's dream -- the separated ones --
to act out in form their unconscious belief of murdering God and
crucifying His Son, Jesus demonstrated: 1) the body is not our
reality; 2) God, His Son, and Their Love cannot be destroyed; and 3)
the dream of death had no effect on him, since he was not asleep,
and therefore invulnerable to the attack thoughts and behavior
within the dream. As I said before, the Course states that the
message of the crucifixion is: "Teach only love, for that is
what you are."
One more point about Jesus and
the Gospels: Since the biblical account of Jesus is so discrepant
from the one in the Course, one could not truly say, as you did,
that according to the Course "the Gospel account is just
symbolic of the remembrance of Jesus by his disciples." I am
reminded of something you said to me many years ago, Norris. After
hearing me state that the Course came as a correction to
Christianity, you commented, and quite accurately, that when you
correct something you retain the basic framework of the original.
But A Course in Miracles retains nothing of the original
framework of Christianity. And the same could just as truly be said
about the Course and the biblical account of Jesus' life, death, and
resurrection.
Similarly regarding the
doctrine of the Eucharist: As we have seen, there are at least two
passages in the Course that specifically refute the Church's
teachings about Jesus' desire to share his body with his followers.
However, like anything else of the egos world, the ritual of
communion could be used by the Holy Spirit to serve a different
purpose -- in this case, as a reminder that Jesus came to share his
mind with us, not his body. But in and of itself, the sacrament has
no meaning apart from this general purpose of forgiveness.
Finally, while A Course in
Miracles would not really use the term "morally
responsible" as it is commonly used in our society, it
certainly would encourage its students to live in a loving and
forgiving way, as you mentioned. Moreover, as we have discussed, the
Course quite emphatically encourages its students to be responsible,
but on a much deeper level. As students of A Course in
Miracles, we are asked to be totally responsible for all
our thoughts, which come from our mind's decision to join with the
ego or with Jesus. From that decision come our beliefs, feelings,
and behavior. If this underlying decision is not changed from the
ego to the Holy Spirit -- from the wrong to the right mind -- then
simply modifying behavior will never heal. And in the long run this
would reinforce a lack of responsibility on all levels of our
experience -- as is witnessed by the history of this planet -- since
we had not assumed the primary responsibility for our original
decision to be separate from the Love of God.
To make the point still once
again, the essential characteristic of A Course in Miracles
that lies at the core of the differences you have nicely summarized
is that it is a non-dualistic spirituality. Christianity, as Judaism
before it, is a dualistic thought system in which God and the world,
spirit and matter, co-exist as separate states, both of which are
real. Reality is thus seen to be a dimension of opposites -- as with
good and evil -- in marked distinction from the Course's
understanding of reality as being only perfect unity in which there
are no opposites.
But we certainly, once again,
agree that it is not helpful for people, whether they are students
of the Course, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, or whatever
their spiritual path, to confuse the different paths. As was
mentioned right at the beginning, the Course says it is only one
path among many thousands.
CLARKE: You are very honest
and forthright about that, and I admire this very much. In fact, you
are the one who invited me to share this dialogue with you, in order
to make perfectly clear to people interested in the Course the differences
between it and traditional Christianity, that the two are not
compatible. You asked me to state the differences clearly and
strongly, not gloss them over. One of the difficulties, as the
Course moves around and spreads its influence, is that not a few
people, including some Catholic priests and nuns, do tend to gloss
over these differences or try to combine things from both or
assimilate the Course into Christianity because both speak of Jesus.
This ends up causing considerable confusion, I regret to say.
WAPNICK: It is very confusing.
What it ends up doing is watering down both the richness of the
Christian tradition as well as the richness of A Course in
Miracles. And I agree with you, that it is much more honest to
say that these are the differences, and that if this is the path
that brings me closer to God, then this is the path I will follow;
and if another path does the same thing, then that is the path I
should follow.
CLARKE: Yes, I have no
difficulty in people following different paths, as long as they do
it sincerely, honestly...
WAPNICK: I know you don't.
That's unusual, you know.
CLARKE: I have seen so many
people who have followed different paths with great fruit, East and
West. I have known many such wonderful people in the Eastern
tradition.
WAPNICK: There is a line in
the Course, actually, that states: "A universal theology is
impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but
necessary" (manual, p. 73; C-in.2:5). And that universal
experience would be the experience of the Love of God.
CLARKE: Well said!
WAPNICK: I think that because
we are so fragmented, so separate, and so different, that to reach
the goal of having that universal experience we each need different
spiritual paths. And that in the end, one path is not any better
than any other. In the end, in fact, all paths disappear into the
Love of God.
CLARKE: Well, one could argue
whether one is better than the other.
WAPNICK: That is another
dialogue...
CLARKE: With respect to this
point of not confusing different paths, let me ask you a practical
question which has me a bit puzzled. I feel there are a number of
particular spiritual and psychological insights from the practical
level of the Course, such as I mentioned earlier, that can be used
with profit by all religious people, including Christians. But it
seems that many teachers of the Course throughout the country, and
elsewhere, focus just on the practical teachings on this level and
omit, almost entirely, mention of the deeper metaphysical and
theological teachings of Level One -- the dream and its origins,
etc. This, too, can cause confusion for some Christians. So may I
ask you what you think of this practice, whether it is sound
practice in the true spirit of the Course to teach Level Two without
the background and foundation of Level One, in a word, to separate
the practice from the theory. Is this legitimate and wise to try to
help people this way?
WAPNICK: No, not in my
opinion. There are many other spiritualities that would teach, as
does A Course in Miracles, that forgiveness is to be
preferred to holding grievances, that developing a relationship with
Jesus or the Holy Spirit is essential to our return home, that God
loves us and does not seek to destroy us, etc. However, there is no
other spirituality that I am aware of that combines a nondualistic
metaphysics with the very sophisticated psychology one finds in the
Course. And one that places the meaning of forgiveness in the
context of this non-dualistic metaphysics. When one removes this
context from the teaching of forgiveness, one has truly lost the
meaning Jesus has given it in the Course -- which is, once again,
that in the end there is nothing to forgive because nothing happened
to disturb the peace and love that is God's Son. And so at
the point that one has removed the concept of forgiveness from the
Course's metaphysics, one has taken away the very heart of A
Course in Miracles -- its non-duality. And one then can no
longer be said to be speaking about A Course in Miracles at
all, but rather some other spiritual path that is dualistic. And
again, it is a disservice to everyone to misrepresent the Course
that way.
CLARKE: Let me conclude now by
suggesting that despite all our differences, we can work together in
our own ways toward healing one of the great illusions of the modem
secularist world: the belief that we are empty in ourselves (partly
true) but that the way to fill up this emptiness is by filling it
with creatures, with what is not of God. There is a great
restlessness and sense of inner emptiness in so much of the modern
world, together with the illusion of consumerism, that somehow
possessing and consuming more and more material goods will assuage
this restlessness and fill this emptiness, always with something
other than and less than God himself. But the more material
possessions we gather, the poorer we seem to get interiorly. As St.
Augustine noted with great insight long ago, forgetting our own
interior spiritual riches, we think we are poor, and go begging
outside ourselves among material things seeking to become rich, but
in the process become poorer and poorer, since the lower cannot
satisfy the higher. This illusion of paradise without God is a
profound illusion indeed.
WAPNICK: I think that we would
both agree, certainly, that no love is possible in this world
without its Source being God. And the whole idea of A Course in
Miracles is to help us bring to the Holy Spirit all of the ego's
interferences to love that are in our minds -- i.e., switch to our
right minds, where at last we can become an instrument of the Holy
Spirit. His Love then can extend through us and so, in this world,
we do become more peaceful and more loving to ourselves and to each
other. There is a beautiful passage in the workbook where Jesus
says:
For this alone I
need; that you will hear the words I speak,
and give them to the world. You are my voice, my
eyes, my
feet, my hands through which I save the world
(workbook, p. 322; W-pl.rV.9:2-3).
CLARKE: In one of the articles I
wrote, "What It Means To Be a Person," based on the
thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, I gave three stages: self-possession
through self-awareness and self-governing of your actions; then self-communication;
finally self-transcendence, where you go out of your own
limited point of view to take on the point of view of the Mind and
the Will of God, to see the whole world as God sees it, and then to
love all the good as God loves it in its proper order. That is a
taking on of the very Mind and Love of God; that is a
self-transcendence that then brings great joy. So to be yourself,
you have to really step out of yourself -- that limited self. It is
not for the self to disappear entirely, I think, but it is to be
fulfilled in taking something larger, the true Center, as one's own
center.
WAPNICK: Yes, I think I might
mention one other thing in view of what you just said, that the goal
of A Course in Miracles is not really to be without a self,
or to disappear from this world into the heart of God, as it says in
one beautiful poetic passage. Its goal is to have us live without
any guilt, without any sin, without any fear, without attack of any
kind. That is the goal of the Course: to be present in this world,
but to have all of our mistaken thoughts of judgment, hatred, fear,
and guilt removed. And again, this is frequently misunderstood by
students of the Course. As is said in John's Gospel, we are to live in
the world, yet not be of it; i.e., live within the dream, but
aware that we are not truly of it, and that our true Identify is
outside the dream. In other words, we are to be in the world the way
Jesus was.
CLARKE: But to live in this
world as long as we are in it. So, there is a kind of death here, a
kind of physical death.
WAPNICK: Yes, A Course in
Miracles does not deny a physical death within the level of the
dream. What it does say, actually, is that there are two kinds of
death. There is the death that comes through guilt and fear, and the
fear of judgment from the ego's projected image of God. And then
there is the death which is described as a quiet laying down of the
body when our work is done, recognizing that we have fulfilled the
purpose of being here; namely, to have learned to be more loving and
forgiving. And then our death is a peaceful one.
Another way of stating the
goal of A Course in Miracles is that it is to live in this
world in a peaceful way, not with all the conflict, both
international as well as personal. And it does say, in fact, that
knowledge -- which is the Course's synonym for Heaven (actually a
kind of Gnostic use of the word "knowledge") -- is not the
goal of this Course, peace is: the experience of peace here within
the dream. It is a way of living with each other -- both
individually, as well as among nations -- having the state of mind
in which there is no conflict, no desire to usurp other people's
place, and no need to steal what is not ours.
CLARKE: As Jesus said, I came
that you might have peace; I came to give you my peace.
WAPNICK: The Jesus of A
Course in Miracles would echo that too, certainly.
CLARKE: So we differ on much,
but also agree on much. Let me give one last quotation from Charles
Morgan, the novelist: "There is no surprise more magical than
the surprise of being loved; it is God's finger on man's
shoulder."
WAPNICK: That's
wonderful. If I could add something relevant to that: A Course in
Miracles would say that there is no greater joy in this world
than the joy of knowing that one is forgiven, and that forgiveness
can only come through experiencing the Love of God through Jesus or
the Holy Spirit.
Still Under Construction