It has long been clear to students that multiple interpretations of the Course abound.  I assume that similar kinds of comparisons will multiply over time as the number of Course students and their interpretations increase.  I would like to try to help the comparative process, not by taking sides, but rather by pointing to crucial ideas and assumptions that must be taken into account in any comparison of ACIM interpretations.  The following ideas seem particularly important but they are, of course, my own assumptions and interpretations.

1.All Understandings of the Course Reflect Interpretations

If there is one thing on which the Course and contemporary philosophy agree, it is that all our perceptions and understandings are tinged by subjective interpretations.  For the Course, all perception is partial: “this is the way reality is made by partial vision” [WB184.4:1].  Likewise, a central theme of the last 200 years of philosophy has been that perception and understanding are colored by a host of filters and limitations.  These filters and limits extend from our social status and historical period through to Freudian defenses and our psychological (and spiritual) maturity.  In short, all our experience is colored and interpreted. 

Therefore, it is a major trap to interpret one’s own interpretation of the Course as not an interpretation.  In other words, it is a trap to believe one’s perspective and understanding of the Course are “The Truth.”  This recognition can have the healthy effect of reducing attachment to our own interpretations, and making us more open to those of others.

2.The Course is (in part) Fallible

Christian fundamentalists espouse “biblical inerrancy”: the idea that the bible is without error.  However, as any careful bible student soon discovers, the bible abounds in errors of many kinds: historical, factual, and logical.  Ditto for Hindu fundamentalists and their “bible”: the Vedas, and for Islam and the Koran, etc.

Though nowhere near as numerous, the Course, too, seems to contain errors and contradictions.  For example, it claims that “the bible tells you to ‘know yourself’ [T-3 III5:1]. Once when we were talking about this, the Course scribe, Bill Thetford joked “The Course is a little rusty on its theology." 

There also seem to be multiple contradictions within the Course.  However, the extent to which these are actually inherent in the Course itself, and the extent to which they reflect our (or my) partial perception and understanding, may remain forever unclear.

3.Care is Necessary When Making Claims for Similarities and Differences

When comparing Course interpretations, or the Course with other spiritual traditions, it is important to be wary of making sweeping claims for similarities or differences, uniqueness or sameness, compatibility or incompatibility.  For example, to claim either that ACIM is the same as (compatible with) or utterly different from (totally incompatible with) any other tradition, including the Bible, is problematic. In fact, taking ACIM or any other tradition as a whole and making sweeping conclusions and comparisons is troubling. 

The Course, and any other tradition, is a complex thought system with multiple claims, concepts and assumptions.  Some of these will be similar or even identical; others will be different or even incompatible.  As Huston Smith, author of the superb book The World’s Religions, pointed out, claims for similarities and differences get nowhere until one gets down to specifics; everything is both similar and different.  This is consistent with the Course’s claim that “A universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary” . [Clarification of Terms, Introduction 2:5].

4.“Reality” is Difficult, and Probably Impossible, to Understand

A great deal hinges on the understanding of “reality” and “unreality.”  This is hardly surprising since ACIM repeats over and over that the world is “unreal.” 

Discussions about reality are very tricky.  This needs to be clearly recognized in any comparison of interpretations.  Just because ACIM says the world is “unreal” doesn’t necessarily mean that it has given us enough information about the precise nature of this unreality for us to be certain about the actual nature [in philosophical terms, about the precise “ontological status”] of the world.  For myself, and this is of course my own interpretation, I don’t believe the Course gives enough information, or is clear and unambiguous enough, about the nature of the world to reach definitive conclusions.  In the technical terms of philosophy, for the Course, the world remains “ontologically indeterminate.” 

In fact, it may be inherently impossible to resolve this issue intellectually.  Multiple traditions, including the Course, imply that appreciating the nature of reality requires not only rational analysis, but also transrational wisdom that results from direct intuitive experience of reality. This experience and wisdom are ‘transrational” [beyond the intellect and rationality].  As the third Zen Patriarch of Zen warned:

The more you talk and think about it

The further astray you wander from the truth.

Stop talking and thinking,

and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

5.One’s Ontological (and Metaphysical) Assumptions are Extraordinarily Powerful and Important

Once you adopt an ontology and metaphysics (a theory abut the nature of reality), then this necessarily determines how you view and interpret all the ideas and phenomena it encompasses, for example, how you interpret the world, the body, the mind, heaven-- in short, almost everything.  For example, if you were to assume that only God is real, then everything else—the universe, the world, and the Holy Spirit’s acts in the world—would be necessarily unreal (whatever “unreal” means).

Therefore, in evaluating and comparing interpretations of the Course, it seems crucial to identify and spell out their underlying metaphysics.

6.Beware the Dual Nondual

“Nondual” has become somewhat of a buzz- word in spiritual circles.  In part this is probably because it has traditionally indicated the “highest” or most profound metaphysical view, in part perhaps because it sounds wonderfully esoteric.  But it is subtle and tricky.

Likewise, the Course is sometimes said to be “nondual.”  However, many of the supposedly nondual interpretations seem to be actually quite dualistic, at least from traditional perspectives.  For example, within the Course community, the views that only God, or only the oneness of heaven, exist, have been described as nondual views.

The discussion gets rather tricky here because of the limits of language and intellect.  However, it is debatable whether such a view is actually nondual, or rather, strongly dualistic.  Because to say that heaven is the only reality is to make (an at least apparently) radical dualism between heaven and everything else.  Yes, the Course can be interpreted as implying nothing else but heaven exists, but this can still be seen as making a dualistic claim.

Traditionally, the term “nondual” has been used quite differently.  As implied by numerous traditions—Advaita Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, Plotinus and Meister Eckert—nondualism is something subtler.  Here nonduality implies, just as the previously discussed Course interpretation does, that the world is unreal and to be distinguished from the Absolute, which is real.  However, traditional nondualism then goes further to suggest, apparently paradoxically, that the world is the Absolute.  This view was wonderfully summarized by the great Hindu sage Ramana Mahashi who said:

The world is illusion,

Brahman (God) alone is real.

Brahman is the world.

Numerous other quotes could be given to exemplify this view, but perhaps the most succinct is Mahayana Buddhism's claim that “nirvana (the Absolute) and samsara (illusion) are one.”

Historically, this nondual meaning has emerged later than earlier metaphysics and has often been regarded as the deepest.  Moreover, it is a perspective that probably cannot be fully appreciated until one has a direct experience of the Absolute and this nonduality.  That is, intellectual appreciation of this metaphysics is necessarily limited by the depth of our experience.

The relevance of this for Course students is two-fold. First, the term “nondual” can be used in different ways. Second, it is possible to interpret some of the Course’s metaphysical statements in the traditional nondual way. A number of Course statements seem consistent with this metaphysics, and it can provide a coherent framework for the Course’s teaching.

7.Comparative Study of the Course and Other Spiritual Disciplines may be Valuable.

Obviously comparative study will appeal to only a few Course students.  However, for those students who are called to this work, there may be real value in studying other traditions. They may help us learn from the ways in which interpretations and debates similar to those now taking place within the Course community have already appeared and played out over centuries in other traditions. 

CONCLUSIONS

So what does this imply for us in practical terms?

•First, to go back to the beginning, it seems crucial to recognize our limitations and that all views and understandings of the Course are partial and interpretations.  There are probably as many interpretations of the Course as there are students.

•Second, hold all interpretations lightly and tentatively.

 

•Third, practice!  It is actually practicing the Course, or whatever path we are drawn to that will eventually awaken us to what the Course calls Knowledge: the transrational wisdom beyond interpretation.

•Fourth, study and practice the Course together. This is what the Course itself seems to recommend.  Collaborative study may have the healthy effects of heightening awareness of our idiosyncratic interpretations, and reducing our attachment to them.  To quote the Third Zen Patriarch once again:

Do not search for the truth.

Only cease to cherish opinions.

Finally, keep in mind Bill Thetford’s response when two people telephoned him to adjudicate a debate they were having over the interpretation of a particular section of the Course.  “What page is it on?” Bill asked.  When they told him, he responded, “Tear it out!”