Question, Response, and Response

Written by Rev. Tony Ponticello, Tom Whitmore, & Doug Thompson Tuesday, 30 June 2009 12:00

(Following by Rev. Tony Ponticello)

Tom,

I assume you know that Doug Thompson makes several statements about the Course In Miracles Society’s (CIMS) A Course In Miracles Original Edition in the newly published A Course In Miracles Urtext Manuscripts. He believes you (Tom Whitmore) made numerous changes to paragraph breaks, comma positioning and word emphasis. He believes these numerous changes are significant and have created and eclectic interpretive version of the book, with your interpretation. He uses your name. 

I know there has been some discordant dealings between you and Doug in the past so I am reading what he says with the proverbial grain of salt. I would like to hear what you have to say about his claims. Someone has already asked me what I think about them, especially since I have embraced the Original Edition for my teaching purposes.

A response?

Love (Rev.) Tony
June 14, 2009

 

(Following by Tom Whitmore)

Dear Rev. Tony, 

Believing that in my defenselessness my safety lies, I have refrained from engaging with Doug Thompson’s criticisms of the Original Edition to the extent that I have been able. However, the subject keeps coming up, so I suppose I must reply. 

Doug’s criticisms are difficult to answer specifically because they are so general. He never cites chapter and verse; rather, he paints with a broad brush. 

I do take issue with him referring to the Course in Miracles Society publication of the Original Edition as “Whitmore’s Interpretive Original Edition.” In the first place, dozens of people have had a hand in the publication of the Original Edition and have participated in the editorial decisions that are embodied in the book, and to single out one of us is to belittle the significant contributions of all the others. The book is published by the CIMS and not any one individual. Doug Thompson himself was a member of CIMS during the early days and contributed to the decisions that resulted in publication of Jesus’ Course in Miracles, a precursor of the Original Edition. 

Secondly, the Original Edition is not “interpretive.” It is a faithful reproduction of the first manuscript that embodied that which became A Course In Miracles. Unlike Jesus’ Course in Miracles, however, which is also published by Course in Miracles Society, the errors of spelling, usage, and punctuation that are found throughout the original manuscript have been corrected to conform to common usage, just as would have occurred had the Hugh Lynn Cayce (HLC) manuscript been produced in book form in 1972. 

Contrary to Thompson’s statements, there is no “originality” in the Original Edition’s paragraph breaks, punctuation, or emphasis. I know of only a single instance in which the paragraph breaks mistakenly differ from those in the 1972 manuscript. The emphasis, of course, is changed from the all caps rendition that appears in the manuscript to italics, but as far as we are aware, the emphasized words are the same in both texts. As you know, Tony, we are constantly scouring the Hugh Lynn Cayce manuscript and the Urtext for instances where either CIMS or scribes have wandered from the path of accurate presentation of the original dictation. 

In the case of punctuation, on the other hand, we have not felt compelled to followed Helen’s idiosyncratic use of the comma and such fabrications as “;-” in place of the em dash. Just as I learned when I held the title of editor in chief of a secular publication, when printing a complex publication, one must adopt a style manual in order to achieve an acceptably consistent printed work. CIMS chose the Chicago Manual of Style, which is published by the University of Chicago. The Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago), in its 15th edition, is without question the authoritative style manual in use in the United States at the present time. Its only rival is the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual (GPO), in its 18th edition, which we also have occasionally consulted when we had questions not answered in the Chicago Manual. 

Both the Chicago and the GPO style manuals suggest sparing use of the comma. The GPO Manual is succinct in regard to use of punctuation: “If it does not clarify the text it should be omitted.” This is the principle that CIMS sought to employ in the Original Edition. 

Ken Wapnick relates in Absence From Felicity that, when he brought up with Helen the question of punctuation, she stated her belief that an abundance of commas aided the student in understanding difficult material, so they opted to continue Helen’s personal style in the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) publication of the Course. One egregious example of over-use of punctuation in the FIP book is the regular use of commas to separate compound predicates, a no-no by all conventions of which I am aware. Literally hundreds – perhaps thousands – of these commas are omitted in the CIMS publication, and each one is counted by Doug Thompson as an inexcusable aberration from the HLC. It should be pointed out, in this connection, that by and large the punctuation that appears in the HLC was not given to Helen in the dictation that she received. Though we haven’t done an extensive review of the Shorthand Notes (Helen Schucman’s original notes as she took down the dictation) with punctuation in mind, it does seem that much of the punctuation that appears in the HLC manuscript was added by Helen and Bill in the editing process and is not regarded as given by the Author. 

Thompson notes that there “many thousands” of variations between the HLC manuscript and the Original Edition, but with only a handful of exceptions, the differences are in formatting (e.g., spelling out numbers where called for by style), the addition of paragraph numbering, changing emphasized words from all caps to italics, standardizing capitalization, and punctuation. There are very few instances where the text was changed at all. 

Thompson does not tell us what he is using as the standard against which to measure aberration, but if it is the available copy of the typescript of the HLC (which appears in PDF on our web site), there are gaps in the Xerox reproduction which are evident. In supplying the material missing in those gaps, CIMS consulted the Urtext, the “Sparkly” edition of the Course (this was an edition published in Australia that contained the HLC), and Thompson’s own “errata” that he circulated in May 2005, as well as the FIP book. 

In the Original Edition, there are several corrections that were made to the HLC manuscript that go beyond spelling and punctuation. Generally, these “corrections” are the restoration of material that appears to have been mistakenly or inadvertently dropped in the preparation of the HLC manuscript. In the second printing of the Original Edition, these instances are highlighted by setting them off in square brackets, but apart from the notation to that effect in the Foreword, they are not otherwise documented. 

The lack of footnotes in the Original Edition is due to the orientation of the publication toward the student rather than the scholar. Our goal has been to be user-friendly to the everyday student of the Course, not to the academic, whose needs are much different. The touchstone has been to eliminate unnecessary distractions to the receipt of the message of the Course, such as a plethora of footnotes as well as the intrusive sentence numbering and multi-part referencing system found in some editions. CIMS opted for a simple chapter and paragraph referencing system that is intuitive and needs no elaborate explanation. Sections are also numbered (with Roman numerals) to facilitate referencing an entire section of the Text. 

Thompson makes broad unsubstantiated statements in his critique of the Original Edition that are simply wrong and demonstrate a lack of discipline in his analysis. He says, for example, that “subjunctive verbs are changed to past tense or past conditional tense” without citing a single example. We were able to find a couple of these changes in tense. The second sentence of 7:10 is one example of correction of an apparent error in tense. In the manuscript, the sentence reads in part: 

“To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother AND yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him. This placed you BOTH within the Kingdom, and restores its wholeness in your minds.”

We change “placed” to “places,” correcting what is a rather obvious typographic error, similar to what occurs in the following paragraph, 7:11, where we changed “believe” to “believed” in the second sentence, correcting an obvious typographic error. 

Another instance of change in tense that comes to mind is in 27:42, where the sentence in the HLC manuscript contains the sentence “For if it were, there were no need for healing then” is changed to, “For if it were, there’d be no need for healing then.” The need for change in tense is obvious. We chose to use the contraction to preserve the iambic rhythm of the sentence. None of these changes alter the meaning of the text an iota, but they do remove obstacles to the unimpeded flow of the message. 

Most, if not all, of the editorial changes of this nature that we made were also made by Thompson in his later published Corrected HLC. Thompson’s chief complaint, in the end, appears not to be that we have made a lot of unjustified changes; rather it seems to be that we do not highlight our editing by footnoting each instance, as he does in his “corrected” version. However, as we note above, our book is not intended as a scholarly work. It is intended for the student, not the scholar or critic. 

This entire conversation has the flavor of a medieval debate over the quantity of angels that might be accommodated on a pin head, which is to say that it ignores what is obviously important by its preoccupation with minutia. What is important is that people are picking up the Original Edition and entering into meaningful community with the Author. For that we are most grateful. 

Tom Whitmore Course in Miracles Society (CIMS)
June 15, 2009 / originally received
June 30, 2009 / slightly revised for publication

 

(Following by Rev. Tony Ponticello)

(Through the publisher of the *A Course In Miracles Urtext Manuscripts*, Miracles In Action Press, it was arranged to have a response to Tom Whitmore’s response to my original question about Doug Thompson’s statements. Doug Thompson was primarily responsible for editing the *Urtext Manuscripts* which contain all seven books of the canon that some refer to as the *A Course In Miracles* material. The *Urtext* itself was not edited. It was Bill Thetford’s first draft typing of the channeled material dictated by Helen Schucman from her notes. The recently published *Urtext Manuscript* represents the best printed expression of this original typing.

The seven book canon mentioned above is, itself, controversial. There is not universal agreement about the seven books being *A Course In Miracles*. Many people feel that only the first three books are actually *ACIM*: the *Text*, the *Workbook For Students*, and the *Manual For Teachers*. However many think that the two pamphlets *Psychotherapy*, and *The Song Of Prayer* are definitely part of the what we should consider *ACIM* material. Many more think *Clarification Of Terms* [called in the *Urtext Manuscript*, *Use Of Terms*] is definitely part of the *Course* since it was included as part of the *Manual* in the Foundation for Inner Peace book, almost from the start. 

There is probably less agreement whether Helen Schucman’s later poetry *Gifts of God* is part of the *A Course In Miracles* source material, but it does tend to read quite like the *Course* even though it has the stated authorship of Helen Schucman and is not anonymous like the rest of the material. Plus, I believe it was written and edited by Helen alone and not dictated and typed by Bill Thetford. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

Further complicating this are the copyrights themselves. While the copyright of the *Text*, *Workbook* and *Manual* have been declared null and void there are, apparently, still defendable copyrights on the other four above mentioned parts. No new legal action has been taken by the Foundation for *A Course In Miracles*, Ken and Gloria Wapnick’s organization, that owns these other, apparently, valid copyrights. The *Urtext Manuscripts* published by Miracles In Action Press contains all seven of the above mentioned volumes and has determined to publish them without regards to the possible copyright violations.

We realize all this is complicated, especially to the newcomer who is just starting her or his study of the material. However, to the seasoned student and the *A Course In Miracles* scholar these issues are very important. It is this authors opinion that there will never be any comprehensive agreement about some of these issues and that they will most likely remain problematic issues with strong opinions on either side. However, I don’t believe they have to tear the *ACIM* community apart. I believe the discussion of these issues can bring a greater involvement with the material itself to many students and that, in itself, has an obvious benefit.)

Rev. Tony Ponticello
July 25, 2009

 

(The following was received by Community Miracles Center for publication in the ACIM On-Line Discussion Group and for possible publication in Miracles Monthly.)

 (Following by Doug Thompson)

“Referring to the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) version sets a terrible example – it sets the example that standards don’t matter, and honesty doesn’t matter, and what Jesus said doesn’t matter. It creates tremendous confusion in the minds of new students, and it largely invalidates what we are doing to the minds of inquiring seekers who are not yet students.

 
“You say that the message is the same. While I admit that to a large extent the content is the same, the underlying message that WE relay when we refer to the FIP version (in English) is that honesty doesn’t matter, standards don’t matter, and what Jesus said doesn’t matter. 

Bart Bacon, 4/4/09

Posted on Community Miracles Center’s On-Line ACIM Discussion Group.

 

Bart has expressed my central concern here, and has done so with the eloquence he can often muster. This is what triggered the whole discussion with Tom. It’s about our standards of accuracy, honesty and integrity in the presentation of A Course In Miracles to the world. It’s about deception, confusion and misinformation which has chronically plagued the Course throughout its history. It’s about credibility. It’s about what our choices say about ourselves and A Course in Miracles when we are publicly identified as proponents of it and when we print those words on the cover of a book we’re claiming is the Course. If we, as Course students, say “oh a few thousand mistakes don’t matter,” or simply deny they are there at all, what does that say to others about the Course we affirm is worthwhile, honest, and even “the words of Jesus?” It says “honesty doesn’t matter” and it says we aren’t to be trusted. 

It says we don’t understand integrity. 

If we claim as “original” that which is most certainly not, and if we claim as “virtually unchanged” that which is most certainly not, can we really expect anyone to believe anything else we might say about the material? 

The shortcomings with the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) version Bacon refers to in the epigraph above are matched in kind, if not entirely in degree, by the so-called “Original Edition” (OE). This news comes as a great surprise to some, even to Tom Whitmore, or so he says. The similarity in kind is that in both versions the historical scribal manuscript on which both are based (the Hugh Lynn Cayce edition or HLC) is massively altered with many thousands of “interpretive” changes that in no way can be understood as “correcting errors.” 

Few outside of FIP devotees would claim that the FIP abridgment of 1975 is a faithful replication of the HLC on which we know it is based. For exactly the same reasons and some of the same kinds of differences, differences in emphasis, wording, punctuation and paragraph structure, the OE cannot be called a “faithful replication.” It is, like the FIP version, an entirely new version. The question is whether or not the alterations introduced have merit, are authoritative, and improve the quality of the Course. Is the OE better than the HLC? Is it better than the Corrected HLC which it sought to displace? Of all the editions and versions of ACIM on the market, what might recommend the OE above all the others to the consumer? That is a meaningful question.

While many individual modifications in FIP or OE have little impact on meaning by themselves, when there are thousands of little impacts, it adds up to one enormous impact. But that would be a “minor problem” were the claim not made that those thousands of changes aren’t even there, a claim that is made by Whitmore for the OE. 

Tom has made a number of specific charges of dishonesty against me which would take far more than the 1,500 words Tony has graciously provided, for me to answer adequately. I’ve spent two days trying to shrink some 50 pages of response to Tom’s  comments into four and I simply can’t do it and still say anything meaningful. I will thus make a few brief comments here and refer you to a more thorough discussion which I will post on the net. (URLs below)

Tom says I have not provided any examples, nor documented my descriptions of the OE. In fact there are many thousands of pages of documentation regarding the OE, Jesus’ Course In Miracles (JCIM), Blue Sparkly and Tom Fox’s “ACIM 1972” as well as my own Corrected HLC on my website since March of ‘07 and Tom was sent the most relevant of it years ago. I haven’t exactly been keeping it secret! In the Urtext Manuscripts appendix, of course my comments were limited by space limitations to very brief summaries of what I know from that documentation. I will consider adding examples, however. It actually didn’t occur to me that I was saying anything that wasn’t already “common knowledge.” 

In addition to that complete listing of all 7,971 changes the OE makes to the HLC, I offer some analysis, discussion and comparison with a great many specific examples. (URLs are listed at the end)

Tom says there are no changes in emphasis. At a guess I’d say there were roughly a thousand. I’d not be entirely surprised if the actual count ends up at 500 or 1500. Some pages have several emphasis changes, some pages have none. Tom has estimated the deviations in emphasis at zero, I’ve estimated them at a thousand. Check for yourself, see who is closer. I say there are about a thousand, Tom says there are none. Someone isn’t telling the truth.

Do changes in EMPHASIS matter?
DO changes in emphasis matter
Do CHANGES in emphasis matter?
Do changes in emphasis MATTER?

 

When dealing with oral poetry, they matter a great deal.

Tom says there is only one change in paragraph counting. On page one alone, there are two. The three paragraphs which every other edition of the HLC, including the original manuscript, has in that section, become five paragraphs referenced in the OE. Again, I don’t know the precise total but at a guess it is over a hundred. Now these are not very important for a reader, but they are of huge importance for referencing because almost all ACIM reference systems count paragraphs and when you count them differently, your references don’t work on other editions. Inquiring minds might want to know why the paragraph designations where changed and how it is that Tom doesn’t even know they were changed?

Tom says that commas were adjusted to the Chicago Manual of Style. Aside from whether or not any work of poetry, be it is Shakespeare, Frost or Jesus, is appropriately judged ‘in error’ according to the style conventions designed for academic prose, many comma adjustments do not at all reflect the conventions of the Chicago Manual of Style. (There is a lot more about this which I have to say.)

Sometimes the impact of fiddling with commas is considerable, as in the following example from the OE p. 669. In the HLC manuscript it stands thus: 

“Christ is within a frame of holiness whose only purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not, that He may call to them to come to Him.…” 

OE moves the comma just by one word, such that the sentence becomes:

“Christ is within a frame of holiness whose only purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him, not that He may call to them to come to Him.…” 

Tom writes: “Another instance of change in tense that comes to mind is in 27:42, where the sentence in the HLC manuscript contains the sentence ‘For if it were, there were no need for healing then’ is changed to, ‘For if it were, there’d be no need for healing then.’ The need for change in tense is obvious. We chose to use the contraction to preserve the iambic rhythm of the sentence.”

That’s not an “obvious” tense error. It’s not a tense error at all. That is the subjunctive mood, a very common poetic and rhetorical device. This illustrates why great care must be taken in judging errors. Just because the language is being used in a different way than we are accustomed to use it doesn’t necessarily mean it is an inadvertent scribal error!

When preparing the Corrected HLC the first thing we did was proofread to identify every deviation between the JCIM text and the HLC manuscript. We found some 500. When we thought there was an error in the manuscript, we made a note and prepared a list which was widely circulated (including to Tom) for comment (Tom never offered a comment). We also took that list to a professional grammarian. Our list shrank very rapidly as we learned that a lot of ‘tense’ problems were in fact “subjunctive mood” and lot of unconventional phrases were in no way grammatically incorrect. Robert Perry was my chief editorial consultant. I made no change if I couldn’t persuade him it was justified. As the list of suspected errors in the HLC kept shrinking I came to have a new respect for the elegant intelligence of the composition and increasing dismay at the way Helen herself ended up changing many things which she apparently thought of as mistakes but which were really not mistakes.

As Jesus told Helen, apparent contradictions in the Course can be either scribal error or misunderstanding by the reader. Before one can conclude that Jesus’ words or punctuation is not exactly what he intended, one has to exclude the possibility that the problem is in one’s own understanding. That is a key component of scholarship: consultation.

Deborah and I spent thousands of hours proofing. We wanted it to be right. Our rule was simple, without conclusive evidence that there is REALLY an error, which the Scribes, had they noticed what we are noticing, would have fixed, and without a agreement among those of us working on it that it was really an error, we didn’t change it. We might footnote it and comment on it, but unless it could be proven to be an error, it remained unchanged. In the end we required proof beyond any shadow of a doubt that something was a genuine inadvertent error before we’d change it. The approach with the OE appears to have been quite the opposite, that anything that anyone even slightly suspected was altered. According to Tom’s report, he doesn’t even know about a great many of the changes that were made. Rather obviously whoever made them didn’t consult Tom and didn’t generate a list of proposed changes for discussion before actually making the changes. The result is that a huge number of things which are in no way “errors” were changed. Not only is the reader not told of this, apparently Tom was not told of this.

The results speak for themselves. I invite a comparison of the relative merits of these two editions. If you don’t want footnotes, well strip them or ignore them. The OE wins on binding and typesetting. If you are going to judge a book by its cover, then the OE wins. On every other count the Corrected HLC has earned its rave reviews and is the definitive print publication of the HLC. It is a bit better than the JCIM because it has 500 fewer mistakes. It is, well, accurate, honest, reliable and authentic to the historical scribal manuscript it purports, honestly, to reproduce. It is so because the methodology applied in its creation was sound and consistently and rigorously applied. And in its second edition it required almost no changes to anything other than footnotes and the Foreword which reflect what we learned about the HLC while working on the Urtext and the Notes.

I don’t dispute that those responsible for the OE sincerely intended to produce something really good. I won’t even dispute that they did the best they knew how. I will dispute that they achieved what they intended, and it’s clear they had no idea HOW such an intent could actually be achieved.

By their fruits ye shall know them and they shall know themselves.

In closing let me say that I’m a bit surprised this is all coming out now. Thirty months ago I prepared a series of documents and put them on my website relating to all these matters, at the time the OE was first printed. After the Corrected HLC was finished, I went on to work on the Urtext. The Corrected HLC is done and to date no one has pointed out any errors. Anyone interested in a genuinely accurate print edition of the HLC can get one. The new Second Edition renamed “Annotated HLC” should be in print shortly. 

I also want to say that while the HLC is an important and interesting document, the Urtext and the Notes are far more interesting and important. This is all a bit like “déjà vu” for me. This is what I was working on three years ago. The HLC is light years away from being “original” in the sense of “first” and it is that “first manuscript” and genuinely original form which I find most interesting.

The Eclectic Critical Edition of ACIM is what we need to be shooting for and we won’t get it in a credible, honest, reliable and accurate form if we don’t apply the tools of textual scholarship. A sound methodology is essential and it must be applied with rigour, integrity, openness, candour and honesty. But if we DO do that, then ACIM can emerge from the shadows of all the wishful thinking and good intentions ineptly administered through most of its history which have left us with a long series of versions and editions which claim vastly more than they deliver.

I also take phone calls between 10 and noon Eastern time at (519)780-0922 or on Skype, my Skype VOIP ID is “dthomp74.”

For further information and full documentation (which should be updated, it’s over two years old, but it is still there) see these URLs:

Top menu for HLC versions comparison: (this menu leads to all the rest of the documentation)

http://www.miraclesinactionpress.com/dthomp74/2007/REVIEW/GUIDETOP.htm

For a comparison of the four HLC editions with four column side by side examples:http://www.miraclesinactionpress.com/dthomp74/2007/REVIEW/4colE.pdf

For the comparison of the OE with the actual HLC manuscript showing all 7,971 differences:
http://www.miraclesinactionpress.com/dthomp74/2007/REVIEW/OE-T_v_source.pdf

 For a pdf copy of the OE Text volume so you can double check if you doubt the accuracy of the above:
http://www.miraclesinactionpress.com/dthomp74/2007/REVIEW/OE-T2007.pdf

 For the actual HLC transcript (replica) used to compare all the HLC editions:
http://www.miraclesinactionpress.com/dthomp74/2007/REVIEW/replica15.pdf

For the facsimile (image file) of the HLC manuscript (so you can check if you doubt the accuracy of the transcript replica)
http://www.miraclesinactionpress.com/dthomp74/2007/TEXT/images/HLCcropped8prt.pdf

If you wish to ask questions by email, my email is .

If you wish to discuss this topic in public, I’ll open one mailing list to the topic. Feel free to join the list and offer your observations, comments or questions:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Just_JCIM/

by Doug Thompson
July 25, 2009 Y

 

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This article appeared in the June 2009 (Vol. 23 No. 4) issue of Miracles Monthly. Miracles Monthly is published by Community Miracles Center in San Francisco, CA. CMC is supported solely by people just like you who: become CMC Supporting Members, Give Donations and Purchase Books and Products through us.

 

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