"New Edition!"

It goes without saying that Jesus gives His revelation to earth constantly in an infinite number of ways both wordlessly and in the myriad words of millions of personalized phraseologies. Above all, Jesus teaches: "Listen inside and hear my teaching and guidance in language that suits you personally."

Yet the particular version of His divine teaching and guidance given to Helen Schucman over a period of years in the 1960s and 1970s, known as A Course in Miracles, has served as a miraculous preparation device for many thousands of spiritual seekers and has become a divinely authorized "unauthorized" supplement to the Holy Bible for many open-minded Christians.

Just as Christianity was only one out of a thousand divinely inspired spiritual movements to break through into worldwide popularity, so the Course revelation Helen received is one way of stating the teachings of Jesus ... a way which has caught on fairly far and near, and has the potential to become highly popular worldwide.

Many people have had their life experience transformed from fear, pain, and guilt to peace, joy and unbelievable love by using the Course ... so many, in fact, that the good news cannot help but spread by word of mouth. Those who have allowed the Course to enhance their spiritual opening process have become bright and attractive to others. They have received the gift and feel in turn impelled to give the gift.

Of course the ultimate gift is wordless, but how much fun and joy is it to tie a fancy ribbon and bow arrangement on a Course book and give it to someone with a "Happy Birthday!" card that secretly carries a deeper hidden meaning than any previous birthday tribute because maybe, if not now then someday, this friend or relative will read and give up weeping?

This kind of birthday giving, holiday giving, or simply no particular occasion gift giving is nicely facilitated by the $19.95 Advent of a Great Awakening edition of the Course.

Besides the convenient price, there are several gift-worthy features of this new edition of the Course.

First and foremost, the new edition is lifted out of the illusion that it has anything to do with psychology. Because the Course was given by Jesus to a psychiatrist as well as nurtured and edited by individuals in the field of psychology, it's not surprising that early editions project an image that makes it easy to mistake the Course for nothing more than a brand of psychology which uses spiritual language.

The beginning part of the preface of early editions, written not by our Holy Spirit but by a psychologist's intellect, starts out by discussing the involvement of "Professors of Medical Psychology," as if trying to establish some kind of justifying worldly credentials and covering for the fact that the work itself will finally prove to be the antithesis of psychology.

Although understandable under the circumstances in those days, such a preface has allowed later users to write academic-sounding and inadvertently arrogant descriptions like: "A Course in Miracles is a self-study program of spiritual psychology which helps us undo our guilt through forgiveness."

Such a misunderstanding of the Course's clever ingenuity has misled many Course users and reminds any truly advanced Course user of a blind man using his hands to feel around an elephant's trunk and then declaring, "It's a big snake."

The Course itself guides against self-sabotaging attempts to "study:" "I do not understand anything I see." Jesus tells us His Course is a preparation device which works on us to undo our habit of studying (conceptualizing and forming conclusions or judgments). "These thoughts do not mean anything."

Psychology in our culture is defined as the science that deals with mental processes and behavior. Meanwhile, the Course is a device which aids us in undoing mental processes, literally becoming comfortable with doing nothing with our mind, so we are no longer in the realm of mental forms and we experience an expanded spiritual reality infinitely far beyond science or behavior.

Jesus uses both the Holy Bible and the Course to teach us that forgiveness is not a doing but an already true condition of reality, and only by grace (by doing nothing) is the unreality of guilt replaced with the reality of forgiveness. The Course cannot help us undo guilt, but it very literally undoes guilt for us if we allow it to work on us without hindering the process by activating, engaging or "thought-forming" the intellect into study.

So it is joyous good news that the Advent of A Great Awakening edition of the Course starts not with a preface which smacks of psychology, but with a prologue of words directly from Jesus from the Course itself:

"Forget not once this journey is begun the end is certain. Doubt along the way will come and go and go to come again. Yet is the ending sure. No one can fail to do what God appointed him to do. When you forget, remember that you walk with Him and with His Word upon your heart."

A second gift-worthy feature of this new edition is the inclusion of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John.

Those who hear our Holy Spirit's voice clearly know we are being asked to merge the Course and mainstream Christianity. Such a merger is already automatically happening without any doing on our part by virtue of there being only one mind. Yet Course users tend to be less judgmental of mainstream Christianity as they allow themselves to be immersed in the Gospels, and traditional Christians tend to be less judgmental of the Course as they discover its intimate association with the Gospels.

Does it matter that the Gospels which are included in this edition of the Course are not from the King James version or the Revised Standard version of the Holy Bible, but are translated from the Aramaic Peshitta?

An immediate reaction of some Christians might be something like: "What use are these Aramaic versions of the Bible? Everyone knows the Gospels were originally written in Greek!" Certainly mainstream Christian seminary scholars do not think highly of George Lamsa's work in translating and attempting to popularize the Aramaic version.

But open-minded Christians, let's say those dear ones who you would likely give the Course as a gift, might find the Gospels from Aramaic interesting and maybe even viewpoint-broadening. After all, many Christians in the Near East and Far East, whether mistakenly or not, consider the Peshitta a definitive version.

"The term Peshitta means straight, simple, sincere and true, that is, the original. This name was given to this ancient and authoritative text to distinguish it from other Bible revisions and translations which were introduced into some of the Churches of the East (Monophysites) after the division at Ephesus and Chalcedon in 431 and 451 A.D. respectively." -George Lamsa

(To read some edited Lamsa articles on the Aramaic and the Peshitta, click on The Aramaic Bible - Introduction #1 and The Aramaic (Peshitta) Bible - Introduction #2.)

A third gift-worthy feature of the Great Awakening edition is its print size larger than older editions, which everyone finds pleasantly relaxing to the eyes.

Also this new single volume edition fits neatly into "Large" size Bible covers made with many convenient materials and pleasant designs and available in Christian bookstores.

All in all, this new edition of the Course serves as a wonderful gift.

The Course's Lesson 105 reminds us to look past what appears to be given to what is really given:

"God’s peace and joy are yours. Today we will accept them, knowing they belong to us. And we will try to understand these gifts increase as we receive them. They are not like to the gifts the world can give, in which the giver loses as he gives the gift.

"Accept God’s peace and joy, and you will learn a different way of looking at a gift. God’s gifts will never lessen when they are given away. They but increase thereby."

As we make gifts of this new edition of the Course to our dear ones, let us laugh inside at the joyous irony: