A Course in Miracles Explained

Bill Thetford

In 1957, Dr. William “Bill” Newton Thetford, 35, a soft-spoken clinical psychologist, accepted his position as Associate Professor of Medical Psychology, College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. The past few years had seen Bill go through a number of positions – he had previously served as a director at a psychiatric institute in Connecticut and as Chief Psychologist at Cornell University Medical College. By any measure, he was an successful psychologist on the fast-track, in a highly respected academic setting – he had worked with Dr. Carl Roger and Dr. Samuel J. Beck, who were pioneers in the fields of Humanistic psychology and Roscharch testing respectively. (His CV here)

Although this appointment came somewhat unexpectedly, Bill was optimistic about his new position. He was hired to head a pre-doctoral training program in clinical psychology, and he already had a few ideas he wanted to incorporate in the program. However, his initial enthusiasm was somewhat curbed, once he realised the full scope and nature of his responsibilities. In addition to his teaching role, he was also the Director of the Psychology Department of Presbyterian Hospital, a title which he was led to believe would be little more than a formality.

Not long after he joined, the Dean informed Bill that there was a large grant from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases to do a study program on neurological and sensory deficits in young children, and that there now was a need to hire an experienced research psychologist who had specialised training in this area. Through a colleague, Bill managed to contact Helen Schucman, a clinical psychologist who just happened to be looking for a position.

Helen Schucman

Helen Schucman, 49, was a sharp, dynamic woman who possessed a keen intellect. After having graduated at the top of her class in New York University, her career had been focused on research projects on learning disabilities with children. However, weeks before meeting Bill, her dreams of heading up a large research department were dashed when a grant proposal was turned down.

Helen turned out to be exactly to be the right person for the job, in more ways than one. Not only was her professional experience ideal for the position, but Helen seemed to be inexplicably led towards working with Bill. Even though Bill had cautioned her that it would be a position which came with an unimpressive title and salary, Helen accepted the position. When they first met for Helen’s interview, she writes in her autobiography:
As I walked into his office a few days later I made the first of a series of silent remarks that I did not understand myself, and to which I paid little attention at the time. “And there he is,” I said to myself. “He’s the one I’m supposed to help.” I was to make a somewhat similar remark a few days later, after Bill and I had got to know each other a little better. It was another of those odd, unrelated things that somehow began to break into my consciousness without any connection with my ongoing life. For a brief interval I seemed to be somewhere else, saying, as if in answer to a silent but urgent call, “Of course I’ll go, Father. He’s stuck and needs help. Besides, it will be only for such a little while!” The situation had something of the quality of a half-forgotten memory, and I was aware only of being in a very happy place. I had no idea to whom I am speaking, but I somehow knew I was making a definite commitment that I would not break. The actual remark, however, meant as little to me as did the previous one in Bill’s office at our first meeting.#

Helen was acutely aware of her inner world – she had the habit of recording her dreams down as short stories, and some of them were highly symbolic of her psychological state and personality. Although both her parents were half-Jewish, her father was ‘as uninvolved with religion as one could be’, and her mother ‘bitterly resented her Jewish roots and spent most of her adult years as a spiritual seeker’ (Absence from Felicity, Pg. 23). She was raised by a devout Catholic governess, Miss Richardson, and Miss Richardson was a large influence on her early religious life. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, she would have a number of health problems and underwent several operations. In her depression and suffering, she felt that God had abandoned her, and by the time she started her undergraduate studies, she ‘concluded that she had done her best to find Him, but He had not done very well in helping her’ (Absence from Felicity, Pg. 45).

Helen and her governess, Miss Richardson

In New York University where she was a psychology student, her agnosticism had now shifted to ‘angry atheism’. She saw herself as highly scientific, and she believed that she ‘had overcome religious superstition at last and, arriving at the one remaining area of truth – a rigid and particularly dogmatic experimentalism – was finally looking at things realistically.’ (Absence from Felicity, Pg. 46). This disbelief in God however, would be shaken one day as she was taking the subway.

One winter evening, Helen and her husband, Louis, were on the subway to visit some friends. She hated public transport and, amongst other things, was disgusted by how dirty the carriage was. She writes:

And then a stunning thing happened. It was very brief. The intense emotions associated with it [the digust] began to fade almost at once, and disappeared entirely in something less than a minute. An accurate account of what happened is impossible. An an approximation, however, I can say that it was though a blinding light blazed up behind my closed eyes and filled my mind entirely. Without opening my eyes, I seemed to be watching a figure of myself as a child, walking directly into the light. The child seemed to know exactly what she was doing. It was as if the situation were completely familiar to her. For a moment she paused and knelt down, touching the shining ground with elbows, wrists, and forehead in what looked like an Eastern gesture of deep reverence. The she got up, walked to the right side and knelt again, this time resting her head as if leaning against a gigantic knee. The feeling of a great arm reached around her and she disappeared. The light grew even brighter, and I felt the most indescribable intense love streaming from the light to me. It was so powerful that I literally gasped and opened my eyes.(Absence from Felicity, Pg. 47)

Bill and Helen were complete opposites in several ways: Bill was 13 years younger than Helen, and over a foot taller. Their personalities were vastly different – Bill was soft-spoken with passive-aggressive tendencies; Helen was assertive with openly aggressive, abrasive tendencies.

Working together in the next few years was challenging for both of them, emotionally and professionally. The Psychology Department, ‘ranked about as close to the bottom of the priority list as any department in the hospital’, and Bill faced a large amount of bureaucratic and financial difficulties with running the department – it took two months for Bill just to find Helen a permanent office. It was an incredibly political environment, and Helen writes:

The job was really ghastly. … The job was more than routine; it was actually oppressive. Besides, it was carried out in an atmosphere of suspicion and competitiveness to which I had not been previously exposed. As I got to know Bill better I learned there were serious difficulties in the whole department, where fund as well as interpersonal harmony were depressingly lacking. (Absence from Felicity)

Current day picture of Columbia University, School of Physicians & Surgeons, where Bill and Helen worked

Impression of the hospital, from A Forgotten Song (Produced by Bridget Winter, 1987)

On a personal level, although there was mutual professional respect for each other’s abilities, they ‘seemed to bring out the worst in the other’s personality’, and had disagreements about nearly everything, whether it was on a grant proposal, or where to eat lunch. However, they ‘knew they needed the other’s support and sustenance in order to cope with the multitude of problems they jointly faced in their professional environment.’ (Journey without Distance, Robert Skutch, Pg. 30)

In the summer of 1965, exhausted by the stain and frustration surrounding their relationship, Bill became uncharacteristically sentimental during a meeting. He gave a speech, declaring that ‘there must be another way. Our attitudes are so negative that we can’t work anything out’. He went on to add that he was going to try a new approach at the next meeting – he was determined not to get angry, and was going to look for the positive aspects in every situation, and he was going to co-operate instead of compete. To add on to this unusual show of vulnerability and honesty, Helen agreed, and was enthusiastic about finding a new approach.

Bill’s speech marked a crucial turning point – from that point on, gradually but surely, attitudes during meetings were became less hostile, and the working environment became less antagonistic. Bob Skutch writes,‘Within three months the department showed signs of functioning in a smoother way, while morale began to improve to the point where Bill noticed that staff members actually smiled at each other from time to time’ (Journey without Distance, Pg. 35)

This is a example what the Course describes as a ‘Holy Instant’, a moment where a little willingness causes a healing change in perspective, often in the face of a situation which seems normal, logical and acceptable in an ego-dominated world.

Helen also began to experience a change in her ‘mental pictures’ – whereas she had used to see them in black and white, she now was seeing in color and in full motion, with meaningful sequences and a great deal of intricacy.

In one sequence, Helen was in a boat which was moving slowly along a narrow canal. The landscape was serene and beautiful, and there was a gentle breeze helping the boat along. Helen had a feeling that there was ‘buried treasure’ underneath the boat, and she noticed a long pole with a large hook at the end, lying on the bottom of the boat. She dropped the pole into the still waters and found that the hook caught something heavy. Lifting it onto the boat, she discovered it was a treasure chest, which contained no jewels or coins, but just a large black book with the word ‘Aesculapius’ (the Greek god of medicine and healing) on the spine. Neither Helen or Bill made the connection with the Course until long after, when they suddenly realised that the black thesis binder which they had put the manuscript resembled the large black book.

From A Forgotten Song (Produced by Bridget Winter, 1987)

As they intensified, Helen found these experiences disconcerting, and she reported these experiences to Bill and Louis. Louis, like Helen, found them worrying and Helen stopped telling him about them. Bill, however, was fascinated by them, and had the feeling that her experiences may have been about ‘finding a better way.’ Although he didn’t understand them either, he reassured her that she was not going crazy, and began reading about psychic phenomena and the paranormal, an area which both of them had no interest or knowledge in whatsoever. As Bill read more about parapsychology, he suggested to Helen that many of her images could been attributed to her past lives. Upon hearing this, Helen was particularly dismissive and skeptical – she prided herself as being an intellectual, scientific person.

Helen was split in this way – although she was undoubtedly sensitive to such phenomena, her outward persona, ‘The atheistic clinical psychologist’, denied her inner experiences and she often took great lengths to rationalise such inexplicable events. One such event involved Bill’s friend, Joe.

One day, when they were working on a report, Helen suddenly said to Bill, ‘Quick Bill! Your friend Joe, the one we met in Chicago a while back, he’s thinking about suicide. We must send him a message’. Helen immediately ‘sent’ him a message, ‘The answer is life, not death.’ Bill called Joe that evening to ask him if he was all right, and discovered that Joe indeed was depressed and suicidal, and had actually picked up a gun that afternoon, but something had held him back.

As her experiences intensified, she began to identify a voice which often ‘spoke’ to her – it was firm but reassuring, and it carried a sense of authority – Helen often referred to it in her writing in capitals, ie. ‘The Voice’.

Continue in Origins & Evolution:
Part 2 – Scribing of A Course in Miracles: 1965 – 1972