I recently taught a class on Ancient Greek Philosophy. As a philosophy professor, I find myself thinking of the difference between Ken and Robert a bit like the difference between Plato and Aristotle. Ken has modeled his “Academy” after Plato, whom I know he admires. His teaching at times, however, sounds a bit more like Aristotle. Plato held universal “ideas” to be real (realism) whereas Aristotle proclaimed universal “ideas” to be merely mental concepts (nominalism).

I might then take a position similar to Boethius (480 – 552), who is often thought of as being either the last of the Roman Philosophers or the first of the Medieval Scholastics, though he stands closer in time to the Romans. He was the first to “preserve” Aristotle for later generations of “Scholastics.”

Boethius tried to mediate or reconcile the teaching of Plato and Aristotle finally reaching the conclusion that finite minds are incapable of understanding the infinite. I am not interested in trying to support one friend over the other nor am I interested in trying to mediate between the two.

Sometimes I find myself agreeing with the Circle for Atonements very literal interpretation of the Course – for example when they say the Holy Spirit is something which is quite eminent and available to anyone of us at anytime as a guide in life. The Course makes some very literal statements about this. On four different occasions, for example, the Course says we will be given “very specific’ instructions. That sounds pretty personal. I like to think that I have a “personal” relationship with Jesus or the Holy Spirit. When I pray, I like to think I’m speaking “directly” to someone in a personal way.

Yet too, I can imagine that the Mind of God is so far beyond the “human dimension” of consciousness, so I can also see how Ken is correct in saying that everything is a symbol or should be understood “metaphorically.” Indeed, my own experience of the transcendent has shown me a dimension of reality so far beyond our experience of ordinary “earthly” life, that I now know experientially that words are indeed but “symbols of symbols” and the experience of “this life” (the ego and the world) pales and fade away in front of the infinite.

So maybe there are 3 visions of the Course, just as we have the Platonic, the Aristotelian and the Boetheian view of reality maybe we have the Wapnickian, the Perrian, and the Mundanian. What I’m saying obviously is that there are as many understandings of the Course as there are students. I am grateful to the members of the Circle of Atonement for opening this “dialogue” (actually it is not a “dialogue: as Ken has not chosen to respond) in order to enable each of us to more clearly understand the Course for ourselves.

It is inevitable that we all have different understandings of what the Course is saying and I think we need to go with what works for us best until such a time as our own thought “matures” into something more sophisticated. Helen gave me a copy of the manuscript of the Psychotherapy Pamphlet in April 1975 and I had a copy of the “Criswell” edition of ACIM by the summer of 1975. So I’ve now been working with this material for 30 years and my own understanding of ACIM has matured significantly during that time.

Ken was my guide during the early years and every time I thought I had figured out the Course, Ken would say. “Take it deeper” and I would take it deeper and then he would say, “Great, now take it deeper.” So it must be for each of us. We take it deeper and deeper and deeper till there is no anger, no attack thought, no unforgiveness left in us at all. We go all the way till there is nothing left but God. The main thing is that “if applied” the teaching of the Course work – that’s the miracle and that’s what matters.

You may have heard the story from the 80’s about the two Course in Miracles students who got into an argument over the correct interpretation of a passage in the Course. The next day one of them called up Dr. Bill Thetford looking for his support and Bill said he thought what they should do was to tear that particular page out of the book. In other words, the interpretation of a particular passage is less important than forgiving each other our own “illusions,” recognizing the truth that we are all brothers and sisters, all children of God and our real job is not to “argue,” our real job as always is simply to love each other. Finally I leave you with these thoughts from the Course.