Book Review

The Foundation for A Course in Miracles® has recently published 2 companion books (sold only as a set) by Ken Wapnick. The first is titled "All are Called" and the second "Few Choose to Listen" inspired by a quote from the text "All are called but few choose to listen."T-3.IV.7.
I believe the vast majority of students studying A Course in Miracles® just study it and use it in their lives. knowing nothing of other teachers than the books themselves and that part of their own minds that already knows all that the book contains. I have met many of them. The more diligently they stuck with the teaching, the greater their understanding became through the help of the Holy Spirit within all of our minds

I had insatiable hunger for this teaching in my first 12 months study on my own and underwent so many changes to my thinking thanks to the help of the Holy Spirit Who I always felt was in my mind guiding and correcting me if I went off track. After a while, totally convinced that this was my pathway and feeling keen to accelerate my learning I came across Ken's Glossary/Index. It was obvious that this was the work of a dedicated scholar.

Ken's clarity seemed so right on line with the material that I became an enthusiastic admirer of his work culminating in my encouraging his being brought to Australia with his wife Gloria for a series of workshops in 1984. We kept in regular touch and they stayed with us in Australia and we spent some time with them on two occasions at their Centres in NY State. I have read every book he has written and heard all his tapes and always appreciated his insights.

Ken Wapnick has consistently been considered the world's leading interpreter of A Course in Miracles® since the early 80's. Other teachers come and go and many have not seem eye to eye with Ken's totally abstract approach. Many pupils wanting this world to work out for them see hopelessness reflected in his interpretations.

Other more optimistic teachers have a ready-made audience for these mistaken but good intentioned Miracle students who are hoping for a direct experience with God, lasting physical healings and holy relationships and a personal Holy Spirit who looks after all our worldly needs.

They complain that he dismisses all the nice uplifting passages as merely poetical worldly symbols of God's love while focussing only on the despair in this world and spelling out in graphic detail the horror and deviousness of the ego giving the student no hope of readily escaping this world.

Over recent years few people evoke such diverse emotions as Ken Wapnick to students of A Course in Miracles®. To many students Ken Wapnick has become somewhat of an enigma. Controversy has raged around his approach almost since his first involvement with the Course. For years I was accused by many of being a 'one eyed Wapnician' and to an extent that was partially true. I learned over time that I had put Ken on an impossible pedestal. We expect too much of our idols and woe betide them if they display even the slightest human ego tendencies. Let them show even a glimmer of humanness and they soon fall off their pedestals and if they don't, we try to give them a helpful shove.

However even his critics could not deny Ken's unswerving and total dedication to A Course in Miracles ®. Their worst complaint was that he expertly over-analyses the material without giving us any hope for improvement of our life here on this earth where we think we are.

Ken's honesty and loyalty to the true purpose of the Course and its author is so crucial to him and the role he thinks he has with A Course in Miracles ®. Ken always told it 'as it is' as far as he was concerned and he could never be accused of trying to water down the material to make it more palatable. It is a tough Course and part of his mission is to remind us not to take the ego lightly.

I was feeling rather jaded when I first picked up Ken's new book/s thinking it would just be more of the same, but soon after starting I realised that this was a well researched book of value to students of A Course in Miracles® and much more expansive than his earlier efforts. The main thrust of it seems to be Ken's emphasis of the impossibility of achieving anything in reality in a dualistic world other than temporary changes in form which is in itself unreal. I have known Ken's position of most aspects of the Course for a long while but this time he has taken the time to spell out very clearly why he takes the stand he does. Some might see it as a subtle attempt to discredit the approaches of other teachers of the Course but he puts up a convincing argument that is hard to dispute, backing it up with solid support from the Course. For example on Page 81 of his second volume "Few Choose to Listen" he writes about Holy relationships this way.

"But as we have seen, the teachings of A Course in Miracles ® would be seriously distorted, not to mention misapplied in practice, if it is not recognized by its students that forgiveness can only truly occur within the mind of the student, although it is experienced within the belief system and perceptual dream that says that there is someone outside us to forgive.

The same is true of course with a holy relationship, which can only exist in the mind of the perceiver of the relationship. Relationships are not holy in form, but only in purpose. And purpose exists, once again, in the individual's mind, its source coming either from the ego or the Holy Spirit. But one often finds expression of the ego's unconscious arrogance when students claim that a specific relationship is a holy one. They know not what they say for the chances are that their egos have succeeded once again in repressing its true purpose of hiding guilt behind a shield of seeming holiness, expressed here in the form of spiritual specialness."

Ken warns students (and teachers) about making up a philosophy of the Course based on snippets of quotes taken at random and completely out of context without understanding the basic overall thought system.

"Thus, to recapitulate, a student of A Course in Miracles ® will never really be able to understand any one passage in it without first understanding the whole, just as a therapist would be irresponsible to attempt to analyse a dream of a relative stranger (let alone any piece of behaviour), without first appreciating where that particular dream (or behaviour) fits into the person's entire life. Unfortunately, however, as we have seen earlier, many students are invariably tempted to remove a sentence or paragraph from its context in the Course, and then declare A Course in Miracles ® to mean what the words say, while in reality they have contradicted the very message of the Course itself." P.93

Ken has probably come across every kind of distortion students have made but he has steadfastly maintained his position despite being at odds with other interpreters of the Course. He has never promised that one could readily achieve an enlightened state without first removing those blocks to love deeply hidden in the recesses of our minds. To many his approach was too slow and gloomy and while they agreed he was a past master at analysing the thought system he was unable to offer any promise of a solution while still in the illusionary world. Other teachers have since come on the scene offering their followers almost instant 'experience of God' completely bypassing the need for forgiveness. To Ken "instant enlightenment" is only achievable when we have completed our forgivenesses. To remain in a totally enlighted state while still desiring anything in this world would mutually exclusive. To Ken's way of thinking the Course works within the dualistic world of unreality to lead us to reality.

In chapter 4 of the second book "Few choose to Listen he says

"Thus, in truth, the figures of Jesus or the Holy Spirit are really the projections (reflections) of the memory of a non-dualistic God within our dualistic minds. The problem, however, is that this projected split-off part of our self is actually believed and experienced to be real, and the dynamic of projection is so quickly forgotten that for all intents and purposes God's true inner Presence-since ideas leave not their source-is hidden behind the veil of denial and the belief that there can be an "inner" presence of truth that is still outside of us

What has occurred in the long run, therefore, is that the god of specialness has once more triumphed over love by becoming the substitute for it. This can be understood when the student recalls that love is perfect and undifferentiated unity. The Holy Spirit, in becoming an external entity that is perceived and experienced as outside the Son-even though He is thought of as being internal-now has become the expression of the god of specialness by substituting for the Presence of God's Love that in truth, once again, is the Son's Identity. This mistake can be avoided through students of A Course in Miracles ® remembering not to confuse a dualistic symbol for the non- dualistic reality, and to use more properly the metaphor of the Holy Spirit as the means for ultimately moving beyond the symbol to the truth of oneness that is within them and is them as Christ."

Ken warns us how easily we can slip from asking Jesus's help in everything we do, (a very helpful early stage of undoing our wanting to control everything) to believing that Jesus is giving us special treatment by granting us our ego needs.

"There is an even more subtle aspect to this dynamic of making Jesus (or the Holy Spirit) a separate and distinct entity, and it goes right to the heart of the dynamics of specialness. It helps to explain the great ambivalence any sincere and honest student of A Course in Miracles® would have to feel about Jesus. It also helps to explain Jesus' several references in the Course about the need to forgive him. We thus return to our brief overview of the dynamics of specialness.

We have seen that the principal premise of the thought system of specialness is the reality of duality and differences, the origin of which rests with the original (and ongoing) separation thought. This is the belief that the Son of God can actually be outside the perfect unity of creation, separate from and independent of the Oneness of God; in other words, that ideas can leave, and indeed have already left their source. This apparent act of accomplishing the impossible is what the ego calls sin, which encompasses the belief that the Son has stolen his individuality from God, at a cost of destroying his Creator and usurping His role and function." p. 109

Ken talks about everybody on earth being motivated by specialness. He addresses many aspects of specialness including judging other people's specialness, groups and channelling. Also he talks about students asking Holy Spirit for specific guidance. It almost is as if Jesus goes along with our specific help when we think our needs are specific but it is a trap to stay at that level and deny ourselves the more important generalised help at an abstract level page 152

This book is written in the style of a university thesis with Ken using seldom heard but impressive words that have you scurrying for a dictionary every few pages. But don't let that put you off, as Ken, being a perennially scholarly academic, could write no other way. Nevertheless this is probably Ken's most definitive book to date and a valuable tool for Course students wanting to increase their understanding about this thought system we all love. Even if you have been resistant to the work of Ken Wapnick in the past I would strongly recommend you 'choose once again' and read these latest offerings of his.

Bill McDonald