Course in Miracles Society Second
Edition of the HLC
CIMS(2) or “Original Edition”
A truly “original” edition
CIMS’ First Edition of the HLC in 2000, (CIMS(1)) which was also known as “JCIM”, looked amateurish, was rather ugly, and was hard to read because of unfortunate typesetting and inconsistent print quality. It was printed a mere four months after the discovery of the Hugh Lynn Cayce manuscript, an almost unbelievable feat. Its shortcomings can be explained by the need for haste at the time. It also had hundreds of inadvertent typos and failed to correct many grammar and spelling mistakes. Seven years later there were high hopes for the long-awaited CIMS(2). At first glance they seem to be fulfilled.
CIMS Second Edition, sub-titled “Original Edition,” has certainly addressed the aesthetic shortcomings of CIMS(1) and has also fixed some, but far from all of the accuracy problems in the 2000 document. The 2007 edition also includes an “original” version of the Workbook and the Manual for Teachers without the Use of Terms. Thus it has three of the six volumes of what is generally considered the ACIM canon. Physically, this CIMS Second Edition bears an uncanny resemblance to the FIP Second Edition.
Many have scratched their heads over this name “original edition” wondering what it means when applied to this Second Edition HLC from CIMS. Read on! We’ve found out!
The Text … a rather “original” treatment of punctuation and emphasis
This review will concentrate on the Text volume of the work only. The highly “original” Workbook and Manual will be dealt with in due course.
In raw “conformance to the replica” this edition comes in last place in Raphael Greene’s “comparisons” of print editions. It has the most differences in the print editions, weighing in at 7,935 or 7,413 more than CIMS(1). We know this “raw score” needs interpreting to be meaningful because it doesn’t distinguish between a typing error and a typing correction. We also know the statistical method is a bit dicey. Fox’s “ACIM 1972,” which is not a “print” edition, gets a score of 11,000, of which several thousands come from one change, removing capitals on divine pronouns, making the “score” substantially meaningless. Similarly the Corrected HLC gets 219 points for removing the hyphen from “no-one” and 357 points for inserting one page Helen inadvertently left out. There are 357 words on the missing page! Taking the u out of “saviour” gets an edition 68 points! So that’s three changes and 644 points, about a third of that edition’s total! These numerical scores need to be handled with care!
Are these 7,935 modifications, four times what we find in the nearest rival, corrections or corruptions?
By far the bulk of the changes in “OE” involve punctuation and emphasized words. About 3,341 commas – or about 4 per page – are gone entirely, and many that remain are moved. Quotation marks are similarly displaced; a hundred go missing. In some cases the movement of commas dramatically changes the meaning of sentences but in most cases they are removed where they precede a conjunction, such as “and,” or “but,” reflecting what most Style Guides recommend for narrative and journalistic composition. Poets don’t usually use newspaper Style Guides and as we know, much of ACIM is blank verse poetry, much of it in Iambic Quadrameter and Pentameter. Removing commas makes some longer sentences more difficult to read, especially for those whose first language is not English, but they are unlikely to change the overt meaning much. The poetic meter is another matter however.
I’ve not examined every comma which was changed but of those hundreds I’ve looked at, I don’t see any that appear to be “original errors” that needed to be removed to correct the grammar or make things clearer. Sure, many aren’t strictly necessary by my own subjective sensibility, but what’s our methodology here, to “correct errors on the basis of evidence” or “whimsically and subjectively re-write” the material? Some of the moved commas do introduce errors by changing the meaning, if not the words, of the text. Here, from page 669, is just one of many examples. The HLC manuscript reads as follows:
“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…
”That’s how it reads originally. “OE” moves the comma back four spaces, 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…”
This kind of modification is significant. Whether a correction or a corruption, it changes the meaning of the sentence. It’s important to know if we’re reading a correction or not! All other editions of ACIM, including the Sub-Urtext, have it the same as the original HLC manuscript. Why was this changed? Was there some evidence that the comma was misplaced in all other editions? Or was this a typing mistake? Or was it just a whim? We are not told.
Far more significant in its impact on meaning however, is the very widespread re-arrangement of emphasis in “OE”. Most will welcome the use of italics to signify emphasis rather than all caps. That’s a nice aesthetic touch, one of many visually attractive features of the edition.
The preservation of the original emphasis has been appreciated by many readers. So often we find the original emphasis makes clear what was otherwise a confusing or ambiguous statement in those editions which, while they often preserve the words, remove the emphasis.
The single most original thing about the “Original Edition” from CIMS is that much, if not most of Helen’s original emphasis is changed in a most original way such that it bears little resemblance to the original manuscript.
Don’t take my word for it, check the comparison. Here is just one of thousands of examples. I highlighted all emphasis for clarity.
First the “Original HLC Manuscript”:
Freedom is the only gift you can offer to God’s Sons, being an acknowledgment of what THEY are and what HE is. Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do NOT love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison anyone, including YOURSELF, you do not love him, and you cannot identify WITH him. When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son.
And next the “Original Edition”:
Freedom is the only gift you can offer to God’s Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what he is. Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do not love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison anyone including yourself, you do not love him, and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification is with the Father and with the Son.
For the purposes of comparison, here’s the earlier, and even more “original” Sub-Ur:
…because freedom is the only gift which you can offer to God’s Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what HE is. Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do NOT love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison ANYONE, including yourself, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son.
I’ve highlighted the emphasis to make the differences stand out. The pink represents the Original Edition’s modified emphasis while the green represents the original HLC Manuscript’s original emphasis. The yellow is the one emphasis unique to the Sub-Urtext. Read them aloud, using the alternative emphasis and you will notice a substantial difference in meaning. In the original manuscript there are six words emphasized. In the “Original Edition” there are seven words emphasized but only two of them are words originally emphasized! Four words which are emphasized in no other edition or version are emphasized in just 6 sentences.
Why is that? Is there some reason to suppose that Helen erred so massively in where she placed the emphasis? Or do we have here simply the subjective impressions of the editors as to what might sound better to them?
Well let’s check the Sub-Urtext. When Helen mistyped there are often clues in the earlier typescript, especially when we find differences. We do find a difference. Only four words emphasized and only three are the same words as Helen later emphasized in the HLC. This earlier and more original text is not the inspiration for the “Original Edition’s” originality. Only one emphasis corresponds to the “OE”, and that one also corresponds to the HLC.
How can this “originality” be explained?
This reviewer can offer no explanation for what appears on the pages of the “OE”. I know of no basis to suppose that many, if not most of Helen’s choices for emphasis were mistakes that needed correction and I know of no basis for determining that “OE”’s choices about changing where the emphasis appears have a greater claim on authenticity than Helen’s own choices. While I haven’t checked them all, there are many thousands, I have checked a few against the earlier Sub-Urtext typescript to see if perhaps the HLC emphasis was being modified to reflect the Sub-Ur’s often more extensive and occasionally different emphasis.
Nope, that’s not it!
Did Tom Whitmore check the Notes? He has a copy … he might have … that could be the explanation but we don’t know for this book doesn’t tell us! And he won’t let us see the Notes. What it does tell us about the editing deepens the mystery. Let’s look at the claims the book makes for itself.
The ideal of accuracy is not original
In the eloquent, superbly crafted Foreword, Whitmore lays out high ideals for accuracy, stating:
“Great care has been taken in dealing with the editorial issues presented by the original typed manuscript. The only changes that have been made to the edition of the Course as completed by Shucman and Thetford have been to correct obvious typographic errors and misspellings, to modernize and render consistent punctuation and capitalization, and to format the material for print publication. Apart from the simple paragraph numbering which we include for ease of reference and navigation, nothing has been added to or omitted from the main body of the work.”
That’s a pretty clear statement of project design objectives, set in the past tense as if a report on what was done.
The reader might notice the fact that Helen Schucman’s name is misspelled. The paragraph’s accuracy goes downhill from there. This protestation of no changes where there are thousands of inexplicable changes is reminiscent of an earlier era when we were all told there were “virtually no changes” in what turned out to be a substantially abridged FIP edition.
Whitmore’s statement is eloquent, but substantially at variance with the facts we can observe. This edition actually contains thousands of additions of emphasis and omissions of emphasis and punctuation along with many actual additions of words to the HLC manuscript from earlier versions. In some cases these are probably legitimate corrections, but the “OE” does not document them, and actually denies their presence. What’s this about? Many of the typos from earlier material are preserved uncorrected, while punctuation and emphasis have been substantially altered so as to significantly influence both poetic structure and overt content of the book.
And as for standardization of the capitalization? There have been changes in both directions.
Some proofreading was apparently done because some previous errors are corrected. It would be accurate to say that the style, capitalization and punctuation conventions of the Scribes were tossed in favour of the prescriptions of a newspaper style guide. It would be fair to say that the use of emphasis was completely re-considered and massively changed so as to create a work that is very much different in structure, rhythm, poetic meter, and overt meaning than the Hugh Lynn Cayce manuscript upon which it was allegedly based. And it would be accurate to say that other than the correction of errors, no reasons are offered by the editors for making these modifications. Indeed all they tell us about the changes is that they are not there.
That all adds up to an edition which is highly original. But wait, there’s more!
An original Annotation scheme
The original edition comes with an original annotation system. Previous ACIM annotation schemes have used chapter, section and paragraph numbering because these natural “textual landmarks” are conspicuous in all editions of all versions after 1972 and are largely constant, very convenient in size, and extremely simple to use.
For example, chapter 8, section 11, paragraph 12 is easy to find in any edition, whether or not it has the section and paragraph numbers printed on the page. The other commonly used reference in scholarly work is original manuscript page number, which his 222 for 8:11:12.
In the “OE” 8:11:12 becomes “8:119”. Instead of the familiar chapter, section, paragraph, it is chapter and paragraph, but the paragraph definition is 100% original to the original edition. That’s ok if you are using the “OE” to look up the reference. It’s marked. It’s more of a problem if you’re using any other edition, because it’s not marked and you have to count 119 paragraph breaks from the start of chapter 8, which spans 25 pages in “OE” or Blue Sparkly.
The real problem kicks in with Blue Sparkly or CIMS(1) or any other edition of the HLC when you find there are only 117 paragraphs in chapter 8. When you get to the last, the 117th, and you’ve not yet found paragraph 119, you’re liable to go back and count again, thinking you erred. But you didn’t, you’ll never find paragraph 119 because there are only 117 paragraphs. But there are 119 paragraph numbers in “OE”..
The problem is that “OE” has an original way of counting paragraphs. Let’s look at how they came up with paragraph 119 when there are only 117 in any of the editions! Here’s how it appears in “OE”:
This is the way, and the only way, to have His answer because
His answer is all you can ask for and want. Say, then, to everyone,
119 Because I will to know myself,
I see you as God’s Son and my brother.
You will notice that following the comma after “everyone,” in the middle of the paragraph, when the section in quotation marks (ok, “OE” removed the quotes which are present in the original) begins, we see “119” indicating paragraph 119. That’s not a paragraph break though! It is, however, the second instance in chapter 8 where a paragraph count is incremented after a comma in the middle of a paragraph!
“OE” annotations are original indeed and problematic to use with other HLC editions. Try finding the “OE” reference 8:110 in CIMS(1) or Blue Sparkly! It will take you to the 108th paragraph, not the 110th. This is just one instance, but it is not isolated. This is the “OE” standard, a completely original way of counting paragraphs. This is not just an original way of writing the annotation, it is an original way of determining what is a paragraph and what is not.
In contrast the more familiar 8:11:12 or 8:K:12 references are easily found in any edition, including OE, and point to the correct paragraph across the board.
I have no idea why this originality was introduced.
One certainly gets the impression looking at this material that one has in one’s hands a rough draft, ready for proofreading, and not a final product ready for the printer. The error rate is spectacularly high and while much effort has been invested in changing the way emphasis is set in type, and which words are emphasized, little effort was put into proofreading. When it comes to the alteration of punctuation and emphasis, we are dealing not with a rendition of the HLC or any extant version of ACIM, we are dealing with an effort to generate yet another new edition. The claim “nothing has been added to or omitted from” the work is simply untrue, but no explanation for why we see these changes, or how the editors came to feel they needed to change the material in this way, is offered. One gets the impression the editors sent the wrong file to the printer … the one they started with rather than the one they finished with.