Helen Schucman’s “shorthand” Notes
This is the first page of Helen’s Notes. The reader can see, with a bit of squinting, that the first two lines scribed on October 21, 1965 are:
10/21/65 1You will see miracles through your hands through Me.
The oral tradition of ACIM has held that the first words scribed were “This is a course in miracles, please take notes.” The reader can see these words do show up on the first page, in double brackets, but not until the third paragraph, after miracle principle number one, and after the remarkable actual first words which survived into Helen’s first re-typing, but vanished by the time of the HLC. So much for “oral tradition.”
The reader can also see that while a few shorthand symbols are used, it is mostly quite legible longhand.
One of the most interesting and for scholars troubling aspects of the History of ACIM is that the vast majority of the original Notes, while they do still exist, in several copies even, are not being made available to scholarship. This is doubly troubling since, as with the story of the first words, much of what has been said about the original scribing has proven to be less than completely accurate.
On this website you will find the best and most original material we can get our hands on, but this, unfortunately, includes rather little of the actual original material.