Course in Miracles Society Second Edition of the HLC
CIMS(2) or “Original Edition”
A truly “original” interpretive 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 seven 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.
There really is no “right or wrong” with regard to
commas, save for using them where no pause in reading or speaking the words is
appropriate, or where they would be confusing. Every contemporary style guide I’ve
consulted says they are appropriate wherever they contribute to clarity and
readability. 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? If we are going to “correct errors” as opposed to
conform the material to our subjective opinions, then we need “evidence of
error” before we change anything.
Some of the moved commas in the OE 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 Urtext, have it the same as the original HLC
manuscript. The OE
indeed approaches this problem in a rather “original” way unlike any other
edition of ACIM before or since. 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”.
Many welcome the use of italics rather than all caps to signify emphasis.
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” Urtext:
…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 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 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 thousands, I have checked a few
against the earlier Urtext typescript to see if perhaps
the HLC emphasis was being modified to reflect the Urtext’s often more extensive and occasionally
different emphasis.
Nope, that’s not it!
Did Tom Whitmore check the Notes? No. The emphasis in the Notes is almost identical to that in the Urtext.
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, and we might all
wish it were true, but it is 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 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 prose style guide. Tom has
confirmed this, that the punctuation of the blank verse poetry was edited to a
style guide designed for writers of academic prose. 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 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 Reference scheme
The original edition comes with an original reference
system. Previous ACIM reference 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” references
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 reference, 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.