BACK TO Original Historical Versions MENU
The Shorthand Notes
To the best of my knowledge, this is currently
(11/11/2009) the only place on the net where any copies of the “original
diction” – or Helen Schucman’s Shorthand Notes can be found in either facsimile
(image files) or transcription. This is
an on-going project and these drafts will be proofed and enhanced and further Notes material will be posted as the
transcription work proceeds.
In the
beginning, on the 21st of October 1965, Helen Schucman began
scribing A Course in Miracles by
writing the words “You will see miracles
through your hands through Me.” (right) For many years the “oral
tradition” held that the first words of the Course were “This is a Course in
Miracles, please take notes.” The notes
Helen took had only been seen by a handful of people until the autumn of 2007
when I was first able to get a copy up on my website. It took more than two years to get the Text volume transcribed, and a major
reason for that delay was that I was quite involved with the print publication
of the Urtext Manuscripts.
Currently
the Shorthand Notes is available in
facsimile (photocopy of the manuscript) copy and a rough transcript of large
portions, on line. This transcript is not
the one Bill Thetford typed out to Helen’s oral dictation as the dictation was
proceeding. As of October 2009, all 31
chapters of the Text have been
transcribed, as has the 23 pages Helen wrote in the three days before the
dictation began, Use of Terms and the
three pages we have from Song of Prayer.
The
facsimile collection includes some 3,500 pages of Helen Schucman’s shorthand
notebooks. These cover the Text volume except for the end of
chapter 19, all of chapter 20, and the start of chapter 21. In addition there are a number of small
segments in the Urtext for which we
have no corresponding Notes
copies. These also cover essentially the
whole of the Workbook, Manual, Use of Terms and Psychotherapy and there are five pages from the Song of Prayer. There is no
Notes material for the Urtext Gifts of God.
The work of
transcribing the Notes into typed
pages that are easier to read is on-going.
Currently, the Text volume is
available.
Where
to find free copies
Where
to buy copies
Note: all PDF
files that you can display in Acrobat Reader can be “Downloaded” by pressing
“Save” (or the floppy disk icon) and then giving it a local filename. That way you can avoid having to wait for
these large files to download in the future.
Shorthand
Notes facsimile
(photocopy in PDF format)
On this website the Notes pages are compiled into 10 PDF files,
one for each of the seven canonical volumes, plus an eighth for the Special Messages, a ninth for the 24 Notes pages which are essentially
Helen’s diary in the three days preceding the beginning of the Text volume and a tenth for some
miscellaneous material. As shown in the
illustration at left, a variety of things have been added to the raw
photocopied pages: line numbers, corresponding Urtext paragraph and page number references, plus unique page
identifiers. The addition of these
references in the margins makes it extremely fast and easy to locate a specific
passage and cross-reference the Notes
to the Urtext. Without them, due to the difficulty most
people have reading Helen’s handwriting, it is extremely difficult to locate a
particular passage in the Notes to check anything.
The source and provenance of our copies
is unknown. The material was donated
anonymously on five CDs containing some 3,500 JPG image files, one for each
page of the Notes. For presentation on the website, the
resolution was lowered to keep file sizes down, the JPG images were compiled
into PDF files, and the aforementioned reference data was added to each
page. While the lowered resolution is
adequate for most purposes, the high resolution original files are available. They are included in the Scholar’s
Toolbox DVD as compiled PDF
files and an exact digital copy of the original 5 CDs is also available by mail
order. (available
on line in PDF format)
Shorthand
Notes Transcript
It took me
some months of working with Helen’s handwritten material become familiar enough
with it to read the material fairly easily.
Due to the time needed to master her handwriting, a typed transcript is
clearly required by some.
Transcribing
this material is an ongoing project. The
entire Text volume has been
transcribed and is available on the website as an unproofed draft. The transcript is done as a line by line,
page by page manner. The proofreading also is an ongoing project.
The
publication of a print edition must await the completion of the transcription
and proofreading projects.
This transcript is not the one Bill Thetford
typed out to Helen’s oral dictation as the dictation was proceeding. As of October 2009, all 31 chapters of the Text have been transcribed, as has the
23 pages Helen wrote in the three days before the dictation began, Use of Terms and the three pages we have
from Song of Prayer.
This
material is all available on-line for free.
However, due to the enormous size of the facsimile (image) files, the Text is available on-line in a
reduced-resolution format. While this is
normally quite adequate for most purposes, high resolution image files are
available on the Scholar’s Toolbox DVD for US$24.
HTML and Print copies
have yet to be prepared. There is no
known commercial source for any transcript.
High resolution image files on digital media can be purchased from http:/www.miraclesinactionpress.com