Editing Notes of A Course in Miracles Complete & Annotated Edition (CE)
A Course in Miracles
began as an act of internal dictation.
Over seven years, Helen Schucman took down its words in stenographic notebooks, working to capture, as exactly as she could, a voice she felt was not her own.
But not everything she wrote made it into what was originally published.
Before publication, her notes passed through several rounds of retyping and editing — first by Helen alone, then with her colleague Bill Thetford, and later with Kenneth Wapnick — with each new version of the Course edited from the one just before it, and each moving a little further from the pages Helen first filled.
The Complete and Annotated Edition (CE) returns to the starting point: Helen’s original notes. From there, we built a new version of the Course from scratch, taking care to preserve what she took down with the lightest editorial touch possible.
What You’ll Find
To produce the Complete and Annotated Edition (CE), we worked from digital photocopies of Helen’s original notebooks — transcribing close to eighty shorthand symbols, working out words written at the speed of dictation, and checking — and rechecking — our work against the Notes.
The Editing Notes are the record of that work.
This is our record of every change we made in producing the Complete and Annotated Edition — word by word, across every volume of the Course. For each edit, you’ll see what was changed and, for many, an explanation of why we made that choice.
Every editorial decision is here for you to examine. If you’d like to know why a word appears as it does in the Complete and Annotated Edition, you can trace it back to the notebooks themselves.
Explore the
Editing Notes
Our notes follow the structure of the Course itself, so you can go straight to what you’re looking for.
Read the notes in order, or begin with the passage that brought you here. However you explore them, we hope they illuminate both the editorial process and the meticulous care taken to preserve the words Helen first recorded.
More on the editing of A Course in Miracles
The Need for the CE Edition of A Course in Miracles
We explain why the Complete & Annotated Edition was produced and what restoring material from Helen’s original notes can add to our understanding of the Course.
COMING SOON
Did Bill Thetford Edit a Version of A Course in Miracles?
We examine the historical evidence behind the claim that Bill Thetford was the primary editor of an early version of the Course and ask what his editorial role actually was.
COMING SOON
Was Helen’s Editing Guided?
We explore whether Helen Schucman’s editing of A Course in Miracles was a human process or whether she experienced it as guided by the same Voice that dictated the Course.
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