From: gorski@pslu1.psl.wisc.edu (Tom Gorski)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage,alt.alien.visitors,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: A Course In Miracles / Reincarnation
Keywords: A Course In Miracles
Date: 7 Oct 92 15:04:02 GMT
Organization: Physical Sciences Lab, University of Wisconsin

In article <1992Oct7.093915.1573@ntb.ch> milsom@ntb.ch (Paul Milsom) writes:
>
>				Tom Gorski and Erik Radmall 
>	had some questions about A Course In Miracles and reincarnation,
>	and John Winston and Doug Thompson gave some information about Nicaea

Well, you might say that...

>Tom says
>
>> ...the reading I get off of it, is that the only *answer* in the course
>> goes something like "the only answer lies within."
>
>Well, Tom, maybe you were confused by the complexity of the language (this is 
>not intended as a snide remark, it *is* complex), or your ego got the better 
>of you and said: "Look, let's face it, we don't want to know about this kind 
>of thing" as soon as you started. The ego does that, because that's its job. 
>I assure you, *all* the answers are there, if you take the trouble to look 
>for them. Certainly the answers are "within" too, although I haven't 
>uncovered too many there yet either! (But at least some important ones.) 

I don't really know what to say about this!!

First of all, I'm somewhat confused by the references to my ego by yours.
Surely, it's so much easier to point out somebody else's foibles as opposed
to one's own, but doesn't that constitute sloppy thinking on a gross scale
in the NewAge-Spiritual Path paradigm?  Mind you, I'm not bothered by this,
so we can talk about my ego if you want to, but I at least wanted to ask
the question.  :-)

Now, as for my opinion regarding the Text, it wasn't formed totally as a
result of my hitting a rhetorical brick wall, as you seem to suggest.
It came from my exploration of a paradox, suggested to its credit by the
text itself.  I'll see if I can explain:

As you merrily plough through the text, you'll come to the parts where
it says that all of your perception-based systems for ingesting information
are hosed up because what you're seeing is your own illusory thoughts,
not what's really there, or something to that effect.  The Text even
mentions in passing that this *includes* the very exercise of reading
the Text in first place.

That's the paradox:  here you're reading a book that has the Wisdom of
the Ages, all of the answers, but you vision might be blurred, so how
can you tell if you're reading it correctly or not?

Let's look at it another way.  Stare at your copy of the Text there on the
table.  What do you see?  Bleached wood pulp, pressed into fibrous sheets,
with strange little ink markings on them.  Yet when you stare at those little
markings, a wonderous transformation seems to take place:  the markings seem
to come alive and seem to take on new meanings!  But the markings themselves
have not changed, have they?  The transformation takes place entirely in your
head!!

>Now I'll accept your challenge, Tom ..

[Description of my suggested exercise, which you didn't _really_ do (:-)),
plus more assumptive references to my ego deleted.]

Well, I guess it's fair to say about ACIM, that it certainly *does* hold
all the answers for those who believe it do be so, for as it says in
Lesson #2, which you quoted,

	"I have given everything I see in this room (on this street...)
        all the meaning that it has for me". 

Some final thoughts:

Actually, it may suprise you to learn that I'm not such a big skeptic when
it comes to ACIM.  I assure you I have better things to do with my $50 then
to shell it out for a 3-volume set of ACIM just to poke holes in it....
And then there's my Ma, who I think quite highly of, who's very big on
ACIM with groups both in Boston, MA, and Reedsburg, WI.  

Perhaps you were right after all about my ego and the Text.  Perhaps the
fact that I can take a critical look at the Text means that my ego *is*
threatened, and that the material is really onto something in me.  Compare
that to your situation, where your ego publically trumpets the virtues of
ACIM.  To me, this reads that your ego has co-opted the material for its own
purposes.  A truly diabolical unfolding of events, don't you think?  :-)

To wit:

>A word of comfort to all of you who have struggled as far as this:
>	We *all* get to Heaven in the end, because we're all part of God. A 
>Course In Miracles says that there are thousands of ways back to God, and 
>ACIM is just one of these.

See?  :-)  Actually, according to ACIM, the ego, the part which thinks
of itself as "We" or "I", _doesn't_ make it back to God.  Why?  Because it's
an illusion, an self-referential illusion that think's it is separate from
God.  The most that can happen is that one day, this illusion goes:

  <poooof!>  (The ego disappears in a cloud of greasy black smoke.)

See ya!

>Paul Milsom
>milsom@ntb.ch
>Neu-Technikum Buchs Switzerland

--Tom G.
Xref: sparky talk.religion.newage:4683 alt.alien.visitors:7381 alt.religion.kibology:4178