The Scholar’s Toolbox I: Primary Sources Version 1
ACIM Primary Source Documents cross-referenced in PDF format
Urtext Menu
The menu below will load any one of the source documents. To view two or more see the Tutorial
Click on the Volume name in the left
column to view the original manuscript facsimile, or in the right column to
view the searchable e-text
Urtext Manuscript facsimiles Searchable E-text copies
0. Preface 0. Preface
3. Manual
for Teachers 3. Manual
for Teachers
4. Use
of Terms 4. Use
of Terms
5. Psychotherapy 5. Psychotherapy
6. Song
of Prayer 6. Song
of Prayer
7. Gifts
of God 7. Gifts
of God
8. Special
Messages 8. Special
Messages
9. Pre-Canonical
9. Pre-Canonical
10. Miscellaneous
10. Miscellaneous
The
name Urtext is a bit problematic
since its usage is so varied and its meaning so vague. For many years Kenneth Wapnick and the
Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) reported that the original Thetford Transcript typed by William
Thetford to Helen Schucman’s oral dictation was called the Urtext. In the summer of
2000, a group of typed manuscripts showed up on the net which derived from
material Wapnick had filed at the Copyright Office in 1992. Just how it got from the Copyright Office to
the net is not precisely known, but it did.
In that collection of 22 Volumes
of the Unpublished Writings of Helen Schucman, these manuscripts were
labelled “Urtext of a Course in Miracles.” The assumption was naturally made that these
obviously early typed manuscripts were the original Thetford Transcript. This is
the material included in the “facsimile” copies. Those manuscripts were typed into computers
to produce the searchable “e-texts” which are largely accurate, but not
precisely perfect replicas of those manuscripts. The e-texts should be viewed as searchable
indices to the manuscripts and not substitutes for them. Due to the fact of some words and letters
being crossed out and marked up by hand, no typed copy is ever going to be a
precisely exact reproduction of these hand-made manuscripts. Due to the enormous time required for
thorough proofreading, this material has not been proofed with the thoroughness
required and one should always verify any passage in the e-texts against the
actual original manuscript. To
facilitate that cross-referencing and comparison, we present both the facsimile
and e-text copies with the exact same pagination.
Further
research into these typed manuscripts has not been able to positively verify
their identity as the Thetford Transcript
and has indeed raised increasing doubt.
The weight of probability leans heavily toward identifying most of this
body of manuscripts as a later, edited re-typing of the initial Shorthand Notebooks. Only the Psychotherapy
manuscript contains substantial internal textual evidence consistent with its
being the Thetford Transcript. In the case of the Song of Prayer manuscript, the research is inconclusive. It might be the Thetford Transcript.
For
more information on the identification of the Urtext and its relationship to the Thetford Transcript click here.
In
the case of the Urtext material from
the USCO, some portions of it may well be the original Thetford Transcript. Much,
if not all of the Text is most
certainly not, most of the other volumes are dubious at best, but the Psychotherapy and Song of Prayer volumes show a number of characteristics we’d
expect from Thetford’s original typing.
They are exceedingly accurate, unlike the Text, and they do show some of Thetford’s idiosyncratic typos. Due to the fact that we cannot be certain,
those two volumes are included both in the Urtext
and the Thetford Transcript sections,
and will remain in both until we can ascertain with certainty whether they are
the first typing or a later re-typing.
Sequence of Pages
For
a variety of reasons it is not possible for me to always determine the actual
sequence of pages in the original 22
Volumes collection nor the precise original sequence. In a few cases, notably with the Special Messages material, there are
some uncertainties as to original date.
Insofar as possible material has been organized chronologically, and the
order of pages here may differ from that in other collections in
circulation. In a few cases material
marked “Special Messages” and showing up in that segment of the 22 Volumes bears page numbers missing
from the Text volume, indicating it
was originally included in what is now the Text
volume. The later Hugh Lynn Cayce manuscript copies this material in those exact
locations, indicating that the Scribes viewed it as part of the Text despite its also bearing the
“Special Message” label. We have
included this material in both locations, in the Special Messages file and in the Text in its apparent original location.
Page Numbering
In
the Text volume there are several
different page numbering systems typed or handwritten on the pages. While there are 1072 pages in total, the last
page number is 886. Some page numbers
are used more than once. This makes the
‘marked page number’ extremely inconvenient, confusing and problematic for use
as a reference. To date there has been
no other and published references to the Urtext
generally use the marked page number even where there is more than one page
with the same marked page number. For
convenience we’ve simply numbered the pages sequentially and we tend to use both
the “absolute page number” and the “marked page number” in our page references
to the Urtext Text volume. We’ve also put
all “Preface” type material at the end, rather than the beginning of these
documents. This way, when loaded in a
PDF viewer, if you are looking for page 500, and you issue the “GoTo page 500”
command, you will indeed end up at page 500 in the Absolute Page Number
scheme. Due to the sequencing issues
indicated above, and the fact that various collections of Urtext manuscript facsimiles in circulation have differing numbers
of pages and differing sequences, this will not always be the same page in all
copies. That’s why we use both
page numbers for the Text.
In
the other volumes the marked page numbers are generally quite standard,
consistent and usable although there are a few “missing pages.” In some cases it appears that the “error” is
simply that a number got skipped in copying, not that material was
omitted. In other cases there is some
indication that we are in fact missing one or more of the original pages.
To
keep things consistent and convenient, such that an the page number marked is
always identical to the actual sequential page number in the PDF files, we’ve
taken cover pages, contents pages, and other material which was originally
placed before “page 1” of the manuscript and moved it to the end. If you dislike this, with a PDF editor you
can always put them back!