One of the most beloved books of modern times, A Course in Miracles is a self-study course in spiritual psychotherapy and a profound text focusing on the principles of universal love and forgiveness. It has had a revelatory impact on people of many faiths and religious backgrounds. Printed on thin bible paper, it consists of the 660-page Text, the 480-page Workbook for Students, and the 90-page Manual for Teachers, bound together in one volume.

In 1965 Helen Schucman, a Professor of Medical Psychology at Columbia University and a member of no particular religious group, responded to an authoritative inner voice who identified himself as Jesus. He urged her to take down what would become A Course in Miracles from inner dictation. First published in 1975, A Course in Miracles has wrought many an awakening, and many more “finders” will be touched by this powerful text in generations to come.

It is a spiritual teaching, not a foundation for a new religion, nor a primer for a “cult of personality.” The Course presents a clear, specific, and theologically profound belief system, based on sound theoretical underpinnings, that also offers practical guidance in daily living. Its teachings are centered on Jesus, but its non-denominational spiritual path is focused on forgiveness in all relationships as the means for returning to God. A Course in Miracles offers spiritual direction for anyone seeking inner peace in today’s complicated world.

Included is “How It Came,” a preface written in 1977 by Helen Schucman, in which she writes that the Course “is not intended to become the basis for another cult. Its only purpose is to provide a way in which some people will be able to find their own Internal Teacher.”

The Text is largely theoretical, and sets forth the concepts on which the Course’s thought system is based. Its ideas contain the foundation for the Workbook’s lessons. The Workbook includes 365 lessons, one for each day of the year. The instructions, while suggesting lingering day after day with a particularly probing lesson, urge only that not more than one lesson a day should be attempted.

Remember only this; you need not believe the ideas, you need not accept them, and you need not even welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist. None of this will matter, or decrease their efficacy. But do not allow yourself to make exceptions in applying the ideas the workbook contains, and whatever you reactions to the ideas may be, use them. Nothing more than that is required.

The Manual for Teachers, written in question and answer form, provides answers to some of the more likely questions a student might ask. It also includes a clarification of a number of the terms the Course uses, explaining them within the theoretical framework of the Text.

This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.