A Course In Miracles – The Urtext
What Bill typed from Helen’s shorthand notebooks eventually became referred to by Helen and Bill as the Urtext. The word Urtext means original text, and is often used to refer to the original manuscript of a musical score or literary work. The Urtext differs from the standard Course in several important ways:
♥ It is continuous, without section or chapter breaks in the Text (although the Workbook and Manual have the same breaks as they do in the standard version).
♥ Its capitalization, punctuation, and paraphrasing are rough.
♥ The flow of the thought in the early portions is very choppy. The material is much more of a dialogue between Helen and Jesus than the monologue of the later Course, Jesus will often speak personally to Helen and Bill. Helen will often interject and Jesus will respond. Jesus will sometimes step in and correct something Helen wrote down, saying she heard him wrong.
♥ The early portions are far more concrete and down-to-earth than the later Course. This concreteness falls mostly into two categories. First, the personal material: Jesus speaks to Helen and Bill’s personal lives, relationships, interactions, and the developmental issues.
♥ Second, the professional material: Jesus speaks to Helen and Bill’s background in psychology, explaining how the Course relates to Freud, Jung, Rank, and others. Most of the personal and professional material has been removed from the standard Course, but has been deliberately left in this online version as this site relates strongly to the training of Teachers and Ministerial Counsellors, and as such is very relevant to that training.
♥ The language in the early portions is more informal and less elegant than in the standard Course. These early portions have been edited on an almost line-by-line basis, to make the language more formal.
The major differences between the Urtext and the standard Course are found almost exclusively in the first four to nine chapters of the text. I say “four to nine” because the amount of editing tapers off gradually. In the first chapters of the First Edition, about 30,000 words have been deleted (the equivalent of 35 pages) in the First Edition. The amount of the deleted material decreases until, in Chapter 9, only about 200 words are removed. In Chapter 10, only 37 words are removed. A high volume of these words still remain in this online version.
Helen then retyped the Urtext and, according to Ken Wapnick, “edited as she went along.” This then, effectively produced a new version, which I will call simply “the second draft.” Some suspect that the Urtext currently available on the internet is actually a combination of portions of the Urtext and portions of the second draft. This version is such a version and has been referenced to the First Edition to facilitate easy referencing when discussing parts with you online. We hope you enjoy this version and that it helps you to bring more peace, Love and gratitude into your lives.
