Confessions XV (Sin Regarded as Illusion)

Holy Thursday

Dear Friends Known and Unknown,

Yesterday I spoke of A Course in Miracles as an immensely sophisticated text, whose influence I repeatedly encountered in many New Age venues.

Often this influence might not be particularly visible. I am thinking now, for instance, of a prominent author in the holistic milieu, who I knew and who had deeply worked with the Course, though I think that this was scarcely mentioned in his erudite writings …

Now I am not saying that A Course in Miracles is secretly at work behind the scenes in every corner of the sprawling holistic movement. I am saying I experienced it as a very popular text – and with a staying-power over the years, which other texts did not necessarily enjoy.

And even where the Course was not being studied, mention of its name frequently evoked affirmation. It would be regularly met with nods of respect.

Yes, as I look back on my New Age years, I find it easy to imagine a student of the Course being greeted with nods of respect in New Age circles everywhere.

But if I imagine myself now, as a Catholic, moving through those same circles and saying that I preferred the dogmas of Catholicism to the Course, I cannot so easily imagine those same approving nods.

I imagine rather bewilderment – and indeed I have experienced such bewilderment continuously, as I have encountered folk of a holistic persuasion in recent years.

Yes, I experience my conversion to Catholicism as bewildering for such people. I have who tasted Findhorn and the New Age to now prefer Roman Catholicism …!? The mind boggles. But that is the reaction both my wife and I have frequently met since we chose the Church.

And although the New Age milieu is commonly considered as a place without doctrines, I now believe this bewildered reaction points to a set of commonly held (though often unconscious) beliefs.

Among these is a definite sense that new teachings are superior to old. For do I not realise that texts like A Course in Miracles belong to a new ‘dispensation’ and are to be preferred to Old Age ‘dogma’?

Thus even in truth, the Course in Miracles is only studied by a very small fraction of the New Age movement, I believe that this pattern of general respect I describe is true and that behind this, there lies a tale to be told …

It is a tale of respecting 'New Revelations' – or rather a certain KIND of 'New Revelations'. These are of a kind I think, which accord-more or less-to a general New Age pattern.

Now I believe that the Course does accord –again more or less – to such a pattern. And to return to a theme in these confessions, it is a pattern which tends to dismiss the notions which attend a Fall into sin, suffering,tragedy and evil.

But to illustrate this, I need to focus on the Course more deeply.

Yesterday I spoke of how the Course’s message is that no harm has ever been done to anyone – in reality.

From this same perspective then, it naturally follows that we ourselves never can or do harm anyone. Guilt and sin are thus regarded by the Course as unhealthy ideas – as indeed is the case elsewhere in New Age thought.

Thus the Course preaches against the concept of sin:

“To sin would be to violate reality and to succeed [which according to the Course’s concept of reality is impossible.]

Sin is the proclamation that attack is real and guilt is justified … Sin is the grand illusion underlying all the ego’s grandiosity [One’s true self] cannot sin. There is nothing [the true self] can do that would really change his reality in any way, nor make him really guilty”

The Course advises us to stop JUDGING AS REAL any harm at all in our actions. It describes such a judgment as ‘Making the error real’ – the 'error' that is, that we can do *real* harm, that we thus are GUILTY of *real* harm or that we can commit what a Christian would commonly call sin.

Now if one holds such a view, a vast host of Christian prayers become meaningless. ‘Forgive us our sins’ … ‘Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.‘ These are examples of what the Course calls: 'Making the Error real".

In a similar vein, I will note that, as my heart ponders the prospects of my 11 year old daughter living out her years in a burning greenhouse, I turn to another prayer, which I believe has been given by Our Lady, and which includes the following supplication:

Let the Holy Spirit live in the hearts of all nations,
That they may be preserved from degeneration, disaster and war.
(For more on this prayer, See my entry for 1-12-05)

Yet from the perspective of the Course, in reality there is no ‘degeneration, disaster and war’.

But whether I turn to the prayer of the Lady of All Nations or not, the fact remains that the Course is claiming that a vast amount of Christian prayer and inspiration is founded on false ideas.

The Course in Miracles then, is fundamentally opposed to vast aspects of Christian teaching and practice.

But this Course finds respect in a general milieu, in which these very same ideas underlying Christianity are also opposed – to one degree or another. That is, it finds widespread respect in the milieu I call New Age.

I wish to repeat 'to one degree or another'. These aspects of Christianity are not always as **radically and consistently** opposed in the New Age culture, as they are in the Course.

But still, this milieu has in my experience, a definite tendency to oppose the so-called ‘Piscean’ notions of a Fall into sin, suffering, tragedy and evil … among other Christian conceptions.

And all of this is to do with why I believe that many New Age folk can scarcely believe that I could now prefer a ‘retrograde’ Catholicism, after tasting the fruits of the New Aquarian dispensation …