https://truthinreality.com/2012/09/08/a-course-in-miracles-and-mk-ultra-mind-control/
http://www.eldontaylor.com/blog/2015/10/21/spirituality-as-a-tool-for-mind-control/
I am writing this post today to help us separate truth from fiction. Recently two friends whose opinions I respect sent me the links above which claim that A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is none other than a CIA mind control experiment. This has led both of my friends to have doubts about ACIM and question my involvement with it.
First, I want to say that these claims against ACIM are nothing new, nor do they particularly disturb me. Nor am I much bothered that my friends have a bad taste in their mouth now in regard to ACIM. So why am I writing this? I could definitely simply ignore these (and other) claims, which is what many in the ACIM community do, because they are pretty far-fetched and maybe don’t even deserve comment. But in this case, and actually in most cases, I do feel that it is appropriate to defend the truth when it is being attacked. As a yoga and ACIM student, I am by now very familiar with separating truth from untruth in my own mind, and this piece is just a kind of extension of that, if you will.
Perhaps the most important thing I will say here is this: It is just so easy to write something and sound like you know what you’re talking about, but in reality have not much of a clue about the thing you’re criticizing. As we know, talk is cheap, and opinions are even cheaper. In this case, someone might claim to be an CIA-member, or have been an ACIM student for years, but so what? If your “facts” are off, they’re off, no matter what your alleged level of experience is.
Conspiracy theories are a cottage industry these days, they clearly are proliferating on the internet. Which is not to say that they are all bogus, there is no doubt at least some truth to some of them. And in this particular case, there may indeed be some truth to the claims being made (for example, that Dr. William Thetford worked for the CIA, this is an established fact). Yet anyone who is more familiar with ACIM would see these claims as just so much speculation and conjecture.
We can also rightly ask from the very outset, why are these anti-ACIM pieces being written? Is there a bias, some stake in things turning out one way or another? Clearly there is a fundamentalist Christian bias against ACIM, and I am leaving aside for now all of the arguments against ACIM from a biblical perspective, just focusing on this one topic at hand.
Turning this question back on myself, do I have an investment in this matter? No, I do not. If someone could convincingly prove that ACIM is none other than a mind control experiment that somehow the CIA concocted as a way to control the masses, or even as a mass personality study, I would gladly accept such news. Yet as we will see, there is (as yet) only conjecture and speculation, no convincing proof…
I really don’t sense that those making these claims against ACIM are really informed about ACIM or aware of certain materials that might help them to understand the context in which it came to be. It is not my purpose to go into all of those details here, but merely to provide some primary sources for you to educate yourself more about ACIM. Here are just a few such sources. These sources make it clear that Helen Schucman was the scribe of the Course. Was the “voice” that came to her implanted somehow by Bill or someone in the MK Ultra project? Anything is possible, of course, but very highly improbable. Bill didn’t even start working for MK Ultra until 1971, and the scribing of the Course began in 1965. The entire Course was nearly complete by 1971. Why not believe what Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford and Ken Wapnick all say about the origins of the Course, instead of concluding that they all were either victims of mind control, or that Bill Thetford somehow sinisterly implanted the entire Course into Helen Schulman’s brain? Are these people not rational, sensible people, just like you and me? Why not give them the benefit of the doubt? If and when you do, you just might find yourself more at peace, and that, I maintain, is what we are all truly seeking.
Finally, read this: http://www.facimoutreach.org/qa/questions/ACIM_Manuscript_History.pdf
Thank you for listening!
Understanding A Course in Miracles 
ACIM is experiential. Ken Wilbur has faced similar “attacks” and has responded that if you don’t at least try the experience itself, you are only expressing an opinion. Truth cannot be attacked. Responding to attack makes it real. I suspect this is one reason so few ACIM students have done so.
I’ve read these things before and honestly was a bit disturbed at first. My ego mind wants very much to believe that I am deluding myself and these arguments certainly add fuel to the fire. But it is the EXPERIENCE that proves otherwise and what convinces me that WHAT THE COURSE POINTS TO is true. Besides, having learned what I have about how these types of questionable governmental activities are carried out, there was undoubtedly a lot of compartmentalization that went on with MKUltra. Most people don’t want to do evil or nefarious things so what is often done is that one group will work on something very specific and without knowledge of what everyone else is doing nor how it is being misused or applied. Bill may very well have been led to believe that what he was doing was for the good of the people…
Thank you for your comment (and other comments), Joseph! It is all about experience, as the Course says, and let nothing delay you. We can all simply see how releasing judgment of ourself and others feels better than not, and that alone is worth it. I appreciate your check-ins, all the best : ) Allowah
Thank you for this article. I also absorbed the information when it came across my consciousness. I looked at it with an open mind, but it struck me as disingenuous considering the people who are making such claims seem to have never read the Course. In the meantime, science seems to be validating some of the major themes of the course which fly in the face of people claiming it is mind control. The nature of our illusionary universe, how our mind creates our reality, and how things in the “past” can be changed by events of the future. NOTE: In practicing true forgiveness, the Holy Spirit collapses space and time as we forgive. I like to call it “quantum forgiveness”.
https://phys.org/news/2017-01-reveals-substantial-evidence-holographic-universe.html
https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/experiment-shows-future-events-affect-the-past/
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/11/11/consciousness-creates-reality-physicists-admit-the-universe-is-immaterial-mental-spiritual/
Why would the CIA set up a mind control system that brings practitioners a deep loving internal peace, that betters their lives in so many ways? When I’m at peace I don’t overreact, I’m discerning and focused. The CIA loves chaos, they don’t want people who will think calmly and rationally in situations they want to control. Anyone who looks at their documented history of mind control programs will see this. Nice try Ego!
Thank you for the very thoughtful and right on response, Matt! : )
I’ve read the Course, was a devoted student at one time, and I still believe it. I can see how this could happen, and it seems pretty nieve to doubt it as a serious possibility. I think the Course is true, but that doesn’t mean the CIA didn’t write it. If you looked back at the history of the CIA during that time they were who funded the academic research community. They were the reason the academic research community survived. Repetition, and strong emotion will hypnotize you, it just “exists”. Traumatic events cause personality splits, because it hurts to badly to think of those painful things, we don’t. On the flip side, that’s what the Course is trying to do, undo the split. This can be a traumatic process though, so it’s not that far fetched to believe that maybe it’s trying to induce and not undo a split. However what it says about the world is entirely true, to me. Think what you want to. One thing I want to assert though is that no one is crazy for suspicion of the CIA. They’re a secret agency, who’ve done a lot of unconscionable things and who only admit to the bare minimum, which is still terrifying. Maybe they ran out of matches at some point and weren’t able to burn quite all the documents and the one that was left, completely traumatized everyone. Anyway it’s not crazy to acknowledge that. Unless you believe it’s an illusion, but you have to at least see that on some level it’s “there”. Anyway according to the Course the CIA is the Christ, so it seems like at the very least Jesus built in a major forgiveness lesson. It would be an exception if forgiveness was withheld from the CIA. Idk
The Foundation for Inner Peace website dates Thetford’s CIA work as 1951-54 [not 1971 as stated]. But, if ACIM is an MK ultra operation, how does it fit the negative objective? ACIM, in contrast to targeting any material ‘enemy’, targets the voice within us [ego] that is always attempting to create enemies for us.
My mother studied the “Course” right before I was born.
My life has been a constant hell ever since she began to implement the teachings on me. She used to go to study groups, etc. Today I often think I will end up in a mental ward. Every material thing has been taken from me, as well as every family member.
There is so much evil in this “book”. Contact me if you’d like to hear more.
Thank you for your comment. For some unknown reason, this comes to me at the end of 2022. However, in the interest of thorough digestion, it will help if I can do all the videos you originally intended. All but one have been removed from youtube, but if you could give the titles, perhaps I could search them out from other sources. Better yet, I imagine that you have copies in your archive, and I would appreciate it if you could pass them to me.
Kent Wainwright
If ACIM were a mind control project, that would define ACIM as created by an entity with separateness-based essence, but then, that would mean that separateness was validating Oneness.
By essence, can separateness be capable of unified thought, so that there can be an ‘it’, that can speculate on its opposite?
Can separateness make the statement: “I am.” ? Can separateness ask the question: “What would it be like, if Oneness were possible?”
The two could not exist in the same essence, because separateness would face the fact of its nonexistence, because separateness is a question, capable of being asked by Oneness only.
Separateness is the illusion speculated on by Oneness.
By definition, separateness is incapable of having essence.