The Conspiracy Hypothesis*

*Hypothesis: Something that is taken to be true for purposes of argument or investigation.

ACIM: Lie Down With Dogs, Get Up With Fleas!
The MKULTRA Milieu Surrounding the “Scribing” of A Course In Miracles

Professional publication data and other material links show the channeling of A Course in Miracles to be covered with the fingerprints of the CIA’s mind control program, MKULTRA

Helen Schucman, a Jewish, atheist channeler of “Jesus”

It has become undeniably obvious that Helen Schucman, the woman who “channeled” or “scribed” A Course in Miracles (ACIM) was very likely unwittingly deeply immersed in the CIA’s MKULTRA activity during the years she “scribed” (“channeled”) the Course.

Most of the information in the “ACIM/MKULTRA Timeline” below can be found on pasf.org, a Gittinger PAS bibliography. This bibliographical information reveals that there were ongoing professional contacts between the people involved during the years surrounding the “channeling” (“scribing”) of A Course in Miracles.

J.W. Gittinger (see, druglibrary.org Chapter 10) was the primary personality assessor for MKULTRA. He pioneered scientific methods to enable him to identify the most susceptible types of personalities for Dr. Gottlieb’s nefarious, amoral, and often harmful U.S. government-sponsored exploitations. Gittinger’s work there eventually surfaced as his “Personality Assessment System” (PAS), which both is studied and has been used by legitimate scientists for non-exploitative purposes.

Two years after Schucman went to work for William Thetford (who had a previous history as a spy, according to Thetford’s friend and student, Fr. Benedict Groeschel) at the Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons Psychology Department, they co-authored a paper on Gittinger’s PAS.

D. R. Saunders is also mentioned in the same chapter of John Marks’ book at the link above as having carried out personality assessment work for MKULTRA. It is possible (but I have not absolutely confirmed this) that he is the same D.R. Saunders who was the chief investigator for the Condon Report, an early UFO study which is considered by many ufologists to be essentially CIA disinformation.

Bill Thetford or 007?

Thetman and Saunders worked together on the secret MKULTRA Subproject 130 (Psychology “Personality Theory”) research (see timeline below, 1971 - 1978). Saunders -- apparently something of an MKULTRA protégé of Gittinger’s -- was co-authoring papers at that time with both Schucman and Thetford.

Three years after Schucman, Thetford, and Saunders jointly authored a paper with a “specific, explicit mention of [Gittinger’s] PAS”, Schucman (1965) began having strange “visions”, and shortly she was hearing an inner “voice” which identified itself as Jesus. [Schucman described it as actually being nearly sub-audible, thus it was apparently identical with the type of “contact” that forms the basis for Teaching Mission, or TeaM, “channeling”. TeaM is a fringe cult associated with The URANTIA Book].

Brainwashing Professional, Herbert Spiegel

Although I have no evidence directly connecting him with any intelligence agency, another of Helen Schucman’s Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Psychology Department “colleagues” around this time was Herbert Spiegel, a recognized expert in hypnotism and brainwashing, who was then teaching courses in hypnosis. He had been involved in brainwashing since the early 1950s when he studied the Chinese techniques used upon Korean War POWs for the U.S. Army. Spiegal was perfectly capable -- if anyone was -- of making Schucman have “visions” and to hear a “voice” claiming to be that of Jesus.

When Schucman, who was culturally Jewish and an atheist or agnostic, hesitated to accept that the voice was genuinely “Jesus”, she was talked into believing it by her boss and then close friend, Bill Thetman. Thetman also “encouraged” her to keep going during the seven years that she was “channeling” the Course.

Peter Caddy played the identically, extraordinarily supportive role in relation to Findhorn’s Eileen Caddy’s earlier “channeling” of a “voice” which told her it was that of “God” (however Eileen was forced to undergo an experience which reads like nothing less than classical brainwashing procedures before she would accept what purportedly her husband never doubted). But by 1965 she had been thoroughly convinced and had followed the “voice” in establishing what was to become the New Age community of Findhorn on a bleak piece of Scottish coast adjacent to Kingloss RAF Base (1962). Two people closely connected with the Findhorn project are known to have had British Intelligence backgrounds. One of these was still Peter Caddy’s wife at the time when, after having left her own husband for Peter, Eileen first began to hear the “voice” (circa 1952).

This is also the identical time-frame as the Urantia movement’s Vern Grimsley’s student employment with University of Kansas psychology professor, Bert Kaplan (circa 1960 -- 1962). Kaplan was at that time the recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grant. And Vern presumably was paid out of that.

Kaplan denied Vern’s assertions -- according to a former member of FOG (Vern’s later organized Family of God Foundation), Hoite Caston, who interviewed Kaplan circa 1983-84 -- that Vern had worked one or more additional years out of state in Washington, D.C. on a Kaplan-overseen National Science Foundation grant. Caston, it is true, believes that Vern, whom he also calls “good, wise, brilliant, loving, and spiritual”, was stretching the truth in order to, as it were, pad his résumé. However that is only Caston’s personal assessment based on his having checked out what may have been Vern’s artificially induced cover memory (if MKULTRA and hypnosis was involved -- Caston does not consider an undercover MKULTRA operation in his dissection of eight “Possible Scenarios” listed to explain Vern’s “messages”). He supplies no factual evidence concerning Vern’s activities during the year or years in question. All we can say in the final analysis is that this pivotal “missing year” has not been satisfactorily explained. (Refs., “Vern Grimsley Messages Evaluation”, 1984, pp. 41, 126, 127).

Interestingly, in 1971 Vern almost immediately sought out Kaplan (who was by then teaching in California) following then FOG member Harry McMullan’s making of the initial contact between Vern and the then CIA proprietary, Radio Free Europe.This was followed by a possibly Gittinger-inspired questionaire which RFE sent FOG to be filled out by all of its members. It later actually did broadcast a short program compiled from at least part of the answers which they gave. Approximately a decade later a Foriegn Service Officer of the U.S. State Department (see below), who himself had an NSA background and who was later to be elected as a trustee of the URANTIA Foundation, confirmed to a reader that some unnamed intelligence agency, previous to the time of this confirmation, had been actively involved with at least some part of the Urantia Movement. And one long-time Urantia movement leader was contacted previously to all this by Al “Cappy” Hubbard, universially believed to have been among other things MKULTRA’s chief LSD supplier.

After Vern’s RFE contact, the facilities of Armed Forces Radio Network (AFRN) were made available to him, and by 1975 Vern’s own broadcast material was being carried on over eight hundred of its outlets (indicated by destroyers on FOG’s map).

Vern’s 1982 -- 1983 channeling of (audible to him only) “voices” led to a serious split in the Urantia movement and indirectly to the seating of a URANTIA Foundation Trustee with a National Security Agency (NSA) background, Neil Waldrop, presently a Foreign Service Officer of the U.S. State Department, a well-known cover for NSA and CIA agents.

NMIH has been exposed as having funded MKULTRA research, but I have been unable to unearth any direct connections between it and Kaplan. It is noteworthy, however, that the University of Kansas Medical school was later apparently the single institution to hold a symposium on the Russian device capable of “beaming subliminal messages to [David] Koresh. The technique uses inaudible transmissions that could have convinced Koresh he was hearing the voice of God inside his head” (Newsweek, Feb. 7, 1994).

Many reputable universities carried out MKULTRA research, some of these have been identified but others have not. Two MKULTRA subprojects concerned a type of cultural psychology which might well have fit into Kaplan’s main field of interest: Subprojects 123 and 124, African Attitude Study. But these would have had virtually nothing to do with any unwitting participation by Grimsley in an MKULTRA Caddy/Schucman-type “channeling” project. Also, those subprojects would likely have been too late to do so by a decade since we do know at least that Subproject 130 (see timeline below) did not begin until 1971. But the enigmatic “Subproject 49: MKULTRA: Hypnosis at [excised] University” might well fill the bill! (See, nemasys.com).

During the time when Helen Schucman was still in the process of “channeling” ACIM, her previous co-author, Saunders, also co-authored a paper with Gittinger himself. Later, but still during the “scribing”, Thetman and Saunders together contracted to do a secret personality study for MKULTRA.

Admittedly there is nothing sinister in authoring or co-authoring papers to be published openly in scientific journals, but my GUESS is that Schucman had no idea about the MKULTRA connections of her friends and colleagues, and that had she known, and had she realized what MKULTRA was up to during those years (however that would not be exposed until a few years after Schucman’s “channeling” experience was over) NOTHING Thetman could have said to her would have made her believe that she was actually in contact with Jesus!

Schucman likely had no idea that she was lying down with dogs, but she got up with fleas, nevertheless!

[NOTE: For more information on the possible use in and on certain cults of what has come to be known as “synthetic telepathy” (the artificial induction of intra-cerebral voices to influence or control the behavior of unwitting subjects) please go to: urantiagate.com]

ACIM/MKULTRA Timeline

1958 -- Schucman goes to work for Thetford in the Psychology Department at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

1962 -- Schucman AND Thetford (Publish paper together on “The personality theory of John Gittinger”).

1962 -- Saunders AND Schucman (Sept. Paper).

1962 -- Saunders AND Schucman AND Thetford (Sept. Paper).

1965 -- Helen Schucman’s pre-ACIM visions and experiences.

1965 - 1968 -- Helen Schucman (w/William Thetford): Scribing of “A Course In Miracles” (ACIM).

1968 -- Gittinger AND Saunders (Article/Paper, apparently published as part of a compendium).

1969 - 1971 -- Helen Schucman (w/William Thetford): Scribing of ACIM: “Workbook”.

1970 -- Schucman AND Thetford (Article).

1971 - 1978 -- Saunders AND Thetford (MKULTRA Subproject 130).

1972 -- Helen Schucman (w/William Thetford): Scribing of ACIM: “Manual”.