THETFORD: Well, it certainly wasn't due to any early religious background for me. I had gone to the Christian Science Sunday School until age seven, when my sister died suddenly and my parents lost interest in all religion. Later in my youth, I attended various Protestant churches, but by the time I had started my graduate work at the University of Chicago, I had certainly given up any interest in religion. Besides I recall how the University of Chicago was often described as a Baptist University where atheist professors taught Jewish students Thomistic philosophy! With that kind of background, I think it's apparent that whatever religious beliefs I might have had would simply have become more confused.

NR: What would you say was your philosophical or spiritual outlook then?

THETFORD: I would describe myself as an agnostic. I was not really concerned with whether spiritual reality was a fact or not. Freud regarded religion as an illusion, and I think many of the graduate students and faculty with whom I associated at the time saw religion as something that lacked intellectual respectability.

NR: Given your agnostic outlook at the time, was there anything you were involved with that might have set the stage for your being the catalyst for A Course in Miracles?

THETFORD: Not as such, although I was one of Carl Rogers’ first graduate students after he came to the University of Chicago in 1945. He taught that “unconditional positive regard” was an essential prerequisite for client-centered therapists. I now realize what Rogers was really emphasizing was that total acceptance in our relationships meant expressing perfect love. Although I recognized how far I was from being able to practice this concept in my life, I grew to appreciate its contribution to my own spiritual development.

Actually, I always thought that a Higher Authority must have goofed in selecting Helen and me for this assignment. When Helen asked the voice once why she was chosen for this role, the answer she got was, “You're obviously the right person because you're doing it.”

NR: What's so curious is that both of you - Helen the atheist and Bill the agnostic - would entertain the notion of doing something like this. How do you reconcile that? Surely something must have been triggered within you.

THETFORD: During that summer of 1965, we had many experiences that shook up my belief system and caused me to be much more open-minded to the possibility of divine intervention. By the time the Course started, I would say I was no longer really an agnostic. Helen, however, had great difficulty with the Course regarding her own personal beliefs. She continued to question what was happening to her throughout the time she was transcribing the Course, and I'm not sure she was ever able to reconcile what she was doing with who she was.

NR: Its interesting that you often use the word “assignment” with regard to you're and Helen's involvement with the Course. Why?

THETFORD: Well, the events we experienced leading up to the Course's dictation seemed to us to be preparation for an assignment that somehow, somewhere, we had agreed to do together. In a sense we were fulfilling our function.

NR: The events you refer to as preceding the Course's dictation by Helen involved a number of psychic and mystical experiences she had. Did you have similar experiences?

THETFORD: Yes, but they never seemed as dramatic as Helen's. However, one that had a very profound effect on me occurred Easter Sunday in 1970. I had agreed to take Jean, an elderly woman artist, down to dinner in Greenwich Village with some other artist friends. It was a very cold, stormy wintry day, with sleet and high winds - unusual for that time of year. Being without a car, I realized I was going to have a lot of trouble getting a taxi, and so I meditated briefly about what to do. I got a clear message that I was to go to the corner of 78th Street and Fifth Avenue, near where I lived, at exactly 3:15, and the problem would be taken care of. I had enormous resistance to doing this, but I put on my stormy weather gear anyway, walked to the corner, and tried to hail a cab. Since I was in competition with all the doormen on Fifth Avenue it seemed utterly useless.

Then for just a moment I closed my eyes and let go of my troubled thoughts, saying to myself: “Thank-you, Father, it's already done!” And for an instant I truly believed that. When I opened my eyes, a chauffeur driven limousine had stopped right in front of me at the corner and the driver rolled down his window and asked, “May I help you sir?” This, as anyone who's been to New York or lived there knows, was a highly improbable happening.

I was very tempted to ask him why he had stopped for me, and then I realized that this would be an inappropriate question; I was simply to accept this gift. I got in and we drove over to Jean's and picked her up. She was absolutely thrilled that I had come to pick her up in a limousine!

The interesting thing, too, is that I didn't discuss a fee with the driver. He simply took me without any question, and when we arrived at our destination I asked him how much it was, and he said something ridiculous like “five dollars”. I think I gave him several times that amount out of enormous gratitude and relief.

NR: What other such experiences?

THETFORD: While we were in the process of transcribing the Course material, I prayed that we might encounter a living teacher - someone who embodied these teachings in his or her own life. Around this time a priest friend, Father Michael, told me about Mother Teresa of India. Duly impressed, I obtained a copy of Malcolm Muggeridge’s Something Beautiful for God, the first book which describes Mother Teresa’s astonishing healing work with the poorest of the poor.

Shortly after I read the book, Father Michael informed me that Mother Teresa was currently in New York. She had recently established a New York Center for her order in the South Bronx - at that time, the worst of all crime-ridden poverty areas in New York - and he had been asked to help facilitate some of her local arrangements. He invited Helen and me to join him in visiting her in the Bronx. Initially, I felt apprehensive about actually having my prayers answered, since I was not sure that I was up to meeting a living saint. However, when this tiny woman graciously met us with palms extended, I felt an almost instantaneous sense of relief. It seemed as if I had always known her. Completely selfless and without pretense, she radiated the joy of total spiritual commitment. Later, when she turned to me and said, “Doctor, wouldn't you like to come to India? There is so much that you could do to help the poor,” I felt an almost irresistible impulse to answer, “Yes!”

I have met with Mother Teresa on a number of occasions since that time, including one visit she made with Father Michael to our offices at the Medical Center the year before Helen retired. To me, her life is a demonstration of the importance of total dedication and complete consistency on the spiritual path. Our prayers are answered, even though frequently in the most unexpected ways.

NR: There has been some speculation that you and Helen edited the Course. Did you?

THETFORD: No. Bear in mind that at the beginning we didn’t know exactly what was happening. So we asked questions of a personal nature and recorded the answers that Helen would receive. I would type these answers as part of the continuous process, no distinguishing them from the inner dictation that Helen was recording in her shorthand notebook. Later, when we realized that this material was obviously not a part of the Course itself, we did, indeed, delete it. It is true there has been editing of capitalization, punctuation, paragraphing and section titles in the Text. However, these changes were minor and the Workbook and the Manual for Teachers also appear exactly as they were taken down by Helen.

NR: Could you give an example of the personal material you deleted?

THETFORD: Oh, there were questions like, “Is there anything that we should be doing that would increase our ability to meditate better?” There was also some commentary on psychological theories that got introduced as an intellectual digression at the beginning, which had nothing to do with the Course itself.

NR: Briefly, what do you think the Course’s purpose is?

THETFORD: To help us change our minds about who we are and what God is, and to help us let go, through forgiveness, our belief in the reality of our separation from God. Learning how to forgive ourselves and others is really the fundamental teaching of the Course. The Course teaches us how to know ourselves and how to unlearn all of those things which interfere with our recognition of who we are and always have been.

NR: Why do you think it was named "A Course in Miracles"? Why not a Course in Love or Forgiveness or Truth?

THETFORD: For good reason, we realized later. I do remember, however, when Helen called me that memorable night and said an inner voice was dictating to her which kept repeating, “This is a course in miracles, please take notes.” At the time, I certainly didn’t respond positively to that title. However, when you get into the Course and then into the definition of what a miracle is, it does make sense. In fact, it’s the only appropriate name for the Course.

NR: And a miracle is . . .

THETFORD: I think a miracle is the love that sustains the universe. It’s the shift in perception that removes the barriers or obstacles to our awareness of love’s presence in our lives.The Course also tells us that there is no order of difficulty in miracles - one is not more difficult than another, since the expression of love is always maximal.

NR: What was your reaction as a psychologist when the Course presented you with the concept that there are only two emotions: love and fear?

THETFORD: I remember very distinctly typing that section, where it says, “You have but two emotions, fear and love, one you made and one was given you.” And I remember thinking that concept really takes care of the whole psychological problem of different emotional states. And it’s true, for example, that anger is an expression of fear in action. I can’t get angry unless I first feel threatened in some way, which means I’m afraid. Love is really the only other emotion that exists, and it simplified things greatly to recognize this as a fact.

NR: And what is love by your definition, the kind of love being referred to here?

THETFORD: Very simply, love is the absence of fear. You might also say that fear is the absence of love. Love and fear cannot co-exist at the same time, although most of us try to live as if they can. We try to balance a little fear with a little love, and hope that we can know the difference. Yet when we let go of fear for an instant, love is automatically there. It isn’t something we have to figure out or look for, love simply is.

It’s very much like the sun which is hidden by clouds on a foggy day. Although we can’t see the sun, we know it is there. The moment the fog lifts we can see it. Such is the case for us, too, the moment we can stop our fearful thoughts we can accept the love and light which is always there.

NR: That pretty much entails trust it’s there always, yet it seems we’re often brought to a place, almost a precipice, and asked to step out, with faith it’s still there. That’s real hard to do, or to muster up the trust to do.

THETFORD: I frequently refer to that in my own life as “celestial brinkmanship” - when we’re out there walking the plank, not knowing what’s going to happen next. But how else can we increase our awareness of our God given potential if we don’t take the plunge into the unknown? I think all of us have to be at least partially willing to try to find out if there is a different and better way to live, otherwise we will simply persevere in the same old patterns of our lives.