Foundation for Inner Peace

The Foundation for Inner Peace, the corporation that assumed primary responsibility for the publishing and distribution of the very successful channeled work known as A Course in Miracles, was originally founded in 1972 by Judith Skutch and her husband, Robert Skutch, as the Foundation for ParaSensory Investigation, an organization to facilitate the Skutches' programming activities within the psychic community in New York City.

On May 29, 1975, Judith Skutch met Drs. Helen Schucman (1910-1981) and William Tetford (1923-1988). Schucman had been the channel and Tetford the transcriber for A Course in Miracles (ACIM). The material was believed to have come directly from Jesus Christ. The two had been joined in the endeavor by Kenneth Wapnick, who worked with Schucman in editing the text. The three let Skutch in on the secret they shared, and she soon became as enthused as they over the teachings of the Course. They met frequently over the next weeks and decided to publish the manuscript that existed in three segments—a text, a workbook for students, and a manual for teachers. Skutch offered her already existing corporation as the vehicle for the publishing activity. It was renamed the Foundation for Inner Peace. Schucman turned her copyright interest in the Course to the foundation and by the end of the summer the first edition was released as a reduced-size, soft-cover offset reproduction of the manuscript, some 300 copies. The following year a three-volume hardcover edition of 5,000 copies was published.

In 1978, Helen Schucman channeled a personal message of guidance from Jesus to the foundation that it was to extend its program by offering means to discuss the content of the Course. This additional activity was assigned primarily to Wapnick. He began his teaching work forthwith. He soon met his future wife, Gloria, and they were married in 1981. At the beginning of 1982, they founded the Foundation for A Course in Miracles to facilitate their teaching work.

Also in 1978, the decision was made to move the Foundation for Inner Peace to Tiburon, California (where psychologist Gerald Jampolsky, a significant supporter of the ACIM, had located his Center for Attitudinal Healing). The Wapnicks remained in New York, but relocated from the city to Roscoe, New York. The foundation expanded its publishing program, including two further works channeled by Schucman, Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice and The Song of Prayer, as well as a collection of her poems, The Gifts of God. They have also issued Course -related cassettes and videos. In 1982, the foundation established a translation program. The Spanish edition appeared in 1993. Subsequently Chinese, Dutch, German, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian editions have been published and work continues on Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Slovene, and Swedish editions.

In New York in 1995, the foundation created an educational arm, the Institute for Teaching Inner Peace through A Course in Miracles.

The Foundation for Inner Peace is headquartered at P. O. Box 598, Mill Valley, CA 94942-0598. Its webpage may be found at http://www.acim.org/.

Sources:

A Course in Miracles. 3 vols. New York: Foundation for Inner Peace, 1975.

Koggend, John. "The Gospel According to Helen." Psychology Today 14 (September 1980): 74-78.

Miller, D. Patrick. The Complete Story of the Course: The History, the People and the Controversies Behind A Course in Miracles. Berkeley, Calif.: Fearless Books, 1997.

Skutch, Judith. "A Course in Miracles, the Untold Story." Parts 1 & 2. New Realities 4, no. 1, 2 (August, September/ October 1984): 17-27; 8-15, 78.