Jampolsky noted follower of ‘A Course in Miracles’

I’m perplexed about the recently published obituary news story about Dr. Gerald “Jerry” Jampolsky (“Gerald Jampolsky, noted Marin psychiatrist, dies,” Feb. 5). Why wasn’t the book “A Course in Miracles” emphasized? Many of his books, and certainly his philosophy of life, was based on it.

Jampolsky was probably the course’s most prominent promoter. He had, in fact, jumpstarted his first book, “Love is Letting Go of Fear,” a bestseller that used it as a foundation, through TV appearances with hosts such as Johnny Carson and Phil Donahue. The famed psychiatrist founded his Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, which helped children cope with life-threatening diseases, by using the threebook course as a springboard.

For the uninitiated, the course is a still-controversial spiritual self-study program based on a woman named Helen Schucman purportedly taking down, word for word, what an “inner voice” told her. She contended that channeled voice belonged to Jesus.

The course’s main thesis is that our constant mandate is to choose between love and fear, and that the physical world we seem to live in is in truth an illusion — a dream, if you will.

“A Course in Miracles,” published in 1976 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, reportedly has sold several million copies and been translated into more than 20 languages.

Marianne Williamson, a 2020 Democrat presidential candidate, has also been an adherent of the course. She greatly boosted its sales by pushing it on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” on television. Williamson’s initial book, “A Return to Love,” is subtitled “Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles.”

— Woody Weingarten,

San Anselmo