The Sparkly edition of A Course In Miracles is the original edit that was entrusted and tasked to Bill Thetford, the co-scribe of the Course, by the Author Jesus. Sparkly has also become known as the Thetford edition or the Hugh Lynn Cayce edition (HLC).

The CAPITALIZATION and hyphenation of some of the words, along with the use of parenthesis and punctuation, remain consistent with the style of the “scribe’s” used in the source material.

Those given the task of publishing and making this edition available recognize and honor the original intent of our brother Jesus to be known as author with Helen as a “just” scribe whose name is not to be associated with authorship, but with the willingness to hear his voice and take notes.

The first edition of the Sparkly edition of A Course In Miracles was published in Australia in 2002 after the material which is known as the urtext came to light in the late 1990s.

Inner guidance to make this original edit available was received by four individuals independently, one who having no understanding of what he was being informed of, had been told by Jesus in the mid-1980s, some ten years or so previously, that all the material would be made available.

In 2004 a trust named the Thetford Foundation was set up in the state of Queensland, for the primary purpose of distributing the initial edit of A Course in Miracles attributed to Bill Thetford and make the message of the author freely available to those it was intended for regardless of financial, geographic or social circumstances.

The foundation name was deliberately chosen to acknowledge Bill’s contribution in undertaking the role of editor of the original scribed material and for his willingness to faithfully carry out his allotted task, as he was directed to do by the author, the Christ Mind of Jesus of Nazareth through the scribe of A Course in Miracles, Helen Schuman. 

Subsequent print runs of the Sparkly after the initial two editions were printed in Australia, have been implemented by The Borderland Foundation, USA. The third edition being printed in China, the fourth edition printed in Canada and the current fifth edition printed in India.

A Note about Bill being tasked with editorial decisions:

When Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford began to receive and fulfill their collaborative function in both receiving, utilizing and bringing the answer to others in the form of the generalized A Course in Miracles, Bill was given the task of making editing decisions and deciding what from the material Helen scribed, would be included and excluded in what would later be published as the generalized version of A Course In Miracles. This instruction was given Bill through Helen, who Jesus called a “just scribe”.

Throughout the period of time it took Helen to scribe Jesus’s discourse and instructions, the communication between Jesus and Helen contained not only direction for what would become the generalized A Course In Miracles, but also personal information, guidance and instruction from Jesus not only for Helen but for Bill and others which was communicated to them through Helen.

At one point in Helen’s notes, she wrote Jesus instructing her in the following…

“Note that the much more personal than usual notes you are taking today reflect the Revelatory experience. This DOES NOT produce the more generalizable quality which this course is aimed at. They may, nevertheless, be of great help to Bill personally, since you asked for something that WOULD help him personally. It depends on how he listens, and how well he understands the COOPERATIVE nature of your joint experience. You can help only by reading this note
FIRST. Ask him later if this should be included in the written part of the course at all or whether you should keep these notes separately. He is in charge of these decisions.”

In her unpublished autobiography Helen wrote, “Bill was adamant in opposing any changes at all except for deleting the earlier too personal references and correcting actual typing errors. I wanted to change just about everything but I knew that Bill was right. Any changes I made were always wrong in the long run and had to be put back in. This strictly editorial attitude only helped me get through a long and difficult job but also proved to be the most helpful as far as the actual material was concerned. It had a way of KNOWING what it was doing and was much better left exactly as it was.”

Many of us, for whom this version of A Course In Miracles was intended are enormously grateful for Bill’s very clear position in making these editorial decision.