Why We Began ACIM Academy

Near the end of his life, William Thetford walked into Judith Skutch’s home in California doing a little dance. Imagine that for a moment.

Here was the quiet psychologist who helped bring A Course in Miracles into the world. A man who could have spent his final years surrounded by admiration, spiritual status, and followers hanging onto his every sentence. Yet those who knew Bill remember something else entirely. Warmth. Humility. Humour. A kind of gentle ordinariness.

He did not behave like a guru. And perhaps that is one reason we love him.

We are also deeply inspired by Tara Singh. Tara brought a rare seriousness and stillness to the practice of the Course. Not performance. Not charisma. Presence. He constantly invited students away from second-hand spirituality and into direct inner observation.

Though very different in temperament from Bill Thetford, both men shared something essential: neither encouraged psychological dependence on themselves. Both pointed away from personality and back toward attentive awareness, humility, and inner transformation. In many ways, Bill and Tara stand like two quiet lamps at the entrance of ACIM Academy. One carrying warmth and gentleness. The other clarity and uncompromising depth. Both reminding us that truth does not need spiritual theatre to shine.

Bill once compared the Course to Vedanta and reportedly called it “Christian Vedanta”. He recognised something many students instinctively feel when they encounter the deeper currents of the Course. Beneath its Christian language stands a profoundly nondual teaching. Not a religion of separation, fear, hierarchy, or spiritual specialness, but a quiet undoing of the belief that we are separate from God, from one another, or from Love itself.

That matters today more than ever.

Because strangely, in recent years, nonduality itself has begun to be attacked in some ACIM circles, often without clarity or even definition. Some students are becoming confused. Others feel forced to choose between devotion and nonduality, as though the two oppose each other. We do not believe they do. In fact, we believe the deepest devotion flowers naturally from the recognition of oneness.

This is one reason ACIM Academy was born. Not to create another spiritual personality. Not to build a teacher-centred movement. Not to gather admirers around a platform. There are already too many spiritual spaces built around subtle dependence. We wanted something friendlier.

A learning space. A conversation. A table where students can think deeply, ask freely, disagree honestly, laugh easily, and study sincerely without pressure to imitate a teacher’s personality or vocabulary. A place where nobody needs to pretend enlightenment. A place where openness matters more than image.

We also felt a quiet calling toward India and the East.

The great nondual traditions have lived here for centuries. Advaita, Buddhism, the wisdom of the Upanishads, all understand something essential about illusion and identity. We believe the Course can be received here not as a foreign religious system, but as a living path of awakening spoken through a different language.

And perhaps one day, by grace, ACIM Academy will become a physical centre too. Quiet. Simple. Filled with books, tea, friendship, study, and silence.

No throne in the middle of the room.
Just fellow travellers remembering God together.

Bill Thetford

Tara Singh

FROM THE HOUSE OF