First and foremost, A Course in Miracles is a course, an educational program. It is designed to take its students through a process of internalizing its thought system. In this process, we learn to accept into our minds and extend to others what the course calls miracles, which heal the perception of the one receiving them. Each of the course’s three volumes signifies a different phase in this overall process.

(The volumes need not be done in order, but they are arranged in a logical sequence that reflects the overall progression the course seems to expect students to pass through). Volume I: Text is the first, longest, and most important volume. It provides the “theoretical foundation” of the course.

Volume I: Text is a masterpiece of spiritual thought. As it guides us through hundreds of topics, the meanings we have assigned the world begin to fall away, revealing a new meaning in everything. This happens even on the level of language. The course uses familiar terms, but fills them with new meaning, making each term a microcosm of its thought system. As a result, this is not easy to listen to. To reap its rewards, we have to truly engage with it. The course asks us to listen to its words carefully, thinking about what they mean. It asks us to take them personally and treat them as practical, as more than an intellectual game. If we will do this, we will experience our old worldview being slowly dismantled, and a new worldview arising in its place.

Volume I: Text is the first phase of the course’s program. It is here that the course’s thought system initially enters our minds. This is only the beginning of the process, yet it is the foundation for all that follows.