About Yasuko Kasaki, Founder of CRS

I encountered A Course in Miracles more than 35 years ago. From the very first day I began reading the Text, my life changed completely.

How I came to be here

To be more precise, it didn’t so much change as this: the murky clouds that had long been obscuring my mind were swept away all at once, and my vision cleared. A reality I had not been able to see before came into view — a reality about myself. What appeared there was a self I had never imagined.

At the time, my English wasn’t strong enough, so I read with a dictionary in hand, translating sentence by sentence into Japanese. Eight to ten hours a day — I never wanted to close the Text, and that was nearly all I did. The Text was at times cutting, at times deeply compassionate, and at times like poetry of extraordinary beauty and rhythm.

A Course in Miracles contains almost no outward instructions — no guidance on what to do or how to solve problems through external action. Rather, it invites us to observe, with great precision, what is happening inside the mind.

I realized very quickly that I needed a teacher to receive this teaching rightly. I had to admit that, without knowing it, I had repeatedly read the words in ways convenient to me — interpretations that let me avoid correcting my own mind.

Guided by a number of ACIM teachers, I read and practiced. To this day I return to the Text again and again, and each time I experience new insights. I continue to learn while sharing it with many friends.

A Course in Miracles does not only teach about truth. It is a complete practical guide — the experience of receiving truth, and the process of correcting the mind when doubt or fear arises, all of it contained within the words themselves. It is a curriculum that leads us with great care to witness the simple fact that even in the midst of everyday difficulties — illness, grief, difficult relationships, small frustrations — we have been given peace.

My work

Without quite knowing how it happened, I found myself sharing these teachings — first in New York, then in Japan, and then in places around the world. Today I offer Zoom classes, healing workshops, and private sessions, and in Japan I hold seminars and retreats several times a year.

In 2004, I founded CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) in New York — a place to study A Course in Miracles in both Japanese and English, to share in various activities together, and to put the learning into practice.

In addition to a 13-volume guide series adding hints, commentary, and essays to each lesson in the Workbook, I have written A Course in Miracles: The First Five Steps, Gifts from the Holy Spirit, and Manhattan Miracle — born from the years of building CRS in New York. I have also translated into Japanese the works of several English-speaking teachers in my circle, so that their teachings could reach readers in Japan.

Everything I have written and taught has grown not from academic study but from the attempt to actually live these teachings — because I myself needed them. In those moments when a scream of protest wells up inside — “Why is this happening to me?” “Why now, of all times…?” — those are the moments when I have turned to these teachings for help.

What I hope for this place

CRS is the place where everything I have cared about comes together — classes, practice, and the community that grows not by working alone but by walking together.

Whatever has brought you here, you are welcome exactly as you are — whatever you believe, whatever you doubt. We all move back and forth between belief and doubt, and in doing so we touch a truth that goes beyond both: the meaning of our own lives. That truth is not something to be found alone. It becomes clear, gradually, through seeking together and receiving together.

With all my love and respect,
Yasuko Kasaki