Edgar Cayce A Seer Out of Season. Harmon Hartzell Bro

others described their experiences of familiar structures when viewed in a psychedelic state. But the pattern was already there in the experience of Moses before a bush that seemed to burn yet was not consumed.

      The entranced man set the pace for each counseling session.

      When he felt he had said enough to an individual, he concluded, “We are through with this reading,” or he closed an entire session with “We are through for the present.” After the latter his wife would give him an extended suggestion to enhance his well-being and balance, then direct him to wake up. Cayce’s body would jerk slightly as he opened his eyes and stretched a bit. Then he often asked, “Did you get anything?” His question was reasonable, for sometimes fatigue, emotional upset, or some less understood cause would block his activity. But the question was outrageous to the rest of us in the room, who had been listening intently to a stream of original material. His query only underscored the fact that he remembered nothing of what he had said. We would be sitting there wondering or bemused, sometimes eagerly starting to talk, and sometimes lost in thought. About us were stacked invisible remnants from vital organs, the garments of ancient times, or traces of tangled lines connecting psyches and relationships.

      Cayce would patiently rouse himself to get a snack of milk and crackers from the kitchen. When he returned, we might have left the study. But often we were still there, discussing what we had just heard. It did not take him long to join in. He knew intimately, of course, the structure and conceptual thrusts of the readings. Other parts of the counsel just given he seemed to pick from the air or from his own blocked memory of the trance. Perhaps this capacity explained why he never appeared to study a transcript of a reading for any length of time. When he held one or just scanned it, he seemed in touch with its contents, much as when he startled secretaries taking his dictation by offering thoughtful observations about the strangers to whom he was dictating. Though the detailed personal data he cited were not in these letters, they were often verified in later phone calls or visits from the senders.

       He Never Heard a Reading

      Was Cayce the waking man in competition with Cayce the entranced man? It did seem now and then that he delayed the move from the larger library to his study, especially when there were interesting visitors. Even though it was time for him to go unconscious and the conversation stumbled into awkward pauses (when those present manifestly wanted him to begin his unique process), he might extend a story as though to say, “Look, I matter as a conscious person, you know.” But when the conversation lagged further, he took the demand in good grace, laying aside his consciousness and putting his life on the line by entering a pressure chamber which none of us fully understood nor could guarantee that he would leave unharmed.

      He was the only one among us who never heard a reading. He alone must take his gift on faith. The rest of us were daily reinforced in our reliance on it. The doubt he had to conquer showed all too clearly in a dream he told from some years earlier. In it he held an infant girl in his arms. (Other dreams showed her as a mummified Egyptian girl who had to be brought back to life, since the young female was often his dream emblem for his unusual talent, as what Jung called the creative anima.)²¹

      She spoke precociously and was being examined by authorities to discover whether she were in fact a midget and doing nothing unusual. Inspection proved, to his relief, that she was an authentic prodigy. The reading taken on this dream confirmed that the infant stood for an ability which seemed to him at times small, of little account in the world affairs. Yet it would grow, he was admonished, to bring joy and aid to many. “Good dream!” “the information” concluded.

      More poignant and revealing was a dream he shared with me which had come at one of the many times when he was out of money, facing the nagging doubt which would confront any modern American: “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” The dream took place in a courtroom, where his wife—ever the bearer of rational judgment in his life—had him arraigned on lunacy charges and brought in their forlorn-looking children to show how incompetent he was to take care of them. Somehow in the trial he managed to affirm his adequacy and ended up giving what amounted to a mini-reading for each prominent figure in the courtroom, starting with the judge. He cited details of their past lives with him which none could deny, and convinced his hearers that he was mentally sound. The reading taken on this dream recognized his financial distress but urged him to be faithful. Then it added that getting in touch with the one man who had vouched for him in the dream would bring him requests for readings and needed income—as it did when he followed up the lead. Obviously in such dreams, Cayce’s unconscious during the night mirrored his fears over the sanity of having to rely on a process he only partly understood, never saw or heard for himself, and found brought him only as much money as he required for everyday needs.

      But a very different, visionary dream he related set his trance efforts in a larger context. He saw himself preparing to give a reading (“fixing” to give one, was his Southern expression) and observed his consciousness as a tiny speck at the base of a great funnel or spiral which reached upward and outward toward the heavens. Between the rings encircling the funnel at different levels were located sources of the information and aid he sought in order to help others. Even the resources of whole cities were available to him, according to their quality depicted as rates of vibration. The tiny dot of his consciousness was tugged by someone’s need to whatever points on the vast spiral he should reach for aid. The dream with its cosmic, mystical scope affected him strongly, and he sought a reading on it. There he was told that his little consciousness was indeed as nothing in the great vortex or spiral of the universe. Yet by its purpose of service it could be lifted to whatever heights and specific resources were needed, “even unto the Thrones themselves,” the ultimate thrones of divine grace. The spiral he had seen was like a great trumpet of the universe, resounding with whatever was required for one who would for a time empty himself of all self-seeking.

      Given the soaring imagery of such a dream, Cayce’s response was understandable when I asked him what he felt essentially transpired in his trance. He chose an image from a letter of Paul’s to the Corinthian church, and spoke of being absent in the body but present in the spirit with those who needed him.²² His image often returned to me in later years when I worked intensively with parapsychologists and gifted subjects trying to replicate some of Cayce’s doings. Typically our emphasis was on states and circuits in the psyche and in the body. Not often was the model stretched as far as his dream of the spiral suggested it might be.

       Where Power and Love Meet

      Slowly it became clear that Cayce’s readings were a joining of power with love.

      Cayce’s power was his distinction. In a technical culture, his skill with facts stood out as the hallmark of his gift. To most of those who learned of his story he was (if real at all) a psychic, a supplier of unknown data, a purveyor of useful facts, a trafficker in unusual power. Yet we were hearing more than facts. We were hearing engagement and encounter, call and sending, of one person at a time. We were dealing with power, to be sure, but it was power infused and shaped by love. Or it was love surprised by wisdom.

      We were watching a consciousness instantly form itself into the person being counseled. Comparing the tone of voice and the choice of words given in readings at the same session showed that we were not dealing with a grand Western Union of the mind, hunting up psychic data to drop on listeners. This counsel was far more personal, more individual. It was bent on engaging each seeker in terms appropriate for just that person’s growth.

      To one the counsel might be demanding, brusque, and businesslike, to another supportive, gentle, or even tender. The factual information was firmly knit to the effort to reach and quicken the person. Caring formed, paced, and sharpened each reading, both in content and in style. The counsel to a somewhat officious Army colonel startled us when Cayce made a rare departure from his usual impersonal address to admonish, after answering a question, “Take that and think it over, sonny boy!” By contrast, for a little old lady in her eighties who only wanted to know in the question period, “How am I doing?”, he capped a reading of warm praise for her generous life with the words, “Who can