Читать книгу Edgar Cayce A Seer Out of Season - Harmon Hartzell Bro - Страница 30

Was this the same man as the one with whom we had been talking in the office, or running an errand to buy supplies, or having coffee with guests just a short time ago? He spoke in trance as someone on important business and typically used an editorial “we” instead of “I.” These were times when his face and speech outside of trance were close to the even discourse of his altered state. The man awake looked and sounded similar when teaching the Bible, whether on Sunday mornings at church or on Tuesday evenings at home. There serenity and depth marked his face so that he was immensely appealing. Some of that same self, so like the person giving readings, came to the fore when he prayed aloud at table graces or at the break every afternoon at two when the entire office stopped for fifteen minutes of Bible reading aloud, prayer, and quiet sharing. And just after he emerged from taking some troubled visitor into his office for an hour of counseling while wide awake, his face was as peaceful and shining as during readings.

How much continuity existed between Cayce’s trance self and his waking self seemed important to discover. For if he were taken over by a strange intelligence, however benign, then what he did was of little relevance to the rest of us who did not become unconscious for a living. But if, as his own counsel suggested, he put himself by prayer into a state which for him extended easily into trance, and there stepped into relation with what he called “universal” currents which lifted up and used all that was best in him, then we were looking at a process which might in some way apply to any of us.

Cayce rarely spoke of himself as a psychic, preferring instead to refer to “the thing I do.” In later years, when I would investigate many professional psychics, that distinction would become sharper. He was not focused on his own skill but upon a relationship, which he would describe as one with his Lord. In that respect he differed from many strongly endowed mediums, healers, and clairvoyants. He saw his ability as gift, in a double sense. It was a talent, to be sure, in the familiar sense of a gift as ability. But it was a talent exercised in cooperation with an active reality much larger and wiser than he, making his skill a gift from out of that relationship. As a result, the whole enterprise of getting readings was seen by him as stepping into a cherished Presence, not as a high-jump leap by his psyche alone.

He would gesture to us to come into his study, and one of us would cover the noisy parrot, a gift from a sea captain, that whistled and expostulated at one end of the library. We shut the door behind us as we entered. There were necessary procedures. For example, we were warned that sudden interruptions could cut off the flow, or even catapult him convulsively from his couch to his feet, leaving him upset in mind and body. Were a hand or a piece of paper to be passed across his solar plexus, or sometimes his head, he could awaken with a violent start. Readings explained that it was important not to interfere with a delicate invisible connection like a cord, connecting Cayce’s body to his consciousness, off inspecting someone ill. And on the few occasions when they had tried successfully, years ago, to get Cayce to locate murderers, he had sometimes wakened shouting, “He’s killing her! He’s killing her!” as though he had witnessed the very event. The distress stayed with him for days. An additional health hazard in years past had been violent, persistent headaches after giving readings, which he had traced to occasions in which a conductor sent his mind off for business and financial counsel when Cayce thought he was giving medical aid. Whatever he was entering with his trances, it involved his whole being and could threaten his health, his sanity, and even his life, since in the process, as one reading put it, “the soul is near to leaving the body.” The danger was greatest to him when he was overtired or ill, and that was just what threatened us as he tried to match his efforts to the stacks of unanswered letters.

As a result, we entered his study with soberness in the backs of our minds, even though we often joked and teased a bit to achieve the relaxed atmosphere which experience showed was optimal for the best readings. We were like those sending a diver to unknown depths, whose equipment was not designed to assure his safety at such far reaches but somehow continued to function. Adding to the seriousness of our effort was another possibility which Cayce had been forced to face. It was the chance, however small, that his counsel might prescribe a powerful medication in error and cause an injury or a fatality. Back in the Cayce Hospital days, when he had worn himself out not only by giving readings but taking on the administration, a full medical reading had been given for someone already dead, not noted in the counsel. Each day, each session, then, was the one in which his gift might prove lethal. Only the sense that he was bound to One who would protect him and others, Cayce observed with no little feeling, allowed him to go on taking this risk.

To start his journey into another kind of awareness, Cayce would sit down on his studio couch and loosen his tie and shirt collar, belt and shoestrings, while his wife seated herself beside him to give instructions. After we had talked enough to create a mood of unforced expectancy, Cayce grew silent and we all joined him in inward prayer. This was, it seemed, the decisive act. It expressed a desire for connection, not private attainment. Essentially it defined the trance which followed as an extension of the prayer process—exactly as Cayce saw it. Many who visited and wrote to us sought to understand his feats by using patterns from hypnosis, which was certainly involved. And in later years Cayce would be studied by me and others in the context of research on altered states of consciousness,¹⁸ not only those drug-induced, but those derived from intense concentration, sensory deprivation, sensory invariance (white noise), as well as states initiated by pain, sex, or dying. But the model that always seemed to me closest to reality was prayer, with which he started the entire process.¹⁹

Next Cayce stretched out on his back on the couch and pulled an afghan cover to his waist. He put his hands together, palms up, on his forehead, and kept them there while breathing regularly and perhaps a little deeper than usual. Then with a bit of a sigh he lowered his hands, taking a few moments as he crossed them at his waist. This was the point at which suggestion to do his counseling had to be given to him. Otherwise he would drift off into a deep sleep from which he could not be awakened for hours, even for a day or longer, if he were tired.

He told us what was going on in his mind, which often gave him the cue to lower his hands and enter more deeply into trance. The experience varied but usually involved following a small dot of light. Particularly vivid was the process of avoiding entanglement with the dead, who seemed to be ready to press into his consciousness in the fashion reported and used by mediums. Here was yet another threat to his effort and one he felt more severely than most outsiders realized. This danger became even greater if a seeker actively hoped for a message from some dead relative. There had been times (relatively few, to be sure) when someone had broken in and spoken through him. Avoiding this outcome was, in part, the intent of asking seekers to be in a prayerful, meditative state, asking for help from the highest source, or the divine, not from discarnate entities. It was also the intent of his own prayer, where he sought to serve God, not to plunder hidden realms. One description he dictated gave an account of going for the records he needed to give a life reading.

As he described to me his inner signal to proceed, it was a flash of brilliant white light, sometimes tending toward a golden color. Without this, he knew he could not give a reading that day. There were also times when he went to what seemed to him a hall of records, following that same light and aware that he must not stop, so that he could secure the counsel for life readings. On the journey he passed through what appeared to be several planes, which he experienced as realms of experience after death. First there was a level of humanoid forms which were like exaggerated expressions of particular human desires. Then came a level with individuals in forms familiar on the earth, satisfied with their condition and having even homes and cities. As the light grew stronger and he followed it onward, he came to a realm where all was like springtime; some desired to stay here while others pressed on for greater understanding, more light. Finally he came to an ethereal, lovely place where records of earth lives were kept. Here he picked out what seemed to be volumes or scrolls of information, or—for what proved to be specially developed souls—he was handed the material he needed.