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2 Working with Cayce

You will give a physical and mental reading for this body, with suggestions for the improvement of either, and you will answer the questions which I will ask you regarding these. (5439-1)

I had never heard of Edgar Cayce, but I assumed him to be one of the hundreds of medical doctors, osteopaths, dentists, chiropractors, or naturopaths who were making regular patient referrals to us for physiotherapy treatments.

—H.J.R.

Edgar Cayce came into my life on a raw wintry day in January 1930. At the Reilly Physicians’ Service we were in the middle of our usual post-holiday rush. Clients were dashing about, working hard to shed their guilt and pounds to undo the damage of Christmas and New Year partying. My sister Dorothy, one of the five who worked with me, was paging me over the intercom. I was very busy and I brusquely asked her if our brother Dr. Pat couldn’t take care of the matter. She was insistent that I come to the reception room.

“I have a Mrs. L.S. here with some papers for you to see. She says Edgar Cayce of Virginia Beach sent her.”

At that time we were located at 1908 Broadway, in New York City, on the second floor of a wooden building on the northeast corner of 63rd Street. It wasn’t a fancy place—nothing like the plush Reilly Health Service in Rockefeller Center that was to become famous in later years. But it was a well-equipped gymnasium and health spa with plenty of space indoors and on the roof for exercises and a handball court. We had one of the city’s most elaborate hydrotherapy departments—European-spa baths, Scotch douches, sitz baths, a variety of steam baths, massage rooms, electric cabinets, and electrotherapy equipment—everything needed for a complete physiotherapy service.

When I entered the reception room, I found an attractive, red-haired woman examining the pictures of business tycoons, labor leaders, politicians, and opera, theater, and radio stars that covered our walls, all of them inscribed to me with appreciation or a similar sentiment.

Mrs. [5439] had an air and bearing that made me think of the theater and star quality. I asked if she were an actress. She smiled a little and looked pleased. She told me that her great love was writing, especially for the theater, and that she hoped to write a good play one day. She looked much younger than her age, which I discovered was forty-two.

The man who is (or was) president of the Physiotherapists of [New York State] and who has been familiar with the readings for a number of years—who is also now using the green light—is: Dr. H.J. Reilly, R.C.A. Bldg., 1250 Sixth Avenue, N.Y.C.

I hope you get a chance to go into his office and see him. It would give you an idea of the type of place you are to seek in your vicinity—in case he does not have one to recommend that is a member of his association, I mean.

—Gladys Davis Turner (in letter accompanying reading 3008-1)

“Edgar Cayce of Virginia Beach sent me here,” she said, holding out a sheaf of papers. “He said I was to have massage and electrotherapy.”

“I never heard of him,” I replied. With the arrogance of youth I casually accepted the fact that he had heard of me, whoever he was. “Let me see what you have there,” I said.

The sheets of paper she handed me were headed:

This psychic reading given by Edgar Cayce at his office, 115 West 35th Street, Virginia Beach, Va., this day 11th of January, 1930, in accordance with request made by self—Mrs. [5439] (then the woman’s full name was given).

Next, it read:

PRESENT—Edgar Cayce; Mrs. Cayce, Conductor; Gladys Davis, Steno. The Time of Reading 4:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. Mrs. [5439] of Central Park West, New York City.

Then it went on with the following instructions to Edgar Cayce given by Mrs. Cayce:

You will give a physical and mental reading for this body, with suggestions for the improvement of either, and you will answer the questions which I will ask you regarding these.

At first I thought this was some kind of joke, or that Mrs. [5439] and Cayce were crazy. Yet I was curious enough to go on reading. I was not totally hostile to the idea of a referral from a psychic, because over the years we had had a number of astrologers, psychics, palmists, numerologists, and other devotees of the occult among our clientele, and frequently we had received recommendations from them. But in all my experience I had never read a diagnosis or prescription for therapy like the one I now started to read.

When Mrs. [5439] told me that Cayce gave what she called the “reading” while he was in a trance in Virginia Beach and she was in New York, I became really intrigued. Even now, with forty-five years of hindsight, it is very difficult to explain what made me stop in the middle of one of our busiest days to read the following, but I did. Cayce said:

Yes, we have the body here, Mrs. [5439]. Now, we find the body very good in many respects, physically and mentally. There are rather conditions of which the body physical should take warning, and by correction of what is minor in the physical functioning at present, bring about a better condition in the physical and furnish the channel through which the mental and spiritual may manifest; for the body-physical is truly the temple through which the mental and the spiritual and soul development must manifest, and in manifestation does the growth come. [Italics added.]

I reread the phrase “for the body-physical is truly the temple through which the mental and the spiritual and soul development must manifest,” finding in it an echo of my own deeply held conviction, one that I had dedicated my life to as a physiotherapist. I often reminded my patients that “the same blood that goes through your intestines and your feet goes through your brain.” My words were not as poetic and spiritual as the language Cayce used, but I meant the same thing.

. . . for the body-physical is truly the temple through which the mental and the spiritual and soul development must manifest, and in manifestation does the growth come. (5439-1)

The diagnosis began with an analysis of the blood supply. Cayce found that the emotion of fear was creating a condition that “must be eliminated” from the system:

... there are many channels through which eliminations are carried on. First, in the respiratory system. This not merely the deoxidization being thrown off through the breath, or through the clarifications of the bloodstream as it flows to the lungs for the oxygen necessary to carry on certain conditions . . . but also that of the whole of the exterior ... through the various pores of the system [and that of the lymphatic circulation].

Also that in the liver, or through the alimentary canal. These, at present, suffer the most—for as seen, the blood supply flows twice through the liver to any other portion of the system and in the left lobe or the smaller lobe of same, do we find those conditions as represent disorders as are affected by the splenic and this lobe, or portion of lobe of the liver—for the liver being both excretory and secretive in its functioning, then acts upon the system in a more than twofold manner.

The Cayce reading went on to explain how the breakdown in elimination in the woman’s respiratory system, liver, and kidneys had affected her nervous systems, creating “disorders—not disease” resulting in overacidity.

These . . . give rise to the expressions of dullness in head, fullness in throat, the misdirection in the mucus-producing tissue in bronchia, nasal cavities, antrum, and those conditions where soft tissue becomes involved. These are merely signposts not causes—not the reactions, even. Rather those warnings as to disorders, or distresses, as come to the physical [to the body].

After this accurate diagnosis of Mrs. [5439]’s symptoms and their cause, the entranced clairvoyant went on to a discussion of the mental forces at work on her.

Fear [is] the greatest bugaboo to the human elements, for in fear comes those conditions that destroy that vitality of that assimilated.

His advice to her hit with uncanny accuracy her most secret desires:

The mental developments should be in the direction of the directing play, writing play, writing book, writing song—for these may give an outlet of self to manifest that which the body, the mental being may hold as ideal. Find an ideal. Do not lose self in the individual nor in the self-centered interest, but rather in that the body, the body mental, the body spiritual may make an ideal. Ready for questions:

Fear [is] the greatest bugaboo to the human elements, for in fear comes those conditions that destroy that vitality of that assimilated.

(5439-1)

Do not lose self in the individual nor in the self-centered interest, but rather in that the body, the body mental, the body spiritual may make an ideal.

(5439-1)

(Q) What books can the body read to help improve her talents for writing?

(A) Tacitus, or Plato, or such—for the entity was associated with Plato, and the rise and fall of same would mean much.

(Q) Shall I write with someone else, or shall I write by myself?

(A) Fear enters here, when the entity attempts to write alone—but write alone, and keep that near self as the ideal, when doing so. Be not afraid to really express those children of the mental body as flow in, in meditation, for these—in use—will grow and will not destroy self, will they but be tendered by the love of the Creator, or of the body itself.

(Q) Is the body necessary to her husband’s business? Is it advisable for her to return to the business?

(A) Would be advisable that at least in the advisory capacity the body see much more of same than it has recently; but to return to same would be to smother self’s own endeavors, and self’s own personality, self’s own individuality would also suffer . . .

(Q) Will the business come back successfully without the body?

(A) With her advice, would come back! With her counsel, come back!

(Q) What attitude should she take toward her husband?

(A) Not merely of duty’s tolerance, but that of helpfulness; for one is as necessary to the other as is that of any condition where there are two poles. (5439-1)

I agreed with his interpretation that the range of symptoms came from a toxic condition, brought on, at least in part, by emotional causes and by improper elimination.

Mrs. [5439] did not present an exceptional or challenging health problem, and certainly the recommended treatment of massage and electrotherapy was well within our routine therapy.

I immediately knew that when we gave her the manipulation we would increase her circulation. The drainage therapy would relieve pressure in the head. In the massage we would pay special attention to the abdomen to stimulate the liver and spleen, and we would work the legs so as to normalize and stimulate circulation in the legs, and this would stimulate circulation in the whole body.

As for the excessive mucus, that will often appear when the diet is incorrect or where there is irritation. It is nature’s way of trying to heal or protect the tissues so they won’t become overly inflamed. Some foods are more mucus forming than others (see Chapter 5 on diet and nutrition).

Cayce’s recommended treatment called for electrotherapy with ultraviolet, infrared, Nile green, and then orange lights. We did not go in for chromotherapy or color therapy, but we did use the infrared and two types of ultraviolet (one pure ultraviolet and the other with the complete sun spectrum produced by the use of carbon-arc lamps). I was most interested in the use of the lights, which Cayce claimed would “equalize the circulation, relieving this condition in the central nervous system.”

In the reading I was intrigued by a number of concepts that not only struck a responsive chord with my own ideas but represented thinking that was not at that time generally accepted by the medical profession. Now, however, these ideas have become commonplace.

Dr. Reilly and the Opera Singer

I recall one amusing incident that taught me a good lesson in psychosomatic illness. For a number of years I had been taking care of Beniamino Gigli, the great Metropolitan Opera Italian tenor. When Gigli’s chauffeur brought him to me, he was overweight and suffering so severely from arthritis he was forced to cancel performances. I helped him get into good shape—brought him down from 245 to a more romantic-looking 195 pounds—and after a few months he never again missed a performance. We became close friends—I went to Italy with him every two years—and he wanted me to give up my practice and just travel and work with him on exercise, massage, diet, and reinforcing his discipline.

Then one day I learned that Gigli was to give a Carnegie Hall concert and I took an advertisement covering the entire back page of the program. It read, “Why Gigli Never Misses a Performance,” and then went on to summarize what I did to keep him fit. When Gigli saw the program, he became angrier than I had ever seen him. Although he had a well-known temper, his anger and moods never had lasted very long. This time, however, he raved and stormed—but worst of all, he caught a severe cold. Anger had set up a chemical condition that created the acids that made him vulnerable—and now he was sick. It was two days before the concert and he threatened to cancel it.

“What a fool you will look before the whole world—you and your ad,” he taunted.

I never worked so hard in my entire life as I did in the next two days, but I did get him well in time to save two reputations.

Types of Treatments Cayce Recommended

osteopathy

chiropractic

exercise

conventional medicine

sophisticated diets

all forms of hydrotherapy

electrotherapy

surgery

herbs

oils

lights

colors

energy appliances

For example, a whole section dealt with Mrs. [5439]’s anxieties and fears about her husband’s business. She had been working with him in what, I later learned, was a very successful business, but she was semiretired and was feeling guilty because the business had developed some difficulties. Another portion of the reading dealt with her frustrated desires to write creatively, particularly for the theater. All these tensions, fears, and emotions, Cayce indicated, were largely responsible for her physical disorders. Back in 1930, psychosomatics was a novel idea. Only a few pioneering doctors connected the emotional, mental, and spiritual conditions of their patients with their state of health or dis-ease, which Cayce interpreted literally to mean just that: lack of, or disturbance of, ease.

I had arrived at the same conclusion myself. As a young man, I taught jujitsu and boxing for the army, serving both on the Mexican border with the 22nd Regiment and later in World War I. I trained soldiers and did special physical conditioning to turn them into commandos. An athlete myself, I did quite a bit of boxing and learned early what it meant to get a “fighting edge,” and what effect a man’s emotions and fears had on his physical condition and performance.

In the months following Mrs. [5439]’s successful treatment I received a number of other referrals from Edgar Cayce, but it was to be two years before we met face to face. Sometimes the patients arrived with the readings, sometimes with slips of paper indicating the kind of therapy to be given. Sometimes the directions were very precise, even to specifying the kind of oil or combination of oils to be used for a massage, and the precise proportion. Sometimes there were no specific directions, leaving the entire modality of treatment—or application of the therapeutic agent—to my judgment.

I have said through the years, in many of the speeches that I have given to medical and lay groups, that every type of healing has cured someone, although no type has cured everyone. My training and experience have been eclectic and I have an open mind. But never have I encountered elsewhere or seen duplicated the wide range of therapies Cayce recommended. They included osteopathy, chiropractic, exercise, conventional medicine, the most sophisticated nutrition and diet, every known form of hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, and even surgery; and he used a bewildering variety of herbs, oils, lights, colors, and original appliances that he had invented.

Where did he get his knowledge of the value of so many different therapies for different individuals—for no two were ever alike? This was uncanny, for with all my knowledge and experience, I found it practically impossible to improve on his suggestions. I also found it hard to understand how a man could go to sleep and give as good or better advice than I was able to give in my waking state.

As men and women continued coming in with Cayce readings or directions, I became more and more interested in the source. How did he get my name? How did he know the type of treatments that we were giving and had the facilities to give? My curiosity continued as, without either of us planning it consciously, a two-way traffic was growing between the Reilly Physicians’ Service and Edgar Cayce at Virginia Beach.

One of my favorite patients was Clara Belle Walsh. A tall blonde of Wagnerian proportions and nearly six feet tall, Clara Belle was the heiress of a great old Kentucky family and was internationally famous as a hostess, a theater and music patron, and an intimate personal friend of England’s Queen Mary.

She sponsored many great performers and artists, and I particularly remember meeting Vincent Lopez, then unknown, in her suite at the Plaza Hotel, where she held court when in New York. One day she casually informed us in a matter-of-fact voice that Lopez was the reincarnation of (according to a Cayce life reading) Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo had been left-handed, which is why Vincent Lopez always conducted with his left hand.

Mrs. Walsh had one painful physical complaint. Her legs were elegantly slim, but the left knee was arthritic and had a spur. Occasionally the knee would hook up on the spur and cause swelling and excruciating pain. When this would happen, she would send for me, I would hasten to the Plaza Hotel, apply packs to reduce the swelling, and work to unlock the knee from the spur. This gave her immediate relief. Once I was out of town when her knee became hooked up for four or five days and developed a terrible inflammation. She had called in the doctor from the Plaza Hotel and he gave her drugs—but not even the strongest narcotic had any effect on her. She was in excruciating pain. When the Plaza’s doctor called in a specialist, he suggested opening the knee or, if necessary, amputating the leg at the knee.

When I came back to town, I found a sheaf of urgent messages from Clara Belle. I hurried to the Plaza and was told by the nurse that my patient was unconscious, under anesthesia, which they had given her while they tried manipulation. The nurse wouldn’t let me enter her room. I explained that I was quite familiar with Mrs. Walsh’s condition and had treated her many times in the past. During this time the anesthesia wore off and she began screaming with pain. As soon as she heard my voice, she demanded that I come to her. I treated her with packs, since manipulation at that point was impossible, and after I brought the inflammation down, I was able to give her relief. I had to see her three times a day for the next three days.

After this bout, Clara Belle was worried and a bit frightened, and she wrote to Edgar Cayce, hoping to find a more permanent cure: “I have seen doctors, some who wanted to operate and others who suggested serum treatment. So far H. J. Reilly of the Reilly Physicians’ Service has helped me more than any other doctor. I believe you know him as you have sent several people to him.”

But I didn’t know him—Edgar Cayce and I still had not met. Mrs. Walsh brought me her reading from Cayce, and the treatment he had recommended coincided with that which she was already receiving. This continuing evidence of our agreement on philosophy and therapy increased my desire and determination to meet this psychic genius from Virginia Beach, but life was crowded and time was scarce, and I had to wait longer for the great moment to happen.

My curiosity about Cayce might have been satisfied much earlier if I had known that two patrons of the Reilly Health Service, Mr. and Mrs. David Kahn, had been close friends and sponsors of Edgar Cayce for many years. David Kahn, in fact, was a boy in Lexington, Kentucky, when he first met the psychic.

David and Lucille Kahn’s enthusiasm and love for, and dedication to, Edgar Cayce and his healing work became a lifelong commitment for this wonderful couple that began in the early 1900s, when David first met Cayce, and continued, in partnership, after David and Lucille married in 1927.

In turn Cayce regarded them as members of his own family. In a letter to Case 1294, Cayce wrote: “We had a lovely visit with Lucille and David [Kahn], Just hope we did not wear out our welcome, but I think of—and feel toward them—as if they were my own people, know I couldn’t love them any better were they my own blood kin.”

—H.J.R.

David Kahn Meets Edgar Cayce

One day, stretched out on the massage table, David described his first encounter with Cayce, who had come to Lexington to help a paralyzed neighbor. David was selected to give the instructions that Cayce needed to receive as he went into a trance and to bring him out of it. David was only fifteen years old at that time, but he said the incident changed his life and influenced him to dedicate a good portion of his efforts to the Cayce work.

The neighbor, Mrs. William De Laney, was remarkably improved after Cayce diagnosed the source of her trouble as an old injury to the spine from a long-forgotten accident. Osteopathic treatment and a specially compounded medication were recommended and administered and Mrs. De Laney made a remarkable recovery. This “miracle” made a deep impression on the young, impressionable David.

Since hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the readings were given in the Kahn home, David had firsthand knowledge of the many cures brought about by Cayce’s unorthodox diagnostic technique and subsequent treatments. It must be remembered that at that time (1931-’32), when I was developing such a strong interest in Cayce, none of the bestselling books about the psychic and “sleeping prophet of Virginia Beach” had been written and the readings had not yet been coded and indexed to become such a rich storehouse of material for writers, students, scientists, and the faithful to study. Except for occasional newspaper stories, the chief source of information was word of mouth. In David Kahn, Cayce had a powerful clarion trumpeting to anyone who would stop and listen for five minutes the wonders of Cayce and his cures.

At the time I had David Kahn on the massage table, trying to relax him, he was a bustling and successful businessman, whose faith in Cayce’s diagnosis, treatment, prophecies, philosophy, and spirituality were the cornerstones of his life.

It did not take much encouragement to get David Kahn to tell me Cayce’s life story—a story told so well and so often that I shall not repeat it here. If, however, there are any among you who have not read Cayce’s biography, I refer you to David’s My Life with Edgar Cayce and Mary Ellen Carter’s My Years with Edgar Cayce: The Personal Story of Gladys Davis Turner, as well as to those written by two other friends and patients: Tom Sugrue and Jess Stearn.

I learned that Cayce had cured his wife, Gertrude, of tuberculosis by having her inhale brandy fumes from an old charred oak keg and by the administration of a certain narcotic given in unorthodox dosage; how he had saved his son Hugh Lynn’s eyes, burned by a photographer’s exploding flash powder, with poultices of tannic acid.

Biographies of Edgar Cayce

There Is a River by Thomas Sugrue (A.R.E. Press, 1997).

Edgar Cayce: An American Prophet by Sydney Kirkpatrick (Riverhead Books, 2001).

Edgar Cayce—The Sleeping Prophet by Jess Stearn (A.R.E. Press, 1997).

Hugh Lynn Cayce: About My Father’s Business by A. Robert Smith (The Donning Company, 1988).

A Prophet in His Own Country by Jess Stearn (Bantam Books, 1989).

My Life with Edgar Cayce by David Kahn and Will Oursler (Doubleday & Co., 1970).

The Lost Memoirs of Edgar Cayce: My Life as a Seer by A. Robert Smith (St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

My Years with Edgar Cayce: The Personal Story of Gladys Davis Turner by Mary Ellen Carter (Harper & Row, 1972).

The more I heard, the more anxious I was to meet the man who—without education or training—had helped thousands of people since he began giving physical readings in 1901. I envisioned Cayce as a person of commanding presence with piercing eyes, majestic gestures, and turban-draped head. But the Edgar Cayce I finally met in 1932 was a tall, slightly stooped man with wide eyes, an open face, an extremely soft-spoken manner. He looked like a minister of some quiet country church or like the Sunday school teacher he was all his life.

We met for lunch and as soon as we were seated at the table he took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and drew deeply on it, obviously inhaling. He must have caught my look of disapproval and surprise, for he said, a little apologetically, “It’s the natural leaf.” (The readings say that the natural leaf is less harmful than the combinations ordinarily put on the market in packaged tobacco.) He added, “Besides, I just can’t give up smoking.”

It was the only point of real difference between us. I do not approve of smoking.

Then we ordered the meal. I noticed he did not pay much attention to the rules of diet that he himself prescribed in the readings. Cayce confessed he was not a nutritional specialist. “In fact, I have no medical knowledge at all. I am just a channel for the information that comes through in the readings.”

—H.J.R.

Cayce’s Successful Treatments

Cayce treated incurable psoriasis successfully with osteopathic adjustments and a simple mixture of sulfur, cream of tartar, and Rochelle salts, plus liberal dosages of mullein and saffron teas and elm water. A mysterious disease sweeping the South—later identified as pellagra—was corrected with a diet of “turnip greens”; heart disease was rediagnosed as toxemia and miraculously disappeared when the subject was given a series of colonics, sweat baths, massage, and hydrotherapy; tumors were melted away on a diet of grapes and daily applications of grape poultices; castor oil packs healed broken bones, cured liver and gallbladder ailments, and soothed epileptics; peanut oil relieved arthritis; three almonds a day were given to prevent tumors and cancer; an apple diet for three days was a Cayce cleansing routine that cleared up more sins of the body than the Garden of Eden’s serpent whispered to Eve. Stony scleroderma softened and healed under the Cayce treatment. The stories of healing seemed really miracle cures.

Actually, he was being modest. Although he had never been formally trained, he had studied the readings for thirty-odd years, and by the time I met him he was no longer the uninformed country boy he had been in his youth, when he started using his remarkable gift of clairvoyance. He had learned and had come to know a great deal. So began a working partnership that has lasted now for forty-five years—fifteen wonderful years while Edgar Cayce lived on this plane—and another thirty years posthumously in my daily practice of natural, drugless therapy, from which thousands of people say they have benefited.

In November 1933, Edgar Cayce, his son Hugh Lynn, and secretary Gladys Davis (later to become Gladys Davis Turner) came to visit me at Sun Air Farm, a health farm I owned and operated at Oak Ridge, in northern New Jersey. It was the first of many such visits and, according to Hugh Lynn, his father looked forward to them and enjoyed taking long walks in the woods. Hugh Lynn Cayce reminisced about those days to my coauthor Mrs. Brod.

“Following the many sessions that Dad had, giving readings to a variety of people in New York while staying at the home of David and Lucille Kahn or occasionally some other member of the A.R.E., we would visit with Dr. Reilly at his Sun Air Farm. There were many such visits—sometimes Dad and Mother and Gladys Davis and myself; at other times whoever happened to be with him in New York at the time.

“The readings didn’t tire Dad so much as the talking with people after the readings. They insisted of course in describing in detail their symptoms, which Dad really didn’t want to hear about . . . He would be very tired and he enjoyed the opportunity of getting away . . . So the relationship between my father and Dr. Reilly developed.

“He particularly enjoyed the meals that Mrs. Reilly arranged. She was an excellent cook and so was her mother whom we all called Ama. They had been in the restaurant business . . . Father particularly enjoyed the biscuits, and I can still remember how big they were; they rose to prodigious heights and Dad used to enjoy them so much and cover them with gravy which was against everybody’s dietary recommendations—including Dad’s suggestions from the readings, Reilly’s rules of diet, and even Mrs. Reilly’s. Nevertheless all would enjoy the delicious meals that were served. Dad would praise Mrs. Reilly and Ama, knowing they would outdo themselves to top their latest culinary triumph, and I quickly caught on and would join him in fulsome praise of the household chefs.

“Dad also enjoyed talking with the people at Reilly’s who were there for treatment . . . They didn’t know he was a psychic and that suited him. Of course, in those days he wasn’t as famous as he later became and they would just talk to him about their problems and business, and he loved to sit around and talk with them . . . he enjoyed long walks in the woods with all kinds of people and he loved the birch and beech trees which surrounded the lake . . . I remember him talking with many different types of people that Reilly had up there. Some of them had problems with drinking, some of them were quite famous and sometimes they would be very surprised to learn that they had been talking to a psychic.”

As Hugh Lynn recalled, his father would be exhausted after spending two or three weeks in the city giving readings and then they would go to Sun Air Farm to rest. He sometimes would have a cold or chest congestion.

“Dad, like many psychics, had an amazing capacity for recovery,” he said. “He could be very sick one moment and completely recovered the next. He had the power to give himself self-suggestion in the unconscious state or to accept suggestion in that state from someone beside him who was told to give him a suggestion to increase circulation to a certain part of the body. I have seen this happen.

“In readings up there at Sun Air Farm he would include either at the beginning or the end an instruction that the circulation of the body should be increased to remove the congestion or cold. And I could watch the color in that particular part of the body involved in the suggestion change as the blood flowed. He was an excellent subject in terms of having his unconscious accept suggestions. He could change the whole nerve energy flow.”

But Cayce never changed his lifestyle to conform to his own suggestions about health. Hugh Lynn said that his father liked to eat certain foods that he had grown up with back in Kentucky. “He loved certain things that my mother would fix for him, for example, pork. He told everyone not to eat pork, but Dad enjoyed it and he particularly enjoyed pig’s feet. He enjoyed wild game, and he did recommend that. He drank coffee and he recommended this in moderation. He recommended smoking in moderation. Many people have raised questions about his smoking, and I suspect that during those early years when Dad was recommending moderation, tobacco was not being treated in the same way as it is now. You must remember, Dad grew up on a tobacco farm. He was a chain smoker.

Edgar Cayce at Sun Air Farm

Dad was a most unassuming person and I think this is one of the interesting facets of Dad’s relationship with Dr. Reilly—meeting and seeing the unusual people that Reilly had at the Reilly Health Service in Rockefeller Center in New York—and frequently at the farm. They were name personalities. He would come back after spending a whole day up there getting everything they offered in physiotherapy; baths, fume baths, massage—sun lamp—and then when he came home he was all excited about having seen some well-known entertainer or motion picture personality. There were always a great many people from the Broadway stage there. Dad was a great admirer of the theater and so enjoyed seeing some of these people from time to time.

—Hugh Lynn Cayce

“Yes, Dad ate what he pleased and occasionally he suffered for it. He would have irritation and stomach pains and congestion. But then he would go into a trance state and get up completely free of whatever he happened to have.

“Dad always insisted that if he couldn’t raise his vibration over a piece of meat that there was something wrong with him.”

Gladys’s Dream

It was at Sun Air Farm that Gladys Davis had a remarkable psychic experience. She saw a dream come true. Gladys had more or less systematically recorded her dreams since 1924—one year after she had become Cayce’s private secretary. As she tells it:

“In late January of 1934 Edgar Cayce, Hugh Lynn Cayce, and I were visitors for the weekend at the Ladd home on Long Island. They were both dear friends and Cayce followers. Late Sunday night Mrs. Ladd was telling me about her husband’s financial difficulties; his job was insecure, and they were about to lose their home. As I got into bed, I remember wishing I could do something to help the Ladd family. It turned awfully cold that night and I was very uncomfortable. Early the next morning I was awakened by this dream:

“A knock on the door. I said, ‘Come in.’ Mr. Ladd stood there with a coal scuttle in his hand and wearing a lumber jacket. (I had never seen him in anything but a business suit.) He came in and made a fire in a little coal stove which stood in the room, saying, ‘Now the room will soon be warm so you can get up.’”

Miss Davis related the dream to Mr. Cayce and Hugh Lynn on the train back to New York that morning, and she agreed with them when they attributed it to her discomfort. “Still, I remember remarking how strange it was that the room should be different from the one I was occupying, which had two radiators on opposite walls.”

In early April 1935 Miss Davis was a guest at Sun Air Farm. “On Sunday morning,” Gladys recalls, “when I said, ‘Come in,’ to a knock on the door, there stood Mr. Ladd in his lumber jacket, a coal bucket in his hand, and he said, ‘I thought you’d like a little fire in your stove to take the chill off while you get dressed.’ I noticed that the little room was exactly the same as I had dreamed it over a year before.”

In January of that year Ladd had become manager of Sun Air Farm.

It was on his first visit to Sun Air Farm that Cayce gave me my life reading, which began at 11:50 A.M. November 12, 1933, and ended at 12:40 P.M., a very long period. My wife and daughter were present, and so were my brother Pat and his wife. The reading is too long to reproduce here, but certain observations had a bearing upon my future work. Cayce noted that “from Jupiter there are those things that gather around the body; and individuals of affluence, position, power, place, in the affairs of all walks of life,” a good description of the Reilly clientele, especially those who would be patronizing the Reilly Health Service in Rockefeller Center (at that time just a hope).

The reading went on: “Hence those that are in that position of being influenced by wrath, or temper, or activities within selves that have brought about detrimental influences in their experience, will be drawn to the body’s association. Not those of mental derangements, but those of mental weaknesses in and through the weaknesses of the body-physical. These, we find, will be the greater attraction towards the entity, because of the entity’s ability to aid such relations, such associations ...” (438–1)

Cayce said that among my incarnations I had been a Roman gladiator in the arena and had served with Nero’s soldiers and that “the entity had the ability to be masterful in the games in the arena,” which possibly explains my interest from boyhood in athletics and conditioning. I had always been puzzled by my bent, since no one in the family before me had been particularly inclined to athletics or therapy: “Hence the games of the Romans, the baths of the Romans, dress of the Romans, are to the entity in the present . . . of particular interest; and much may be gained by the entity in the present by following those lines of thought pertaining to the particular activity of the entity in the past,” also a possible explanation of my early interest in hydrotherapy.

In Egypt, Cayce said, I kept the records on the arts of healing and those of music: “The entity then through these activities brought much to a disturbed people; and aided those that would be called physicians of the day in establishing places of retreat and conditions that might aid the individuals and groups in cleansing their bodies, purifying their minds, by the activities of the body, and by the classifying of the foods during the period.” (438-1)

Perhaps this explains my exceptional success with musicians right down to the date of this writing.

The reading dealt with two other incarnations: one as a member of the company of Eric the Red “when the entity was among those of that company who made the first attempts for the permanent settlement in the land known as Vineland on coasts about Rhode Island and portions of the land lying north of Massachusetts. Then the entity was strong in body, in mind and in the activities both on the land and the sea and was in name Osolo Din.”

Another incarnation dealt with a sojourn in Atlantis. There was much more about my character, emotions, spiritual life—all of it remarkably accurate and perceptive in describing me as I now am and the roots of my present characteristics in previous incarnations. In any case, the reading established beyond a question that I was predestined for the work of healing through physiotherapy and drugless therapy, and that I would be doing this work in many future lifetimes as I had in past lives.

In the question period I was able to ask about something that was giving me sleepless nights. I had been negotiating to get space for an enlarged Reilly Health Service Institute in Rockefeller Center, which was then under construction. David Kahn and a wealthy client who had worked closely with officials of RCA were helping me. My client had opened a line of credit for me, for I had not nearly enough money to finance the $125,000 necessary to set up such an establishment. However, we had run into snag after snag in dealing with the building’s sponsors and management.

Cayce said that among my incarnations I had been a Roman gladiator in the arena and had served with Nero’s soldiers and that “the entity had the ability to be masterful in the games in the arena,” which possibly explains my interest from boyhood in athletics and conditioning. I had always been puzzled by my bent, since no one in the family before me had been particularly inclined to athletics or therapy.—H.J.R.

At the time of my life reading I had been negotiating for over two years and I was very discouraged. In fact, I was ready to drop the whole thing. I put the question to Cayce: “Is it advisable to continue my efforts to secure an establishment in Radio City?” —H.J.R.

I have always been deeply grateful to Cayce and I tried to express that gratitude in concrete ways. If at any time a person had secured a reading in which the type of work that was to be done at my institute was beyond the means of the patient, I would gladly give them all the necessary treatments free of charge. This commitment I honored during the life of the institute. —H.J.R.

“Advisable to continue,” he replied. “As we find, this should culminate in the latter part of the coming year, when those influences from the efforts of others from without are attracted to the activities of the entity and bring better relationships.”

There were other words of guidance and reassurance. Encouraged by the reading, I persisted. Fourteen months after the reading—in December 1934—the lease was sent to me for signing. Everything I had been working for was incorporated in it. However, during the negotiations and plans for my establishment, I found that my space needs were even greater than originally anticipated. I needed another thousand square feet of space. Should I try to change the terms of the lease or let well enough alone?

With the confidence generated by the Cayce reading, I took the long chance and asked for the extra space. The Rockefellers okayed my request, making me a very happy man and again corroborating Edgar Cayce’s great gift of prophecy.

In the years since my friend’s passing I have tried to honor his memory by making full use of the many suggestions he gave for the body and mind. And I have insisted that anyone wishing to be treated by me become a member of the A.R.E. I do this not only because of my interest in supporting the organization but because the patient’s attitude is so important. Unless the patient is attuned mentally and spiritually, results can be very disappointing. Attitude is all-important in achieving success with Cayce treatments. The key word is attunement. Cayce and I shared a common viewpoint. We do not treat diseases—we treat, care for, and teach people. I think this quotation from one of his readings sums up this philosophy of healing:

... all strength, all healing of every nature is the changing of the vibrations from within—the attuning of the divine within the living tissue of a body to Creative Energies. This alone is healing. Whether it is accomplished by the use of drugs, the knife, or what not, it is the attuning of the atomic structure of the living cellular force to its spiritual heritage. (1967-1)

The Edgar Cayce Handbook for Health Through Drugless Therapy

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