Reading 254-107

TEXT OF READING 254-107

Text

Date: 9/17/1940 Sex: M ReadingID: 1245

This Psychic Reading given by Edgar Cayce at his home on Arctic Crescent, Virginia Beach, Va., this 17th day of September, 1940, in accordance with request made by the Manager of the Ass”n for Research & Enlightenment, Inc., Hugh Lynn Cayce.

[Edgar Cayce; Gertrude Cayce, Conductor; Gladys Davis, Steno. Hugh Lynn Cayce.]

Time of Reading 11:25 to 11:45 A. M. Eastern Standard Time.

1. GC: You will have before you the Ass’n for Research & Enlightenment, Inc., especially the Department of Publications. You will consider the work, plans and connections and advise us at this time in developing a program which will present the psychic work of Edgar Cayce in keeping with the ideals and purposes of the organization and make possible increasingly wider distribution of the information contained in the Association files. You will answer the questions, as I ask them:

2. EC: Yes, we have the work of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Incorporated; the ideals and purposes.

3. As to plans or ideas respecting publications, - these have been indicated again and again. It is first desirable, as has been outlined, that what is to be presented be prepared in a way and manner that may be in keeping with the presentation desired, - whether this be from special individuals or collective case studies, or from the varied forms of data which may be presented, or through individuals preparing papers, pamphlets, booklets, books, upon the various subjects. Then there would be the INVITING of the various groups, students, researchers or the like, to investigate the records that have been, or may be, made or compiled for use in a general way and manner.

4. Any or all of these are worthy of consideration, and must be handled according to the dictates, of course, of those who are chosen to carry on such phases of the information or data gathered.

5. Ready for questions.

6. (Q) Regarding the book, “There Is A River,” - is there any advice for Thomas Sugrue in connection with the outline being prepared for Henry Holt & Co.? (A) This will necessarily have to be rather in keeping with the ideas and purposes of the writer; else we may present one outline and another idea in the main.

7. (Q) In explaining reincarnation in the book, “There Is A River,” should the author Thomas Sugrue take special Readings in order to get a clear outline of the way in which this law works in its many phases? (A) It is not to be an explanation; it is to be the presenting of an idea that is in keeping with the facts OR FANCIES; but as conditions that are to be answered by those who think. Not as a fact, - as has been the first premise; it is rather an idea, and is it - or not - an ideal?

8. (Q) What historical and philosophical sources can be consulted for references which will give parallel or complementary interpretations of the law of reincarnation for use in this connection? (A) It may be reference from many of the writers of the East, or it may be in the questionings as to Scriptural references, or it may include all of these, as well as the masters or the fathers of the church, in the VARIOUS and sundry manners! Not as being proof, but rather as answering questions; and the question STILL - ever - to be answered by the individual; as should be the whole tone or text of such a book.

9. (Q) Regarding the preparation of pamphlets from information given in Readings, - it is proposed to have individuals prepare pamphlets based on information given through Readings on special subjects of general interest. These will be sold by direct mail, advertisements in occult magazines and lectures. After deducting actual expense of printing, the remaining income is to be divided equally between Association and author of pamphlet. Advertising costs, and decision of extent of advertising to be borne and determined by Association.

First: Dorothy Herzog of Nesdor Inc., 69 West 46th St., N.Y.C. Subject of Pamphlet, “Continuity of Life.” (A) (Interrupting) Best that all such be prepared first; then submitted to the information itself for due consideration.

10. (Q) Comment on outline suggested by Dorothy Herzog as section heading is read from outline presented by her, copy of which is in hand. Foreword - An Appreciation of Edgar Cayce - to be written by Herzog after interview with David E. Kahn - 2,400 words. (A) Very well.

11. (Q) Ch. I - Early life of Edgar Cayce, stressing communication experiences and followed by other later experiences of same nature.

(A) These may not be those as indicated by Kahn, however; if they are to be a part of the data.

12. (Q) Ch. II - Information from Readings, What Is Death? - 3,000 words. (A) The headings are very good, but what are the skeletons of the data presented?

13. (Q) Ch. III - Continuity of Life - Excerpts from Life Readings showing continuity of life - 3,000 words. (A) Very well if presented properly; ever as a question, not as a fact.

14. (Q) Are there other subjects for pamphlets which Herzog could handle more advantageously? (A) As indicated, there are MANY various subjects. We would only take one at a time. This would be the better for this individual in the present.

15. (Q) Questions by Dorothy Herzog: What is thought of our idea suggesting NESDOR, Inc. as the N.Y. distributors for the Ass’n’s literature? (A) This may best be determined by the Board of Trustees or Manager of the Association, rather than from here. For it must be a material consideration and not a spiritual or mental one.

16. (Q) What is thought of the idea of the Association holding lectures at NESDOR, Inc., either given by Dr. Enid Smith or others of the Ass’n? (A) No.

17. (Q) Is Dorothy Herzog’s thought of a pamphlet on Maya to follow the “Continuity of Life” pamphlet good? (A) This would necessitate more of the data. The SUBJECT is well, but as to how the subject would be handled is a different question.

18. (Q) Would it be good to follow the pamphlet on Maya with a booklet (longer than a pamphlet but not altogether book length) on Egypt that might be used as Volume II to Volume I of a booklet already written (I have the manuscript) entitled: “THE BOOK OF THE DEAD FOUND IN THE GRAVEYARD OF THE LIVING,” by KUKURON, Master from the East - told to Mahru Lawrence - “a work revealing Egypt via ancient - present - future documents, written and unwritten, but recorded in 7-Chapters of powerful word incursion into the inner beauties of Egypt.” (A) Very well.

You’ll need something to recognize the beauties of Egypt after a few months!

19. (Q) First pamphlet of a series on Atlantis, - by Dr. Enid Smith of 503 W. 121st St., N.Y.C. Considering information given through this channel on Atlantis, what should be the material presented in first pamphlet? (A) This should be rather that which has been indicated from the beginnings of the activities that may be paralleled, or information drawn from many of the other books in which Atlantis has been presented.

20. (Q) What approximate length would be most suitable? (A) About 300 to 400 pages.

21. (Q) Any suggestion as to title for first pamphlet? (A) This had best be written and then the title suggested.

22. (Q) Please give specifically what material should be included in first pamphlet? (A) The first of the Readings as to the spiritual actions and the developments of life through the Atlantean period, combined with the references to individuals’ experiences in Atlantis.

23. (Q) Are there other subjects for pamphlets that Dr. Smith could handle more advantageously than the Atlantean material? (A) The material regarding the Judean ministry could be better handled; or the coordinating between Egypt and India; or the Persian experience.

24. (Q) Which one would you suggest as the first pamphlet for Dr. Smith? (A) Judean ministry.

25. (Q) Should this be handled as entire history of the period, or record of the life or Jesus before the beginning of the ministry? (A) The entire ministry.

26. (Q) How should she handle this pamphlet? (A) Much as that handled in “The Nazarene,” except written from the Essene or JUDEAN angle, - or the masters of the East as presented by or through the Wise Men, rather than the Roman experience.

27. We are through for the present.

Copy to Hugh Lynn Cayce ” ” Ass’n file Extracts for Thomas Sugrue ” ” Dorothy Herzog ” ” Enid Smith

Reports

Reports & Follow-up

R1. 4/30 Booklet published by ANI, Inc.:

THE NEW TO-MORROW

APRIL, 1930

Published Quarterly By THE ASSOCIATION OF NATIONAL INVESTIGATORS, INC. At VIRGINIA BEACH, VA.

Price 25 cents Subscription $1.00

“THAT WE MAY MAKE MANIFEST OUR LOVE FOR GOD AND MAN”

THE NEW TO-MORROW

Published Quarterly by The Association of National Investigators, Inc.

For Its Members

PUBLICATION OFFICE - Virginia Beach, Va. EDITORIAL OFFICE - Lexington, Va.

THOMAS J. SUGRUE, Editor HUGH LYNN CAYCE, Managing Editor

Vol. I. APRIL, 1930 No. 2.

CONTENTS

Page HISTORICAL…2 MEMORIES - Hugh Lynn Cayce…2

PHILOSOPHICAL…7 MY CONCEPT OF GOD - PART TWO - Morton H. Blumenthal… 7 MAN’S RELATIONSHIP TO GOD - Edgar Cayce…16

FICTION…21 SUNRISE - Thomas J. Sugrue…21 A LONG, LONG TIME AGO…39

EDITORIAL…24

EDUCATIONAL…22 HOW TO OBTAIN AN EDUCATION - Franklin F. Bradley…22 AN EDUCATIONAL PROJECT - Hugh Lynn Cayce…36

NEWS AND VIEWS…41

THE LETTER BOX…43 Contents fully copyrighted, 1930, by Thomas J. Sugrue. All rights reserved. Second class mailing privilege applied for. Subscription rates 1.00 per year, included in membership dues. (Single copies 25 cents. Foreign subscriptions 1.50). Address all communications to Thomas J. Sugrue, Drawer 896, Lexington, Va.

THOUGHTS

Cold, dark winds that are wet with rain Come out of the west to bring me pain, And beat on my face as I turn and stare, Till the rain and tears are mingled there And I know not which is which.

Somebody plays a vagrant tune And twists it round a drunken moon, For two young lovers to disentwine And an old, old man to drown in wine, And I know not which is rich.

The seasons come and the seasons go, And our tears are shed on grass and snow; And all of our hearts are wrung with pain And twisted aright with song again And the perfume of a rose.

And that is the way that Life goes by, A laughing tear and a smiling sigh; And there is no end for there was no start, And the soul goes on when we stop the heart, And we know not where it goes.

T.J.S.

MEMORIES Hugh Lynn Cayce

In this paper I want to approach the subject of reincarnation from its oldest and most popular appeal. I realize that in so doing I am opening a discussion subject to all manner of attack from those persons who are practical-minded. Please remember that as yet I am not trying to prove anything to you. It is my purpose to strike some note of interest in your mind and prepare the way for the coming of the mass of scientifically collected and recorded data which will, in the future, make some dent on the most hardened skeptics. But first the ground must be prepared. You must begin to think and read on the subject. In the end it will be worth your while. In the end you will come to see that this theory is not a wild dream for the mystically inclined to go mad over, but a vital part of the system of laws and processes that governs your existence and work on this earth. You will come to understand the value of studying the real background that lies behind your environment and heredity. History will mean more to you. Finally you will come to know, through understanding this process, a little more of just what it is all about and just what part in the whole affair you are playing.

In the following paragraphs you are going to find an example of an experience similar to many you have had, time after time. Who of you has not come upon some unfamiliar scene, or watched some happening, that becomes vaguely but annoyingly familiar. Perhaps it has been some scene in a foreign country that you have previously never visited; perhaps it was some individual before unknown, or it even may have been some object that aroused a sense of the familiar. Psychology, of course, has worked out for such cases a very logical explanation, which in many cases is correct.

Let us take a simple case and follow this line of reasoning. You stroll into Mrs. Jones’ garden for the first time. Something about the arrangement of the flowers, the benches, the walkways and the fountain, remind you of something that you cannot quite remember. You are delighted with the very atmosphere that seems to hover about the spot. While you toss platitudes to Mrs. Jones, your mind is searching for something to establish a grasp upon, a connecting link with some past experience. The explanation is obvious. Your artistic sense of proportion is satisfied by the arrangement in the garden. In your trend of experiences, in reading or by observation, you have noticed some garden that lacked a point or two that are included in Mrs. Jones’ garden. Your mind tries to go back to bring out this image. Or perhaps you have imagined at some time the image of a garden you would like to be in, and you find in Mrs. Jones’ garden things arranged just as you would like them.

All this is very logical, and very interesting, but there is the interesting question of just where the first suggestion of such a garden came from. Just why are you not pleased by some garden that is more orderly planned, that is more beautiful or larger, etc.? Why should you imagine for your own pleasure, just this type of garden? Do you not see that there is something deeper, something back of this, that may influence your mental interest in this particular garden? Is it not possible that in some past experience you enjoyed a pleasant afternoon in just such a garden as Mrs. Jones’, and that this feeling has been carried over, and influences you?

This is, of course, a childish, simple illustration. Search about in your memory, and I believe you will find many that are far more interesting and explanatory. Memories are sometimes beautiful things, but how much more lovely they would be if we could recall at will experiences from all the pasts! Begin to develop your memory of the past. Write down your dreams, both night and day, and you will begin to open a new world of forgotten experiences, more thrilling than a best-seller, for you will be the hero or heroine.

The following may interest you. The first scene was taken from Life Readings, the second from actual experiences. Around the influence of the first on the second there has been builded a great friendship which has meant much to the individuals concerned. But let us first have the experiences, and then the explanation.

The day had come. The usual quiet of the monastery was disturbed by the low, suppressed murmur of those preparing for the ceremonies. Here and there through the arches moved black robed figures, the soft, padded tread of their sandals and the swish of their gowns blending with the faint sounds of life awakening in early spring. A lone bird attempted a few feeble notes; a dog, somewhere in the distance, barked a bit more joyously than usual. The wind blew gustily, but it was not cold.

In the shadow of one of the massive stone arches a young man stood. A ray of sun-light had crept through a crack above him, streaming in a long streak across the coarse gown he wore. His attention was caught. It was like the flash of a gleaming sword blade. It flashed on his hand. No, what had once been a hand. Only three fingers remained. Nervously he rubbed the scarred flesh against the cloth until it irritated him. The three fingers opened and closed convulsively. It had not been so long ago that this had held the thongs of a shield. It had not been so long ago that he, Olif Ericson, stood face to face, and fought and killed warriors whose hair was as fair as his own. It seemed a long step from the din of the battle-field to the quiet of this - this House of God, as they called it. For a moment he let his mind go back to her. She was beautiful. But only those things spiritual are really beautiful. She had smiled. He had loved. Her ways and manners were strange to him. He had been young. Now he felt old, so very old. On and on he had gone in a mad pursuit, losing his heart and head. Finally she had broken faith with him, laughed at him. There were others, many others. He could not understand. Life had seemed empty. Nothing was left. Then there had come the council of Father Oliof. He smiled as he thought of him. Not many years older than himself, yet he had brought to Olif the knowledge of the Christ. A peaceful quietness had filled him. A new horizon loomed before him. He had forgiven her. The church, the love of all it stood for, had come to take possession of his mind and body and soul. The period of noviceship had passed quickly. Today he was ready to take the final vows. He was glad. Regrets, one by one, had faded.

The sound of a voice brought him out of his revery. “Are you ready, Olif?”

He turned to find before him the tall figure of a brother of the order. It was he who was to lead him to the inner chapel. Olif nodded and smiled. There was the faintest sign of an answering smile. Together the two moved off along the corridor. Not a word passed between them. In the heart of one there was a great expectancy, an all-enveloping sense of the nearness of that which is God, in the heart of the other - who knows what the feeling might have been?

Before a massive door they paused, and Olif’s companion knocked upon it. During the few seconds they waited for the answering knock Olif’s attention centered on the carving on the door. The crude figures of knights in armor seemed alive. What curious things they wore. The inscription he could not read. What a change from a castle to an abode of monks. The answering knock interrupted his thoughts. The door opened and he was ushered into a dimly-lit room. On either side were dark figures that seemed to melt into the very blackness of the walls. Silence. Only the low, short breathing of the men was audible. At the far end of the room there was another door, which now stood open. Beyond it, kneeling before an altar, he saw the familiar figure of Father Oliof. A figure advanced from the side and spoke. Mechanically Olif repeated the words he had learned. In a daze he went through the ceremony. He crushed the desire to rush into the next room and throw himself before the altar. Finally it was over and and he was led on to the farther door. Slowly it closed behind him and he was alone with Father Oliof. The priest motioned him to kneel before the altar. As Olif felt the hand upon his head something swelled inside him that seemed about to tear him apart. His voice at first broke, as he repeated the vows, but gradually it grew stronger with each word. It was over. Then Father Oliof did a strange thing. He grasped him by the hand and smiled, ever so faintly.

It was late afternoon. Edward walked restlessly up and down the room. Everything was quiet in the fraternity house, though from the outside came an occasional break in the silence. The fire-bell had rung once, a rooster had crowed, and now and then a gust of wind would rustle a bunch of dead leaves that clung tenaciously to the limb of the scrubby little oak tree near the window.

He was the last one to go through. Damn, it was taking a long time to run off the final ceremonies of the initiation. Yes, the past week had been something of a gripe, but now it was over, and in a few more minutes he would be one of the the brothers. T. J. really had been nice to him. It would have been hard without him. He was head of the chapter. He would probably have a lot to do with the ceremony. Edward’s thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of a black-gowned figure. “Well ole man, it won’t be long. Lord, these robes are hot.” The figure adjusted the blindfold on Edward and piloted him out of the door and up the stairs.

Edward didn’t hear much of the exchange of ceremonial language on the way to the inner council room. The bandage was too tight and he was wondering just what part T. J. was going to play in the ceremony. Finally they came to a stand still before the council room door. The guide knocked. There came an answering knock and the door opened. Edward stumbled over the top step and remembered the shoe shine he had taken so much pains to get. He was led across the room and told to kneel. The bandage was removed from his eyes.

Before him sat T. J. The black hood was pulled up over his head. His face was a bit red. He was rather warm. Out of the corner of his eye Edward caught sight of a line of black robed figures. The faces of these fellows whom he knew so well looked strangely white in the glow of the candles. Some of them began to seem very, very natural in the surroundings, others became more and more out of place. Edward closed his eyes quickly and then opened them to look at T. J. again. How natural he looked! Mechanically Edward repeated the vows. He looked away. A strange uneasy feeling arose in him. Everything was becoming too natural. Something inside seemed to say that the vows he was repeating were incomplete. He wanted to add to them, but that, he thought, would be a shine. He went on repeating word after word. Soon it was over. Everyone was happy and relieved. Everyone shook hands, all using a different grip. But that didn’t matter. Finally he came to T. J. Edward grasped his hand. They both smiled. They both understood.

For the two boys who went through the foregoing experience the knowledge and understanding of the real background has become an inexhaustive spring of interest. They have come to know and understand one another better. They are able to live more in accord with another. The history of the period of the Danish invasion of England during the time of King Alfred has become personal history. The study of the influence of the church of the period almost daily opens new insights into little characteristics that they are now able to understand in one another. Friendship has become to these two boys not just a material thing, but a bond, a union of thoughts and ideals based on the results of a oneness of thought and action in the past for a cause. There has come a friendship that glories in the fact that it has grown throughout the ages, that it has conquered time and space, and that coming into this understanding it assures itself of external cooperation.

Who of you can say that this has not helped these boys? It has. Will it not be worth your while to try to make your own memories just as valuable?

MY CONCEPT OF GOD Part II Morton H. Blumenthal

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The first installment of this philosophical treatise by the author of “Heaven on Earth” appeared in the December issue of “The New To-morrow.” In the second part Mr. Blumenthal sums up and explains the ideas and discoveries set forth in the first half. He also gives a detailed explanation of the mind of the Creator and how it differs, and why it differs, from the human mind before birth and after death. Later Mr. Blumenthal will go into the history of the One Concept, and its pluralistic aspects in the earth-world. The entire text is from a lecture delivered at the Cayce Hospital, Virginia Beach, Va., September 22, 1929.]

The mind or soul of man has so evolved in time, that upon change into the physical form of man it becomes self aware of being the intellectual being it becomes. The mind or soul of the animal, (being that portion of the one essence that belongs to this earthly section, or materializing kind of process of this one life essence), has not previous to change into physical form, (prior to birth), sufficiently evolved as to become physically self aware of being the animal it becomes. The development of that part of the one essence called environment in the vegetable and mineral kingdom, has not previously sufficiently evolved to make manifest in physical form of rocks, trees, etc., that development of consciousness termed mind or soul - i.e., animation and sensation. In other words, the mineral and animal kingdoms manifest in physical form a development of that part of the one life essence called consciousness, that involves only a sectional operation of the whole universal life essence, whereas in man is made manifest in physical form not only a sectional representation of the operation of this one force or essence, but also in the mind or soul of man, the universal forces themselves. A representative operation of a section of life makes manifest in the physical form of the lower material and animal kingdom the universal forces, raised in the animal to the manifested and representative form of desires of hunger, fear, reproduction, and self preservation. Added to this are the universal forces themselves, (that compose the make-up of man’s soul), and in which combination of representative sectional forces the universal forces themselves make up the entity that in manifested physical form becomes man.

Every element in the whole force is present in this mind or soul of man, as in a drop of water there is present every element in a whole glass of water. In the mind or soul of the animal, and consciousness of the vegetable and mineral kingdom there is represented in physical form only elements of a sectional or earthly operation of this one life force.

That is the difference in the previous development of the mind or soul of man and that of the animal, and the consciousness of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms. Because of this difference, man is a physical form of soul that knows himself to be that which the soul, (made of this one spirit), becomes in materialized form - i.e., an intellectual, sensuous being. Likewise, because of this difference, the animal soul (likewise made up of this same elemental essence, but only a section of it), is NOT able to know himself to be the materialized formation this lower development of soul or mind becomes in physical form - i.e., two dimensional sensuous being, capable of perceptions, but not conceptions. Because of a still lower type of development of that part of this section of one life energy, (called in mind, soul or consciousness), the vegetable and mineral kingdom manifest a state of consciousness so low (inanimate, and not possessing a sensory system), that we cannot see it, as we may in animal and man. Thus when the spirit or life energy changes from its mineral, vegetable, or animal form states, this development of that part of the life energy called consciousness or mind remains un-self-conscious, and continues to act, to control the life essence, to make it automatically return to its materialized state. This subconscious or inner side of life, having developed the habit of moving in one direction, continues to move in that direction, exactly as is demonstrated by it, while it is in physical form. The subconscious mind of the animal may be acted upon by man so as to make it operate along unusual lines, as for example, a dog trained to walk on his hind legs. Likewise this lower development of mind, in its elemental state, may be acted upon by a higher developed elemental mind, to give the lower kind of direction. Once this direction is given, the spirit with its portion called mind must continue to do what its first impetus directed it to do. Once we learn to swim, we always are able subconsciously to perform the swimming act. A dog, once able to swim, will automatically swim whenever he gets into water. Likewise in dematerialized state or elemental state the creative energy in lower developed form, given direction by a higher development of that portion of the creative energy called mind - (i.e., that which we have described as the Creator’s mind), will continue to automatically follow the direction of this original impetus, and keep automatically moving in this direction. Thus, the creative energy once moving into materialized state will continue to move in this direction, first to become the mineral kingdom, then the vegetable, then, as form and consciousness is evolved, into the lower animal, and finally into the higher animal kingdom. This process is an ever continuous, perpetual process, exactly as is the process or change of all materialized forms constantly going on, back into the elemental state again, in which all matter is conserved. But what is this higher kind of elemental mind that works on a lower or sectional portion of the one whole essence, to make it sectionally operate, to become manifested materialized formations of this physical world? We have already described this mind as that belonging to the Creator, to which every such universally and highly developed mind in the physical form of man is heir.

Upon change of mind from its physical form to elemental state (at death), it achieves an elemental kind of viewpoint (higher than finite three dimensional kind), and in the case of the development of mind or soul manifesting in man, it becomes not only aware (as does the animal mind) of life not in physical but in elemental form, but also becomes self-aware (as the animal mind does not), of self being this one essence that is in substance everything that life is in every and any form. Such is the fourth dimensional viewpoint of mind after changing from its physical form of intellect back to the elemental state of the controlling part of the one life energy.

Such a mind would operate, not as mind operates in three dimensional physical form, but as it operates in fourth, and higher dimensional, elemental states. Such a mind, which is the kind man becomes self aware of possessing after death, would cognize chairs, tables, trees, and all things that occupy space, and space itself, to be but projected formations of one spirit energy that composes the substance of these forms, as water composes the substance of those projections called waves. Such a mind would know itself to be this substance, and be capable of acting UPON it, to create of it different formations, which would result in different forms, both as regards shape and states of consciousness. Thus, if not blocked while in physical form, the mind or soul of man changes at death to become of the fourth, higher dimensional elemental kind that this life essence possesses in its elemental state, and also becomes self aware of being that. In other words, man changes from being the Created, and knowing himself to be that, to the Creator, and becomes aware of himself being that.

Being self conscious from a fourth dimensional viewpoint of being that one life essence or creative energy that composes the substance of all space and things in space, and which under the controlling influence of that part of the one element called mind, projects itself, one form of which is the atomic form of this world. Such a being would see chairs, tables, trees - all objects and the space between objects, as external surface and projected formations of this one internal essence, spirit, creative energy, etc., that he now finds himself and all reality, or life, to be.

Such a being, self conscious of life and self from a higher than physical three dimensional viewpoint, (i.e., from a fourth or higher dimensional viewpoint), would be able to break self away from the automatic operation of this creative energy’s sectional operation to change into materialized formation. The mind or soul of the animal returning to elemental state, continues to act automatically to transform again into materialized state, but the mind or soul of man, also returning (as it does at death), to elemental state, is not subject to automatic activity of the life essence, but rather, self conscious of self and all being this essence, may use his volition as to just what he, in elemental state, will do with himself. Whereas the force with its mind portion automatically returns to materialized form in the case of the animal, in the case of man the mind portion is so universally evolved as to permit it to voluntarily choose whether it will become that which this one force operates to become in the Martian section, Mercurian section, or any other section, terrestrial or celestial, that this one force is in creative operation to form. Man alone breaks the chain of automatism evidenced in the operation of this force to form and constantly reform into the lower material kingdoms. The mind of man is, in its make-up and spiritual development, the kind of mind possessed by life in its elemental and universal state. That is, it is the Creator’s mind in materialized form - i.e., the highest kind of CREATED mind. The mind of the soul of man, or the portion of the one creative energy that has universally developed, is in materialized form that potential or subconscious side of man’s mind (subconscious or subjective), that is doing the manifesting and developing, and that has covered itself with a materialized manifested form of mind, (such as the animal possesses) in order that from a three dimensional viewpoint it may store knowledge of itself being a separate thing from the rest of life - i.e., of developing an individuality. It likewise used the physical form to make manifest its previous universal development in its ability to know itself to be, and also its ability to make manifest a previously stored development in the form of a personality and character, inherited from previous earthly experiences. Thus, we have musicians born to non-musical parentage, and genius of all kinds born to parentage in which no trace of the individual’s particular genius is traceable. Likewise, we each of us have in our make-up qualities, tendencies, likes, dislikes, individual to ourselves alone, that are additional characteristics in our nature to those imposed upon us by our parents, i.e., are those inherited and stored in the subconscious mind, which is the seat of the memory, and which stores knowledge through that put into it by creations of our imagination, whether the latter is creating three dimensional ideas while in the physical form of this world, or fourth and higher dimensional ideas while in the more elemental forms of other worlds.

The Creator’s kind of mind, then, in physical form, is the universal subconscious side of man’s mind, which operating in conjunction with the physical form-mind, (animal kind) becomes in materialized state the mind of the Created - i.e., of intellectual, self conscious, three dimensional man. On the other hand, the mind of the Creator would be that side of man’s mind called the universal subconscious, not operating in conjunction with the limited conscious development of mind, (which latter, in manifested physical form becomes the animal kind of mind), which the universally evolved subconscious side of man’s mind, not joined to the animal’s mind and changed into physical form, (prior to the birth and after death), would cognize from the viewpoint of life in its elemental and not materialized state - i.e., from a fourth and higher dimensional viewpoint. The latter would not see life through the physical mask that makes self appear to be separated from an outside world, but would cognize the one element called life, ELAN VITAL, creative energy, or God; and to the extent of developed mental power or will, would be able to know self to be an individuality in and as part of this one, and capable of using it to express its higher dimensional ideas, (that its higher dimensional end is capable of forming) and to form away, or outside of its individual self, creations or formations of this one that it chooses to create. By so using it, newly formed states of matter and consciousness could be built, just as we operate upon it in its materialized form from our physical mind’s viewpoint to effect newly created formations - i.e., as we build our houses, chairs, etc.; so we subconsciously, from a fourth dimensional viewpoint, (after death), may work with the very essence of life, to reproduce of it created formations of a kind representative of our fourth dimensional self.

Bearing in mind the difference between the fourth dimensional viewpoint of mind in the elemental state (i.e., the dematerialized subconscious state of the Creator’s mind), and the oneness of life to the mind of such a being, and the three dimensional viewpoint of mind in materialized form, (in the case of man not only an animal subconscious changed to materialized form, but also a universally evolved subconscious kind of mind, by virtue of which addition a combination is effected that in materialized form becomes man - bearing in mind, we say, the difference between the fourth and higher dimensional self-conscious viewpoint of mind of the elemental life essence in its universal totality, and the more limited three dimensional viewpoint of this same mind changed to add itself to a sectional formation of mind; remembering the difference between the Creator’s mind with its infinite viewpoint and the mind of the Created with its finite viewpoint, yet the oneness of both kinds of mind, we are prepared to form some intelligent concept of God.

The mind of God embraces the one total life energy with its universally evolved portion called mind, in all of its forms, all of its stages of development, and all of its self-conscious individual viewpoints, including ourselves; yet, while in physical form we possess not the Creator’s kind of mind, but rather the kind that mind becomes in physically created form. God, then, as distinguished from ourselves, is this one elemental life essence, spirit, creative energy, ELAN VITAL, or whatever we may call it, with its portion called mind, which latter includes not only our created form of mind, or three dimensional self conscious viewpoints, but also in addition, higher than physical, three dimensional, self conscious viewpoints; fourth and higher dimensional, developed and developing self conscious viewpoints [900-16, Par. 7-A comment in re MIND used in 9/52 SL].

We are all heirs to this higher state, yet what we will be able to do with life and ourselves in this changed higher state will depend on what we learn to do with it in its physical form from our lower three dimensional viewpoint in this material form or section of life’s process called a material world. Without the addition of our universally evolved subconscious, or soul selves, life in materialized form becomes the two dimensional, unselfconscious animal, or in lesser developed spiritual state, the one dimensional lower animal, or in still lower developed state the chaotic and disbanded state of consciousness made manifest in materialized formations of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms.

This unknowable substance of space, then, must be that which combines together the things that occupy space, and which is continuous with the things that occupy space, or one with them, and therefore, is one-fourth dimensional reality, or is one reality measurable in terms of four dimensions, rather than being split up into different three dimensional realities. Our mind so operates as to enable us to obtain knowledge of realities measurable in terms of three dimensions only, and therefore, that which physical life is in cause, or that one four dimensional substance that is doing the moving or vibrating to become space, and things that occupy space, eludes our sensuous observation. No magnifying glass or instrument may change the operations of our mind so as to enable us to experience and conceive four dimensionally instead of three dimensionally, and therefore, no instrument or magnifying glass may enable us to obtain knowledge of this life essence in its elemental state. That is, by virtue of its operation, it causes itself to become changed into three dimensional forms, (we, ourselves), and in which still lower dimensional physical form it becomes observable to our physical mind. The latter form of this unknowable essence is called the Mineral Kingdom, Vegetable Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and our own selves, the Kingdom of Man. We then, ourselves, and the world outside of ourselves, are the result of the process of some, to us unknowable and inconceivable element, which element is the creative or causation side of ourselves, and of our world, and in which causation side of life the mind operates from a fourth and higher dimensional viewpoint instead of three dimensionally, as it does in the physical form of man, or two dimensionally in the physical form of the animal, or one dimensionally in the physical form of lower animal, or in a still lesser development in the consciousness of the vegetable and mineral kingdom.

We, who know ourselves to be it from a three dimensional viewpoint, are this life element in manifested materialized form, and our viewpoint and physical state of being is directly continuous with the fourth and higher dimensional viewpoints possessed by mind in its de-materialized state, or in its manifested elemental state - i.e., Creator’s kind of mind we potentially and subconsciously now possess, and from the higher viewpoint of which we lived prior to change into physical form, or prior to birth, and from which viewpoint we will again live, after change back into our own life’s elemental state - i.e., at death.

In other words, in whatever state life exists, in its essence or causation side, it is that state of consciousness that governs the process of creating - i.e., that is the Creator. In this one essence are incorporated infinite, evolving, growing, progressive self conscious viewpoints, and this one essence in its infinite changed formations, and all its growing and ever expanding self conscious viewpoints, or individualities, (of which we each of us in physical form is one), this one, in substance unchangeable quality, that runs through all, is all in any and all forms and states, with all its pluralistic, evolutionary developments and conditions already described, is what we call God - the One Omnipotent, Infinite God or Father.

By understanding our introspective subconscious experiences, that are of a fourth dimensional nature, we may come to better understand, even from our physical three dimensional sensuous viewpoint, what this one creative energy, life essence, ELAN VITAL, spirit, or God is - i.e., what it must be, (not as space and things, or worlds occupying space, as it is to our three dimensional operation of mind), but what it must be to the fourth and higher dimensional side of mind, which higher dimensional beings from their higher dimensional viewpoints cognize things, space, worlds, planets, themselves and all, to be but different sustained formations of, and by this One God. This higher or more universal kind of being with its higher than three dimensional viewpoint, we ourselves internally and potentially are, and may even while in physical form, understand ourselves to be that, and also understand ourselves, and life in total to be, what that higher dimensional viewpoint cognizes and knows self and life to be. We may understand that we are a self conscious viewpoint possessed by the One God - are that which God is, capable of doing that which God does; yet God, the Father, is not only our individual self, but incorporates each and every progressive individual self into one complete whole [900-16, Par. 7-A comment in re MIND used in 9/52 SL].

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

In its elemental or causation state life is One. We each of us, like all other forms, is it. We know ourselves to be it, and our knowledge of it and ourselves depends upon the viewpoint, in the form we take, whether the sensuous lower dimensional viewpoint of life that consciousness takes in physical form of this world, or the more elemental and higher dimensional viewpoint life takes in some other form of some other world. This One Life Essence or Element that constitutes the substance of all forms, (of all space and things in space), or is what creation is in elemental cause, with its different stages of mind development, including our own and other higher self conscious developing individualities, constitutes the One, Total, All-Inclusive Element called God. The difference between the mind of the Creator and that of man is a difference in the dimensional viewpoint and manifested form mind takes on in materialized form of life, and that higher dimensional viewpoint and more elemental state of mind possessed by life when not in manifested materialized form - i.e., in other more elemental formations than that of this material world. Man is this One life essence with its controlling element called mind, which in physical form (at birth) becomes the physical body of man, with a controlling form of mind called intellect, knowing himself to be that. To man the higher and more powerful state of being, (that exists in life’s higher or other than materialized forms), appears as the causation or creative side of life, and he worships this state of being as the Creator, or God. This is because the higher dimensional viewpoint of life in its elemental state involves a controlling mind of the forces that are made to project into manifested physical form. Yet man is this life element with its higher kind of mind, changed (at birth) into lower materialized form, and changed again, (at death), back into the elemental state, to view life from a process of mind possessed by this life essence in its elemental, (rather than manifested material form) state, and from a higher than sensuous three dimensional viewpoint; knowing himself, from more elemental fourth, fifth, sixth, etc., to infinite viewpoints, to be this elemental One, this God. This, despite the fact that God in total is not that which any one individual self conscious viewpoint knows self to be, but is the One Element called Life, Creative Energy, Spirit, etc., that includes within itself each and every evolving and growing self conscious individuality; whether ourselves in physical form, other selves in other forms that this one becomes in more elemental states, or those selves that have have reached the infinite viewpoint to be self aware of life in its original primal state as well as all its projected forms, and projecting forms ever in process of being affected or created. The latter high state of conscious we describe as “Son of God,” and this the Master Jesus manifested in the physical form of this world. We, however, are each of us growing step by step towards this highest state of being of consciousness. Thus the One Father embraces us all.

Finally the control we have over this life element, and self consciousness we possess of being this one element, when we change from physical form to life in its more elemental oneness, (when a physical body and brain no longer divides self from an outside world, but a fourth dimensional viewpoint enables us to know life only in its oneness), the individuality and control we maintain in and over this one when we change at death to self consciously become it in its more elemental state, depends upon the power of will we develop to contrive it in its manifested form, while we remain in its materialized form of man depends upon our control over it in its lowest materialized form of the mineral and vegetable kingdoms, (including our own bodies), over it in its higher materialized form of consciousness made manifest in the animal - i.e., of our control over our sensations and desires, and of our inner potential development to become able to express in terms of creations outside of ourselves, our higher emotions; and this whether such self expression or creative outside projection is in terms of business, finance, law, medicine, art, science, education, home, social world or whatnot.

If we become dominated by physical environment our self conscious individuality becomes weakened, and we, upon change into the elemental state, are weak in our control over the life oneness that we become dimly self aware of being, and becomes lost in it, as though wandering about in a chaotic fog. On the other hand if we obtain self control, self mastery, in our environment of the home, business, social world, etc., (i.e. overcome its world), then we become not dimly self conscious of being the one from a fourth dimensional viewpoint, but powerfully self conscious of being it, and of being able to use it to express our higher dimensional selves, to mentally know ourselves to be it and to push out upon it to create of it; to express to our fourth dimensional ideas and retained ideals what we then think and want it to become. We are mentally weak and thus dimly self conscious, or mentally strong and thus powerfully self conscious, of our individual existence in this One.

Your ability to use this One to create with us a projected expression of yourself, is according to the development of mental power or weakness while in the physical form of man, in which form a physical body and mind automatically divides life into our inner selves and an outside world, and thus allows us mentally to develop the power to do this for our mental selves when not in physical form. If we do not take advantage of this opportunity, the fourth dimensional viewpoint of the elemental state of life we assume after death does not afford any further opportunity for this particular development, for in physical form alone are we enabled to obtain that mental development that enables us to know ourselves to individually be the elemental One; to use it to express our individuality, to be the controlling factor in its creative operation, and know ourselves to be that which God is and ourselves be, from the higher dimensional viewpoint, brilliantly self aware of being that.

MAN’S RELATIONSHIP TO GOD Edgar Cayce

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a transcript of one of Mr. Cayce’s lectures [See 6/58 Searchlight - 2nd article], delivered at the Cayce Hospital, Virginia Beach, Va.]

Please understand that I am not trying to explain your relationship to God. I am only hoping that I will be able to tell you something that will stimulate you to thought.

First it is necessary that we review, as we might say, man’s experience in the earth’s plane - so far as we have a history of it. The broadest understanding that we can get, I think, is from the Scripture itself. I don’t mean that I am going to preach any special theology or give you an idea of what I believe in the theology of the day, or the theology of the past.

It doesn’t matter as to what we may claim we believe. What is really worth while is what does that which we believe make in our lives? What change, what difference, does a belief make that may come into your life? That is the thing people are really interested in. The world does not care whether you believe the whale swallowed Jonah, or whether Noah was in the Ark a whole year or only forty days. What is an individual’s belief in those things that have come into his life that have changed his attitude toward his fellow man, or towards his God? This is important.

If we take the history given us in the Bible, we would begin with the first individual that we find had a concept of his relation to God. Who would this first man be? Not Adam. No, for Adam’s concept at first was his relationship to his fellow man, or his relationship to his mate - if we take it just as an individual. It is the seventh from Adam that we find had a different concept entirely. “Now Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.” He was considered by the people of that day as a man with an individuality. First it was known as an individuality or a personality, if we may put it in those terms. It was the personality as manifested in the relationship of one individual to another individual. Enoch, we find, was one who began to consider his relationship to his Creator - call Him by what you will or may - whether the God of the first cause, the God of nature, or the God of the divine. Then we find there is a different concept that begins to move among the people. They are moved in a different way and manner. It changed that man’s life.

The next man we find that comes down through history as one who had a definite religious experience is Noah. Now, Noah was a just man. He was a perfect man in his day and generation, but it changed his attitude. Not only did it change the man’s attitude as to his relationship to what he worshipped as his God, but as to his relationship to individuals round about him, and it brought a different activity in his life. That is the kind of thing that we are trying to get at; to see how these things change about.

Abraham is the next. His experience brought to the world a great change. He was called out to make of his seed and of his generation a peculiar people, a separate and distinct nation. He was an elderly man without an offspring, yet God spoke to him and made him a great promise. “Now separate yourself from among these people and go out to a strange land which I will give to your seed forever as a heritage. I will make of you a peculiar people, and through your seed will all the nations of the earth be blessed.” Abraham harkened to that call.

In this very matter there lies for most of us a great fault. Have any of us so lived that we were called to do a special thing? Have any of us so lived that we may be guided by that something from within that will direct us if we would but stop; to harken to “the Voice?” We notice that when this call came to Abraham he heard the call and knew it was not in him that the people were to be blessed, but in the way that he was to act towards his brethren. He was to separate himself from these for a peculiar service.

This idea has grown to seed. This is held against those very people. They separated themselves from others as a chosen people of God. It was to make a nation that Abraham was called, and through Abraham should ALL nations be blessed. Through the acts of this individual, through his understanding and response to the call, were all people to find happiness. But when these people begin to make this promise an individual thing, that “I can sin because I am chosen,” they begin to fall by the way.

Next we come to Jacob. When the day came for Jacob to be taken to his fathers he called about him his twelve sons and explained to each his faults and virtues. He showed them what each, through his concept of his relationship to Jehovah, had builded, was building, and that to which it would come in their lives. All that he told them came to pass.

The next in line is Moses, who is raised up to be a deliverer of his people. Abraham had been told that his seed would be in bondage for four hundred years, and then there would be raised up one who would lead them back to this promised land which he himself was not allowed, to possess, but which would become the land of his people, for He would remain to them a God if they would remain to Him a people. Then, this is given in a way and manner that it works from both sides. It isn’t that one should set self up and say, it is thus and so, and cannot be any other way - for we find anything may be changed by the will of an individual. There is something that man must do, as well as something that the Creator must do. There is a purpose in life. It is not a haphazard thing.

Now we come down to the days when the Jews went out to the promised land. As they wandered through the wilderness they began to think about their own personal relationship to God. They forgot all the hardships through which they had passed in Egypt. Human nature has always been, and will always be - just the same. As we pass through life we feel that the present is about the hardest time we have ever had, but after a few years have passed we begin to look back on those things, only seeing the things that have come out of this. Why? Why does this happen? There is a cause. When the people murmured, and when they asked that they might have a physical God, that they might see something that was tangible, they cried to Moses. You speak of the spirit and you are able to go up on the mountain and speak with God. You are able to go up on the mountain and bring us wonderful messages, but we don’t see Him, we don’t hear Him. We hear only those things that you come back and tell us. We have seen the pillow [pillar] of fire by night and the cloud by day but these have become every day matters. We expect these. Now we want to do things that other people do. We want a God like they have.

They had forgotten they were called out to be a separate and distinct nation. They had forgotten the call that had come to their forefathers and the heritage that they were about to claim.

Throughout all of this Moses maintained his faith in, and upheld, the God he had come to know through personal experiences. He had heard the call from within. God to him had become a personal God. For the people who fought among themselves at the foot of the mountains God was still the God of war, the God with the big stick who beat off their enemies but would turn on them if they went too far.

Cannot we get this idea? God is a personal God. He is not a God of war or a God of plenty nor even a God of an individual. He is a God of all. In all things and our heritage is in Him. We may illustrate this. Just as the earthly parent feels in respect to his own offspring, so may we in our own selves conceive of SOMETHING that God may feel, must feel, about his children, His peoples here in this world.

It is His purpose that we make ourselves a channel through which His spirit may manifest. He would use us. You may say, well I don’t want to be used. I heard a lady say this about her little eight or nine months old boy, “I know his father wants him to become a great artist, but I don’t want him to do anything that may be called the work of genius because he will have to suffer physically.” She might just as well have said, “I do not want him to give up the desire of the flesh for a spiritual life.” To my mind that is a sad condition. What has been the experience of the peoples of this world when they have forgotten that there is a purpose in their passing through this experience in this material plane? That purpose is to make their wills one with the Creator. Let us prepare to be used as a channel that He may manifest through us. Write that down. Get it. It isn’t that you are to be bossed over by someone else, for there is nothing in the world that we can do for God. What we do we do for the other fellow, for in so doing we become one with the will of the Father. He has given us control of the physical world that we may use it for helping our fellow man. We may be the channel through which the other fellow, less fortunate than ourselves, may be aided in whatever is needed for him to gain a better conception of his relation to his God.

It would be well if we could remember the decision of the great Jewish leader who said, “Others may do as they may, but for me and my house, we will worship the living God.” Daily, we are confronted with problems that require just such a definite stand. Let us remember His promise and be strong.

We may now trace the history of the Jews on down to the time when the first king was chosen. Saul was raised up to be their king and leader yet he failed to understand that the time had come when the people had developed to the point where God did not desire a sacrifice of animals, but of individuals, to His cause. David was the next in line and despite the fact that he did many things that we today call sins we may learn many lessons from his attitude toward his God. Saul tried many times to kill him yet always David said, “It is not meet that I should raise mine hand against an anointed of the Lord.” It is not right that any one individual should raise his voice against another individual who is doing his service in the manner he feels God has spoken to him. God has never called an individual to lord it over his brother, but always to become the servant of his brother.

Finally there comes the last rise to power. The Jewish nation becomes under King Solomon, David’s son, one of the greatest of the time. After the beautiful temple has been builded and prosperity comes to the nation the people begin to forget their relation to God, and led by the king they turn to the worship of the physical pleasures of the world. Their fall is near. The period of the prophets follows. Individuals arise who have a vision of what the relationship to God should be, but the people will not listen to them, and the Jews are torn apart as a nation, and scattered to the four winds.

The question has come down to every age, to every individual: What is your relationship to your God? It came to Enoch, to Noah, to Abraham, to Isaac, to Moses, to Joshua, to Saul, to David, to Solomon and it comes just the same to you today. What is your relation to your God? Remember that He is the God of the Living, not of the Dead. Remember that in serving Him you must serve your fellow man, that you must become a channel through which God may work His divine will here on earth. When the burdens become hard to bear and you feel yourself beginning to slip away from the path you know is right, draw nearer to your God and He will draw nearer to you. As a child will come and sit at the feet of its parents, seeking their guidance and advice, asking their help, just so we must approach through prayer the God who is our Father and Creator.

First to know God we must believe that He is. We must seek to find His face. “Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Now in coming to know Him, is it not evident that as we consider and help our fellow man so do we carry out God’s work. Our relationship to our God then becomes our relationship to our brother. There is nothing that we can do for God, but there is much that we can do for His Children, His created creatures, and our brothers. As we go about in our every-day work let us remember to lend a helping hand wherever we may, and know that in so doing we are fulfilling the Will of the Creator and coming ever nearer to our God.

SUNRISE Thomas Sugrue Parker walked into a world gray with the expectation of dawn. Mist on the fields was slowly overcoming inertia and migrating to nothingness. The air was chill, and he shivered, ever so slightly. Mustn’t do that, he thought. He walked a few steps farther, and waited for his escort. One of the soldiers was closing the door. Another was cursing softly because it was cold. Parker looked at him and sneered. He wondered whether the paleness of his face was noticeable, and whether they knew he had not touched the breakfast they brought him. Was he acting as he should? He had never seen a man prepare to die, and he was not sure of the proper decorum. He wondered if he was brave. Someone had said that a brave man is one who does his duty though afraid while he is doing it. He was that way. Only this was hardly a duty, except the bravery part. Why was it his duty, and why did it frighten him so? He didn’t know. It seemed quite useless now.

The soldier finished bolting the door, and they began marching. Parker kept step with them mechanically. He wondered why he was afraid, and why he was afraid to show his fear. Did it make any difference, now that he was going to die, and there was no one there to appreciate his courage? If only someone was there to see it. An audience would help, for then he would surely not weaken. He remembered his fight against Princeton, when his ribs were broken, and blood was clogging his throat, and they called his signal again and again. Eighty thousand people watched him then, and it had seemed easy. He remembered the time he fought the school bully, because the bully had whipped his kid brother. Only Janet and the beaten Jimmy watched him then, but that was enough. He loved Janet, wanted to live for her, and he loved Jimmy, and would like to live for him. Maybe Jimmy would marry Janet now. He hoped so. Jimmy, who worshipped him for his protection, and cried when he went away. Janet, who loved him, and bruised his lips with her kisses when he went to say goodbye.

But there was no one. No one but the German lieutenant and his firing squad. They were gross people, unimaginative and egotistical. They were tired of war now, and wanted to go home. That was why they looked at him so sullenly. He was helping to keep them away from home. He smiled slightly. He would not detain them much longer.

But there were others who would. And they were telling their jokes in blood, and laughing to hide their fear. But he couldn’t think of them. They were alive, and had a chance, and he was going to die.

The escort stopped, and he walked alone. Why was his body afraid? In his mind he had reasoned it a thousand times, and was content to go. But each time the image came to him clearly a shock struck him. He could feel one coming now.

Like waves they were, sweeping over him, paralyzing and nauseating the body. The brain was numbed, and only a sickness and weakness could be felt. He could not eat, or smoke, or pray, or do anything, and all because he was going to die, a thing he had prayed for often, and looked for eagerly. No, he was not afraid. But his nerves had gotten away from him. They sensed the physical danger, and trembled in fear. Why couldn’t his body let him alone? He was prepared to die, and it was playing the baby. It had always been troublesome. When he wanted to study and dream, it wanted to play football. When he wanted to roam and tramp and adventure, it wanted to love and stay at home. And now, when he wanted to die, it was afraid.

There was nothing to be afraid of, and besides it wouldn’t do any good. They were going to shoot him anyway. He didn’t believe in a Hell or Heaven of course, though he did think there was some sort of hereafter. A place where one could rest, or go to work again. Anyhow, it couldn’t be worse than this life, though it might be longer.

He stopped before the wall and turned around. The men were fussing with their guns. The lieutenant was smoking a cigarette. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and looked inquiringly at Parker. Parker frowned slightly and shook his head. The lieutenant bowed apologetically and put the handkerchief away. Parker was annoyed. Now they would expect him to keep his eyes open.

Well, it was damned near over. All but the shouting. He looked at the timid dawn, just rising, and frowned again. He had satisfied himself of everything, and now another thought arose to worry him.

Jimmy might take care of Janet, and the Devil would take care of his soul, but who would take care of his fame? Of course his name would always live at school, and sports writers would speak of him reminiscently in superlative terms, but who would know the story of his death, and write it? The thought worried him, and he frowned more deeply. The clicking of gun breeches brought him back to reality. They were getting ready to fire. He was going to die.

Die - Die - Die - Die - Die -

WHY?

He didn’t know. Oftentimes he had wished to die, because he was tired, or unhappy. But now he was neither tired nor unhappy, and he was going to die anyhow. And he didn’t know why.

A lieutenant raised his hand. The men aimed.

A panic seized him. Wait! Wait! He couldn’t die yet! He didn’t know why he was dying!

Careful. Mustn’t weaken. He smiled slightly, tightening his muscles. What a miserable audience! Well, fire away, dammit! - but he wished he knew why he was dying. The rifles were disconcerting. He looked toward the sun. It was bright now, very bright. Last night it had set. Now it was rising. Maybe -

CRASH -!

His chest was burning, his eyes swimming. He couldn’t breathe. Wisps of blue smoke and black specks floated before his eyes. And the sun - the sun - rising - he opened his lips to laugh. What a joke! What a joke on the lieutenant! He knew now why there was no reason for his dying. He wasn’t dying! They couldn’t kill him! No - No - No -

Parker pitched forward from the wall, and the hard ground smashed his face and licked his blood.

“Through the heart,” said the grizzled veteran, squinting down his gun barrel, “I always shoot for the heart.”

The young man next to him shuddered. It was his first experience on the firing squad.

“He smiled,” he whispered, in an awed tone.

“They all do,” said the veteran cynically, “the captain says it is muscular contraction. I do not know. Perhaps it seems humorous to them.”

“He was a very brave man,” said the lieutenant, throwing away his cigarette.

FANTASY

Dreams - shadows - black and hurrying. Fear - visions - crying at night when stars are gone, and streets are long and silent. Kaleidoscope etchings - flitting against white paths of shimmer - nothingness. Regrets - revenge - madness. A velvet kiss - roses dipped in wine - turning black in sunshine. Never go back - never go back.

Worlds - whirling - bubbles of thin glass in eddies of backwash - blather. White arms - fading - fading - fading

• calling me on to darkness - fear. Why am I weeping? Where have I been? What is it? Why is it? Life - life - life. The past - fragrant memories - no pain - no heartaches. The present - dark - fleeting - strange - passing - instantaneous - ununderstandable - nothing. What is it? What is it? Future - black apes whirling - merry-go-round - onward - onward. Where?

Three gods have called me on - a woman - wine - dreams. Let me wake to bathe in red wine and feed on kisses - bruised - inarticulate - inexpressable - maddening. Something dragging

• calling - back - back - back!

Men - men - screaming, cursing, crying. Mud - mud - mud! They are dead - dead - all dead. Blood - here - on my hands - on my head. I am dying - dying - dreaming. War - pestilence - raging! Glory - glory - hell. They are dead

• dead - all dead. Blood - on my hands - on my head.

Wine - kisses - dreams. Dragging me back. No - no - I will not go. Please - please - please! Shadows - faces - dying

• dying - dying. Never go back. Never go back. No yesterday. No to-morrow. Only now - dreams - kisses - wine. Bubbles - laughter - drink - drink - drink.

Bubbles - laughter - bursting - bursting - bursting. Down - down - down. Never go back. Never go back. No yesterday. No to-morrow. Only now. Falling - falling - falling. Down

• down - down. Love - life - dreams - Don Mikel [T.J.S.]

EDITORIAL

Her turn from art to religion on my chance remark that one mistake more or less hardly made a difference brought me to a jolting sense of uncomfortableness and a realization of my hostess. Mrs. Perkinham was quite harmless talking of the modern trend and Mr. Cabell’s romantic indecencies. I credited her with knowing less about philosophy than literature, but in this field she was inflamed, and I could hardly ignore her positive acidity and continue my idle concern in a long cigarette while she assailed the slender freedom of my thoughts. People, she hissed in her righteous indignation, were entirely horrid in their attitude toward Christ. I was crushed, and murmured apologies, conscious that I was included in her category of people with an attitude. There were, it seemed, people and attitudes who gave no consideration to the longevity of convention and religious custom. To those few remaining patriots of the past age of morals and proper manners had come an enlightened conviction that these moderns were going to hell, and because Mrs. Perkinham had come to like my art she was sorry that I could not be saved. I became increasingly uncomfortable, and crushed the cigarette in a bronze ash-tray whose female figures were neatly clothed in shapeless Grecian robes. Perhaps it was only because I had lost the loving influence of a home, and perhaps if I would reform with true fidelity and zeal I might be spared.

I was humbly sorry as I left, turning with a slight shudder from the spectacle of a woman in pity and rage over something she understood as a firm truth because it denied all that was free and natural in a body and mind closer to earth than God.

They are a dying race in America to-day, fighting a lone battle against something quite as bad in the extremity of its reaction, and no more healthy and normal. The old Guard is rather vague in its description of a cause, preferring to leave the question of a law caused by their own fanaticism out of it, and cherishing tender memories of a war they sponsored because they did not have to go in person. It is well that they ignore the heavy fact that making the world safe for democracy, and fighting the Demon Rum, have the similar paradox of empty platitudes. The idea that democracy cannot be safeguarded or Rum defeated would leave them pitifully bereft of something to long for. The further idea that there is no true democracy and Rum is not a demon, would tear every vestige of pride and purpose from the blue silk of abolition that cries in a wilderness of sin for the mirage of sterile minds and the tepid stillness of docile acquiescence.

Meanwhile the ghosts of Oscar Wilde and the exonerated Zola flit in muttering exasperation, while literary chevaliers pander to a taste grown mawkish in the unfragrant conception of realism. Popular editions in drugstore displays, the final bar of judgement for the best-seller, reek with the filth of abnormal psychology grown less fragrant in the calico of popular fiction. Tired of ineffectual court scenes, New York reformers silently cut the luscious lines from sex plays, and preserve them in guarded scrap-books, ignoring the chorus girls and revues because they attend them, and referring to an enforcement grown rotten with senility, the night clubs and speakeasies that spatter the country with the indelicacies of a broken and over-ripe fruit.

So from the left comes a strident cry of “No Standards,” and the right rumbles an answer, “Values or Nothing.”

It is not a question of which is right, but the harder problem of seeking a middle way. To pick a course between two lines of crying fanatics is more difficult than combatting either. It is pertinent to note that tolerance has never existed in actuality, though its ideal has swept through the dregs of each inquisition. A debt of honor goes begging in a world of selfish illusions, where the chimeras of yesterday are forgotten in the mundane happiness induced by individual achievement.

Massachusetts points with pride to a heritage of transplanted freedom, plucked from the native intolerance of a frenzied religious age by stern courage and an implacable desire for justice and liberty. The misty spectacle of Roger Williams fleeing through frozen swamps, and the drab drama of witch- burning are conveniently forgotten in the exotic memory of bigotry triumphant on virgin ground. It was at Philadelphia some years later that Freedom was noted as being born. This renaissance seemed to denote an inability to prosper, though admitting the possibility of reincarnation.

At an inconveniently tender age, I noted the incompatibility of God’s all-seeing mercy and goodness with the Hell of mortal sin to a maiden of middle age who was living in smug security, having saved her soul by unimpeachable conduct over a period of forty years. I shall never forget the horror with which she received my impiety and agnosticism. God, I was peremptorily informed, in His infinite wisdom had created Hell for just such sinners as I showed promise of becoming. The fact that I offered no objection other than the natural curiosity of a child over a puzzling dilemma, had nothing to do with my eventual descent to perdition. My duty was to believe, not to think. That faith might need a foundation of reason was preposterous to a mind trained from childhood in the theory of tradition. It was not that she could not reason, but having been forbidden the use of such a faculty, she had never developed or discovered it. Of such is the right, predestined to fortitude and values, based on the fundamental doctrine that what is pleasant must be necessarily wrong.

I have often had a mean desire to paint for this ancient friend the various and attractive aspects of the nether oblivion as related by Plato, Lucian, Dante, Pope, and the modern Mr. Cabell of Virginia, and to test its promised bliss against that of her material heaven. But the memory of a smiling provincialism, buxom in printed calico, and gracious in the endless toil of feeding ravenous Christian imps from a cookie jar always filled, has made me forebear. It is not only possible but true that for her, a reasonable interpretation would cause chaos if accepted, and the religion of her forefathers made a saint of a woman whose greatest tragedy was the lack of a husband and children to benefit by the radiance of a true Christian love that knew sacrifice because it was part of her. Her one fault was in praying for the unorthodox, and damning the unchristian. To her these latter were hopelessly lost in a world governed by ten commandments and a host of prerogatives, supplement to something she knew only by clerical interpretation.

Whether Christianity was founded on Peter or a geological impediment, it is meaningless to attribute divine safety from error to human beings. Whether these humans are made in the image and likeness of God, or have made Him to their image and likeness, has no bearing on the question of which of the numberless sects is right. That the interpretations of apostolic successionists is superior to those of radical successionists has likewise no bearing. Fundamentally, they must all be wrong, for if all were right there would be no separation. It is impossible to satisfy all people with a single doctrine, nor can a single person be satisfied with a doctrine that is not pleasing to himself, and amenable to his way of thinking and manner of living. The primary object of every dissenter is to find a justification for himself. The assenters have either found themselves justified, or given up some of their cherished ideas and pleasures for an ideal future, ardently promised, and necessarily worth while.

It is from the latter class that reformers and abolitionists are born. I make no brief against the sincerity of such people. It is merely necessary to note in passing that ideals are seldom based on the theory of sublimation and objectivity. Self-privationists who have given up cherished desires for salvation cannot naturally believe salvation possible for those who continue to express their natural tendencies. It is for this reason that we are benighted with people imploring us against every natural move of body and mind, for in their several manners is included everything not, in their sense, strictly religious, even to the shaving of our beards. And to offset these charitable denunciators of our very existence there thrives the reactionary left, eager to supply every demand for a mental or physical sensation which exists, and is desired only because it opposes the opposite wing.

There is a middle ground somewhere, but is it hard to find, difficult to approach, and virtually uninhabited. In addition its inhabitants are subject to the damnation of both wings, and it is a feat of admirable gymnastics to keep from falling to one side or the other in the endless struggle that uses this middle ground for a battlefield.

One naturally looks to the field of higher education and intelligence for the most enlightened view of any situation. In the minds of the Olympian masters dwells the only unprejudiced view of right and wrong, oppression and repression, politics and government, and the metaphysical questions which bother none but the sincerely religious.

I was quite content to listen to a rather aged professor once monologue on the beauties of old wine, rare dishes, tender delicacies of the palate, and the goodness and joy of life in general to one who understands and appreciates them. He was red-cheeked and sparkling over the old liqueur as he related the odors of rare flowers, the wines and mixed drinks of the continent, and withal the joys of a meal well selected, perfectly cooked, and appetizingly served, after exercise in the open air had made the healthy body desirous of fuel. I smiled agreement, drained my glass, and observed how fortunate the enlightened also were to believe such things were not sinful, and that a physical hell would not punish them. His glass stopped half-way to his parted mouth as I lit a cigarette and continued that we have the added enjoyment of knowing we had loved them before and would be privileged to attain them again, in perhaps greater and more appreciable measure. Creative evolution and Reincarnation I mentioned casually, were the most enlightened and truly virtuous accomplishments of the newer metaphysical scientists. I was glad that we were able to enjoy a glass of wine or a delicate fowl without fear or sin nowadays. He neglected to drink his wine, and a puzzled, and I thought rather pained look, spread over his face as he lit his pipe and puffed reflectively in silence. I was content to leave after the conversation made several futile attempts at revival, and was sorry for my remarks as he bade me good night. Next day he greeted me in class with what I deemed a cold reserve, and also a look of triumphant magnanimity. I have always believed that he prayed against me, and have always been glad that I was unable to precipitate him into what would surely have been an uncomfortable situation. He had settled his philosophical affairs at twenty, and taught peacefully ever since. It was not for me to disturb a man revered for his gentle tolerance and deep scholasticism.

The attitude is universal in its two-fold aspect. A young woman thought me a prig for refusing to learn a much too athletic dance. She interpreted my excuse of insufficient stamina to be an inference of vulgarity. It is true I believed the dance lacking in grace and exact propriety, but I never said so to her. One of her male companions later interpreted my refusal of a drink from his patent flask to prejudice and sobriety. That is not true. I had too much respect for my stomach to insult it with the varnish he carried. It is thus that Flaming Youth flouts a code better than any it can boast, yet somehow inadequate in that it incites such rebellion.

The left is too young in the present to have descendents, but its ranks are filled by the sons and daughters of the declining right. Business men for whom God exists in a two million dollar edifice on Sunday, and an empty paraphrase the rest of the week, are not apt to inspire either religious fervor or ethical nicety. For the hypocrite a long chain of damnation exists, for the man is much more worthy who outspokenly declaims his impropriety than he who considers physical presence and monetary support sufficient for eternal salvation.

It is not an insoluble problem nor a hopeless situation.

It is much easier to be tolerant than intolerant, despite the active superiority of the latter. The basic fallacy seems to be the constant belief in a definite right and a definite wrong, so closely drawn as to exclude all members of any but the particular sect which propounds it. That we all worship a single God is Christianity’s binding cord, yet unless this one God is worshipped in just the way each sect designates, there is a certain amount of disgrace attached to the delinquent. This is particularly true of the older and stronger religions, and would undoubtedly be true of the younger and smaller sects were it not necessary that they allow a certain amount of latitude in the interest of self- preservation. Perhaps the next largest misunderstanding is the prohibition of certain simple pleasures and ideas, which are sometimes the most definite line that can be drawn between two Christian faiths. In these prohibitions lies the danger of prejudice, for a denied pleasure can hardly be appreciated in one who is apparently just as secure in soul, since his church condones the practice.

If these rules and interpretations, together with the prohibitive laws, could be at the same time so generalized and yet specifically unmistakable in their moral scope, a great deal of the intolerant attitude would automatically cease. Fundamentally it is based on details and material differences, and these are trivial in comparison to the broad issues involved. A belief in the same God and broad Christian principles would bind every man to his fellow man without the niceties of discrimination which so frequently spoil a mutual understanding. This is not at all impossible, and America in the past fifty years has made gigantic strides in that direction. The end is not obviously near, but the dissolution of sectarian barriers is well begun.

Though it is beautifully ideal, it is not at all practical, or even desirable, that the various sects and churches merge into one universal Christian religion. In the first place each fills a particular niche in regard to the many strata of society in America. They have been builded by groups who have other ties than religious; such as political, economic, and purely social. In the second place, they are established too firmly in the regular schedule of life to permit disruption without chaos. Further than that, to be coldly material, they represent an outlay of monetary resource, together with an economical system, which is indispensable to the present system of living. It would be as foolish to bring every big business under a single head and try to run them all from a central office as it would to coalesce the various churches.

There is a simple and more effective solution, based on purely mental changes. The practicability of the system has been exhibited throughout history, and is more than ever successful today.

Rousseau, in his “Confessions,” described a man who, to his mind, was tolerant. The picture is vivid and true, and is worth more than passing notice.

“Externally he was devout, like a Spaniard, but in his heart he had the piety of an angel. Except myself, he was the only man I ever saw whose principles were not intolerant. He never in his life asked any person his opinion in matters of religion. It was not of the least consequence to him whether his friend was a Jew, a Protestant, a Turk, a Bigot, or an Atheist, provided he was an honest man. Obstinate and headstrong in matters of indifference but the moment religion was in question, even the moral part, he collected himself, was silent, or simply said, ‘I am charged with the care of myself only.’”

Were the great philosopher alive to-day he would see many whom he believed tolerant, for it little matters to-day in questions of business and social intercourse what the religion is, so long as a person’s character is permissible. It is in matters of religion that tolerance is lacking however, and it is in these matters that progress is most needed.

It is not the religious principle of allowing each man to worship as he sees fit that we need, but the tolerance which brings each man together regardless of which sect he embraces. It is not enough to let a man go the way he chooses and then shun him for it. Since he worships the same God and is loyal to the same country, why not admit him as one of the same brotherhood? If we can adopt this common sense attitude in the bulk we shall have accomplished the majority of a great task.

If the astronomer can measure stars without losing his God, cannot other men seek God without losing their religion? Is it not possible for two men to be rivals in business, members of different churches, yet friends in a common search for the secrets of truth and enlightenment? There is no necessity for changing or giving up a particular church membership or form of worship because one is partner to an enterprise which tries to put in active force the basic principles of Christianity. It is this attitude of the original idea of tolerance in religion which has kept mankind from advancing to a more reasonable and enlightened view of God and universal truth. We have left to the theologians entirely the settling of such matters, and these have been true to tradition. Hence comes the stagnation, and to-day religion is centuries behind the time. Just as morals fluctuate with fashion, history, and time itself, so religions must find themselves adapted to the environment of contemporary civilization. To-day Christianity is out of tune with the time, and there seems but one way of accomplishing harmony.

If we can apply the same men and methods to religion and philosophy that we have given to science we shall very soon discover that religion is in perfect accord with our lives, rather than a thing handed down from our parents as a rather unpleasant birth-mark that we must carry through life. Had Christianity the attitude of science and art we would all be devoutly religious. It is not that we have no inherent belief in the precepts of Christ, but merely that they are so formed as to come in apparent conflict with the modern routine of living. With a common sense interpretation and understanding of the principles, philosophy, and law, how much more compatible and meaningful would be the rites and customs we adhere to now as mere forms. Not that these forms and rites should be done away with, but an effort should be made to explain them in the light of something vital and familiar in the present.

It is, of course, a philanthropic idea to suppose that business men, professors, and doctors of divinity can band together in an effort to bring about such a condition. However, philanthropists are not wholly lacking in the world, nor are they unmindful of the duty civilization seems to have imposed on them.

In the present age, everything has been discovered, exploited, explained, examined, improved, and brought to the highest possible state of perfection. Everything, it seems, but the most important part of life - the spiritual side. Not that it should be exploited, but how needful has mankind always been of an explanation or a discovery of, and most of all an understanding and ability to use, that spark of our nature which alone stands out as something above the beast. The discoveries of science have given more leisure and opportunity for education and mental development, and that development has gone to further improve a luxury already tottering on the uncertain edifice of rank materialism. In the meantime the spiritual and philosophical has been allowed to become out of date, and in spite of the faithfulness with which we perform the rites and ceremonies of organized Christianity we are lacking in the proper spirit and fervor, through a misunderstanding entirely caused by the tenaciousness with which religion clings to its medieval garments of dogma and explanation. Unless something is done to bring us all to a realization of our dependency on a higher being, and a realization that man is weak and imperfect, we shall soon be so conceited with our mechanical miracles as to entirely forget the initial and inevitable cause of them all and ourselves.

Individual minds have always been concerned with such problems, but to-day there is no individual capable of accomplishing such a work. It is a task for organization in an age of organization, and the backing of business men and educators is needed rather than that of the clergy. It is not a task for the clergy, or a question of reforming the church, it is a duty of far-reaching minds who appreciate the necessity of balance in a life quite apt to fall to the side of materialism and passive acceptance of the spirit.

When a furniture manufacturer, let us say, and a broker; with perhaps a dealer in interior decorations, or paints and lacquers; combine with a doctor, a learned professor, and a photographer; to search for the truths and beauties of life, the spirit of true tolerance is born, and its work begun. When that same group organizes itself into an association for the propagating of the good they find to mankind, yet maintaining each for himself his own private business, life, and religion, the spirit of true tolerance is rightly manifest. When, further than that, these men invite into their association every interested person, regardless of sect or creed, and with such a band of far-seeing but practical idealists, conceive and execute a program whose every detail is in harmony with the central idea of aiding mankind; when such “details” include elaborate research in the fields of philosophy, education, mechanics, archeology, medicine, history, and spiritual awakening; when the truths, theories, cures, secrets, and beauties thus discovered or re-discovered are installed in practical institutions which fit them into the everyday life of each person, to that person’s advantage and advancement; and when, last of all, these theories, ideals, and truths embody a pure and emancipated spirit of Christianity that breathes contentment and happiness into the soul and opens for every person a new land of attainment and reward; then we may say that tolerance is alive, manifest, and growing.

There is a valley of godliness beyond the world of bi-sexual intercourse and tri-dimensional understanding. There is a heaven of happiness beyond the carnal satisfaction of desire and insatiableness of immortality. There is imbedded in each individual soul the capability of communion and fusion with the one beginning, the individual concept which projected all things from itself. Life is soul, and soul is God, and betwixt and between there lies a valley of shadows, inarticulate and grotesque. To those who see it represents an interlard of happy struggling, to others an iniquitous playground of chimeras. With the tolerance of wisdom and magnanimity, the ideals and desires of something finer and higher than figures of earth, there comes a white road, long and straight, and because it has no ending it is the grandest one to travel.

HOW TO OBTAIN AN EDUCATION Franklin F. Bradley

The present title is a meaningless phrase. One cannot “obtain an education.” One either “arrives at the method of living which is called an educated one;” or else “obtains a degree of learning.” The latter is important, but the former more so. The latter is common, the former rare.

This article is a continuation of the ideas expressed in the last issue, under the title, “Education - What It Consists Of.”

Granted that an education is a method of living, governed by direct, rapid, and correct judgement; and granted that the results of education are rich qualities of mind and spirit, contentment, appreciations, friendships, and position and honor among men; there are few who would not sacrifice much to become educated.

My conviction is firm that under present methods only the exceptional person can become educated. I know probably a thousand people, and not more than a half score of them are truly educated. Yet I live in the shadow of a great university and belong to university faculty groups, and other groups of “graduates.”

In studying schools from kindergarten to post-graduate an interesting thing appears; kindergarten work leads the field. It has been blessed by contact with the best minds. In its highest development we find children being taught to think logically, to coordinate their different faculties, to care for their bodies, to use their imaginations, and to complete tasks. All this and more is done while the interest is maintained. Further, there is found a sequence of performances.

Most schools beyond kindergarten spend the majority of the time of the pupil on book learning, solely on a basis of unrelated subjects. Some day they will wake to the need of carrying through the best kindergarten ideas, and improving on them.

We have as yet few schools where the average student may secure an education as it is here defined. There are some where the sunshine is arriving, and there will be more as the years pass.

In the midst of discussions on the musical age, the art age, the mechanical age, the architectural age, etc., I venture a prophesy that we are approaching the Educational Age - which will, from its very nature, dominate all others.

In the Educational Age we will recognize every human life as having a career - a career of living.

EDUCATORS complain that the business of living, as usually carried out by their students, instead of continuing what they have been taught, tends rather to wipe it out.

BUSINESS MEN complain that educators devote too much energy to teaching subjects unrelated to the requirements of successful business careers.

STUDENTS complain that they are forced to make passing grades in subjects that hold no interest, and only a fugitive memory; that they sally forth from college convinced they are prepared to succeed, and all too soon wake to the fact that they are not.

PSYCHOLOGISTS use the students for their stamping ground, forgetting that if the educators, the business men, etc., etc., were also psychoanalyzed to proper effect, that the student grist would satisfy demands of the business world. As a friend of mine once said, “For just one year keep all children out of school, and put all parents into school, if you would produce practical education.”

In brief, continuity is necessary. Pupil, teacher, parent, business associate, etc., must be a part of the plan - all hooked together without friction - that permits the graduate to fit smoothly into his career of successful living and enables the world to appreciate it, and him.

It is evident that complete education is made up of a study of more things outside of books than inside them. Because no two people are alike in character of brain activity, nor in their natural surroundings; and also because of the complexity of the subject, it is very difficult to so chart a course of procedure that it becomes a universal answer to the challenge “How to Obtain an Education.”

The dozen most important steps to be taken in the case of one individual would be vastly different from the same number of steps for another individual, because of varied experiences, hereditary tendencies, national points of view, etc.

For the purpose of this paper a single illustration will be taken, that of a young American who has had a reasonable amount of “book learning,” and has lived the life of an average, energetic, intelligent young American.

If there is a young man, as indicated above, who really desires to educate himself, he must as a basic principle accept the fact that older men have been equally intelligent and have made progress, and that he must base his growth and development upon the findings of such individuals. In this way he will go much further, and come much closer to the ideal of a perfectly educated man than if he advances step by step on the basis of his own individual experiences.

If you are such a young man, and ask me how to arrive at such an educated method of living, my answer is as follows:

Reach as high a decree of learning as your time and finances permit. Seek out a mature friend whom you regard as living a successful life from the standpoints of finance, civic duties, home life, and enjoyment of purely intellectual pursuits. Beguile this man into taking you over, as doctor would a patient. Let the program of your development under his care consist in grounding you most thoroughly in a progressive and persistent way, over a period of years, in a list of subjects something like the following:

To know the business of earning and holding MONEY (worldly possessions). To understand the retention and happiness and renewal of YOUTH. To approach your fellow man in his own LANGUAGE and method of thought. To develop and live with a practical IMAGINATION. To make and hold many FRIENDS of MANY KINDS. To learn the enjoyment of EDUCATION, of intellectual life, and of being governed by it. To have the COURAGE of your convictions. To make, honor, and love your home. To possess outward and inward mental, physical, and spiritual personableness and ADDRESS. To persuade personal RECOGNITION to come when due. To listen to GUIDANCE, sift it, and follow it when sound. To know the ends sought, separating ESSENTIALS from non-essentials, wheat from chaff; striding forward, avoiding lost motion, unto the end that you pass your strength to a hundred others.

The list must vary a little with the needs of different individuals, and with the functioning of the “Mentor.” It is hoped to analyze in a homely and detailed way, in our next issue, each of the dozen points mentioned above.

One of the world’s great artists was asked the best method by which a talented young man could reach the highest goal in that line. The reply was that there was only one method to be considered. It lay in the young man’s attaching himself to some artist who had already made a definite mark in that profession, and absorbing all that artist could give him; and on that as a stepping stone, rise to the limits of his own ability. The reason given was that in the depth of the successful artist was an accumulation of the extracurricular things, the balance wheel, the dynamo, the vision, etc., which ordinarily the student does not get from his teacher.

Some day we will have a clan of receptive and diligent students learning to absorb the elements that make for educated living. Also we will have a body of men and women capable of, and willing to give of, the essence of living to the younger generation. We have a few of each to-day. We need more.

AN EDUCATIONAL PROJECT Hugh Lynn Cayce

You have heard it said over and over again that the children are the hope of a nation. This statement, like many other accepted American aphorisms, has become, to the average parent, a meaningless group of words without any real purport. The training of a child becomes something of a burden to be placed upon the state as much as possible. A mother will fight valiantly for her offspring as long as it remains to her a baby, but once the child begins to think for itself, she begins to misunderstand it. The father glances away from his business now and then, long enough to toss the growing infant a word of encouragement, which all too often becomes a reproof for some little interference. During this period of early education, when a readjustment of the home is in progress, the formal education of the child becomes vitally important. It is a well known psychological fact that the impressions made on a child during the grammar school and high school ages are those that are to go far in molding the nature and character of the prospective man or woman. Great steps have been taken in recent years to improve our nation’s system of public education, but no one will deny that there is still a long road to travel, and every broadminded man and woman will look with favor upon any project that has for its purpose the advancement and improvement of methods of primary and preparatory education.

It is with a great deal of pleasure that we take this opportunity to announce that at Virginia Beach, Virginia, the very center of the Association’s work, there has been established a boys’ school which has for its principles these very ideas of improving the methods of primary and preparatory education. There have been several members of the Association who have taken a personal interest in studying the methods and ideals of this school. Professor Francis H. Greene, headmaster and founder of the school, has been kind enough to give me a few notes on the methods and ideas he is following. I have visited the school, and know many of the pupils and their parents, and the reactions that have come as a result of Professor Greene’s methods. I wish to outline these briefly for you, and remind you that progressive education is not entirely dead in the United States.

“The Virginia Beach School for Boys” was opened at Virginia Beach, Virginia, last fall. Professor Greene obtained temporary quarters in a large building fronting on the Atlantic Ocean, an ideal location in many respects. He began with a very select group of boys between the ages of eight and fifteen. These boys receive careful personal attention. They are studied as individuals, and their respective weaknesses analyzed and strengthened. Every boy is taught the meaning of honor, and his word is accepted without question as soon as he understands the full significance of the term. As much attention is paid to the building of character as to the building of the mind. Professor Greene puts the matter simply in these words: “The growing years are the years when character is made. Habits of life are formed, and it is the duty of this school to see the future citizens started on the right path.”

At the present time two important programs are carried out. The mental training is carried on by opening for the lower grades the following studies: Arithmetic, Language, History, Geography, Reading, Spelling, Spoken English, and Penmanship. In the upper grades the courses of Rhetoric, Composition, Public Speaking, Latin, French, German, Greek, History, General Science, Physics and Chemistry are provided. Each student is aided in selecting subjects that will tend to hold for him the most interest. Regular class room procedure is carried on, but every effort is made to stimulate interest rather than give the pupil a mass of undigested knowledge. The second program that is followed is the placing of emphasis on physical training. The boys are taught to play to get the most enjoyment out of exercising and caring for their bodies. Baseball, tennis, football, hiking, etc., became an important part of each day’s work.

In the future Professor Greene plans to gradually enlarge his school to include preparation for college work. Special emphasis will be placed on assisting each student, through a study of the student, in finding just what life work he is best fitted to take up. In making these studies, all known tests and psychological aids will be employed. Professor Greene is a firm believer in the idea of teaching a boy how to adapt himself to his surroundings and make the best of them. He begins this training in his lowest classes by teaching correct habits and methods of study.

It is planned to continue the school on the Ocean Front until 1932, when a modern structure to house the students, provide ample class room space, and meet all the requirements of a boys’ boarding school, will be erected. A location is now being considered that will allow complete space for all outdoor activities, including water sports.

On June 15th Professor Greene is opening the first series of camps that will be continued each summer to carry on the work of the school. The first camp will be located on a beautiful inland water-way, Linkhorn bay, near Virginia Beach. Instruction will be continued in secondary school subjects, but the great emphasis will be placed on camp life. The daily program may include any of the numerous sports that are popular near Virginia Beach; golf, baseball, boating, swimming, tennis, or hiking. Every effort will be made to carry on the ideas of developing a well rounded nature in each pupil. “Within a boy,” says Professor Greene, “lies an unlimited, undeveloped amount of potential energy. It is our purpose to loose this energy, to train and guide it that the boy may became a man; a man well fitted to live among his fellow men.”

The important thing for members of the Association to realize is that here very near us, near the center of our work, there is being attempted a project that involves many of the principles for which we stand. If there is one word that should characterize the work of the Association of National Investigators, Inc., it is the word “Education.” I do not mean haphazard, unsystematic education, but carefully planned, intelligent training of the mind and body.

I believe that many of you who read this magazine will be intensely interested to know of the existence of this school, which is founded on progressive educational methods. Education in any form is to be praised, but intelligent education merits not only praise but personal interest. May I here express the hope that, as the Association moves out into educational fields, as it is going to do in the near future in a very tangible manner, all the members, as well as the heads of our educational departments, will work hand-in-hand with Professor Greene in this, the greatest of all human projects, the training of American Youth.

TO-MORROW

“It is a long way off - to-morrow,” said Olion sadly, “and for some people it never comes.”

“But for you and me it will come,” she whispered quickly, “and you will come to me again, with this white rose I have given you, and you shall tell me again of the way I must love you, and the far country you will take me to.”

And she went close to him, and he held her tightly in his arms and bruised her lips with his kisses, as the perfume of her tangled hair brushed tenderly against a white rose in his own.

“To-morrow, Olion.”

“To-morrow, Heladne - it is a long time.”

“To lovers, yes, but to the sun it is only a few hours. It will be here soon, and then another day will come, and we will go away together to the far land of our love.”

She kissed him again, and the white sand wavered and fled as he walked slowly to his horse. Heladne watched as the moon and sand made a black silhouette of his departure.

“A long time,” he said. “I do not understand. For me, a little sleep, then to-morrow, and Olion will be here.” The white shoulders shrugged, and the little forehead unpuckered. Heladne climbed slowly into bed and sighed, sleepily.

It is not far from the arms of a woman to the steel of her rival. The moon blinked at Olion, not understanding his silence. It is a long way off - to-morrow. For lovers, yes.

• Don Mikel [T.J.S.]

A LONG, LONG TIME AGO

“We will give her to Aram-San,” said the King, “and he will be pacified, and let us live in peace.” And because he was an old man who loved peace the King smiled, and because he loved his daughter very much he sighed, for the kingdom of Aram-San was far away.

So letters were sent to Aram-San, and he received them kindly, and set a day for his coming, and for the wedding. And the King sent for his daughter and took her in his arms and kissed her, and told her she would marry Aram-San. And she bowed before him, and accepted his will, and kissed his hand. But there were tears in her eyes when she turned away, and that day she kept to her chamber, and would see no one.

And now began preparations for the coming of the great King from far away, and for the wedding, and about the castle I could find no one to listen to my tales or songs, nor had the King time for my verses or company. The slaves were brought from the pyramid to work at home, and they erected an entrance of alabaster and faience that led to the river, and lined it with tapestries of gold and statues of Rah. The soldiers spent all the days drilling and maneuvering, and the Red Platoon of the Princess each day practised the Manuel of Marriage, for they were to be her escort to the sacred altar.

After a time the hammering stopped, and the days were more peaceful; only the drilling went on each morning for hours at a time. Egypt was ready for Aram-San. Far away the pyramid builders again took up their task, and farther away a great king set out for Egypt. Within the castle two people waited, one for his tomb, the other for her husband.

And now I did not see her often, as I used to. She did not come with her innocent questions and the wonder in her wide blue eyes at the tales I told her. She did not feed the birds that came to listen to my lute each evening, nor did she come to sit at my feet amid the orchids at sundown, when I played the songs of love and olden days. Only did I see her at sunrise, when the old priest gave us blessings and we bowed in worship. She covered herself in the white robes of the Daughters of Rah then, and the tiny feet, sandalled in gold, showed as she knelt in prayer.

So the days went by, and became shorter and shorter. The orchids were paler, and the nights colder, and because I am an old man and garrulous, I became very lonely and sad, for I had no one to talk to. The king had no time for me, the Princess stayed away from everything, and my birds flew from my music, as if I sang of unhappiness. The soldiers paraded, the Red Platoon drilled. Egypt awaited Aram-San.

He came at sunset. I heard the shouting in the garden, but I did not go to see. I am an old man, and I have seen many Kings come and go. Aram-San was a tyrant. I did not like him. I played to my birds, but they were frightened of the noise, so I went to my room and read my books.

That night there was a feast, and Aram-San was toasted and feted, and everything was in his honor. He sat in silence at the head of the long table, smiling and nodding at each new compliment. But his eyes and his mind were on the Princess, who sat next to him. When the wine had flowed for a long time, and the music and the conversation heightened to a babble I crept away. I could not bear longer to look at the Princess, or at the foreign King, who was looking at her constantly.

So I went into the garden and played my flute, and though there were no birds to hear me, and the orchids were asleep, I played very beautifully, for my heart was aching and my soul was troubled. The faint breeze was soothing, and the smell of fresh earth comforting, and after awhile I ceased playing, and turned to look at the moon. It hung across the palace, lighting that part of the garden away from me. I watched it a long time, and wondered if it knew. But soon I knew that it did, for into the garden, and very close to me, came the Princess. And he who was with her was not Aram-San. I went away very softly, so as not to disturb them, and that night I thought a long time before sleep would come.

The air was very hot next day, and very still. The soldiers drilled, and there were games, and more feasting and drinking of wine. At evening the musicians began to play, and the ceremony began. I sat high in the great temple of Rah, where the incense came very faintly, and the notes of the music were scattered, so that only the purest of them reached me.

So the Princess married Aram-San, and the Red Platoon escorted her to the Temple, and formed a canopy of bodies and crossed swords through which she walked to the Sacred Altar. She walked slowly, keeping time to the music. A shaft of sunlight fell on the swords and they gleamed and flashed like diamonds. The Princess bowed her head, then raised it again, and came to the end of her journey. Something gleamed and flashed in the fitful and dying sunlight, something brighter than the glare of swords. I am very old, and my sight is dim, and I was far way, but to me it seemed to come from the cheeks of a soldier, a member of the Red Platoon. And that would be a tear.

To-day the news has come that the pyramid is almost finished. That is well, for the King is very old and tired. He has not been happy since the princess left, and the tales of her unhappiness have made him very sad. I too, am old, and I have no pyramid. But now the birds do not flee from me, and the orchids are blooming again.

The Red Platoon is not parading to-day. They are burying a comrade, a young fellow, who died of a strange malady.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The above is a fanciful scene from old Egyptian days, prompted by an incident in the Life Reading of the author Thomas Sugrue.)

NEWS AND VIEWS of THE ASSOCIATION OF NATIONAL INVESTIGATORS, INC., AND THE CAYCE HOSPITAL

Since the last issue of this magazine things have been going forward with such rapidity that a volume of progress must be recorded. Each committee of the Association has gone ahead with its far-reaching program, and definite and material advances are recorded and visible. New buildings have been planned, and some are already in the process of construction. More real estate has been added to the Association holdings, and improvements have been many and various in the present buildings of the Association, especially the Cayce Hospital.

Dr. Lyman A. Lydic arrived at Virginia Beach on the 2nd of January, 1930, to take up his duties as Chief of Staff of the Cayce Hospital. Previous to his selection for this office Dr. Lydic was a prominent physician in Dayton, Ohio.

Dr. Lydic has been quite busy every since, as the hospital has been well filled during the past few months. Changes and improvements have been many, and Dr. Lydic expressed himself as delighted with the facilities and organization.

Among the improvements is a Club, or Smoking Room, in the basement of the hospital. This has been attractively

furnished and admirably fitted for lounging, reading, or playing cards. It has proven a most delightful means of recreation for the convalescing patients during the winter months.

Reconstruction work has been done on the tennis court, and it has been carefully guarded against seasonal storms. A correction and improvement has been made in the heating system, and to the rear of the main building, a new bulkhead was added. An eight car garage with service room is among the exterior additions, and with the acquisition of land behind the hospital, prospects of a sunken garden have arisen.

Within the building many additions may be seen. In the office a telephone switchboard has been installed, with two trunk lines and eight extensions. In the lobby a bronze tablet bearing the names, of the original officers is to be seen.

With regard to the medical facilities the new Hydro-Therapy room has been considerably enlarged, and the Electro-Therapy room has been removed to more suitable quarters.

Looking into the Research Department one sees a number of books being compiled, containing data gleaned from the readings. These volumes contain chapters on every phase of the work, though at the present the largest advances have been made along the line of physical diagnoses. The information thus recorded will in the future be studied by physicians along with experience in actual cases.

With this material largely complete for the present, a different phase is being compiled; that of the theosophical, theological, and philosophical nature. Metaphysicians will eventually study this material, and much of it will be gotten into proper form by the Educational Committee for presentation to members, in order that they may be benefitted in their individual lives by application of the truths contained therein. This as may be seen, is in exact accordance with the ideas and purpose of the association.

The Research Office itself has been recently refinished, the walls have been painted and additional equipment installed. For the present the Accounting Department is located here, under the direction of Mr. L. J. Hesson, formerly of Chicago, who recently came to Virginia Beach to serve in this capacity.

The Educational Committee has been most active in the recent past. Although it is too early for any definite announcements, before very long the new and extensive plan of this portion of the work will be ready for publication. With the return of President and Mrs. Morton H. Blumenthal, with their son Morton, Jr., from a six weeks’ stay in Europe, the study class and lectures Mr. Blumenthal conducts will begin again on March twenty-third.

The first annual Review of the Association will appear in April. It will contain a resume of the work since its beginning, and present in concise form the events and development of the Association from its conception to the present time. It is being printed by the Benson Printing Co., of Nashville, Tennessee.

Approximately two hundred and ten readings were given by Edgar Cayce during the months of January, February, and March. Appointments have been made up to June 1, and there is a long waiting list after that, as it was decided to withhold definite dates until the present appointments are disposed of. Hospital patients are given preference of course, and the urgency and sincerity of the case is always taken into account.

Mr. Morris Rome of New York City presented the Cayce Hospital with a beautiful piano as a Christmas gift, and also as a token of appreciation for the spirit manifested by the hospital and the service it is rendering to mankind.

Mr. Edgar Cayce was presented with an oil painting of himself by Mr. David Levy, in appreciation of his “kindness and help to ‘Sonny’ Levy.”

The winter has passed quickly at Virginia Beach, with the rapid advancement of plans and the many improvements. With the end of the official year on July 1, a momentous stride forward in every department of the Association will have been made. With plans already carefully laid and well launched for the coming years, the spirit of the Association receives more zest with every forward stride, and there is not a prediction which could safely limit its bounds.

THE LETTER BOX [Noted on page 263 of paperback edition “There Is A River”.]

It is with particular pleasure that we print the following letter and affidavit, recently received from a patient in the Cayce Hospital. This department is especially anxious to receive any such communications, and it wishes to impress its readers with the idea that questions, criticisms, and comments of any kind are welcome. We should like the opportunity of hearing just how the magazine is being received, or the Association itself. There must surely be a great deal of reaction, favorable, and unfavorable, and also many questions, which arise in the minds not only of our newer friends, but the members themselves. It is for such that this department was created, and nothing will be more pleasing than to have the readers make use of it.

Virginia Beach, Va. March 5, 1930.

Mr. Thomas J. Sugrue, Editor, Drawer 896, Lexington, Va.

Dear Sir:

Enclosed you will find a short personal testimonial, which I have written voluntarily, and this is to ask that you print it in the next issue of THE NEW TOMORROW.

I have been a patient here for several weeks and feel that I am obliged to say at least this much.

Yours very truly, FRANK H. ISAACS

Several years ago Mr. Cayce was recommended to the writer. Like many other skeptics, I could not be easily convinced, but finding no relief from suffering of a shell shock condition, as a last resort I decided to investigate this new method of obtaining relief.

I was certainly surprised to discover that in a few days I had completely recovered. I am grateful for having been led to this avenue through the courtesy of Mr. David E. Kahn, and I am thankful to God for having something to live for in the future. FRANK H. ISAACS

The following is a transcript of a letter written by Dr. Lyman A. Lydic, Chief of Staff of the Cayce Hospital, to one of his old teachers, Dr. E. S. Winslow, of Waterville, Maine. The letter is particularly interesting in that it reveals the enthusiastic reaction which Dr. Lydic experienced at the outset of his new work, and the fervor with which he has set out to serve in his important capacity.

Virginia Beach, Va. March 5, 1930

Dr. E. S. Winslow, Waterville, Me.

Dear Doctor:

No doubt the news that I am now located at the Cayce Hospital, Virginia Beach, Va., will come as a great surprise to you, as you probably thought I was permanently established in Dayton, Ohio. In fact, it all happened so quickly that I am still surprised myself.

I became acquainted with Mr. Cayce while he was a resident of Dayton, Ohio six years ago, and since that time he has made Virginia Beach his permanent home. During the last thirty years Mr. Cayce has become known throughout the country for his wonderful power of psychic diagnoses and treatment, and reached the climax in gathering around him countless intellectual and influential friends. This brought about the establishing of the Association of National Investigators, Inc. In going about to scientifically investigate the phenomena manifested through Mr. Cayce, they naturally established the hospital.

Having seen many of these cases while Mr. Cayce was in Dayton, I was drawn to this when it was established on a scientific basis, so when I investigated and found that it was on this basis, with the facilities for handling the phenomena in this manner, I decided to cast my lot with it.

When I arrived, the work had been under the supervision of others who were wholly in sympathy with it, and the undertaking here. You will be interested in knowing the type of cases being handled every day at the hospital. We are equipped to handle every type of case with the exception of contagious and mental diseases.

At the present time we have patients under treatment for congenital inco-ordination of mental and physical faculties, ulcers of the stomach, acute gastritis, general pruritus, mucous colitis, spastic paraplegia, tabes dorsalis, optic neuritis, with partial blindness, shell shock with its typical manifestations, hysteria, acute osteomyelitis, all types of gynecological cases, and so on. You will note that some of these cases are considered beyond help by the medical profession, and I must say that we haven’t a case which is not responding in a very encouraging manner.

We can handle twenty-five to thirty patients and are equipped to carry on the purpose of the research by checking the psychic diagnoses by every modern means, which includes complete history taking and physical examination, through X-Ray examination, including gastro-intestinal and Graham dye test, blood chemistry, Wasserman, Widal, blood counts, spinal smears, tissue slides, and urinalysis, chemical and microscopic.

In the form of treatment, we are prepared to give osteopathic, medical, all types of electro-therapy and hydrotherapy and colonic irrigation. So you can see that we have a very complete armamentarian with which to confirm the diagnosis and prove the efficacy of the treatment as outlined by Mr. Cayce’s readings.

As I am expecting you very shortly to make a visit, it will be a pleasure to show you our complete Research Department and the work that is being carried on.

Sincerely yours, L. A. LYDIC Chief of Staff

“THAT WE MAY MAKE MANIFEST OUR LOVE FOR GOD AND MAN”

ANNOUNCING THE ANNUAL REVIEW of The Association of National Investigators, Inc. on APRIL, 1930

Containing the history, purpose, activities, plans, and record of the Association from its founding to the present date; with the organization, committees, and financial reports for the year.

The ANNUAL REVIEW is the first permanent record of the Association’s work, progress, and perspective. It contains sections devoted to each department, with views of the CAYCE HOSPITAL and its surroundings.

The Association invites its members and friends to subscribe to the ANNUAL REVIEW, which will appear in a limited edition.

SUBSCRIPTIONS - $2.00

SECRETARY, THE ASS’N OF NAT’L INVESTIGATORS, INC. Virginia Beach, Virginia

Dear Sir:

I am enclosing a check for …, for which send me ( ) The Annual Review, ( ) The New To-Morrow for one year. ( ) Information on the Cayce Hospital and the Association in general, ( ) “Heaven on Earth,” by Mr. Morton H. Blumenthal.

Name… Street Address… City and State…

NOTE: Mark x in the space before publications desired. Membership in the Association includes subscription to the “New To-Morrow.” Information on the Association and Hospital, and copies of “Heaven on Earth,” are free.

R2. 9/29/40 Program of the Dedication Ceremonies of Library, Office and Vault. [A condensed version of Thomas Sugrue’s lecture “The New Tomorrow” [see below] was printed in the Jan. 1957 issue of THE SEARCHLIGHT - See 1861-5 Reports]:

DEDICATION CEREMONIES

LIBRARY, OFFICES AND VAULT [Addition to Edgar Cayce’s home on Arctic Crescent] of the ASSOCIATION FOR RESEARCH AND ENLIGHTENMENT, Incorporated Virginia Beach, Va.

Sunday Afternoon, September 29, 1940.

Mr. Noah Miller, President of the Association, presided.

Miss Florence Edmonds, Member of the Board of Trustees, led an opening period for meditation.

Opening Remarks

Noah Miller, President.

This is a happy occasion for all of us. We have gathered here this afternoon to dedicate the new library, offices and record vault of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc., and in so doing pay tribute to Edgar Cayce.

It is important, I believe, that every member of the Association recognize the step forward which this structure represents. These offices, library and vault have not been built for Mr. Cayce. His part of the work for the Association could have gone on without them. This library, these offices and our record vault have been built by and for the members of the Association who recognize their opportunity and responsibility in studying and presenting the good which they have found in Mr. Cayce’s work.

This is the dawn of a new day for our Association. In this dedication we symbolize our desires and determination to take forward strides in preserving, studying and presenting the thousands of unusual records in our files.

Let us not pause in our work other than to give thanks for this privilege.

We have come to that point in our program when we are to dedicate the vault which is to contain the records of the Association. With a simple, yet symbolic, act we will now, in your presence, signify the importance of the records being preserved and studied by our Association.

Here before me are the typed copies of three original readings. They are important readings. The first one is the oldest written record of one of Mr. Edgar Cayce’s psychic readings. Significantly, this record bears the name, Gertrude Cayce. As you have often heard Mr. Cayce say, the results of this reading, the help given his wife, caused him to give himself to this work. The date is September 23, 1911 - that was twenty-nine years ago [538-1].

The second reading was given in March, 1931. It is one of the organization readings for our present Association. I would like to read you a passage from it [254-54]:-

“In the manner as has been given, as to how each individual is to attune themselves for that purpose of gaining an understanding of their individual relationship to the furtherance of the good that may be obtained through those channels, or that phenomena that manifests itself, little - as yet - has been done by any. Some, true, have held intact those ideals - yet making the ideal of such a concrete example in their individual lives have been put rather in abeyance until further developments. Would further developments be expected, would be well that each take that as is desired in self, as to how self is to be used, as to how self may act TO THAT source THAT individual has chosen as its desire to see developed through the phenomena; for from the desire of the heart the mouth speaketh, and as one holds an objective near and dear in the heart, so does the activities become in keeping with that so MUCH desired; for where the treasure is the heart is also. Unless that as is determined in self is wholly in keeping with those precepts, those principles that may make for a continuity of life, hope itself, LITTLE may be expected; for, as given, this - here - in this place - now - may become as a shining light to many, or may become the laughing stock of many. Do not expect that evil days will not come upon each and every one, for

• as given - indeed offences must come, but woe unto him by whom they come! So prepare thine OWN life, thine OWN manifestations of that as is gained FROM same, that the evil may not be spoken of by thine acts, thine words, the manner of life, the manner of conducting thine OWN going in and coming out. Should thee, thine self, feel thou art not able to drink of that cup, then put not forth thine hand to grasp same, and DO the FIRST THINGS first! It has been given as to how each, in their prayer, in their supplication, should seek, ask for, those of questionings, those of intents, those of purposes to set forth before others that are afar, or those that are constantly being drawn to a something that many know not what. Art thou able in thine own heart, thine own life, to answer the questions of such? for it has oft been given, be able to at all times answer for the hope that is held within THINE OWN heart. Does the manifestations of the phenomena mean so little, even in the beginning, that only few have offered, “Show ME, O God, how I may be of service?” Let that answer come from that source, for those who be upon the Lord’s side need not be afraid, and if the Lord be not in that thou doest, then have little or nothing to do with same, in ANY manner, in ANY office, for it must surely come to naught.

In the beginning, then, BEGIN aright!”

Today, as when that reading was given, we are responsible for the furtherance of this work, the presentation of it to our fellow man; for, we have found it to be good.

The third reading before me is the one which was given yesterday afternoon, our most recent record. It was given for the man, who eleven years ago, was the first patient in the Cayce Hospital.

At this time I will turn these documents over to Miss Gladys Davis, Secretary of the Association, and Custodian of the Records. She will place them in the new vault.

Note: - Mr. Miller next introduced Mr. Thomas Sugrue, Chairman of the Department of Publications, who delivered the major address of the afternoon. A transcript follows:

THE NEW TOMORROW

By Thomas Sugrue

An address delivered at the dedication of the library and offices of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc., Arctic Crescent, Virginia Beach, Virginia, Sunday afternoon, September 29th, 1940.

Nine years ago, on the afternoon of June 6, 1931, I sat on the stairs at 115 - 35th Street, Virginia Beach, while this association was organized. My contribution to the meeting was small. I suggested that the title be association FOR research and enlightenment instead of association OF research and enlightenment…one word was my donation. Today my patience is rewarded: I’ve been told that I can use as many words as I wish. I hope you will think, when I am finished, that I resisted the temptation manfully, and held myself to a gentlemanly quota.

The details of that first meeting of the association have for the most part escaped my memory, but I remember the weather better than yesterday’s. It was a warm, sunny, peaceful spring afternoon, only disturbed by the birds and the insects, who were making a great deal of fuss about preparations for the summer. There were no blustery winds…only a small breeze that went about from flower to flower, listening to complaints and promising to get everything attended to, in time.

That was what I felt about this new association, as I sat on the stairs. I felt that we were done with expecting other people to transport us to physical and spiritual wealth without effort on our part. I felt that we had returned now to a normal way of doing things, and that if we would be patient, and persist, that everything would be attended to, in time.

It would take time because it was not an external organization we were about to build, but an internal one. Outside the sun shone everywhere, but only from those places where the seed of life existed in the earth did things grow: and the breeze was telling the young plants that the sunshine alone could not turn them green; they had first to fill the arteries of their leaves and stems with the magic fluid of chlorophyll.

That was our problem. We all possessed the magic fluid of the spirit, but in most of us it had not flowed out through the arteries of our mind and burst into the blooms of faith, hope, and charity. It was hidden in the barren shale of ego, its roots dried out in the sandy wastes of vanity, conceit, and selfishness. We thought we were pretty good as we talked about our intentions that afternoon. Since then we have learned that when we think most well of ourselves we are apt to be least admirable…pride goeth before a fall. We had a lot of things to learn: I think, now, that we have learned some of them, because I felt very strongly that afternoon that not a single brick would be set upon another for this new association until the internal bricks had been levelled and trued and solidly set in their places.

I do not mean to be too flattering when I say that we have learned. There is before us yet the larger task of application. No virtue is worth the sound of its name, as St. Thomas Aquinas said, unless it be translated into the action of love.

This building is our challenge. Now that we’ve got it, what are we going to do about it?

Well, first let us see what it is that we have learned; what it is that we possess.

The essence of human existence is the struggle for identity. Man wants to know, first of all, who he is. The baby in his crib, crying without apparent reason, is soothed by the sight of his mother. He identifies himself with her. In her face he sees the reality of his existence: she is the star to which he clings in the strange, unknown world in which he finds himself.

Later he struggles for identity in other ways - as an intelligence, acquiring knowledge and using it; as a social personality, joining with others in play and work; as a philosophical atom, contemplating himself in relation to life as a whole. Finally, he feels the urge to seek completion outside himself, by identifying and joining himself with a loved one, and by becoming with this loved one and with life itself, the co-creator of new life, new individuals, who seek their identity in the worlds of the flesh, the mind, and the spirit.

In our spiritual lives we follow the same pattern, but it takes longer for each phase to be accomplished. The search for identity presents the Satanic question: do we belong to God, or to ourselves? The ego demands self-rule; it wants to be left alone, to do as it pleases. The spirit whispers a different way, talking to us through our instincts, our intuition, our conscience, our emotions. For these the ego sets traps, so subtle that they are often unrecognizable as such. And when we DO discover them, other traps are laid. There is apparently no end to our ability to fool ourselves.

Our desires are made to look like our purposes; our appetites appear in the guise of our ambitions; our idle dreams take on the semblance of destiny.

If we do not desire a thing, we claim for our lack of desire the virtue of self-denial; if we DO desire a thing, we point to our zeal in pursuing it as proof of our vitality and alertness - and we will not have it any other way except that we are doing it for others.

If we want a person of the other sex, it’s love; if we don’t want him or her, it’s friendship. If we have no ambitions, we are modest and humble; if we have ambitions, we seek to serve our country and its people. If we are poor, the Lord is blessing us in disguise; if we are rich, the Lord is rewarding us for virtue.

If we endure pain and hardship, these are the tests of saints; if we have happiness, happiness is the state of the blessed.

Whatever it is that we are, whatever it is that we want - such, the ego will counsel, is right and just and most to be admired and pursued.

Until we have passed this barrier and arrive at the knowledge that we are of the spirit, not of the ego, not of the capricious will, we are continually caught in this mesh of self-deceit; we fall before it a hundred times a day, and only because the invisible hands of the merciful spirit are there to lift us again and set us once more on our way are we able to keep going.

But we will merely go round and round, falling and rising again, unless we find the door that leads to the magic mirror in which we may see the reflection of our true self. There are two ways to find this door: we can be dragged to it by suffering; or we can find it by the torch of the Christ mind, walking up the steps of wisdom, peace, and charity.

Most of those who find the door use both ways. They start out following the torch; they lose their way and are dragged up the final long stairway by heartache and loneliness. Or they are set on the path by loneliness and heartache, and seeing the torch ahead, they follow it.

By these methods, I think, the members of the association for research and enlightenment who have remained true to its ideals and purposes through the years, have arrived at, and passed through the first door. They know who they are, and they see ahead of them, in the new tomorrow that is symbol- ized by this building, WHY they are - and what they must do because of that why.

It means a new direction, a new purpose, for their lives. Hitherto the force of their thoughts has been centripetal - inward, toward themselves, in self-analysis, in examination of conscience and instincts, in listening for truth. This was the path of the wanderer in search of himself; this was the way of men who must keep watch on themselves lest they deceive themselves.

Now the way is centrifugal - outward, towards others, in an effort for the common good - in a genuine recognition of the brotherhood of man in the reality of the spirit. Self, having recognized self, can be trusted to act correctly. It will be NATURAL now for self to act for the good of others; this has become a desire in itself, for desire is now fused with purpose, and purpose is fused with destiny. This is the second great stage in the evolution of the spirit of man.

The members of this association have committed themselves. There is only one way for them to go: forward, in the service of mankind. This they MUST do before the last great journey is permitted them: the search for the face of God, which is the end of every man.

So now it is time to turn outward toward a greater reality than the individual - toward the human society of which we are all a part - toward all of the things of which the social texture is made up - toward those supra-personal ideals to which men devote themselves, and without which they would fail in their quest for completion and happiness - toward the disinterested love and service of the heart of the world, which aches so bitterly for the folly of its desires.

From all this the association and its faithful members have stood a little apart, preparing themselves. The time has now come to go forth.

Let me say again that it is not my intention to flatter either the association or its members. Neither do I think they should be falsely modest.

Because they have learned a few things; because they have discovered the true nature of themselves, does not mean that they are infallible in conduct and thought - that they no longer make mistakes. Far from it - they may even make more of them. But there is a difference.

Now they make mistakes with the knowledge that they ARE mistakes - not in the notion that they are right and just acts. Therefore they have the ability to recover from them more quickly.

And - what is more important, their mistakes have a purpose. They will continue to err, but more and more they will err on the side of justice.

But mistakes, sins, mean less than action.

“Love,” said St. Augustine, “and then do what you will.”

Then the reality of love is encountered - and love is the emanation of spirit - it becomes the impelling force in life, and all action naturally is in the right direction. I believe it is true that certain members of this association could be left to do what they will, in the certainty that their actions would involuntarily be in the interests of others.

But it is in this doing, this acting, which is the problem before the members of the association now. There is a word in the dictionary - velleity - which is defined as “inert aspiration” - a dolorous state in which the person wants to accomplish something but hasn’t the gumption to do anything about it.

One of the great philosophical fallacies is the vision set forth, without any means for accomplishing it. This was the weakness of the Platonists and the mystics of all times. The Platonists accurately envisioned the goal of man, but were ignorant of the way which led to it. It was Christ who provided the way, and it is Christianity which has given man a practical means, in ethics and morals, of accomplishing this end. But much of Christianity has made the mistake of substituting the means for the end - of making ethics and morals ends in themselves, rather than pathways of enlightenment and spiritual evolution. Many reasoning people have turned away from modern Christianity because they find no satisfactory explanation of codes of conduct which seem to exist for their own sakes. But more people have turned from Christianity in our time because they looked in a false mirror and saw what the ego wished them to see - a resplendent St. Michael, already saved and transcendent, and permitted indulgence in all that he desired.

When the Roman Empire began to crumble, and calamity after calamity was reported to the people, they began to look for a solace beyond the material world…but they wanted a religion which would make the way to salvation easy: they didn’t want to give up any of the pleasant living to which they had become accustomed. Consequently many isms and pseudo-religions sprang into life, and within Christianity itself, which was struggling for a foothold in the empire, there arose movements aimed at making the whole thing easier for people.

In our time much the same thing has happened. Since the organization of this association a dozen sects and societies for salvation have risen to popularity and fallen again - fallen because in them the people have followed a rainbow, and eventually they have discovered it to be just that.

But Christianity has itself fumbled the problems of restating its purpose, of saying to modern people in modern terms what Christianity is, and what it means to people, and what it means to civilization. The church has had a hard time explaining - and proving - to people that Christianity is a living thing - that it is life itself.

Christians have found embarrassment in people of other religions, who have seemed to live more Christian lives than the Christians. Again history is being repeated, for during the decline of the Roman Empire, when a certain man named Faustus, a Manichean in religion, was accused of not being a Christian, he replied to Augustine himself:

“Do I accept the Gospel? You ask me if I accept it, although it is apparent that I do, for I obey its commands. I should rather ask if you accept it, for I see in you no signs of your accepting it. I have left father, mother, wife, children, and all else required by the Gospel. Perhaps you do not know what is called the Gospel. It is nothing else save the preaching and the commands of Christ. I have parted with gold and silver, having ceased to carry money in my purse; content with daily bread, without care for the morrow, as to how I shall be fed or clothed. You see in me the beatitudes of Christ; and you ask, do I believe the Gospel? …But you say to believe the Gospel is not only to do what it commands, but also to believe all that is written in it, and especially that God was born. But neither is believing the Gospel only to believe that Jesus was born, but also to obey His commandments. If therefore you say that

I do not believe the Gospel because I pass over the Birth, much more do you not believe because you treat His commandments with contempt. If, as you say, belief in the Gospel includes faith in the genealogies and obedience to its precepts, why do you, an imperfect man, condemn me, another imperfect man? Let us suppose that you are right, that perfect faith consists of two parts, one consisting in word, of the confession that Christ was born, the other in deed, observance of Christ’s precepts: mark that I have chosen the hard and painful part, you that which is light and easy. Why then do you assail me for taking upon myself the more difficult part of faith, leaving to you, as a weak brother, the easier task? Come, let us ask Christ Himself, and learn from His own mouth what is the chief means of salvation. Who shall enter into Thy kingdom, O Christ? HE THAT DOTH THE WILL OF MY FATHER IN HEAVEN. That is His answer. Not ‘he that confesses that I was born.’”

That is precisely why no sect, no ism, no cult, no philosophical society has been permitted to form around the work of Edgar Cayce…for the philosophy of the free mind of Edgar Cayce, speaking through him in readings, has stated over and over again that He, Christ IS the light, IS the way, IS the truth…

The first duty of members of the association, then, is to be Christians…to live as Christians, and to thus reflect in their own lives the truth which they have found, with the help of these readings, within themselves.

This they have done - many of them - and already it has brought inquiries from others who have begun to wonder to what they may cling. What is it that has helped you so? Where do you get the strength and serenity which you seem to possess? These questions have been asked of some of you. You must have an answer to those questions, and to many others.

The example will be watched more and more, as time goes on. The explanation must be ready. Only the other day one of the young members of the association, walking down a street in Norfolk, found that she had involuntarily swerved to avoid walking under a ladder. She went back and deliberately walked under the ladder. A block farther on an old lady started to cross in front of her, then waited for the girl to go, since the youngster had the right of way. But the young lady found herself involuntarily stopping, giving the right of way to the old lady.

These actions, I think, symbolize the present state of the members of the association: still making mistakes, submitting to old superstitions, but doggedly fighting against them and correcting mistakes where they can be corrected: beginning in other things to act thoughtfully, justly, and courteously, without taking conscious thought.

And these are the people who must now carry forward the work of this association: they will do it because they want to, and because now, I believe, they cannot help doing it.

What, precisely, is this work? What has this association to offer the world?

Obviously whatever the association has to offer the world is continued in its records, in the more than 12,000 stenographic reports of Mr. Cayce’s readings, which will be housed in this vault, and which will be studied in this library…

That study must be made possible, first of all…without it the association will continue to serve only the individuals who have readings and the small groups which can carry on their own investigations…with that study made, almost anything is possible.

There are helps here for everyone…for the sick and for those who help the sick…the medical doctor, the osteopath, the homeopath, the neuropath, the physiotherapist, the directors of sanatoria, the psychologists and psychiatrists, the surgeons, the scientists, can all be aided, can all be enlightened, and through them and their ministrations all peoples, everywhere, can live more healthfully and fully.

This is not moonshine; this is not idle dreaming. This can be done - but it will take time, work, perseverance. The remedies must be tested, must be presented to the proper persons, must prove their efficacy. But they are here; they exist, now, at this moment.

Those who are studying the laws of psychic phenomena - so-called, can be enlightened and helped. In the readings there is information on the laws of telepathy, clairvoyance, and all the other manifestations of the supernormal. These can be tested; these can be proved; these can be presented.

Those who study the human body as a psychic vehicle, who are interested in the laws of personality, talent, genius, etc., can be enlightened and helped, so that vocational guidance can become an exact science. This is not foolish bragging; this can be done. But it will take time, it will take patience, it will require forbearance in the face of ridicule, criticism, and neglect.

Finally, there is in these readings a philosophy, a system of living, that answers the challenge of the present day. This is an age in which, as the poet said, “the old faiths loosen and rend;” the beliefs our fathers and forefathers lived by are crumbling. Science has pushed back the stars, magnified time, expanded the universe, found a new world in the atom, turned topsy-turvey every notion that man possessed regarding the world in which he lived and the other worlds he saw shining in his night.

It has come swiftly, and it is moving even more swiftly - toward the end of the age of power and materiality, toward a new tomorrow when the only wealth which men will seek is wealth of the mind, and the only knowledge that will be prized is knowledge of the spirit…let me read you what one person has written of that day…:

And in that time, so the prophets have written; when the Twentieth Century shall have passed away, and the sign of God-man is in the sky: peace shall reign upon the earth, and no man shall hate his brother.

Neither shall there be war, nor pestilence, nor poverty, nor any other of the shameful things which man has done unto himself since first he knew shame.

And a great land shall have risen out of the ocean of the Atlantic, and many islands also, to care for those who were forced from their homes in the land that destroyed itself, that was called Europe.

Nations that are great shall have perished, and all men, seeking to be brothers shall have put their hands to a common pledge, and raised up a single force to rule them: the force of wisdom.

Then wisdom shall sit in the palaces of cities, and on the mountain tops, and breathe in the hearts of men.

Wise men shall sit in judgement, and order the ways of their brethren, and listen for the voice of God.

For wisdom is the knowledge of God, and of His whereabouts, and of his laws and His mercy, and the beauty of His creations.

So wisdom brings peace, and teaches love, and sets the face of man toward his spirit.

And in that time these things shall be, and the earth and the sky and the sea shall open to man their secrets.

Atoms shall put their shoulders to the wheels of commerce, so that trees may grow unharried, and rest in their graves of coal and oil without hindrance.

Sound from heaven shall bend itself to the ears of man, that he may hear the music of the spheres, and understand the rhythms of his soul.

Colors and perfumes shall rise up from the sea to fashion beautiful images, and nourish the dreams of the young.

And through all the land, love, like a famished child, shall sit down to a feast, and rise up filled with joy.

No soldiers shall march; no guns shall sound; no bitterness or lies shall do disservice to the lips of anyone.

No debts shall be made; yet all promises shall be fulfilled. Death shall come to meet no man; all men shall go to meet death.

In the spring forget-me-nots shall blanket the fields, and the hearts of maidens shall turn to the hearts of men, and the sun shall follow its course in the heavens.

And God shall be pleased a little, looking at man, and tint the roses with a deeper red, and raise the skylark in the sky.*

Today that age is being born - in travail and sorrow, with suffering for everyone. To show others the beautiful thing that is ahead; to help others endure the present for the sake of the future; to help a little in anticipating such a day… even to lay a few stones of the path that leads to its achievement…this is a high and glorious privilege…and it is a high and glorious privilege which I believe the members of this association have been accorded: today it challenges them; tomorrow it must be done.

All men seek God; all men, eventually, find Him. It is the wandering that is long and painful, that can be shortened and gladdened by wisdom, mercy, and charity. That is what the members of this association can do…they can help men to find themselves and their God…each, as the poet said, in his own tongue…

A fire mist and a planet, A crystal and a cell; A jellyfish and a Saurian, And a cave where the cavemen dwell.

Then a sense of law and duty, And a face turned from the clod; Some call it evolution, and others call it God.

• [Poem by Thomas Sugrue using prophecies from various sources.]

A mist on the far horizon, The infinite, tender sky, The ripe, rich tint of the cornfield, And the wild geese sailing high, And all over upland and lowland, The sign of the goldenrod, Some of us call it autumn, And others call it God.

Like tides on a crescent sea beach, When the moon is new and thin, Unto our hearts high yearnings, Come welling and surging in, Come from the mystic ocean, Whose rim no foot has trod, Some of us call it longing, And others call it God.

A picket frozen on duty, A mother, starved for her brood; Socrates drinking the hemlock, And Jesus, on the rood; And the millions who humble and nameless, The straight hard pathway trod; Some call it consecration, And others call it God.*

That is the challenge to the members of this association: to help others to know the truth: the truth which shall set them free.

Already much has been done. This building is a monument to the association for research and enlightenment; the association for research and enlightenment is a monument to the work of Edgar Cayce, the work of Edgar Cayce is a monument to truth…

Remember this, and remember also the words of the Psalmist:

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.

There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.

• [“Each In His Own Tongue,” by William Herbert Carrutha.]

CONCLUSION - EDGAR CAYCE

There is only one thing I want to say. That is, “Thank you.” As you know, two years ago I had a dream which gave me the first concrete idea as to a manner in which this building might come into actual existence. As I thought of it, it seemed far away. The Readings have indicated for years that when a sufficient number of individuals had been convinced personally as to the value of the information, they would help pass it on to others. When I had this dream, I sent a copy to every member of the Association. [See 11/15/38 ltr. under 1469-1 Reports. See also under 254-103 Reports.] Today we are able to see the result of this letter. The money, time and energy which have made this possible have come from those whom I have tried to help.

One of the carpenters, working on the building, said to me the other day, ‘Well, Mr. Cayce, I’ve heard about you… I’ve heard a lot of people say a lot of things about you, but I don’t think I’ve ever met a man just like you. I don’t know what it is, that is different, but there’s something!” He possibly has never seen even a copy of a Reading; he doesn’t know what it is all about. Yet, when we started putting in our library, the first set of books was given by this man. It is helpful to know that our efforts stimulate such attitudes in individuals.

We are dedicating this building for a service to humanity. “Inasmuch as ye do it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye do it unto me.” The service to our fellow man is the greatest service we can do for our Maker. For, it is seeing in our fellow man something we could worship in our Maker that leads us on, to hope for, to be the very best possible channel for good. The work of studying our records and preparing them for distribution is just beginning. We need your cooperation and the assistance of every member of the Association. We are ready to go forward.

Thank you! Thank you for helping me to make this possible. Let us close with a word of prayer:

Gracious God, we thank Thee for Thy blessing to us. We thank Thee for the gift of Thy love, and the manifestations of Thyself in the earth through Thy Son, Jesus Christ. As we have come here this afternoon to dedicate this building for the purpose that we may better serve our fellow men, may we each dedicate…rededicate…our lives to Thee. For it is in Thee that we live and move and have our being. Be Thou, O God, the guide. Direct us in the things we do and say, and help us to choose Thy ways. Now, may the blessings of the father, the Son and the Holy Spirit be on each and every one, as we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

R3. 11/7/40 HLC’s letter to Mrs. [264]: “We are off to N.Y. for a short trip beginning next Sunday. Mother, Dad and Gladys will go up for the first week and I will be there for the next two with Dad. We will have two open meetings this year, one of them devoted to the Expansion program. We will be a the Kahn’s again, 20 Woods Lane, Scarsdale, N.Y.”

R4. 3/15/41 Building Fund letter by Marguerite A. Poss - see under 1757-1 Reports.

Background

Background

B1. 7/4/40 EC’s letter to [257] tells about Congress, who was present, how he felt about it, etc.

B2. 8/12/40 EC’s letter to [257]: “Broke ground for the new building this morning…”

B3. 9/16/40 EC’s letter to [779]: “We have started work on the vault and offices.”

Mentioned Entities

A.R.E. (Association for Research and Enlightenment), Soul, Thomas Sugrue, Purpose, Ideal, Virginia Beach, Dreams, Subconscious Mind, Cayce Hospital, Egypt, Hugh Lynn Cayce, Jesus Christ, King David, Morton Blumenthal, Mount Ararat, Atlantis, Oneness, Ministry of Jesus, Prayer, Reincarnation

Source: The Complete Edgar Cayce Readings, A.R.E. CD-ROM (2006). Reading 254-107, ReadingID 1245.