Reading 254-91

TEXT OF READING 254-91

Text

Date: 6/28/1936 Sex: M ReadingID: 1229

This psychic reading given by Edgar Cayce at his home on Arctic Crescent, Virginia Beach, Va., this 28th day of June, 1936, in accordance with request by those present at this meeting of the Fifth Annual Congress of the Ass”n for Research & Enlightenment, Inc.

[Edgar Cayce; Gertrude Cayce, Conductor; Gladys Davis, Steno. Gladys & Douglas Johnston, David E. Kahn, Helen & Alec Ellington, Jane (Minnie) Williams, Myrtle & R. L. Demaio, Hannah Miller, Mary Blood, Chester Robinson, Florence & Edith Edmonds, Esther Wynne, Helen Storey, Ethel & Edgar Parry, Anne & John Penn, Lillian Barclay, Frances Y. Morrow, Ruth LeNoir, Jennie Moore, Henry Hardwicke, Elizabeth Perry, Abbie Kemp, & Hugh Lynn Cayce; also Sally Jones.]

Time of Reading 4:00 to 4:15 P. M. Eastern Standard Time.

1. GC: You will have before you the Ass’n for Research & Enlightenment, Inc., members of which are present here. You will consider the work of this organization in studying and presenting the psychic work of Edgar Cayce. You will give at this time a discourse which will set forth the standards for our activities during the coming year and giving such specific suggestions and council as may be helpful to the members of this Association.

2. EC: Yes, we have the purposes of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, the members that are present; as a group or a membership and as individuals.

3. In considering the work of such an organization and its standards, that as composed of individuals of all character of experience, all influences that are of a nature that has brought about the interest in a work of that purposed by the activity of such an Association, we find it is - as has been given oft - first to the individual, then to the groups, then to classes and masses.

4. As to the activities that are before this organization, first - as we find - there is a period just ahead in which there will be given the greater opportunities for service by each and every member. This is not only owing to the general conditions of an unsettled nature but to the termination of a period and the beginning of a period when there is to be the LIVING by individuals of that which has prompted them. Not as ones seeking for self-exaltation, not as individuals seeking for an easy way, not as individuals seeking for a manner or a means of escaping their own selves; but rather as in using their understanding, their comprehension, their knowledge, their love their patience, their long-suffering, in such ways and manners that there may not indeed be the perishing of hope and faith in the earth.

5. Such opportunities are before all those who have purposed in their heart to DO good unto those not only of the household of faith in their individual tenets or beliefs but unto ALL, because each soul that manifests itself in human form IS thy brother - and the spirit and soul of same is in the form of thy Maker. For the Lord’s sake, then, the opportunities are not to be used to self’s own glory but that the glory of the Father may be made manifest in the earth.

6. THESE be the opportunities, THESE be the experiences through which each and every soul will pass within the next year.

7. For there is set before thee those choices to be made, as to WHOM ye will serve.

8. As to MANNERS, then, in which each soul shall conduct self as respecting this as an individual organization, it has oft been given that this is not under any schism or ism or any individual tenet other than that which has been of old, “I AM my brother’s keeper!” That should be the cry that should be in the heart of every member, every individual, “I AM MY BROTHER’S KEEPER!”

9. Then so live, so act, so conduct thyself in thy dealings with thy fellow man day by day that they who are astray may be set aright. Not those who are astray only according to THINE own interpretations, but those who are seeking! Art thou astray? Art thou troubled? Art thou discouraged? Art thou fainthearted? If so, then THOU art astray!

10. For “Lo, I am with thee always” is the promise to those who have put on the whole armor. “If ye will be my children, I will be thy God” is to every soul. Have ye lost touch? Have ye lost faith? Have ye lost hope? If so, then ye YOURSELVES are astray!

11. In thine dealings with the Association, then, and its purposes, and those sources or channels through which ye may seek for that comfort, have ye APPLIED in thy DAILY experience that thou hast heard, that thou hast found good, that thou hast experienced in thine OWN life? If so, THEN ye may INDEED know the manner, the way in which ye may use thyself in whatever sphere or phase of activity ye find yourselves; that ye may be a BETTER member, a better servant of a living God! For ye who would be the greatest will indeed be the servant of all, as He hath given from the beginning. Yea, thy Lord, thy God, showeth thee this day by day in His dealings with thy fellow man, to show those promises that have been made sure in the experiences of those that seek. For He giveth good and evil unto all, and ye choose through the WILL thy relationships - as to whether they shall be for self-exaltation, self-glorification, self-indulgence, self-gratification, or for the love of life, of truth, of hope, of honor, of virtue, of patience, of brotherly love. Ye yourselves show forth these in the manners, the ways ye deal with thy fellow man!

12. Forgive, if ye would be forgiven. Be patient, if ye would have thy Father be patient with thee.

13. In what manner, then?

14. First having convinced thyself through thine own personal application, then, as has been given, that which is good, that which is life, if ye would have same give it unto others. For in so doing ye gain that understanding that bringeth to thine own experience that which makes for the fulfilling of that purpose for which ye came into this experience.

15. For He hath prepared a way of escape for each soul; He hath not willed that any soul should perish. Nothing may separate thee from the knowledge save thyself!

16. In the experience of the group, in the experiences of all, we will find in the coming months, in the coming year, those periods when there will be a greater seeking through these channels. Will ye be ready to set that as is the standard? What, then, is the standard? “OTHERS, Lord, not myself but others, that the glory of the Father may be manifested in the earth; and as the day of the Lord approaches that many may be ready and willing to answer, ‘Here am I, use me.’ ‘Here am I, use me.’”

Reports

Reports & Follow-up

R1. 6/15/36 Thomas Sugrue’s booklet THERE IS A RIVER preface to book then being planned on Edgar Cayce’s life and work. [Used also under 1800-26 Reports.]

THERE IS A RIVER By Thomas Sugrue

(Copy was autographed with the inscription, “For Gertrude Cayce from her third son, Tom.”

Being the Preface to a Volume, Now in Preparation, on the Life and Work of Edgar Cayce…

Published by THE ASSOCIATION FOR RESEARCH AND ENLIGHTENMENT, INCORPORATED, Virginia Beach, Virginia

“There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God…” Psalms 46

It is not here my purpose to strike on the bandor of time more notes than were awarded, in the beginning of my plan, these minutia of preface. I had intended to announce in brief the purpose of my efforts, the effect toward which sentence and paragraph and chapter are aimed. But it seems, as with all things in which man and his mind properly have no business, that I am entangled. Such simplicities as were clear to me in their birth have clouded on the pages where they were to mature. Their dress in words cannot be a Grecian gown, simple and caught at the middle with a golden clasp. They demand designs with which I am not now, nor ever will be, familiar. Yet in the face of challenge I can but cross their desires with language, and hope they will come forth fulfilled.

The story of Edgar Cayce is not the chronicle of a man born, appointed to a destiny, and fulfilling it. It is not a biography built upon facts, garnished with anecdote, and served with similitude and interpretation. It has more to itself than that. It demands, in its telling, the scope and poetry of legend, the depth and preciseness of history, the clarity of science, the exactness of mathematics, and the vision of religion. Such abilities do not come in the same human package. The mind with which I had hoped to mate the matter of this tale has no solution for its meanings, its ramifications, its subtleties and myriad implications. Only by the inflation of a vast insolence, and loud singing to drown the voice of fear, can this venture hope to pass through the dark valley of verb and come out walking.

There is contained in the life of every man, whatever his caste in the system of human intelligence, a mystery as great as the universe: a formula so intricately woven, so cunningly patterned, that even his soul, groping through ages of thought, can but feebly guess at the solution. The architecture of his skeleton, the chemistry of his flesh, are phenomena which he has never more than vaguely understood. Of his mind he has no knowledge at all, except that it operates - objectively upon the life which besets him from without subjectively upon the death which gathers within. He has no certain knowledge of how to deal with either of these exigencies, and in puzzlement he blends them, to his further bewilderment. He labors in the life without him; in order to preserve the life within him; yet the execution of this labor is the matter upon which the death that grows within him feeds. His existence is a paradox: he moves inexorably toward extinction, laboring that he may preserve himself for it. He works that he may live that he may die.

To the beast and the flower this is not an irrational procedure. There are other beasts and other flowers, descendants of those which return to earth. Nor does it seem unreasonable to the average man that people in China occasionally die. It is when this fact of cessation presents itself to the individual that mind fails to follow the pathways of matter. It is something with which reason, however fortified by evidence, will have nothing to do. It will sanction all things but its end. To this it presents argument; of this it is afraid. The first man with a soul, trapped in his cave by fever, or age, balked at it. To him had come a revelation: that he was lord of the earth. He would not relinquish his scepter.

So made for himself, this man in the cave, a comforter. He told himself of another life, beyond the winds and the seas and the rivers and the forests: a life wherein there was always harvest, and where age could not enter in. He told it, before he died, to his sons and daughters and wife, and said he would meet them there. They believed him, and they were happy.

We, too, have believed that story, and we have been happy because of it. We have examined the architecture of our skeletons and the chemistry of our flesh, and have found no answer to them. We have divided our minds into squares and circles and put names upon them, but nothing has come of it. We have questioned each other closely about the thoughts that have been engendered within us, and have found no cause for joy. In the end we have accepted the word of the witnesses of death, who have told us that peace comes to the faces of those who are about to travel into nothingness. With this as our guide we have carried our ancestors and our lovers and our friends to their graves, and have prayed for them. We have built churches, and taken to ourselves religion. We have made our hope into a belief, and our belief into a social structure. We have taught others to believe as we believe, for in numbers there is strength. We do not wish to go into this nothingness alone.

Yet when the city lights have receded and the doors of our churches are closed we stand alone with doubt. We can gaze through telescopes at stars greater than our sun, and speculate on other worlds in the space toward which some day we will be propelled. We can see upon the blackboard of a schoolroom scrawling numbers which prove that space and matter and life and death are one. We can pass swiftly through the air, or over our lands, or through the seas, or even underground. We can receive from the hands of the chemist substances which restore our health. We can hear in our homes the voices of men a thousand miles away. But from none of these can we receive surcease from our end, from none of these can we gain knowledge to illumine our doubt. With this we must grapple alone.

The facts are few. At some unspecified time we emerge into a world with which we are not familiar, and with which we are not equipped to cope. At another unspecified time we leave it. We are, when we die, somewhat larger in body than when we are born, but this has no bearing on our contemplation of the two events. Before birth we had nothing to do with our bodies, and after death we have nothing to do with them. What, then, are we? We are apparently our thoughts. When we do not have them we do not exist. When we have them we are alive. We do not remember having had any before our birth, nor for some time thereafter. As we die they flee from us. Yet they are we. How then can they flee from us? We must, perforce, go with them. But where?

They may be, these thoughts, only another of our senses. These, we know, die. They pass away slowly, painlessly, leaving us without feeling, without sight, without hearing, without taste, without smell. When we are young they are strong and alert. They pick up the world for us, and bring it to our minds. When their work is done they begin to sleep, and then to die. Our eyes grow dim, our touch is muddy, our ears and our taste buds and our noses are untrustworthy. We can no longer smell spring in the air, nor feel it against our feet, nor sight it through the bark of trees. We grow old, and only remembrance of things makes them real.

As my fingers strike the keys of the typewriter which is translating these thought impulses into words, tiny cells are brushed off my finger ends. These cells, which were a part of me, are destroyed. So soon as they leave me, however, trophic nerves, which carry impulses throughout the body, send an SOS to headquarters. Immediately the blood supply is marshalled for service, cells are put into swift-flowing streams, and dropped into the empty spaces. The tissue is repaired, and I have no knowledge that damage was done.

If I suffered from anesthetic leprosy this repair would not take place. My trophic nerves would not send any message, and my body would be unaware that help was needed. No cells would replace those worn off by the keys, and when I had completed the life of Edgar Cayce my fingers would be stubs.

That is what happens to our senses. As life proceeds from the simplicities of childhood to the complexities of adolescence, maturity, and senility, we become confused. An odor that was once the perfume of the roses becomes a snarl of memories, a heap of circumstances and happenings in which the perfume of roses was in some way concerned. Our senses, besides being duller, are no longer straightforward in their accounting to us. Our eyes no longer see a house in which we live. They see a kaleidoscope of happenings and events and people that have had to do with us in that house. Our taste buds no longer tell us that we are drinking Rhine wine. They tell us instead that we are sitting on a sidewalk in Budapest, watching the Danube and the people who are passing by. The senses have given over to their own death. They are immersed in a pile of memories, recognizing things only because of the remembrances these things incur.

Likewise the mind, struggling to extricate itself from this mass of wreckage, becomes confused. Desperate to escape, it denies itself: it says it has no part in the wreckage, it calls what is past the subconscious. It divides and redivides itself, making excuses for its incompetencies, tracing its mistakes to prenatal influence and heredity, blaming its dullness on environment, seeking to escape through a process of mental suasion that depends for its rationality upon irrationality. In the end it comes face to face with itself again, having rounded the block in its flight and arrived, panting and exhausted, precisely at the point where it began. It is inevitably itself, existing without effort, but unsure of its future. The doubt remains.

All of these things are known to each of us, and each of us, now and again, ponders them. In our youth we talk of them to other persons, until we perceive that these other persons are precisely as muddled as we are, and as fearful. Then we take the task within us, and thereafter turn it over and exercise it, frequently at first, then with less and less regularity, and finally at only those times when the hand of the potter seems about the crush us in the mold.

It was my fortune when, in my now quite faraway youth I was putting these things to myself and others, that a listener happened in who was not of the common herd. He seemed, though as young as I, to be unworried. He smiled tolerantly at my voiced heresies - wild cries of fear that I tried to make into shouts of courage. To my inchoate philosophies he made quiet answer, puncturing their tender shells with barbs of what I forthwith considered genius. I took him to my bosom. Through long nights of the 1926 winter in Lexington, Virginia, in our tiny rooms in Lees Dormitory, when we should have been preparing lessons for the stern masters of Washington and Lee University, we talked of the doubt.

He said he knew, this bespecaled young man who so willingly gave up sleep to instruct me. I asked him how he knew. Then for days he would not talk to me, and I saw him brooding over his books, staring at me occasionally with opaque eyes, staring at me occasionally with eyes that shot into me and stabbed at my nerves. Then one night he told me how he knew.

“My father,” he said, “is a psychic medium.”

It is now a long time since that happened, and I do not remember much except that we stayed up all night, and that at breakfast we were still talking. I wanted to know, but I did not believe. I was a Roman Catholic Irishman from Connecticut. He, Hugh Lynn Cayce, was a Christian Church member from Virginia. There was no valid reason why we should like each other, why we should be together. It was, I thought afterward, almost indecent.

But he said he knew, and he talked of a God Who was merciful, Who was understanding, Who saw eye to eye with my blundering desires in life. So we forsook sleep on other nights, and talked again, and again.

He told me of a man, his father, who lay down to sleep and spoke with the voice of authority: who cured the halt and the lame and the sick and the blind; who told the story of the world before history began; who traced in the minds of those who came to ask him, other lives on earth and the promise of more lives to be; who spoke of the Old Testament and the New Testament as truth; who made heaven and salvation a reward for the strong, not a dull fortress in an inconceivable land manned by the wimpering and the cowardly who had prayed and given alms and fled from battle.

So in that spring I went with the boy to Virginia Beach, Virginia, to see his father. I expected a dark-haired, sharp-eyed, stalwart man who walked with gods and spoke in the language of metaphysics. I met a mild, amiable, soft spoken man who on the first day changed his cigarette brand to suit mine, who allowed me to teach him the intricacies of rummy, and who asked me to go fishing with him. He took me down town and bought me a soda, introduced me to the village barber, and played three sets of tennis with me. I went to bed in his house that night with complete peace. Such a nice man, I knew, would not let the devil get me.

All that, too, seems a long time ago. He has been my friend now for nearly ten years. I am so conversant with his life and with his work that I begin where I began myself, and explain it step by step, seems a confusing and arduous task. Perhaps I should have done it long ago, before I was so lost in the trees that I could not see the forest. Perhaps I should not ever have attempted it.

Yet there is, in my files, an envelope labeled, “Readings;” and there is, in my mind and in my heart, a certain peace. These things are due to Edgar Cayce. Since that day when we played rummy and discussed cigarettes and drank soda and played tennis, no one of the questions which arise in the dark hours to plague the minds and hearts of men has troubled me. The soundness of my body, the temper of my mind, the quiet of my soul, are due to him. He has slept for me many times, with the sun across his face, and he has told me who I am and what I ought to be, and who I was in the years that are history and legend.

He has informed me of the reasons for my ills and my frettings; and given me ointments for their heal. He has calmed me when I was unruly, and praised me when I was meek. He has set my feet again and again on the highway of humility, and held over and over again that mirror before my face in which is reflected the charge of my existence.

These things he did when asleep. Waking, he has given me roof and sustenence, friendship and company. We have walked together through the canyons of Manhattan and over the sands of Virginia Beach. We have whiled away the hours on golf courses, and on the shaded porches of his home. He has listened to my troubles, and unburdened himself to me. There is not any man for whom I hold greater love. He is, in brief, my friend. I believe in him; I believe in his labors; I believe in his gifts.

Therefore this task has come to me. I had hoped that someone more worthy would be appointed. I know that I am inadequate, that never in my life will a more difficult problem be set before me. It deserves better hands. Yet the time has come for its fulfillment, and no other workman is at hand. I have taken it gladly; it is my honor.

To those who know Edgar Cayce and his work I have this to say: the breadth of the assignment has not escaped me. I know that on any one of the innumerable subjects which have coursed through his 25,000 readings a book could be written. These books, in time, will be written. My job is to break the ground, to lay down with as much completeness and exactitude as is possible the fundamentals of Edgar Cayce, his life, and his work. Much must be excluded. Things that were momentus in their days of happening seem, in perspective, shadowy details that stray into dull byways. The outline, massive in years and importance, remains. It is this which I hope to get solidly planted between covers. The rest, in due course, will follow.

To those who come upon Edgar Cayce for the first time let this be warning: it is no tale to take in stride. Whatever else it gives you, it will give you pause. There is not in the chapters which will follow any program of ballyhoo, any attempt to sell a product. This is a document for the purpose of record. Those who would quibble, who would point the finger of their intelligence in scorn, who would call questions and cry for proof, had best leave off and take again to their school books. Here is a river for those who wish to bathe; but those who enter it had best know how to swim.

Thomas Sugrue June 15, 1936 New York City

R2. 6/30/36 See 294-185, Par. 18-A, 19-A, EC’s dreams regarding earth changes, spiritual development, etc.

R3. 8/12/36 See 1249-1, Par. 9-A regarding getting scientific aspect of EC’s work.

R4. 9/13/36 See 262-100 regarding A.R.E. Study Group work and Manual for teachers, study group leaders, etc. [See Source File Key #262 for Supplement comprising study group material used for group leaders in Sept.-Oct. 1936, re 262-100.]

R5. 9/29/36 See 1210-2, Par. 6-A giving definition of “Seekers” and how to reach them.

R6. 10/3/36 EC’s letter to [2118]:

Dear Mrs. [2118]:

I’ve wanted to write you ever since receiving yours of the 23rd, and I only wish now I knew how to say just how much I appreciate your interest…most of all, somehow I feel, Mrs. [2118], you have gotten a better concept of what my real inner desire is to do and be, than most anyone I know; or at least you express it in such a beautiful way that it presents to my own concept just what I would like to put into words.

We had the reply from Mrs. [1267] and I’m hoping, trusting and praying with her that the suggestions as given will prove to be as valuable to her as such information has been to so many hundreds of others. We sent to you a copy of the reading.

I assure you it has been quite gratifying to us to have so many wonderful reports continually. Very recently there was a young lady [852] visiting us who had only a few months ago been given up by ten physicians, who said it was impossible for her to get well…for they didn’t know what was the matter with her, and acknowledged it. Yet she is now in almost perfect health, nineteen years old and with all the opportunities and enthusiasm that goes with young womanhood, with a desire to finish her schooling and to prepare herself for something very definite as her life’s work. This to me seems to be real worth while, and it’s certainly without any thought of any cism, ism, or cult…only the love of a merciful Father that may be manifested in the lives and experiences of our fellow man, and that they as individuals may become more and more conscious of that oneness with that divinity.

I am most happy to know that you enjoyed the introduction to the book Mr. Sugrue is writing, and I appreciate more than I can tell you your thought of preparing the book for those who are in some ways, at least, less fortunate than we who have our eyesight…that they, too, might read this.

I want to ask you a question… I hope you do not think it’s impertinent, and if I may I would like to ask that you act on it if you think favorably of it:

For some years I have been very well acquainted with Mr. [437] who is President of the …, Inc. He it was that introduced the Miracle Man some years ago in the silent pictures, and he has spoken several times of trying to obtain a story that would carry something similar, something more up-to-date, yet carrying the same thought that possibly “There Is a River.” And that we have, if man will only take hold, a connection with divinity that may manifest itself in our relationships with our fellow man. Somehow I have gotten the idea that this preface, “There Is A River” might be made into such a movie. Not with any names, of course, but so it might carry something that would be very much worth while, helping to eliminate much of that which has grown up as cults, cisms, class, hatreds on account of creed or cult. I believe it can be presented as Mr. Sugrue has written of himself, in such a way that it would be good. What do you think of it? Read it over again and let me know. And then if you think well of it, drop a line to Mr. [437], telling him what you think of it…and it might be that we can in that way be of a great help to a great number of people.

Yes, Hugh Lynn met some of the group who distribute the pamphlet, “The Next Three Years,” when we were in N.Y. last spring. And as has been our policy, we try to pass on that we have found in our own experience to be worthwhile, for individuals to use as they may think best. I understand that the same thing doesn’t appeal to everyone, but I hope that a great many of our members will be able to get a good deal out of the various papers and data we have sent out from time to time.

Hugh Lynn is undertaking locally to review some of the books that have been written on the subject, pro and con. And while he hasn’t had his first meeting yet, apparently he has aroused a bit of interest. The course is to open Thursday evening.

Our groups in Norfolk are growing; more interest I think is being shown, and other groups are being formed from time to time.

Thank you again for your letter and for the real help and joy you have given me in writing this. I trust that I may be hopeful to any and all whom you may interest in writing us, and hope you will let us hear from you whenever you have the opportunity.

Please remember me to Katherine when you write. With kindest personal regards and love from each and every one here, I am

Sincerely, [EC:GD]

R7. 10/6/36 Mrs. [2118]‘s letter to EC:

Dear Mr. Cayce:

I have just received your very kind letter. Yes, I believe I am fully aware of the noble purpose of your life & work. That is why I have never forgotten you & have never ceased to speak of you to those sufficiently attuned to appreciate spiritual strivings & manifestations.

Too well do I know that the field of psychic research has also its host of imposters, who feed upon a gullible public, or some suffering groper after light. These make it all but impossible for the rarely endowed psychic to make himself felt or understood or to even win a respected place among thinking people. It is an uphill road for such as you - but you are not the kind to lose heart or courage or to fail to live up to the light within you.

The case you wrote about in your letter proves your great value as one endowed with almost superhuman power for good.

I am one who has great faith in the healing power of the Spirit - whence it comes or how, mysterious as it may seem to most people, seems to me to be but the natural emanations of Divinity - or Divine Love. The great sorrow is that so few know how to find the fountain-source of all those freely flowing healing waters.

You who seem to have found the way are certainly doing your share to helping others to do the same; so much for what I think of you!

As to your request for my opinion, etc., on the subject of dramatizing Mr. Sugrue’s “There Is A River” for the … Pictures, I should off-hand have to say that I would have to read & re-read Mr. Sugrue’s interpretation before I could give you a fair opinion on the subject at all. This much I will say & this may suffice you, that ever since I met you the thought was strong in my mind that it would be a valuable contribution on the part of some scenario - writers well versed in the field of psychic phenomena, to write just such a story as yours, leaving out as you say any names, etc., the idea being to popularize & for educational purposes to familiarize the lay mind with the whole vast subject of psychic phenomena, & to offset the popular misconceptions & fraudulent practices of so-called discredited mediums, etc.; also to help do away with all types of prejudices: racial & religious hatreds, etc.

So I am sympathetic with the purpose you have in mind. I am only not sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Sugrue’s workable knowledge of the field, or his ability as a dramatist or playright, for it would have to be made a living, thrilling vital production to effect the desired result.

Nor do I feel that I could or would be the proper judge of Mr. Sugrue’s literary gifts; he may be ideally suited for all I know. Yet I would not be in a position to judge his spiritual understanding or for that matter anyone else’s. A play no doubt could be written & if well done it could be a tremendous power for good. If inadequately done it could do much harm to the cause.

I do not want to close this letter without thanking you for the Reading for Mrs. [1267]. She is deeply touched by the fasts & suggestions you gave her & will act upon them. I shall advise you later of the results.

I am mailing under separate cover for your research library a few books that may be of interest, one of them being Dr. Meyer’s books that you requested, etc.

Kindly convey my warmest feelings to your dear ones & to Miss Gladys. To my great regret I cannot of course attend Hugh Lynn’s book reviews, would that the distance were not so great. I wish him every possible success.

Very cordially yours, Mrs. [2118]

R8. 10/12/36 EC’s reply to [2118]

Dear Mrs. [2118]

We were very happy to have yours of the 6th, and I wish to express my appreciation also for the package of books that you forwarded for the library of the Association. I’m sure that you will hear from Hugh Lynn, as he handles these, but I just wanted you to know how I feel about it also.

Yes, there seems to be so much imposition upon the public in psychic matters…and there are so many questionable and unkind things said from others at times, and then at others the Work seems to fail to bring that we know individuals are seeking. Yet with a study of these experiences we are so often shown the futility of any one group or individual feeling or thinking that it has the only truth. For it is evident that truth, like our understanding of our associations with Creative Forces or God, is a growth. And it is indeed true, as was said by one of the writers of the Holy Writ, “We grow in grace, in knowledge and understanding of God.”

And the only way, when we observe circumstances, experiences about us, is by practice; putting into practical application in our dealings with our fellow man that which is our concept of the God we worship. And as one of our group members, who has been studying for some years along with the Work, said the other day, we usually find this to be true; “Everybody else is right but me,” which is, of course, just opposite to what most of us say or preach, that think we have gotten hold of something.

I do hope that the information for Mrs. [1267] proves of great value. We have had and do have at times apparently a series of very unusual, exceptional cases, where apparently there is little to be done except the spiritual understanding that may be given to those that are left or those that are laboring with the individuals who apparently are suffering from no cause of their own. And yet to me it would be a very sad thing indeed if those suggestions given in these readings were not at least true and tenetable under the circumstance; that is, that we are constantly meeting our own selves.

I want to thank you again for your wonderful expressions of appreciation of my sincerity. I THINK I am; I know I’m trying to be just as honest with others as I would like for them to be with me, and I ask others to do just that, no more, no less.

Also I appreciate what you say about the little pamphlet, “There Is A River.” I’m sure you are quite right, that such an undertaking would require a very delicate yet a very positive handling. And I realize that most of the cinema companies are looking for popular subjects. And when it comes to presenting anything that is of an educational nature, it is not only quite an undertaking but it oftimes puts them in jeopardy to a very unstable public. Yet if such could be presented in the right way, I do believe it would be very worth while. I do not say this because it is something in which I have an especial interest, but because of the interest I have in my fellow men coming to know that they, too, may know of their relationship to the Creative Forces or God.

When you have thought it over, it will be very lovely if you will drop either Mr. Sugrue or Mr. Goetz a line expressing your feelings or reaction to the subject matter. I’m sure it would be a help in the right direction, if this is worth presenting. And I appreciate your interest.

I certainly trust that Mrs. [1267] is finding help, and I will be more than happy to hear from you as to just what her reaction to the information is.

Thanking you again and again for your wonderful help, and asking to be remembered to all of your loved ones…and with very best from each and every one here, I am

Sincerely, [EC:GD]

P.S. Do you happen to know our very good friends, Mr. and Mrs. [619] & [601] at Detroit, Mich.? If you do not, I would certainly like for you to get in touch with them if you are ever in Detroit.

R9. 10/25/36 See 257-172, Par. 32-A—41-A in re proposed trip of EC to N.Y., advising to help those who seek and who are in need, not those just curious.

R10. 11/23/36 See 294-8, Par. R22, Myra Kingsley’s update on EC’s horoscope predicting “low ebb” vibrations and warnings in the coming year. In closing she wrote: “I wish to say that my reading [Life Reading 1293-1] from you was one of the really profound experiences of my own life and has given me a new, and better, thing to work for.”

R11. 9/29/39 See 5749-11, Par 3-A referring to this preface to THERE IS A RIVER.

Background

Background

None.

Mentioned Entities

Thomas Sugrue, Soul, Purpose, A.R.E. (Association for Research and Enlightenment), Hugh Lynn Cayce, Virginia Beach, Gladys Davis, Baking Soda, Creative Forces, Fallen Angels, Gertrude Cayce, Healing, Astrology, Book of Job, China, David Kahn, Destiny, Dreams, Earth Changes, Free Will

Source: The Complete Edgar Cayce Readings, A.R.E. CD-ROM (2006). Reading 254-91, ReadingID 1229.