Reading 4146-1

TEXT OF READING 4146-1 M ADULT

Text

Date: 10/11/1917 Sex: M ReadingID: 11867

This psychic reading given by Edgar Cayce in Selma, Alabama.

[Edgar Cayce; (?), Conductor; (?), Steno.]

Time of Reading Unknown. Reading is not on file with Edgar Cayce Foundation or elsewhere according to available records.

Reports

Reports & Follow-up

R1. 10/11/17 F. W. Sears’s letter to EC:

F. W. SEARS, M. P. LECTURER, WRITER, TEACHER 108 & 110 W. 34th ST. NEW YORK

My dear Mr. Cayce;

Have just returned from a lecture trip west which immediately followed my vacation and will answer your letter now before I take up my season’s work which begins next week.

I have not been able to obtain the “wet battery” suggested* and so have just began to use a Farradic battery with dry cells.

There are two kinds of batteries, Farradic and Galvanic, both of which may be used with either dry cells or wet batteries. As the former and dry cells are a more recent invention I have been trying to get a Galvanic battery with wet cells. Have tried everywhere in both N.Y. City and Chicago for the latter. Have had one promised me here in N.Y. City but found it was not ready when I returned last Tuesday so have just began a course of treatment with the Farradic dry cell and believe it is going to be quite beneficial.

Now in regard to what you call your “gift” and the inquiry you make in reference to it.

The world is perfectly familiar with what is known as the first, second, and third dimensions; i.e., length, breadth and thickness, but it is not familiar with the fourth dimension, which is the interpenetrability of matter although there is ample evidence of it even to the physical senses, such evidence may be quickly observed by dipping a lump of sugar, or a cloth of any kind, in water and witnessing the atoms of water fill the space in between the atoms of sugar or cloth.

Man is also familiar with the material or physical world but he is not familiar with the astral world simply because the latter is made of finer material and interpenetrates the atoms of the coarser material of the physical world at will, and also exists outside of such earth material.

At the time of the birth of the physical body “something” comes and takes possession of it otherwise we have what is

• [GD’s note: No copy of Mr. Sears’ reading to which he refers is in the A.R.E. files. Evidently EC wrote asking his opinion of the information and this was the reply.]

known as a “still birth” or a dead child. This “something” is the astral body which is more commonly known as the “soul”. At the times of the “death” of the physical body this astral body simply leaves it and does not come back to take possession of it again, the connecting cord being separated.

The astral world, from which the “soul” comes at birth and to which it returns at death, is all around us and interwoven with the physical or material world.

Some persons are more sensitive to the astral world than are others. This is NOT a “gift” but rather a species of abnormal and unconscious development which may be had by anyone. Whether or not the effects are “good” depends upon whether such person uses such development as the master of it or its slave. The tendency with more persons is to become the slave to it and in all such cases it not only debilitates the body but in time it controls the human mind. Such development simply being the unconscious giving up of the human body and all of its faculties to some astral body other than the one to which the human body rightfully belongs, and permitting its use by such astral body.

When you become unconscious during the time you are using this “gift” you are simply giving up the use of your physical body to some astral entity and allowing it to use your body and its organs to express itself on this material plane. This astral entity is one who was a physician here in the material world and who is now a physician on the astral plane (for we have and need physicians there as well as here, but those on the astral plane deal with the finer material than do those on the physical plane; this finer material being what is usually called here by the name of magnetism, although that is not what it really is.)

When you lay down to sleep at night your astral body leaves the physical but remains connected with it by an astral cord. When it returns and takes possession of your physical body the consciousness, knowledge or wisdom of your human mind has not been increased or changed to any material extent; and this same thing is true when you lay down your physical body at death. On the astral plane one uses his finer senses (which correspond to the five physical senses) and is able to determine things by reason thereof which the physical senses do not know. That is why your doctor was able to tell me some things about my physical condition which I had sensed but of which I was not fully sure before. He was not able to tell me a lot of other things simply because he had not learned them either here in the material world nor on the astral plane.

I am calling attention to these things in order that you may better understand the correct value of the information given during these trances of yours.

That your control, or guide (whatever one may wish to call it) is able to diagnose disease much better by reason of working with his astral senses than is the vast majority of physicians, there is not doubt, and to that extent can this be used by those in need of such assistance. That any information which it might give for other purposes would be of any value is another matter and would depend wholly and entirely upon such guide’s development both here and on the astral plane.*

In view of the fact that to continue to permit your physical body to be used as the medium through which these messages may be given, is to devitalize it in most cases and in time bring on a general debilitated condition unless the work is done with great care and under the most harmonious conditions, my advice to you would be to go very slow in any further development of this “gift” and build up your physical body to the end that when you do allow yourself to be used as a medium that you are able, physically and mentally, to do so without injury to yourself.

I have had a larger experience, probably, in the study of and in dealing with “nervous” people and the influence of the astral entities upon them than falls to the lot of the most experienced “nerve specialist” and know how easy it is for the average person to get into the currents where he becomes astralized or obsessed, or both, and how difficult it is for him to get free from these currents. Nothing but the proper control of his human mind by his own soul or ego ever accomplishes this permanently. It is just as necessary to keep out from under the control of some other astral mind as it is to keep out from under the control of some other human mind.

With all good wishes I am

Faithfully [signed] F. W. Sears

• [Handwritten at top of above letter was the word NO in large letters and circled.] [GD’s note: This big pencilled “NO” is in EC’s handwriting. I suspect it means EC did not agree with Mr. Sears’s interpretation of the source of “the gift”.]

Background

Background

None.

Mentioned Entities

Spiritual Body, Physical Body, Soul, A.R.E. (Association for Research and Enlightenment), Alabama, Chicago, Entity (Cayce Term), Jesus Christ, New York City, Purpose, Selma Alabama

Source: The Complete Edgar Cayce Readings, A.R.E. CD-ROM (2006). Reading 4146-1, ReadingID 11867.