There is a River: the Life of Edgar Cayce, A Life Changing Book

Today my friend Ricky Kendall emailed me about seeing the book, There is a River: the Life of Edgar Cayce, by Thomas Sugrue, on my Favorites Book list. There Is A River, was developed during Sugrue's intimate association with Cayce and was first published by Henry Holt and Company in 1942, still regarded as the most definitive study of Cayce's life and his extraordinary psychic gift.

And Ricky told me what that book meant to him. His story is so familiar. I have heard over and over again from friends, acquaintances, and from fan mail, how they had read There is a River, usually in years past, and how the book was a catalyst for their spiritual search and understandings.

I’m not sure what year I first read it, maybe late 1950’s. It is very possible my father had it in his paperback collection when I was in Junior High or High School. I do know we had discussions about Cayce. If I had not read it then, it would have been not long after.

Ricky had this to say today:

I noticed on your "Population Unknown" blog you have Thomas Sugrue's "There is a River". Did that ever bring back memories. We used to have weekly gatherings, back home in ….Wyoming, of family and friends to hold séances. I monitored the séances because I had taken a short tutorial on hypnosis and everyone felt I could best make them feel at ease and help any medium come through [with spirit]. It worked!

My uncle was a medium until his wife put an end to it. She did not approve. We learned a lot from him. A friend of the family who was Wiccan, Bonnie ... came through as a medium later on during one of our session. She has since passed away but I have many of her letters. I couldn't bear to throw them out because of the beautiful signs and art on them. She was a member of the Scottish Wicca. She was amazing.

Our little gatherings would last about 3 hours and we'd always have some sort of treat afterward while we discussed UFO's, psychic phenomenon, ghosts, lost treasures and anything fun. I usually made chocolate chip date cake which everyone loved. It was easy to hold and no frosting. The meetings actually got out of control at one point because people in town heard about it and wanted to attend. You wouldn't believe the unfamiliar faces that would be knocking at our door before the meetings, wanting to attend.

When my uncle was a medium, he actually solved a murder case in our town before the police even knew who the murderer was. He explained the entire event from start to finish. It was a local high school student who had stabbed two girls after the annual Christmas tree bon fire at the city park. It actually scared us all half to death but it also added more interest for us and it had to become more secret. What my uncle had told us had to be kept hush, hush. How on earth would we even begin to explain to a small town police department that the information came through a séance. The murderer was finally caught about a year later and the entire series of events were a perfect match to what he had told us. It was an amazing time for me. I was a sophomore in high school.

The reason I wanted to tell you this story is that "There is a River" was a huge part of our weekly discussions. We read it together, talked about it, added our own philosophies and spiritual accents and just enjoyed the hell out of it. Sometimes I wonder if this isn't what religion is really all about. Getting together and sharing spiritual knowledge from every possible source. I hope you enjoyed that book as much as we did. I love Edgar Cayce's writings.

* * * * * * *

I think Ricky is correct; if this is not what religion is about, then it should be. A sharing of spiritual knowledge and spiritual experiences. Stepping out of the BOX, and exploring other ideas, because after all, we are all spiritual beings.

I can also relate to the situation with the uncle knowing facts about the murders. About twenty years ago, a reputable and credible psychic from Southern California received information from beyond regarding the death of a missing young boy. He headed up a very small group of sensitives who often worked discreetly with the police department on security issues and other matters. So he went to them with the information that had come to him. And the cops were very suspicious of him, suspicious enough that he become very concerned. He spoke with us about it. As it turned out, sadly, the young boy was murdered, and the details matched what he had “known.” I believe he was a little uneasy until the suspect was arrested and charged with the kidnap and murder of the boy. So I understand the uneasiness that Ricky’s family and friends felt over the information that came to his uncle.

I had mentioned to Ricky that I was surprised by an interest in the paranormal during those earlier years and in a small town in Wyoming.

And he told me, “these people have more time, slower paced and quite possibly bored. The idea of séances and the supernatural was like a new blockbuster movie to them. What is even more fascinating is the intelligent input by many of them. Deep down they had a real thirst for knowing what was around them, in this life and the afterlife. I have to say that very few of them had a religious affiliation that peaked their interest enough to go to church to find the answers. They were all looking for another [spiritual] source and they were full of questions and many had very plausible and interesting answers.”

Heck, maybe that is what it is all about. An innate thirst for knowing--a search for answers.

And for many that thirst led them to reading There is a River and within the pages of that book the American public was first widely exposed to mediumship and reincarnationist thought through the work of Edger Cayce.

Edger Cayce had a psychic gift beyond compare, but Thomas Sugru also had a gift he shared, his talent for writing an extraordinary book about the life of Edger Cayce and his psychic work.

And they both gave us inspiration.

Read Part Two: Edgar Cayce, The Mystical Odyssey


~Linda

Edger Cayce, The Mystical Odyssey

The American public was first widely exposed to reincarnationist thought through the work of Edger Cayce and the many books that were spawned by his extraordinary psychic gift. The first such book, There Is A River, by Thomas Sugrue, was developed during Sugrue's intimate association with Cayce and was first published by Henry Holt and Company in 1942, still regarded as the most definitive study of Cayce's life.

Below is an excerpt from my book, Whispers From the Soul: The Divine Dance of Consciousness by Don and Linda Pendleton.

Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1877, Edger Cayce was but twelve years old when the first awakening of his mystical nature became manifest. A Biblical scholar with an innate religious sense, he had very early on resolved to read the Holy Bible from cover to cover at least once for every year of his life. By the age of twelve, he had read the entire Bible twelve times. His favorite reading spot was in a playhouse which he had built for himself beside a creek in the woods where he went every afternoon to study the Bible.

While so engrossed one day, reading the story of Manoah in the Book of Judges, in which the conception of Samson by his barren mother was revealed to her and her husband, Manoah, by an angel who later ascended into heaven, the young Cayce looked up to see a woman standing before him. "I thought it was my mother, come to fetch me home for the chores. Then I saw that she was not my mother, and that she had wings on her back. She said to me, 'Your prayers have been answered, little boy. Tell me what it is you want most of all, so that I may give it to you.' I was very frightened, but after a minute I managed to say, 'Most of all I would like to be helpful to other people, especially children.' Then she disappeared...the next day in school I couldn't spell a word, and was kept after school...that night I slept on my spelling book and knew everything in the book when I woke up."

Cayce had a rather routine and uneventful life during his early adulthood but the event that was to profoundly change his life occurred when he was twenty-three. He became ill and lost his voice, unable to speak for nearly a year except in a whisper, and sought the help of a hypnotist after all medical remedies had failed.

While under hypnosis, he spoke without difficulty in a clear and natural voice. But then something incredible was also going on. As his speech began, his first words were, "Yes, we can see the body." This was soon to become recognized as a standard "opening statement" from his deep hypnotic trance state, the signal that he was in contact with another reality–and this first "reading" was to provide the diagnosis, treatment and cure of his own affliction.

The message through Cayce's voice continued, "In the normal state, this body is unable to speak, due to a partial paralysis of the inferior muscles of the vocal chords, produced by nerve strain. This is a psychological condition producing a physical effect. This may be removed by increasing the circulation to the affected parts by suggestion while in this unconscious condition."

This was but the beginning of the most astounding Odyssey of psychic experiences ever documented during modern times. While in deep trance, Cayce was able to diagnose illness and prescribe treatment for others even at long distance and with no physical contact between Cayce and his patients.

One of Cayce's earliest consultations was for a five year old girl who had been ill for three years and was suspected of some degree of mental retardation, suffering from convulsive seizures following an attack of grippe [influenza] at age two. She had been seen by many medical specialist without relief and the seizure episodes were intensifying, then experiencing up to twenty per day at the time Cayce was asked to help her. Through his trance state, it was determined that the child had suffered an injury to her lower spine as a result of a fall from her carriage days before the onset of flu symptoms. Cayce's diagnosis showed that the grippe germs had settled in the injured spine area which produced the convulsions and subsequent lack of mental development. He recommended specific, gentle osteopathic adjustments of the spine. The first adjustment was not dramatically effective and a subsequent reading told the doctor that the adjustment was not quite right. The following adjustment was properly done according to a "check-reading" and instructions were given to continue the spinal adjustments every day for the next three weeks. Within a week, the child was responding dramatically. At the end of the third week, Cayce, in trance, reported that the condition had been corrected and that the child was developing normally and would continue to do so without further treatments. By the time three months had passed, the child was normal in all respects and regaining the mental growth lost during those three years.

His medical readings assisted thousands of men, women and children around the world for the next twenty-two years before he entered a new phase in 1923, the "life readings" for the mind and soul, which produced the first reincarnation/past-lives and prophetic studies, the centerpiece of Cayce's work from that point forward until shortly before his death twenty-one years later.

Cayce, a devout Christian, was deeply concerned by the past-life readings, plunging him into a concerted study of the scriptures before he was able to reconcile these apparent conflicts with his Christian beliefs.

The A.R.E., Association for Research and Enlightenment, was founded by Cayce and supporters in 1931 at Virginia Beach, Virginia. Cayce died in 1945 at the age of sixty-seven but the A.R.E. foundation remains highly active to this day. More than thirty thousand stenographic records of his diagnoses, life readings and case studies, containing affidavits and reports by physicians and patients, are still being categorized, researched and published by the foundation.

Cayce was characterized as a clairvoyant and, indeed, he seemed more comfortable with that idea and preferred to think that he was merely somehow able to tap into the "Akashic Record," which is the concept that every thought, every movement, every sound since the beginning of creation is indelibly impressed into the fundamental etheric substance of the universe. One might say, impressed into the memory of God. Carl Jung's collective unconscious would seem to suggest something of this nature.

However, by Cayce's own records, it did seem that from time to time he was communicating directly with the consciousness of individual souls on the other side and sometimes engaged in dialogues with them. He did not appear to be "taken over" in any physical sense by another entity during his trance state though on occasion an entity would speak through him. It could be noted that Cayce consciously had no memory whatever of the sessions until he read them from the transcripts.

Apparently, also, Cayce was able to see auras and to diagnose medical conditions while in a complete waking state, thus it is obvious that he did possess a superior psychic sense in or out of trance.

From our own personal direct association with other trance-mediums, the entities who come through these mediums exhibit definite and memorable personality traits which could not be ascribed to some impersonal source such as the "Akashic Record." These spirits are usually highly personal, even engaging in quite detailed discussions with their clients, are often very humorous, displaying strongly identifiable mannerisms and figures of speech.

Whatever the source of Edgar Cayce's spectacular gifts, they have provided new windows through which ordinary people may perceive reality and often transform their lives.

We all are richer because of Edgar Cayce.



© Copyright 2003 by Linda Pendleton. All Rights Reserved.

Read Part One: There is a River: Edger Cayce, A Life Changing Book

~Linda