Venturing Inward. Hugh Lynn Cayce
territory around with an unobstructed view of the Atlantic Ocean. The first unit will be followed by others as the occasion demands.
The Association of National Investigators was incorporated May, 1927, in the State of Virginia. Although the immediate basis of its foundation was to further foster and encourage the physical, mental and spiritual benefit that thousands are deriving from Mr. Cayce’s endeavors in the psychic world, the larger and more embracing purpose of the organization was to engage in general psychic research, and also to provide for practical application of any knowledge obtained through the medium of psychic phenomena.
In the matter of specific application the association seeks to render aid to the sick and ailing through its hospital, and to disseminate and exploit for the good of humanity, knowledge obtained from its research work through the lecture halls, library and other educational channels.
The Association will furnish those who seek psychical readings and desire to secure treatments exactly as prescribed therein the opportunity to gain such treatment at the hands of competent and sympathetic physicians. The hospital is to be conducted along the most modern scientific and ethical lines. Every comfort and service for room, board and treatment will be given patients, and all money paid in, except for physicians’ fees, will go into the maintenance of the institution.
With many ups and downs, including the loss of the hospital during the Depression years of the thirties, Edgar worked on through 1944. In 1942 Thomas Sugrue, a friend and classmate of mine at Washington and Lee University, who had become a newspaper and magazine writer, wrote There Is a River, the first biography of Edgar Cayce.
The next year a Coronet magazine article entitled “Miracle Man of Virginia Beach” brought hundreds of letters daily to my father. Appointments for readings were set ahead for two years.
Work and pressure mounted during the war years. Following a stroke and several months’ illness, Edgar Cayce died January 3, 1945.
The Association which had been formed to study his psychic work and preserve his readings began a program of cross-indexing under subject headings the data in the 14,306 documents. Studies of the correlated data on specific subjects, such as historical and geological information, life after death, and reincarnation, as well as experiments based on ideas in the readings, were instituted. Lectures, discussion groups, publications, and other activities, comprising a general educational program in psychic studies, were continued in Virginia Beach and in many large cities throughout the United States.
In September, 1953, Pageant magazine carried an article on Edgar Cayce under the title “The Man Who Made Miracles.” In interviewing physicians who had looked at some of the readings, the author quoted one of them as saying that none of the treatments recommended could do any harm but they didn’t make any sense to him. Another M.D., a heart specialist, said that after studying the readings for a month, he believed the medical information in them was not only true, but also far ahead of its time.
In 1956 Dell Publishing Company brought out a fifty-cent pocket edition of There Is a River under the title The Edgar Cayce Story.
Morey Bernstein, author of The Search for Bridey Murphy, a study of hypnosis and reincarnation which grew out of an interest in the Edgar Cayce readings, wrote an article for True Magazine in May, 1956, in which he described his own investigation of many of the reports in the Cayce files. In the same year a new pocketbook life of my father, entitled Edgar Cayce—Mystery Man of Miracles, by Joseph Millard was published by Fawcett Publications.
In 1959 American Mercury carried an article on Cayce, “In Slumber Deep,” by Lytle W. Robinson, and the American Weekly told its several million readers about him in the April 12, 1959, issue. The article titled “The Mystery of Edgar Cayce” by Maurice Zolotow was based on a New York physiotherapist’s (Harold Reilly) several years’ experience in following the Edgar Cayce readings.
NBC Monitor, a national weekend radio program, carried thirteen interviews with people who had had Edgar Cayce readings and with members of the Association staff on May 15, 16, and 17, 1959.
Since these early publications, literally hundreds of books have appeared about Edgar Cayce in dozens of languages around the world.
What kind of person was this who spent part of each day for more than forty years in an unconscious state?
As a child, my father was described as quiet and secretive, almost a recluse. He was a dreamer, a very imaginative boy. At an early age he planned to be a preacher. Though he was never formally ordained, his talks both in and out of the church had the quality of sermons. The language of the readings was biblical in phrase and illustration, though by no means confined to the Bible. The quietness of the boy changed; for, as a man, Edgar Cayce loved people. His studios in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Selma, Alabama, were meeting places for groups of young people.
Throughout his lifetime Edgar Cayce maintained active church interests: janitor at ten years of age in a little country church; teacher in Sunday school; leader of Christian Endeavor societies; deacon; and adult Bible class teacher. In Hopkinsville, Louisville, Bowling Green, and Selma, where Edgar was active in Sunday school classes, he was responsible for the members’ work with people in prisons. Entries in his journal describe his Sunday school class in Selma, which at one time was reported to be the largest in Alabama. He also mentions the Bibles provided for, and the visits to, those in prison. He refers back to similar work in Louisville when members of his class met a young man who was jailed for selling “moonshine” whiskey. He helped teach the young man to read. During those years he was a member of the Disciples of Christ Church. There was no church of this denomination in Virginia Beach, so there we joined the Presbyterian Church.
My father spent some part of each day reading his Bible, praying, and meditating.
Dad was a man who enjoyed catching perch in a Kentucky pond or sailfishing off the Florida coast. He liked games—checkers, bowling, croquet, golf. He enjoyed card games only if they did not require too much concentration as in the case of bridge. About such games, he said it was too easy to read the minds of the players.
He was a man with many skills. As a photographer he made pictures, developed, printed, mounted, and framed them. He sponsored exhibits of good photography. He used models for some of his best photographs but also took prizes with his picture of a cotton plant in full bloom. Parents brought children to him from all over Alabama as he gradually became known as an exceptional photographer of children.
He delighted in making preserves, jellies, and wines, provided he could handle them in quantity. After summer visits to Hopkinsville, my mother found every available shelf covered with jars of brandied peaches, jellies of all kinds, preserved figs, and vats of wine. During his lifetime he must have given away several thousand jars of jelly and preserves. Wherever we lived—Hopkinsville, Selma, Dayton, and Virginia Beach—there was a home workshop. Dad could mend anything. As soon as we were old enough, he taught my brother and me to work with tools (an accomplishment in itself). The family was always adding to or remodeling the house. Painting, concreting, plastering, etc., were frequently part of a day’s activity. My father’s early farm training was never completely forgotten. He was proud of his gardens, the variety of trees in our yard, and the cultivated berries on which he spent a great deal of time and work.
Money was the topic of considerable conversation in the Cayce household. There was either too little (long periods) or too much (short periods). My father spent money sometimes as if he had an inexhaustible supply. Then he worried over it. He would buy jars, fruit, and sugar for a big preserving spree, even if the family had to eat nothing but bread and preserves for several meals. If he happened to see a particularly attractive offer of a variety of trees for sale, the groceries might be light for a few days. He was generous with money, with his family, with people who worked for him, and with himself.
To say he was a sensitive person would be a gross understatement. I think he was constantly more aware of what went on in the minds and emotions of those around him than most people realized. This was actually painful to him and he tried to shut these impressions out of his mind. To some degree, this sensitivity may have been responsible for his temper—which he worked hard all his life