in coming to work for him until his son Hugh Lynn returned from serving in the Army. Hugh Lynn had been managing the Association since the early 1930’s and was sorely missed. Harmon decided to go to Virginia Beach for a week to talk with the Cayces about the work that needed to be done.
Harmon came home a changed man! Although he went to Virginia Beach wondering if the Cayces were self-deluded about Edgar’s gift, he came home feeling sure that Edgar’s gift was truly authentic and that his faith in God was deep and real. Harmon went to Virginia Beach a humanist, believing that the only God that existed was the highest good that humans could accomplish in the world. However, he came home believing that after all he had seen and heard in Edgar’s study, there had to be a God Force out there somewhere: an Intelligence, a Transcendent Goodness far greater than the God he had been reducing to human kindness.
I had asked Harmon to write to me about his experiences with the Cayces, and he began on his train ride home. I want to include some of it here, because he mentions this change in his attitude toward God. As I reread this letter, I am amazed all over again that Harmon at the age of 24 could grasp in one week the essence of Cayce’s work. This is part of what he wrote:
It’s not complicated or difficult, this philosophy. It’s simple and all in the Bible just like that, without esoteric emendation ($.50 please!) Even an ignorant, self-centered fool like me can understand it when it’s finally shown to me. I hadn’t the faith that you had to believe anything that wasn’t shoved right into my puss for observation. Cayce comes along and I can actually see God’s will working in men’s lives. When it’s that plain, even I can at last believe!
But the trouble is that I have been such a sad apple in religion and sometimes vinegar in finances that you doubt my judgment. Then how can I ever persuade you that to work with the Cayces would be the most enriching thing we could possibly do? I can’t I fear. But hearing Mr. Cayce give a reading, hearing him tell someone in pain to be kind, loving, patient in a voice of infinite tenderness and gentleness—his readings are so much like what it must have been like to hear Jesus talk, that I’m sort of expecting the Lord God himself to persuade you. If you and I really search for Him in the next few days, I think we’ll find our answer, and our way.
We haven’t mentioned the advantages to us in going out there. They are like the advantages the disciples had in going off to help Jesus. Nearly anyone on earth would trade places with them now, but at that time they were thought to be crazy. Some of them even lost their lives as well as their friends, family and security. I don’t think we will! Mr. Cayce told me enough stories of prayer answered in the work there to convert even an addlepated horse to the idea that God takes care of those who forget themselves in service.
Now mind you, I’m not crazy enough to think that this is the only way, or even the best way, for us to serve God right now. I think we have to go right on in music, and especially you do. If we go out there with some determination, actually there is opportunity to grow a lot more in music than there is in our busy household in Chicago. For that growth has got to come from within and not from the dazzling cultural advantages of a big city—when you really get down to it.
Heigh ho, ain’t this fun? Don’t think this is all sober business. I’ve laughed till I ached during [these] last few days. These people who live so very sincerely seem just as near to the bubbling fountain of humor as they do to the well of eternal life. Mr. Cayce is just as much fun in his readings as he is out of them. I’ll tell you about this when I see you.
I could go on, darling, but it gets me too excited, wondering whether you’re going to knock me down or listen skeptically, or be annoyed, or thrilled, or all packed and ready to go—or what? I’ll be seeing you in a couple of hours, my little blonde sweetheart. I love the hell out of you, Honey.
Your Hubby, Harm
Yes. I had already started packing!
Harmon had hoped that I would be willing to put aside work on my master’s degree and join him on this new leg of our journey together. I loved my husband, and the more we talked, the more I could see this was an opportunity not to be missed. We talked about the changes that would have to be made in our lives.
We decided I could always get back into my master’s program. Harmon would have to tell his small weekend pastorate that he would be leaving. He would have to talk to his draft board and ask whether a year researching the work of the Cayces would be acceptable as part of his ministerial training. In actuality, the board approved the research as an appropriate subject for a doctoral dissertation and subsequently deferred him.
Years later when Harmon entered his doctoral program, it was not easy for his professors at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School to deal with the subject matter of Harmon’s dissertation. His committee changed at least three times. One professor said, “I live in a world where I believe this kind of thing can happen, but I can’t remain on this committee.” He then walked out. To add to the problem, the university also required Harmon to take a year of post-doctoral work to ensure his methodology was sound. Despite their reservations, they couldn’t find a single flaw in his reasoning. When the dissertation was finally completed and accepted, we celebrated and said a heartfelt prayer of thanks to God.
Hugh Lynn Cayce helped with the thesis in every way he could to move it toward completion. He filled in gaps in Harmon’s understanding, he told him stories, and he briefed him about the people who had been instrumental in the Association’s growth. No one encouraged Harmon more than Hugh Lynn, and no one was more excited at the final approval of the very first doctoral dissertation based on his father’s work.
Although for a long time, the medical, theological, and educational arenas largely dismissed the authenticity and helpfulness of Cayce’s work, during the forty-four years of our marriage, until Harmon’s death in September of 1997, he and I saw a slow but growing acceptance of many of the ideas in the Cayce readings, and it gave us joy. Today there are even more people who are unafraid to look at the idea of reincarnation; grasp the importance of taking care of God’s creation; see the human body as the temple of the Living God; and welcome the disciplines of meditation and prayer, especially in small groups. Today many acknowledge the value of a balanced diet for maximum physical and mental health, are willing to entertain the possibility that certain mythic cultures truly existed at some time earlier than recorded history, and even look seriously at some of Edgar’s remedies for certain physical illnesses.
Edgar Cayce drew to him many interested in parapsychology, but he was far too talented and complex to carry only the label of “psychic.” Harmon placed him in a long line of idealists who have changed the world for the better:
We think of a psychically gifted person as a whiz, a genius, a star at little-known powers of the mind. Given the history of our technological achievements, we view such a skill as a process to be mastered apart from our motives, like space travel, computer calculation, quick-freezing the dead, or designing laser weapons. But the adventure of Cayce’s life sets his paranormal accomplishments in a much larger context of high-purposed caring and creativity.
Cayce belongs somewhere among the stumbling, surprised explorers of new terrain, only partly able to describe what they see, and tempted to doubt their own experiences: Pasteur trying to prevent ravaging disease; Schweitzer offering medical care in the African jungle; Gandhi cleaning toilets with the outcastes in India; King marching with throngs of left-out African Americans; Jane Addams creating settlement houses in the slums; Mother Teresa clasping the poor and dying.
His trances disclose penetrating views of good and evil, worship and ethics, community and disintegration, the earthy and the transcendent, gifts of insight from East and West, and a Christ who is everyone’s destiny but nobody’s captive. They create a cosmology and attendant ethics which resonate to the prophetic tradition in biblical faith, yet invite disciplined lives in
