David Kahn's Life with Edgar Cayce

This photo circa 1922 is from Edgar Cayce's Photographic Legacy (1978) compiled by David M. Leary.  David Kahn was inside his new Marmon touring sedan as Edgar Cayce kept his foot on the running board near San Saba, Texas.  The photo was taken by Hugh Lynn Cayce.

 
 
David Kahn (1893-1968) was in his mid-seventies when he worked on chronicling a memoir of his experiences with Edgar Cayce, resulting with My Life with Edgar Cayce (1970) by David E. Kahn as told to Will Oursler.  Kahn's wife Lucille also participated in a series of interviews for the book.  Will Oursler commented in the Preface:

Kahn was closer to Edgar Cayce and his family, over a longer span of years, than any other human being.  He personally brought many individuals to Cayce for readings; he himself helped to take down hundreds of readings in the early days.  He knew Cayce as friend and fellow adventurer across the Texas prairies and oil fields—and ultimately into the jungle of New York City.  But he knew his friend Cayce above all as an associate in psychic and metaphysical discovery.

Kahn at fifteen was living in Lexington, Kentucky when he agreed to take down a psychic reading communicated while Edgar Cayce was in a hypnotic sleep.  It was the first time of numerous occasions when Kahn observed how Cayce was able to manifest a source of unlimited knowledge while entranced.  Cayce had been summoned from Hopkinsville to give a reading that eventually resulted with the healing of a paralyzed woman who was a next door neighbor to the Kahns.  Cayce stayed with the Kahn family for a week and explained to David's father that he was not 'calling up ghosts of the departed': "Mine is more from my mind or my unconscious mind, which I have no explanation for; I do not consult the dead."  Mrs. Kahn agreed that whatever it was, it was not Spiritualism.

All of this began while I was in high school.  From there I went on to the University of Kentucky and had planned on a law career, which was interrupted by the war and my enlistment.

When Cayce first gave me a reading predicting that I would leave the flock and go into uniform, there was no immediate threat of war in sight in America, so I assumed he meant that I would become a policeman or a fireman.  This I did not think very probable.

But we liked each other and kept in touch.  Cayce agreed that he would give me readings whenever I asked.  Any time I wrote him a letter or telephoned with a request for a reading, or sent him a request from anyone I knew, he would respond as quickly as he could.

 
Kahn quoted from a letter written to him by Cayce that stated that the readings were "merely a channel though which such information may come as to assist one in understanding what would produce coordination in the individual body."  Cayce, himself, believed the readings to be "a manifestation of the universal force or source."  This Force would be articulated in Cayce's channeled readings as deriving from God and Christ Consciousness. 

Kahn's nickname for Cayce was 'Judge,' as is explained in the book.

Because of the difference in age between Cayce and myself, and the vast respect in which I held him, I did not feel that I could call him by his first name.  At the same time, "Mr. Cayce" seemed too formal and remote.  I thought about it and finally lit upon the word "Judge" as one that held the concept of honor and respect.  The word seemed to stand for the things he stood for, the depth of judgment and wisdom that he touched in the psychic world and also in his ordinary conscious life.  I had the feeling that he would judge my life and actions by the same high standards he held in his own.

Kahn learned that their friendship appeared to have been predicted in a reading.

There had been in one of Cayce's early readings about himself the statement that there would come a Jew into his life who would work closely with him and help to shape his future.

Judge himself told me of this, and it was clear he thought I was the one who would fulfill this prophecy from the reading.  The pattern of our family and our lives more than supported this view.

While serving in the army during World War I, Kahn continued to obtain information from Cayce.  Here is an example of what was learned through one of Cayce's readings with a description of the ensuing results.  On this occasion, Kahn had just learned about the death of a younger brother.

Out on the parade grounds was a pay telephone, and I put through a call from there to Selma, Alabama, where Cayce had moved.  When I reached Cayce I said, "Judge, I have two questions, please listen to me very intently.  I want to know if I will be able to get a leave of absence to go home to my family and if I can say two or three weeks when I get there.  If I cannot go I want to know why.  I'd like to know what is going to happen to me in the next six weeks."

As in all Cayce readings, I gave him no further information.

I said I would wait by the phone for him to call back and reverse the charges.  I knew he understood how very urgent it was to me.

Some time later, the phone rang. It was Judge.  "You can go home for three weeks if you want," he told me, "because you are not leaving Texas when you think.  There'll be an order very soon directing troops now on the Mexican border to report to your division to be inducted into the national Army.

"The commanding general is not going with the division when you go, but you will not go for at least three months.  When you get the notice to go, the general is going to give you the opportunity to go with him to Virginia as his aide, or to go with the division under a new general.  You will go with the division."

Kahn was also told he'd have many narrow escapes but never an accident and would come back in good health.  After informing General Greble of the prophecy, the general showed him orders that seemed to rule out these events; however circumstances soon changed and eventually everything Cayce had told him proved correct.

I accepted as an indisputable fact Judge's assurance that I would come through every danger in the war unscathed.  Holding approximately the same post in France that I had in the States—as a general's aide—I went everywhere, to the front, into the trenches, over open and unprotected areas, often under shelling or bombing.  I simply was not afraid; Cayce had said I would be all right.

After the end of the war, Kahn became involved with Cayce in a plan to utilize his psychic abilities to make money through Texas oil leases.  Cayce hoped to obtain funds for a hospital to be devoted to his psychic work.  Kahn acknowledged:

But the oil-drenched dreams of Cayce and myself were not to turn out as we two fervently desired.

The forces had other plans.

After giving up the Western adventure and returning home, Kahn had a reading from Cayce telling him his future in the business world would be in wood and metal.  Kahn soon went to work at a furniture company.  The readings also indicated an involvement with radios and music.  One of Kahn's successful ideas was putting radio sets into cabinets to make them fine pieces of furniture.

Through this period I consulted Judge regularly.  He was moving with his wife and family to Virginia Beach in September 1925.  However, I continued to get readings from him on every major step I took.  There was one rule about these readings that I always kept in mind: The readings outlined the opportunity indicated by what Judge called "the forces."  It was then up to the individual to make the opportunity work out.


As for engagement and marriage in my own case, the wheel of romance had begun to turn after I came to New York.  It had begun for me when I went into the Belasco Theater in New York on a lonely evening and saw for the first time a beautiful actress onstage whose last name happened to be the same as mine.

Kahn married Lucille in 1927.  The book includes Lucille's remembrances of her earliest readings with Cayce.  She recalled at the first reading feeling outraged when the entranced Cayce declared that a sick child would recover if placed on a diet solely of ripe bananas.  To her astonishment, she later learned that the child was getting along very well.  Kahn commented: "For in a sense in marrying me she was marrying also the Cayce family, and Judge himself, and the forces on which he drew . . ."  He explained:

My relationship with Cayce was a fundamental part of my business and personal life, as Lucille had to understand.  If I needed him, I called him.  If he needed me, he called me.  Many times I had emergency calls for financial help.  Except for his photography, Cayce never had a business himself.  Whatever the state of his finances, the readings were never commercialized.  Cayce could not use them to help himself in the everyday matters of supporting himself and his family.  The readings served to guide only others to health and happiness.

With his wife Gertrude, we sat up a membership organization so that he could have some kind of drawing account on which to live, so that he would be protected in giving the readings, and so that the public that kept constantly increasing its demands on him would not overtax his strength.  The readings warned that he should give only two readings a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  As long as we stayed with this limitation, Cayce continued with the work without ill effect.

Kahn realized that he "needed someone with acumen and experience to assist me in carrying out the programs Judge and I had been considering."  These plans included a hospital and Kahn's friend Morton Blumenthal became instrumental in making the hospital a reality although only for a short interim.  Kahn observed, "Unfortunately, even with the best will in the world, questions of control and authority arose, particularly as we reached the 1929 financial crash and the depression that followed."  Kahn admitted that he had not always followed the advice of Cayce's readings.

Approximately three months before the 1929 crash of the stock market, when everyone was involved in skyrocketing figures, Cayce warned me in a reading that the crash was going to come and advised that I get out of the market before this happened.

I did not doubt the reading.  I did question the timing.  Everything seemed to be going well.  I had enough money to care for my mother, to help my brothers and sisters establish comfortable lives for themselves, and to provide for my wife and child.  Actually, I didn't follow the market closely—it was the excitement of my business activities that concerned me.  So I left my investments in the hands of brokers.  Using my limited human range of knowledge instead of the sources on which Cayce drew, I had decided to wait and see.  Like millions of others, I held on, and when the first weeks of the crash were over, I found that I had almost nothing left.

Kahn continued to have financial success through considering the information presented in Cayce's readings.  On one occasion in New York in 1931, Edgar and his wife along with his secretary Gladys Davis were arrested on the charge of telling fortunes.  Kahn recalled: "The New York case received wide publicity, photographs and headlines in the papers."  A 1998 biography presenting recollections of Edgar's son Hugh Lynn Cayce mentioned about the 1931 arrest that New York tabloids described Gladys as Edgar's "pretty blonde secretary" and left his wife cropped out of the published photos.  During the trial, Kahn testified for the defense and the case was quickly discharged in Cayce's favor.

Kahn remembered that it was in 1936 when he and Cayce "decided to reorganize our activities under the name of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc. . . . The name was suggested in a reading."  News media occasionally reported about Edgar Cayce's psychic ability and he became known as this 'miracle worker of Virginia Beach.'

Kahn recalled that his two sons grew up in an exciting world.  "It was not at all unusual for the children to be in the room while Cayce was in trance state giving a reading about someone's previous life—or diagnosing ailments of some patient he had never seen."

Kahn recalled how a reading brought him into contact with the President's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, in relation to a community development project in Arthurdale, West Virginia — a place he and Cayce had never heard about before the reading.  As a result, Kahn oversaw the relocation of cabinet production to Arthurdale, commenting, "It was a partnership in humanity, a combined operation of business, government, and individuals."

Another reading advised Kahn to go to Washington, D.C., where he successfully met with those whom had been named in the reading: Mrs. Roosevelt, General Brehon B. Somervell and Secretary of the Treasury Morganthau.

I was ushered into one office where a colonel in charge had obviously been briefed that I was a trouble shooter who seemed to know how to get whatever was in critically short supply.
 
The colonel said he had been instructed to put me into the quartz crystal business.  I didn't know what quartz crystal was.  He explained that it was extremely important in submarine devices and in other vital instrumentation used in defense.

 
Kahn's job was to fill an order for eight million polished and cut crystals within a matter of weeks — what seemed an almost impossible assignment.

Then certain things began to happen—the unusual incident or coincidence that opened a way, a path ahead, the unlooked-for events that I had come—by association with Judge—to look for.
 
I consulted with a panel of thirty experts whose job it was to find and expedite the purchase of rare or difficult-to-obtain materials essential to the defense effort.  During the meeting, the panel discussed a new rumor that one man in Rio de Janeiro had accumulated large supplies of the quartz but was not shipping any of his stockpiles to America.  I asked for his name.  To the startled looks of some of the panel members, I picked up the phone, asked for the emergency operator—and called this man in Rio.  When he came on the line, I told him, "This is David Kahn in Washington, D.C.  Yesterday morning, when I left my home in Scarsdale, I drove your wife and your new baby girl to the station in my car.  They're en route to your mother's home in Washington."
 
The man was amazed and delighted at this unexpected news about his family.  He himself had not yet seen the little girl.  The mysterious man in Rio was our next-door neighbor in Scarsdale.
 
We found that the rumor was true.  He did have the quartz, five million two-pound boxes of it, outside his windows in Rio, but he had no planes, ships, or other means of transportation to get it out.  I said I could arrange that part of it if he could make a binding commitment.  He could and did.  Two days later two planes left for Rio to begin a daily shuttle between Rio and Miami bringing four thousand pounds of quartz crystal back on every trip.
 
It is such incidents that make me so sure that my life is not a series of coincidences but an unfoldment.

Kahn also found himself and Cayce involved in "some of the most startling coincidences in publishing history" concerning the book Starling of the White House (1946) by Thomas Sugrue, whose previous book was the Edgar Cayce biography There Is a River (1943).  A friend of Edgar Cayce, Hopkinsville-born Bill Starling asked about a planned biography during a Cayce personal reading.  "The reading said that Kahn should finance the book and Simon and Schuster should publish it . . . The reading went on to say that Tom Sugrue would be a good choice as the writer . . ."
 
On the morning following the reading, Kahn returned to New York.  Arriving around 1 am during a rainstorm, Kahn invited a "tall man carrying a black suitcase" to share a taxi ride.  They began talking and Kahn discovered the man was Max Schuster of Simon and Schuster.  When Kahn told him about the planned book about Bill Starling, Schuster informed him that Starling had put him into the Senate as a page boy when Schuster was around thirteen years old. 

Kahn was reunited with Edgar Cayce a month before Cayce's passing in 1945 following a stroke.  Three months later, Gertrude Cayce "joined her husband in that other realm."

The reading transcripts remain as an illuminating resources for researchers and scientists.  Kahn commented about the 'life readings' that were heard through Cayce while he was in a hypnotic sleep:

. . . in so many instances with Cayce's life readings, the people involved and the facts in this present lifetime bore out past history connections given in the life readings.


Many of the life readings would refer to the fact that the entity dwelled back in the lifetimes long since past in the land called Atlantis.


Atlantis, as Judge gave it in the readings, would appear to be not merely a physical civilization that sank below the waves of some tremendous flood or upheaval of the earth's surface, but, rather, a link between the purely spiritual, ethereal existence and the material; as if the souls of the universe, pure and unsullied at the outset, could by their very thinking become the entity in physical form.

Lucille Kahn commented about Edgar Cayce: "You know, when he started to give a reading, he had to have his head in one direction for life readings and in another direction for other kinds of readings . . . As I remember, when he gave life readings his head was south; for physical readings it was north."

"Most of us in ARE have accepted reincarnation as a fact. If every thought, deed, and act is recorded somewhere, then we do have to meet it.  It is the law of moral retribution.  It will be a guide in your way of life if you can accept it."

Lucille recounted being in her husband's presence as he made his transition to the afterlife.  During this interim he was only able to communicate at intervals because of the drugs.  "There were statements from time to time Dave tried to make, as he went in and out of this other realm . . . In his last moments of consciousness my husband, seeming to come back out of the beginnings of coma, opened his eyes and murmured to me, 'Tell them—there is survival.'"

Explaining the 'Second Coming'

 

The first article in the January 1973 issue of The A.R.E. Journal is "The Second Coming" by Cora Scott.  The A.R.E. Journal was published by the organization founded by Edgar Cayce in 1931, the Association for Research and Enlightenment.  Some years ago, I was able to obtain a collection of issues of The A.R.E. Journal and noticed Scott's analysis of "The Second Coming" among them.  The article offers an example of how a researcher of the Edgar Cayce channeled readings interpreted the transcendental communication pertaining to the Second Coming.  The readings are also the topic of the preceding blog article. 

Here is the beginning of Cora Scott's article "The Second Coming."

In 1944, Edgar Cayce gave the following reading for a fifty-three-year-old woman:

For He will one day come again, and thou shalt see Him as He is, even as thou has seen in thy early sojourns the glory of the day of the triumphal entry and the day of the Crucifixion, and as ye also heard the angels proclaim, "As ye have seen Him go, so will ye see Him come again."  Thou wilt be among those in the earth when He comes again.  3615-1

This is a remarkable statement, for it appears to say quite clearly that the Christ will return, as the New Testament has promised, and that He will do so within this century.

The tendency today is to regard much that is contained in the Bible as symbolic only, and this may be all to the good, since a too literal interpretation has in the past led to many undesirable excesses.  Human thinking tends to go to extremes — either the Bible is literal truth or it is entirely metaphorical.  But why must we accept either of these standpoints?  It seems likely that the Bible is in some cases symbolic and in others literal. It is possible that the prophecy of the Return was literally true.

That is to say, the Second Coming may not be only a metaphor for the attaining of the Christ Consciousness in individual seekers here and there, as some take it to mean, but a literal and factual approach toward humanity by the living Christ spirit at a definite point in time.  The readings indicate that this may be so:

. . . as has been promised through the prophets and sages of old, the time - and half time - has been and is being fulfilled in this day and generation, and . . . soon there will again appear in the earth that one through whom many will be called to meet those that are preparing the way for His day in the earth. The Lord, then, will come, "even as ye have seen him go."  262-49

The readings further indicate that this is not an isolated occurrence:

For time never was when there was not a Christ and not a Christ mass . . . Know this had no beginning in the 1900 years ago, but again and Again and AGAIN!  262-103

Thus, while the testimony of countless seekers through the centuries gives evidence to the fact that the Christ can be approached and reached at any time by those willing to pay the price, it seems as if there are definite times when He Himself makes the approach for a specific purpose.  What is this purpose?

Then, He has come in all ages when it has been necessary for the understanding to be centered in a new application of the same thought, "God is Spirit and seeks such to worship him in spirit and in truth!"  5749-5

In all of the great religious faiths the belief in a Saviour of man who is to come can be found. It is perhaps most clearly stated in the Bhagavad Gita: "Whenever there is a withering of the law and an uprising of lawlessness on all sides, then I manifest Myself.  For the salvation of the righteous and the destruction of such as do evil, for the firm establishing of the Law, I come to birth age after age."  (Chap. 4:7-8)  For some it is the Messiah whose appearance is expected, for others it is the Imam Mahdi or Maitreya.  Perhaps these are all names for one great Being, called by Christians the Christ.  The significant point is that many people of all faiths have believed in a divine mediator, an Elder Brother of the race, who will come to aid them when they wander in darkness, when they stray off course and need to be reminded of their true destination.  It begins to look like a great Plan by which humanity is to be led back to its spiritual Source.  We have never been abandoned by God, as some complain.  Only, sunk in materiality and in self-ness, we ourselves have created a dense smoke screen by means of which His face is hidden from us.

*



As this blog has profiled a variety of cases of transcendental communication, people in an ascended state of existence are known to sometimes acknowledge the necessity of stating aspects of metaphysics on a metaphorical basis due to the beliefs and limited knowledge of humans on Earth.  The records of this communication—including the Edgar Cayce channeled reading transcripts—correlate with my own perspective of 'Christed ones' throughout the ages.  This perspective was influenced by the surprising circumstances of my 'spiritual awakening' chronicled at testament.org. 

My first awareness of the work of Edgar Cayce occurred during the period in which Cora Scott's article was written.  In 1973 I was a high school student and around this time noticed at paperback bookstores the series of books about Edgar Cayce with a cover photograph of the famous clairvoyant showing him with an inquisitive stance.  The books seemed of a predominantly analytical and intellectual nature and as a teenager I was instead looking for more clearly defined evidence of 'paranormal phenomena' — a subject I've been studying throughout my life.  There had been a strange experience when I was around five years old and heard an unseen speaker calling my name one morning.  Throughout the 1970s and '80s as I began my career and continued my education, I remember viewing a few brief television documentaries about Edgar Cayce.  It was in 1995 following my experiences in Oklahoma that I decided to read biographical books about Cayce's life (1877-1945) to learn more about him and his work. 

My unexpected spiritual awakening to what Scott called "the living Christ spirit" resulted from recalling symbolic incidents in my life (including two mysterious occurrences of burning bushes outside my home) that I considered soon after my trip in the summer of 1995 to investigate what had been described as a 'talking poltergeist' haunting in rural Oklahoma.  Upon my return to Los Angeles, I found the paranormal manifestations continuing to occur in my presence.  These events are chronicled in the case study Testament (1997).  After realizing that the central manifesting entity known as 'Michael' in Oklahoma could only be the biblical Archangel, it was channeled to me through a startled friend that I should have the pen name 'Mark Russell Bell' as I involved myself in documenting my experiences.  

As I attempted to research my strange predicament, I learned from Zecharia Sitchin's book The Wars of Gods and Men (1985) that clay tablets found in the ruins of Ashur and Nineveh, the ancient Assyrian capitals, presented information about a man referred to as 'Bel-Marduk.'  Sitchin reported that the tablets had been interpreted in 1921 as offering "a pre-Christian Mysterium dealing with the death and resurrection of a god, and thus an earlier Christ tale."

The ancient events chronicled on the clay tablets involved Marduk or Bel ("The Lord") and there is a description of "Bel, who was confined in The Mountain."  Sitchin explained the reasons he believed that this mountain was Egypt's Great Pyramid and wrote about finding "similarities between the Babylonian Marduk and the Egyptian God Ra" (and Amen-Ra or spelled as Ammon/Amon/Amun).  Throughout his books, Sitchin attempted to make sense of ancient inscriptions and scriptures showing correlations between ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian pantheons.  The following year, Sitchin continued to investigate this topic in a new book The Cosmic Code and wrote: "Sentenced to exile, Ra/Marduk became Amen-Ra, the unseen god." 

Upon reading the passages about Bel-Marduk in 1995, there was an immediate identification with 'The Mountain' in my own life as I had worked as a publicity writer for Paramount Pictures in Hollywood for seven years.  The studio's logo—a familiar one to moviegoers—is a mountain.  Ironically, some of the storylines of movies I'd helped publicize were metaphysical, including "Ghost" (the afterlife), "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (religious archaeology), "Dead Again" (reincarnation), "Fire In The Sky" (UFOlogy), "The Butcher's Wife" (psychic ability), "Scrooged" (visitors from the ascended realm), "Star Trek" movies (life in outer space), and a reissue of "The Ten Commandments" (divine guidance), to name a few.

Soon after learning about 'Bel-Marduk,' I found what was apparently a replica of an ancient Egyptian medallion at an antique store near my home that showed a profile of someone who looked just like me. 

Although I had estimated Bel-Marduk to be some manner of priest, the medallion led me to further perceive Bel-Marduk as belonging to a royal lineage and apparently one of the ancient 'god-kings.'

The following excerpts from the Edgar Cayce channeled reading transcripts provide an example of parallels with the Sitchin passages about Bel-Marduk and Amen-Ra.

From Text of Channeled Reading 294-151 (July 29, 1932)

7. Then began what may be truly termed the first national or nation spirit of a peoples; for with the divisions, rather than this causing a dispersing of ideals or a dividing up of interests, it centralized the interests; for these were being guided by a ruler or king whose authority was not questioned any more, nor were the advisings of the priest questioned, who was acting in rather the capacity of preparing for this very spirit to manifest itself in the way of the national emblems, the national ideas, that stood for the varied activities of not only individuals or groups, but for the general masses.  Hence there began the first preparation for what has later become that called The Great Pyramid, that was to be the presentation of that which had been gained by these peoples through the activities of Ra-Ta, who now was known as Ra . . .

9. Then began the laying out of the pyramid and the building of same, the using of those forces that made for the activity of bringing then from those very mountains where there had been those places of refuge that which had been begun to establish these, not only into that which would remain as the place for receiving that which had been offered in the Temple Beautiful on the various altars of the activities of an individual's innate self, but to be the place of initiation of the initiates that were to act in the capacity of leaders in the various activities through this period.  This building, as we find, lasted for a period of what is termed now as one hundred years.  It was formed according to that which had been worked out by Ra-Ta in the mount as related to the position of the various stars, that acted in the place about which this particular solar system circles in its activity, going towards what?  That same name as to which the priest was banished - the constellation of Libra, or to Libya were these people sent.  It is not fitting, then, that these must return? as this priest may develop himself to be in that position, to be in the capacity of a liberator of the world in its relationships to individuals in those periods to come; for he must enter again at that period, or in 1998.

From Text of Channeled Reading 294-152 (July 29, 1932)

1. EC: Yes, we have the information that has been given.  With the building of that memorial, there were the developments in many - or every - other line of human experience and development.  These were the natural development if the ideal that was held by the entity Ra-Ta from the beginning, for these were man's relationship to his Maker, man's relationship to his fellow man.

4. Also there were then with those of Ra born other children, that were to rise in their various capacities, that their activities would be carried on.  With this again brought contentions among the civil and political factions of the land.  This again brought the disturbing forces in Ra, and there came then that period when all the pyramid or memorial was complete, that he, Ra, ascended into the mount and was borne away.

My bizarre yet in no way exaggerated assortment of life experiences resulted with my noticing patterns of the word 'bell' and the name 'Michael' throughout the annals of cases of unexplained phenomena (as mentioned in previous blog articles).

In 1995 I realized that a Christ Force revealing a Spiritual Oneness to a seeker of wisdom was not only something read about in scriptures associated with religious traditions, this had happened to me and I was able to chronicle the circumstances with verbatim journal and interview transcripts in a documentary style in Testament.

A 1997 press release publicizing Testament included the following commentary:

"God has revealed secrets of life to me in a chronology of events that aren't without humor, irony and occasional moments of terror and awe," remarks Bell.  "The Spiritual Force has found me a receptive channel — as it previously has not only Jesus and Buddha yet also such little-understood people as Madame Blavatsky and Edgar Cayce.  You might say I've been appointed your master of ceremonies for a day of expanded consciousness.  The word 'paranormal' has just become obsolete."

More information is available at testament.org.

 

Out For Lunch

Halloween in the dorm room-- this picture was taken by my amazing roomate who not only puts up  with my eccentricism but has become one of my closest friends!

The microwave is humming in the background as I eagerly await a cup of hot herbal tea. I am back at home, and most of my family is asleep already. I've adapted too well to a midnight bedtime.

Today my grandparents visited and told me that I needed to put some sort of "Out For Lunch" post up on my blog so that people wouldn't think I simply abandoned it. That's when I realized that I haven't written a proper post since September! Here it is, February, and I have so much to write about and so many pictures to share that every time the thought of blogging crosses my mind, I shut down the thought so that I don't overwhelm my brain.

To be fair, I am very busy. This entire freshman year I am taking on a nice hefty class load which will only increase over time. This semester I am in class for 24 hours a week, and have homework, the Shoppe, family, friends, church, and activities to keep up with. It's rare that I have even half an hour of the day to simply sit down and read a book or just zone out! It's a big change of pace from my homeschooling days (and I thought I was

I'm really loving college, though! I've made so many wonderful friends and can't even begin to describe how much my life has been changing, and in so many great and wonderful ways!

This is the first weekend in over a month that I have been home, and it is SO NICE. My family and I are really close, I've missed all my siblings, and ohmygosh I completely forgot to ever blog about the birth of my baby sister.

(See what I mean about having so much to write about that I just don't do it at all?)

Here's a picture of Baby "Josie"-- and sometime in the hopefully very-near future you will be subjected to an entire post in which I "ooooh" and "ahhhh" over her!

Well, consider this my "Out For Lunch" post! As I can fit time in between homework and work, I'll start getting this blog back into shape. :) Pip pip toodle-dee-do for now!

P.S. I have a new website! www.shaylynnann.com It's still in the works (and always will be!) but for now it's a nice little hub for all of my online artistic-ness.

The Second Coming

The 'Second Coming' is among the diverse metaphysical topics addressed in the channeled reading transcripts that document the psychic vocation of Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) who came to be known as 'the sleeping prophet.'
 
When considering the passages of the readings about the Second Coming, one should understand the nature of the communication that was given through the entranced Edgar Cayce.  Reading 254-2 given on March 19, 1919 presented the response to a question about "how the psychic work is accomplished through this body."
 

2. EC: We have the body here - we have had it before. In this state the conscious mind is under subjugation of the subconscious or soul mind. The information obtained and given by the body is obtained through the power of mind over mind, or power of mind over physical matter, or obtained by the suggestion as given to the active part of the subconscious mind.  It obtains its information from that which it has gathered, either from other subconscious minds - put in touch with the power of the suggestion of the mind controlling the speaking faculties of this body, or from minds that have passed into the Beyond, which leave their impressions and are brought in touch by the power of the suggestion.  What is known to one subconscious mind or soul is known to another, whether conscious of the fact or not.  The subjugation of the conscious mind putting the subconscious in action in this manner or in one of the other of the manners as described, this body obtains its information when in the subconscious state.

3. (Q) Is this information always correct?
(A) Correct in so far as the suggestion is in the proper channel or accord with the action of subconscious or soul matter.

 
Reading 364-7 of April 5, 1932 includes commentary about "in the beginning," "the Word WAS with God" and "incarnations of Adam" before the topic of the Second Coming is addressed.
 

8. (Q) Please give the important re-incarnations of Adam in the world's history.
(A) In the beginning as Amilius, as Adam, as Melchizedek, as Zend, as Ur, as Asaph, as Jesus - Joseph - Jesus.

Then, as that coming into the world in the second coming - for He will come again and receive His own, who have prepared themselves through that belief in Him and acting in that manner; for the SPIRIT is abroad, and the time draws near, and there will be the reckoning of those even as in the first so in the last, and the last shall be first; for there is that Spirit abroad - He standeth near.  He that hath eyes to see, let him see.  He that hath ears to hear, let him hear the music of the coming of the Lord of this vineyard, and art THOU ready to give account of that THOU hast done with thine opportunity in the earth as the Sons of God, as the heirs and joint heirs of glory WITH the Son?  Then make thine paths straight, for there must come an answering for that THOU hast done with thine Lord!  He will not tarry, for having overcome He shall appear even AS the Lord AND Master.  Not as one born, but as one that returneth to His own, for He will walk and talk with men of every clime, and those that are faithful and just in their reckoning shall be caught up with Him to rule and to do JUDGEMENT for a thousand years!

 
Here are portions of reading 3976-15 of January 19, 1934 concerning the premise of a day and year of the Lord. 
 

2. EC: Yes; as each of you gathered here have your own individual development, yet as each seeks to be a channel of blessings to the fellow man, each attunes self to the Throne of universal information.  And there may be accorded you that which may be beneficial, not only in thine own experience, but that which will prove helpful, hopeful, in the experience of others.

3. Many an one may question you as to the sources, as to the channel through such information that may be given you at this time has come. Know it has reached that which is as high for each of you in your respective development as you have merited, and do merit; and has accorded and does accord to the realm of light that which may be aidful and helpful in thine own experience, and in the experience of those that ye in your service to they fellow man may give unto others.

4. Hence, in giving the interpretation, MANY are present; many of those whose names alone would bring to others awe - discredit, yet - even a wonderment.  For, not only then must the information be instructive but enlightening; yet it must also be so given that it may be a PRACTICAL thing in the experience of thine own self and in the experience of life of thine fellow man.  Not only must it be informative in nature, but it must also be that which is constructive; though that which is informative and that which may be enlightening and constructive must at times overlap one another.

5. First, then: There is soon to come into the world a body; one of our own number here that to many has been a representative of a sect, of a thought, of a philosophy, of a group, yet one beloved of all men in all places where the universality of God in the earth has been proclaimed, where the oneness of the Father as God is known and is consciously magnified in the activities of individuals that proclaim the acceptable day of the Lord. Hence that one John, the beloved in the earth - his name shall be John, and also at the place where he met face to face.

6. When, where, is to be this one?  In the hearts and minds of those that have set themselves in that position that they become a channel through which spiritual, mental and material things become one in purpose and desire of that physical body!


10. Who shall proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord in him that has been born in the earth in America?  Those from that land where there has been the regeneration, not only of the body but the mind and the spirit of men, THEY shall come and declare that John Peniel is giving to the world the new ORDER of things.  Not that these that have been proclaimed have been refused, but that they are made PLAIN in the minds of men, that they may know the truth and the truth, the life, the light, will make them free.

 
In the following paragraph, the communicator on this occasion is recorded as having offered an identification: "I, Halaliel, have spoken."  Halaliel is described in reading 254-83 as "the one who from the beginning has been a leader of the heavenly host . . ."

An analysis of the 'John Peniel' prophecy was published in the July 1982 edition of The A.R.E. Journal.  W. H. Church wrote in "'His Name Shall Be John' An Objective Look at the John Peniel Controversy":
 

Actually, the probable lineage of the real John "Peniel" (whose surname, like that prophetic reference to "Immanuel" in Isaiah 7:14, may be more symbolic than literal) has already been intimated, if not precisely pinpointed, in other Cayce readings touching on the subject—readings that are generally unknown or else ignored . . . 


If the reading that tells of him can be literally interpreted (3976-15), John Peniel was to be the name of an incoming entity on the "Other Side" at that time (January 19, 1934), who would be a reincarnation of John the Beloved.  His unusual mission in the earth was to be as a messenger who would proclaim the long-awaited Second Coming of the Lord.  A date of 1998, according to another reading, was set for that epochal event.  This was based on Cayce's interpretation of an esoteric chronology in stone, which is an interior aspect of the carefully laid-out architecture within the Great Pyramid at Gizah. 

In this same pyramid did the Great Initiate, the Master, take those last of the Brotherhood degrees with John, the forerunner of Him, at that place.  As is indicated in that period where entrance is shown to be in that land that was set apart, as that promised to that peculiar peoples, as were rejected—as is shown in that portion when there is the turning back from the raising up of Xerxes as the deliverer from an unknown tongue or land, and again is there seen that this occurs in the entrance of the Messiah in this period—1998.  5847-5, June 30, 1932

In excerpts from yet another reading about a year later, further information on the prophesied reappearance of the risen Saviour seems to have been communicated through the sleeping Cayce by the Beloved Disciple himself for the reading began: "I, John, would speak with thee concerning the Lord, the Master, as He walked among men." (5749-5)


There may also be an esoteric correspondence with the pineal gland, seat of the Christed Consciousness.


. . . Edgar Cayce's role seems firmly established as a forerunner of the event, who was sent to warn the people to make ready the way.  This was confirmed very beautifully in an unusual dream Mr. Cayce experienced (indeed, were not all of his dreams "unusual"!) in December, 1942.

The dream, in brief, was this: The voice of God was heard "as from out of the cloud and the lightning," addressing an assembled throng of shrouded figures on the Other Side, where Cayce was also present.  Twice the voice asks, "Who will warn My children?"  The Master offers to go but is told that the time is not yet fulfilled for His return to the earth plane.  Then the deceased evangelist, Dwight L. Moody, speaks up: "Why not send Cayce, he is there now."  At this juncture, the Master speaks: "Father, Cayce will warn My brethren."  The dream, or vision, concludes with the voices of the assembled throng in a grand chorus: "And we shall all help!" (Dream of December 12, 1942, or early morning of the 13th; see 294-196.)

W. H. Church's article also mentions the 'Ra Ta' expression found in the Edgar Cayce channeled reading transcripts in relation to another instance of the year 1998 being given: ". . . as this priest may develop himself to be in that position, to be in the capacity of a liberator of the world in its relationships to individuals in those periods to come; for he must enter again at that period, or in 1998."

The Second Coming is the subject of Edgar Cayce channeled reading 5749-5 of May 1, 1934.  The archived report of the reading presents a description of a "DREAM (or Experience) as told by EC, upon awaking from [reading] 378-28 this A.M."  The 'dream' was of Cayce finding himself on a train casually conversing with a group of "deceased evangelists" who were all dressed in white.  They were "going to a meeting where somebody was going to teach . . ." because, as one of them (George Stuart) said, ". . . we have found that we didn't know it all."

I am presenting the transcript of reading 5749-5 in the entirety.  The reading was given at Cayce's home on Arctic Crescent, Virginia Beach, Virginia from 3:35 to 4:00 pm with Gertrude Cayce as conductor.
 

1. GC: You will have before you Edgar Cayce, present in this room, and his enquiring mind in relation to the talk which he expects to give next Monday evening on the "Second Coming."  You will give what he should present at this open meeting on the subject.

2. EC: That which crowds in at the present may be well for those present, but would it be well for those in open meeting?  From this experience, though, there may be gathered that which has been given and that which may be helpful to many in the comprehension of that which is the experience of those that seek through such channels to have for themselves the experience that may be had by those here in this room at present.

3. Be mindful then, each of you, of that ye may inwardly experience in that which may be given you.

4. For, those experiences that have been told you of the vision of the gathering of those that were known to many in this present land and in the lands abroad were in reference to just those things that may be said respecting the Coming.

5. Many of those have ministered, have preached concerning this Second Coming. Not a one but what has at some time left the record of his contemplations and experiences in those environs, whether made in the heart and mind of his hearers or in the written word; yet here today, in what ye call time, ye find them gathering in a body to LISTEN to that as may be given them by one who is to be a forerunner of that influence in the earth known as the Christ Consciousness, the coming of that force or power into the earth that has been spoken of through the ages.

6. Listen, while he speaks!

7. Ye, my brethren, in your ignorance and in your zeal have often spoken of that influence in the earth known among men as the record made by those that would influence the activities in the religious or spiritual life of individuals through the ages, as a record of the Son of man as He walked in the earth.  Rather would ye listen and harken to those things as He spoke when He made those inferences and illustrations as to how those had closed and did close their ears to what was actually going on about them; yet as they knew Him not!  He, our Lord and our Master, was the first among those that put on immortality that there might be the opportunity for those forces that had erred in spiritual things; and only through experiencing in a manner whereunto all might be visioned from their greater abilities of manifesting in the various phases, forms and manners as they developed through that ye know as matter, could they come to know how or why or when there was made manifest in any realm spirit that was good and spirit that was in error.  For, He gave thee, had ye not KNOWN the Son ye would NOT be condemned in thine own self. For, condemnation was not in Him, but "ye are condemned already."  And in the coming into the influence of those that would open themselves for an understanding might there be the approach to Him.  He has come in all ages through those that were the spokesmen to a people in this age, that age, called unto a purpose for the manifestation of that first idea.

8. Readst thou how the sons of God came together, and Satan came also?  "Has thou considered my servant?  Hast thou seen his ways?"  And the answer, even from the evil force, "Put forth thine hand - touch him in those things that pertain to the satisfying of desire that is flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face."  Then, "He is in thine hand, but touch not his soul - touch not his soul!"

9. So we see how that the coming into the earth has been and is for the evolution or the evolving of the soul unto its awareness of the effect of all influences in its experience in the varied spheres of activity; and that only in Him who was the creator, the maker, the experiencer of mortality and spirit and soul COULD this be overcome.

10. Then, the necessity.  For, has it now been said, has it not been shown in the experience of the earth, the world, from any angle it may be considered, that He has not willed that any should be lost - but has prepared the way of escape in Him, the Maker?

11. But who is the worthy servant?  He that has endured unto the end!

12. Then, He has come in all ages when it has been necessary for the understanding to be centered in a NEW application of the same thought, "God IS Spirit and seeks such to worship him in spirit and in truth!"

13. Then, as there is prepared the way by those that have made and do make the channels for the entering in, there may come into the earth those influences that will save, regenerate, resuscitate, HOLD - if you please - the earth in its continued activity toward the proper understanding and proper relationships to that which is the making for the closer relationships to that which is in Him ALONE.  Ye have seen it in Adam; ye have heard it in Enoch, ye have had it made known in Melchizedek; Joshua, Joseph, David, and those that made the preparation then for him called Jesus. Ye have seen His Spirit in the leaders in all realms of activity, whether in the isles of the sea, the wilderness, the mountain, or in the various activities of every race, every color, every activity of that which has produced and does produce contention in the minds and hearts of those that dwell in the flesh.

14. For, what must be obliterated?  Hate, prejudice, selfishness, backbiting, unkindness, anger, passion, and those things of the mire that are created in the activities of the sons of men.

15. Then again He may come in body to claim His own.  Is He abroad today in the earth?  Yea, in those that cry unto Him from every corner; for He, the Father, hath not suffered His soul to see corruption; neither hath it taken hold on those things that make the soul afraid.  For, He IS the Son of Light, of God, and is holy before Him. And He comes again in the hearts and souls and minds of those that seek to know His ways.

16. These be hard to be understood by those in the flesh, where prejudice, avarice, vice of all natures holds sway in the flesh; yet those that call on Him will not go empty handed - even as thou, in thine ignorance, in thine zealousness that has at times eaten thee up.  Yet HERE ye may hear the golden scepter ring - ring - in the hearts of those that seek His face.  Ye, too, may minister in those days when He will come in the flesh, in the earth, to call His own by name.

17. We are through.

 
In reading 3011-3 of September 29, 1943, a question about an expected date of "the Second Coming of the Master in the flesh" is answered: 
 

(A) How doth He interpret, as to the day or the hour?  No man knoweth save the Father.

Live ye then, each soul, as though ye expected him today.  Then ye shall see Him as He is, when ye live such a life.

 
Another reading where the Second Coming is a topic is reading 5277-1 of July 1, 1944. 
 

37. (Q) In view of the inconsistency of opinion held by various groups of earnest students of the Holy Mysteries regarding the Second Coming of Master, what should be our attitude?
(A) As has been indicated, be prepared each day to meet thy God.  He will bless those, as is the promise, who love His coming.  Then, whether it be in this experience or when ye have returned, let thy prayer ever be, "Lord, use me in Thy way.  Thy will be done, not mine."

 
At testament.org, I commented in 1998 about the parallels between a previous incarnation of my own in Egypt and the Edgar Cayce channeled reading transcripts about 'Ra-Ta' after having selected excerpts from the transcripts for an Introduction to the follow-up book to my case study Testament (1997).  The collected Ra-Ta transcripts are presented in the blog article "On Ra-Ta from the Edgar Cayce Channeled Reading Transcripts".  A preceding article about 'Christ Consciousness' is "A Meditation on Christ Consciousness from the Edgar Cayce Channeled Reading Transcripts".
 

How Masao Maki Met 'Dr. Fritz'

This photo from the book shows Rubens Faria preparing to enter a trance and allow his body to become a 'channel.'

 
 
In this article, I am presenting excerpts from Masao Maki's autobiographical book In Search of Brazil's Quantum Surgeon: The Dr. Fritz Phenomenon (1998).  Maki had first heard about Dr. Fritz on May 12, 1996.  At a Miami Airport duty-free shop, a middle-aged woman asked him where he was going.  He told her that he was going to Brazil on the midnight flight.  She told him, "Oh yeah?  So you're going to meet Dr. Fritz, eh?"  She had learned (probably from a National Enquirer article published in January) about the possibility that Dr. Fritz was going to treat Christopher Reeve, the actor who was left paralyzed from a horseback riding accident.

A columnist for a Japanese New Age magazine, Maki was attending the International Transpersonal Psychology Conference in Manaus.  On the first day of the conference, Dr. Stanislov Grof mentioned that a young Brazilian computer programmer was currently channeling the spirit of a German doctor who died in World War I.  'Dr. Fritz' was treating thousands of patients with an incredible success ratio. 

On the final day of the conference, Maki was looking for a brochure when he found a note about a "Video showing of Dr. Fritz—Healing the Spirit" that was then taking place.  After Maki watched for a short period, the video ended and the producer explained that he was in the middle of editing the video and had shown the first ten minutes as a sample.  The following morning, Maki was having lunch in a hotel buffet restaurant when he saw the producer and invited him to sit at his table.  Maki learned that the producer, David Sonnenschein, lived in Rio de Janeiro, where Maki was headed.  Sonnenschein told him to telephone him a few days later: "If you get a chance, it might be a good idea to meet Dr. Fritz."  He also said that the man who channels Dr. Fritz was a neighbor who lived in the next door apartment.

The following passage is from the chapter "Returned From World War I" of Maki's book with some inconsequential sentences omitted.

May 24

On the fourth night of my stay in Rio de Janeiro, I was able to reach David by telephone. "I'm sorry," he said. "I just got back, and I'm too busy to go with you tomorrow."  But he gave me the address of Dr. Fritz's clinic.

Should I go meet this Dr. Fritz tomorrow?  My inner skeptic argued, "What can you possibly hope to gain by meeting this doctor?  He's probably bogus."  But my curiosity won me over, and before going to sleep, I decided to seek out this miracle worker the next day.

May 25

After an exhausting search, we [Maki and the taxi driver] finally found the Penha district and Dr. Fritz's hospital.  It was just past noon.


When I turned to look at the hospital across the street, I was very surprised.  This big building, on the corner of Rua Quito and Rua Couto, looked nothing like any hospital I had ever seen.  In fact, it was a dilapidated warehouse that had been abandoned many years before.  The paint was peeling off the outside walls, and the windows that weren't broken were very dirty.  It made me sad.  How could this be the hospital that Dr. Stanislov Grof spoke so highly of?

Outside the front gates of the building, the scene reminded me of a festival at an Indian temple.  Everywhere I looked there were people and vendors selling fruit juice and bread and incense to the crowd gathered there.

After taking the scene in for a few minutes, I decided to venture inside.  Once through the gates, I was amazed to find even more people, packed wall to wall.  Somehow I managed to make my way through them into another huge hall with a high ceiling covered in broken roof tiles.  I couldn't believe my eyes!  Inside this hall were another few hundred people.  Most of the patients, dressed in cheap clothing, were obviously poor.  Thirty or forty people sat in wheelchairs, and others leaned on crutches.  Still others had bandages over their eyes.

"How the hell can Dr. Fritz treat all of these patients," I wondered with amazement.  "There's no way one human being can fix all of these people.   It's impossible."

I needed to calm down.  To bring myself down to earth, I decided to count the number of patients.  I divided the people into units of about one hundred and began to multiply.  I counted once, then twice, then a third time.  The number I got was about one thousand.  How could one doctor single-handedly treat a thousand patients in one day?  My curiosity was piqued, and I began to feel a sort of glimmering around my body.

About a dozen workers, wearing name tags, were organizing the patients.  Another dozen or more nurses, in white uniforms, were busily preparing treatments.  I searched their faces, but couldn't find anyone who looked like Dr. Fritz.  Eventually, I saw what looked like a clinic room beyond the main room.  As I started to go through the door, two young Brazilians, who had been organizing the patients, blocked the way.  I explained to them in English that Dr. Fritz's neighbor, the movie director David Sonnenschein, had told me about Dr. Fritz, and assured them that it was okay for me to go inside.  They didn't seem to understand me, but somehow I found myself inside the rather large clinic room.  To my surprise, here were another 200 or so patients waiting very quietly in a dozen straight lines.

Beneath the windows along one side of the room sat about twenty obviously very ill patients in wheelchairs, attended by relatives who were looking after them.  I could see the pain and anxiety in their faces.

Slowly, I became aware of some familiar music playing faintly in the background, though the noise from the crowd in the big hall next door made it difficult to hear.  At first I thought, "It can't be," but when I put my ear up to a small speaker hanging from a wall, I could hear the strains of a Hindu bhajan, a prayerful song to a Hindu god.  Two years before, when I was on a pilgrimage to Indian temples, I heard the same song many times.  It was a song of praise to the gods Rama and Krishna.  I couldn't believe I was hearing the same bhajan in a place like this.  I felt something like a sacred vibration and was in awe that this vibration could reach out and make connections beyond time and space.  It was deeply moving.

I looked around again and noticed a picture of the Holy Mother and other saints on the opposite wall.  Beneath these sacred pictures sat a simple wooden desk and a white metal folding chair.  Atop the desk stood a small statue of Jesus Christ and a vase filled with pink roses.  The beauty of the flowers drew me closer, and I breathed in their fragrance.  All of a sudden, I thought, "This must be Dr. Fritz's desk!"

Just then, two middle-aged nurses appeared and began speaking to me in Portuguese.  I could tell they weren't trying to chase me away, because they were very polite and friendly, but they spoke very rapidly, and I couldn't understand them at all.  I struggled to think how I could communicate with them.  It seemed no one in the clinic spoke English.  Then a powerful looking older nurse came over.  She seemed to be the chief nurse, and she said to me in broken English, "Here English-speaking person.  Now I bring him."  Five minutes later, she came back, accompanied by a young Brazilian man wearing thick eyeglasses.  He was very friendly and lively, and wore a white T-shirt and blue jeans.  He smiled animatedly and asked me what country I came from and if there was anything I needed.  I was very happy to find someone I could talk with.

I told him I had come to learn about Dr. Fritz, and he smiled broadly and pointed to a simple black-and-white portrait, drawn in charcoal or pencil, hanging on the wall.  "This is Dr. Fritz," he said.  "He was a surgeon in the German army who died in World War I.  But the spirit of Dr. Fritz comes here and miraculously cures people."

I supposed this young man was a worker in this place.  I liked him immediately, and decided this was a good opportunity to ask some questions.  But suddenly he put his hand on my mouth and said, "I'm sorry, I have other business to attend to.  Please take your time and enjoy your visit here."

As I watched him walk into the back room, I was a little disappointed that I wasn't going to learn more about Dr. Fritz, but I had that happy feeling around my chest that I get whenever I meet a wonderful person.

I stepped over to the framed portrait of Dr. Fritz hanging on the wall and examined it more closely.  It was a simple copy made from an original.  It depicted a fat European man with a humorous expression on a bespectacled bearded face.  Written on the portrait were the words, "Dr. Adolph Fritz, died 1915."  It was bizarre to think that Dr. Fritz had died more than eighty years ago, yet somehow was still alive in this hospital.

As I stood contemplating the portrait, the door to the back room opened and the same young man emerged, now dressed all in white.  He walked to the little desk and slowly looked around at the people in the room, smiling as if to say good-bye.  Then he sat down on the folding chair and several nurses gathered around him and closed their eyes.  Then they raised their hands to about shoulder height and turned their palms outward toward the young man.  It seemed as though they were sending some sort of prayer energy to him.

He took off his thick eyeglasses, gently laid them on the desk, gazed at the little statue of Jesus Christ for a few seconds, then put his right elbow on the desk.  With his right hand, he covered both his eyes and became very quiet.  It felt like time stood still, and I gazed at him with wonder and awe.  Perhaps twenty seconds of silence had passed when his head and hand slipped from his eyes and his head dropped closer to the desk's surface.  Slowly then, he raised his face, and I saw it was not the same friendly face I had seen only thirty seconds before.  His entire complexion had become reddish, and his eyes, without the thick glasses now, were still open and had a sort of sleepy look.  At that moment, I realized with some surprise that the friendly young man was really Dr. Fritz himself.

Though I had seen the video of Dr. Fritz at the conference in Manaus, the image had been so distorted that I hadn't recognized this young Brazilian as him.  "Can this really be happening?" I wondered.  "Can the spirit of a doctor who died nearly eighty years ago manifest himself again through the body of another?"


My mind was too Westernized to understand or accept this phenomenon, even though it had just happened right in front of me.  I noticed the impatience of my rational mind, and realized that it didn't know what to do when faced with a situation it couldn't easily understand.  I decided I didn't need to come to a rational conclusion just then.  The only thing I could do was closely observe this phenomenon while trying to keep a cool researcher's eye.  To calm down, I inhaled deeply three times.  Then I focused all my attention on Dr. Fritz again.

The chief nurse brought in about two hundred forms, which had been filled out by first-time clients, and placed them on the desk in front of Dr. Fritz.  Each piece of paper described the symptoms or illness of a different patient.  Dr. Fritz began sorting the papers into two stacks, one for patients requiring immediate treatment and the other for patients whom he could see later.  The speed with which he sorted the forms was beyond my imagination.  He spent no more than one or two seconds on each, placing it to the right or left.  That could only mean he was not reading the papers, I realized, but sorting them by feel.

Sometimes he would stop and turn his head a little.  Then without looking at the page, he would place his finger on the surface and move it to the right or left.  I guessed that he must be sensing how serious the patient's illness was through his fingertips.  I couldn't understand how he did this.  It just blew my mind.

In the middle of this work, he looked up and spoke to the chief nurse, and his voice was totally different from the voice I had heard before he channeled Dr. Fritz.  The young man's soft, rather sweet voice had become husky and low.

In fewer than ten minutes, he finished sorting the papers, arose from the table, and walked into the back room, accompanied by a few nurses.  As he did so, he passed right in front of me.  I tried to read his facial expression, whether he noticed me or not.  There was no sign he remembered me, even though we had met only fifteen minutes before.

After they were gone, another nurse came to me and began pointing toward the room where Dr. Fritz had gone, saying, "Dr. Fritz. Operação."  She repeated this until I understood that Dr. Fritz was performing an operation in the other room.  Next to the door of that room, I saw a poster of a nurse with a finger to her lips.  Underneath the picture was printed the word "Silencio," or "Silence."  I became very curious about what was going on behind that door, but it seemed to be a sacrosanct area that no one could enter without permission.  So for the time being, I waited on the other side with two hundred others.

After about an hour, Dr. Fritz emerged with a more serious expression than before.  Three nurses were waiting for him with a rolling cart full of hypodermic needles filled with a dark brown liquid.  As soon as he came into the room, he picked up one of the needles and began injecting the patients at the front of the line.

He spoke one or two words to each patient, then injected the needle rather randomly into some part of his or her body, seemingly paying little intention to what he was doing.  The speed at which he diagnosed and injected each patient was beyond my ability to comprehend.  Some patients had brought an X-ray with them.  Dr. Fritz would hold the X-ray up to the electric light for about five seconds, explain something to them, and then inject them very quickly.  He used a new needle for each person, but it seemed as though all the fluid in the needles was the same.  I wondered if the dark brown liquid was some kind of magical miracle wonder drug that was suitable for everyone.

There were many children and babies in the room, as well.  I know children can be very sensitive to pain, especially injections, but not one child expressed any pain when injected.  In fact, hardly any children in that room were crying.  Dr. Fritz appeared very fond of them.  He gave each one a big smile, sometimes pinching them affectionately or touching their head or body in a joyful friendly way.

Some patients he injected near the eyes, others near the nose, others in the back of the neck.  The needles were quite long.  I watched the people closely as they were injected.  Most didn't change their facial expression at all.  It seemed they felt no pain whatsoever.  I saw one old man being injected in his spine, the long needle penetrating deeply into his body.  All the while he smiled and talked with Dr. Fritz.

Dr. Fritz finished treating these two hundred or so patients in about two hours.  Watching all this, I became so moved that I felt like crying.  Perhaps some pure part of my mind was reacting to some kind of energy vibrations overflowing from Dr. Fritz.

All at once, I felt I understood the true meaning of my unexpected nine days in Rio de Janeiro.  I had thought it was the tour company's mistake, but now I understood that the universe was giving me an opportunity to meet Dr. Fritz.  I didn't know what would happen or what I would do, but I had at least five days left.  "This will help my spiritual growth in some new and different way," I thought.  "I must come back here as much as I can for the next five days."  I stayed by Dr. Fritz's side until nine o'clock that evening, although I couldn't communicate in English with anyone.

Finally, Dr. Fritz finished treating all one thousand patients, and began injecting the remaining nurses and workers.  Looking at his face, I could see that the many hours of non-stop treatment had made him very tired.  His complexion reddened visibly as he went along, and became more and more severe.  His voice deepened even further, and sometimes he yelled at people.

Finally, his work done, he sat down on the same white folding chair where he had started out eight hours before.  The older members who remained raised their hands toward him.  Then, in exactly the same manner as before, he covered his eyes with his right hand, his head dropped toward the desk, and Dr. Fritz disappeared.  In a few seconds, the nice young Brazilian man was back.

It was a very dramatic transformation.  His face changed completely, and he replaced his eyeglasses.  Smiling softly, he looked around the room at everyone.  He was young and friendly again.  He stood up, walked over to me, shook my hand, and said in a cheerful voice, "So how was it?  How did you like Dr. Fritz?"

"I was very moved," I said.  "Is it okay for me to come back tomorrow?"

He smiled broadly and said, "Oh yes, yes please!  You are very very welcome here."  Then he walked out of the hospital with his wife, who had been tending to paperwork throughout the day. 

 
During another trip to Rio de Janeiro later in 1996, Masao Maki reported discussing Dr. Fritz in relation to actor Christopher Reeve.  Rubens Faria told him about a visit to New York in June: "Dr. Fritz did one simple operation, but during the operation even my wife, who I brought along as a helper, wasn't allowed to come inside the operating room."  Faria was uncertain about accepting an invitation to return to New York: "When I think about the thousands of patients who are relying on Dr. Fritz every day at this clinic, then sometimes I feel it is better to treat the thousands of patients here . . . ."