PHILOSOPHIC METHOD APPLIED TO THE EDGAR CAYCE READINGS By Lowis A. Foster Jr. Associate Professor of Philosophy, William & Mary College, Williamsburg, Va. I confess that the present house of Philosophy is divided as to what philosophy is and should be. Some wish to relegate it to mathematical logic, an idea stemming from Plato; while others would confine itto linguistic analysis, first suggested by Aristotle. Since my awn view is more conservative, letme borrow a definition from one of the more modern of the great classical philosophers, Alfred North Whitehead: ‘Philosophy is the endeavor to formulate fa system of general ideas which shall be consistent, coherent and complete, in terms of which every aspect of our experience can be interpreted. Above all else, philosophy is concerned with meanings and thoir proper expression. Observe this simple example of the elemen- tary fallacy of equivocation. That two and two are four is thought by most to be an indubitable truth. But let me submit to you that tio and two are either five or not-five, and if they aro not-five, then we must conclude that they are five. This represents an error that can easily occur in every day speech, and which is also not foreign to some philosophical treat However, the philosopher is dedicated to eliminate this sort of non-think from our language. For instance, a definition, if it is to be something moro precise than a conventional dictionary deserip- tion, should distinguish between the similar and differentiating characteristics that are common to all members of a class. Hence, man must be defined as featherless biped animal with a rational soul. The last four words, you notice, excludes from the classi- fication, a plucked chicken, But the philosopher is equally concornod with the world in which ho lives, and different philosophers have explained that world in different ways. As we examine their views, I shall ask you to keep in mind three important questions, First: What is each ‘one"s premise? These are important because they are tacit assump- tions which they are urging you to accept as patent fact. Second:“4 THE A.R.E. JOURNAL Does each one's ideas demonstrate intornal consistency; thet is, aro they froo from contradiction? Third: Ts each pattern complete enough to include such abnormal experiences as psychic phenom- Armed with these questions, let us prepare to examine those implications of philosophy which are pertinent to the Cayce Read- ings. Now what does the philosopher do when he confronts a phenom- enon such as Edger Cayco? If he is a true philosopher, the one thing he cannot do is to ignore it. He may sneer at it, of he may suspect it of being a hoax. But he cannot turn his back on it. If it is @ hoax, he must prove this; and if skeptical, he must ive grounds for his doubt. More specifically, he can do one of two things. He can say that by his definition such phenomena aro human accidents, or he can say: ‘Horo is a type of data I must exanine, the result of which may require altering my definition of man.* The evidence which has been amassed by the Edgar Cayce Foundation is so overwhelming that it forces an essential marriage with. philosophical inquiry. But this is no ‘shot-gun wedding’. The relationship is natural, moral, and destined; and can no longer be unrequited by eithor party. In my view each is necessary to the other. Philosophy has need of the novel data of psychic phenomena and research, if for no other reason than to guide it away from ‘retrogression into dogmatic slumber’ [At the same time, psychical research urgently needs the prec sion of logical order and the gonoral discipline of philosophical analysis and synthesis. It needs these if it is to be froe of well- intentioned but inadequate procedures; and if, along with philos- ophy, it is to contribute responsibly to the general cause of human knowledge and dignity. The phenomenon of Edgar Cayce presents a double difficulty for the philosopher. Not only must he content with the fact that Mr. Cayce manifested a faculty and function different from those comprehended in our definition of man; he often talked about the same things that the philosopher talks about. In effect, he was, on occasion, a philosopher himself. Now this is most disconcerting. He becomes a rival to the profossional philosopher in so far as his Readings - implicitly at least - make claim to a rival doctrine of philosophy. Add to this the bitter irony that Mr. Cayce could philosophize with little orPHILOSOPHIC METHOD APPLIED TO THE CAYCE READINGS 15 no effort. He could do it in his sleep, while we, poor devils, must slowly wring out each drop of knowledge from its conscious and roluctant source. Fortunately, Mr. Cayce's mothod has some disadvantages. His philosophical utterances aro scattored, prophetic, onigmatic, and unsystemized, This is what I meant when I called his philosophy implicit. Horo is whore tho philosopher with his academic discipline might be of use, Ho can attompt to assemble the many idoas of philosophical import seattored throughout the Readings into an eligible pattern. Let me take as an example the Memory material I have been studying through the Circulating File of the Readings. It is very scanty, and this alone is enough to arouse professional suspicion. Edgar Cayce never coased talking about mind and soul; and the philosophers nover cease talking about the essential relevance of memory to soul. Indeed, at least one philosopher has theorized that memory is the principle of all being and existence, ‘Thus, it seemed that the researcher who compiled this partic~ ular file on memory appears to have perused the general indox of tho Readings, to have extracted those passages in which the word ‘memory* occurs, and to have arranged them in some kind of provisional order. Now, surely for such a catalogue to be adequate and complete, the researcher must primarily hold fast to tho concepts of Mr. Cayce’s language, and only secondarily to the word that arbi- tearily define it. In fact, 1 am prepared to defend my opinion that philosophical discipline can be of substantial service in the cataloguing and indexing of the Cayce Readings and their tributary literature, T came across the following set of dofinitions of terms in another one of the Circulating Files: ‘4 apiritual faculty of the soul.’ ‘A creation of God composed of spirit, mind and will.’ iyi ‘ithe complete individual, including the physical body, conscious mind, subconscious mind, superconscious mind, soul and astral body These, of course, are merely a list of words, calling attention to certain similarities and differences in Mr. Cayce's use of Tanguage. Probably this was all that was intended here, and perhaps they are more properly explained elsewhere. If not, or to the degree that they are not, the philosopher's duty is to render disciplined precision to their meanings.6 THE A.R.E, JOURNAL Tako the word ‘soul" in the above reference. We must first ask what Mr. Cayce really meant by it. Grant it to be a ‘ereation of God" - and we certainly ought to be cleat about the word ‘God? - how is it created? Did the soul have a boginning in time? Is it evernal? Is it still in process of being croated, as some evolu tionists hold? If @ process, does it have an end, of is it immortal? When the soul is said to be « ‘composition,* does it moan that it is a collection of individual units like an army - of is it an intemal order, such as a musical chord, where the removal of any essential part will destroy the harmony of the whole? Further, is the soul an ‘entity,? a part of an ‘entity," of both? Finally, what is the total logical relation, by virtue of which wwe shall be able to fully understand the whole? The philosopher who decides to study the Readings is obviously acquainted with the past and present thinkers who have theorized about the soul¥s nature; and from those homay have oven formulated new concept of his own. Equipped with this and the tools of logic, he must analyze the Readings by isolating those parts which seem to share a common criontation. He must constantly ask himself if the implications he discovers coincide with any ho has already encountered in the history of philosophy. Should they not so coincide; should this discovery outweigh anything said by philosopher before; he must attempt to teanspose tho insight he has gained into symbolic or natural language, With this in view, let us explore four divergent viows of the soul as expounded by four great men in the history of philosophy. The first view is a widely current one, but we will approach it from the viewpoint of the philosopher who first propounded it; the 18th Century Scot, David Hume. He is better known for his writings on history and politics; but his status, like Schumann's in music, is that of the philosopher's philosopher. Hume argued that all of our knowledge can ultimately be analyzed into immediate sense-impressions. Thinking is nothing more than the association of ideas by addition or subtraction. It results either in abstract knowledge such as mathematics, the game of choss, and the like; or in knowledge pertinent to real existence, All so-called truth about real existence is based on relations of cause-effect; and Hume proceeds to analyze just how we come by this notion.PHILOSOPHIC METHOD APPLIED TO THE CAYCE READINGS 17 Is ita matter of true fact that fire burns? Before we say yes; what is the true meaning of this proposition? We mean that burning is an offect which is related to the fire, which is its cause. But what do the words ‘cause-effect? mean here? Simply this. Orig- inally I experienced a group of yellow, flickering visual impros: sions; and these were followed by sensations of heat and pain. When the yellow impressions appear again, I am already apprehen- sive before I sense the pain-impressions. Finally, 1 condition a belief that they will always appear together; and this implies a power in the one (which [ call the ‘cause') to produce the second (which I cal the ‘effect?) . From Hume's point of view, cause-effect is a psychological fiction with which we fall in love and then endow with the power to create reality. Is there actually an external world contributing to tho cause of our experience? Hume says we can never know this for certain, because we cannot go beyond our impressions. Is it only my soul which causes my ideas and unifies all of my experiences, and is that what I call ‘mysel®? Again, we cannot Know this. ‘Can you claim to have experienced impressions ot sensations of soul? No, it is too meaningless a word, standing for too ompty an abstraction. But is there any reslity that we can know truly? Hume says that the one and only reality is an awareness of a succession of impressions and ideas ‘This, you will admit, is a devastating thoory; and neatly every philosopher since has felt the necessity of first coping with Hume. 3+ The main target of Hume's attack was Descartes, who had lived in the preceding century. Descartes had insisted that the one thing we can know, with absolute certainty, is that the soul exists = foras soon as we try to deny its existence, our very act of denial is an affirmation that we aro something which at least doubts. This led to his famous dictum: ‘I think, therefore I am.” What Descartes moans is that while we are indeed a unity of body and soul, it is the soul which is our essential substance. If we stop to analyze the nature of our soul, we find it is imper- fect in many ways; buthow could we know ourselves tobe imperfect, unless we possessed a concopt of perfection? Imperfection is the absence of perfection, like black is the absence of color. But,8 ‘THE A.R.E. JOURNAL, because of our imperfoction, we could not have created in our- solves the idea of perfection. Therefore, it must have been caused by a being outside us who is perfoct; and this being we call ‘God.’ We may possess the power to act and create, but it is so limited 1 power thatwe could never have boen capable of our own creation. Ergo, God must be the cause of our being. Moreover, since it takes as much power to sustain our boing as to create it, He mustcontinue to be the author of our being through- ‘out our existence, Further, since you know God to be perfect, you know He doos not deceive, Therefore, the faculties of your soul, such as under- standing and will, are not defective. If you were able to use them properly, you would be free from error and sin. But you do not. always restrain the will, and often judge and act without clear and distinct knowledge. Thus, you are the agent of your errors, ‘and God is in no way responsible for evil. ‘As you soe, this Cartesian view of the soul is only common sense elevated to metaphysics, and I only have time to touch on fone problem it raises. Descartes sees the complete human entity as a unity of body and soul. Living involves interaction between these two substances. From the body-substance, the soul derives some of its ideas and feelings; and it is by the soul-substance that the body is activated into life. But how can the body - the essence of which is extension in space - interact with the soul, the essence of which is conscious- ness and spirit, and is non-extended? Thore natures mutually exclude one another. This fact led Etienne Gilson, one of the great contemporary. philosophers, to remark: ‘There was an excuse in the History of Philosophy for a Descartes, butthere is no excuse for Cartesians.* A very large school does dismiss Descartes’ concept of the soul as nonsense, his most avid crities boing tho Materialists. Today they have attained to subtier forms than the Dialectical Materialism of Marx and Engels, but their sourco-material still derives from the Romans Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius. To reduce this doctrine to its simplest form, we must approach t through the eyes of its groat founder, Democritus, who insisted that the one experience we can trust is that of our sense- perceptions and feelings. These are basic to all our knowledge and happiness, whereas our abstract ideas are no more tangiblePHILOSOPHIC METHOD APPLIED TO THE CAYCE READINGS 19 than their source. Science, which is disciplined common sense, asserts that all material things evolved to their present form by chance and acci- Gential variation; further, the divisibility of matter cannot be nfinite, but must be resolved into tiny but finite colorless partioles of different shapes and sizes, all of which are constantly in motion and eternal. In order for these to move, there must be @ void, and this void is infinite in size and contains an unlimited number of these atoms. Their natural impulse is to move in one direction - downward. But some of the atoms swerve from their course, and because of the differences of shape, they hit, bump or hook onto other atoms. Through millions of years of this snowballing, a world such as ours is evolved, including the infinite variety of matter which habits it, Do you wonder why there is such regularity in our world? That is because each form of matter has a certain determined atomic structure; so naturally its off-spring will contain the samo ingre- dients ag itself. Our world and all that composes it will endure for a period of time, and will then be dispersed either by internal ‘ot external force into the void again. What is tho nature of man himsolf? Substantially he is composed of the same elements as everything else; namely, atoms and void. Obviously he has less void in him than air or # sponge. Thus the only difference between one type of matter and another is defined hy the structure of the atoms and the degree of complexity they manifest. Does man then have a soul? Yes, certainly; if the word ‘soul? designates a part of man, as do the words ‘heart,’ ‘lungs,’ ‘brain? and the ‘ideas? stored in the brain. The word ‘soul? cannot mean a spiritual, non-extended sub- stance, (as Descartes said), because nobody has ever soen, hoard for felt such s thing. For the Materialist, it means a particular structure of certain typos of atom. Part of it is diffused throughout the other parts of the body, accounting for sonse-perception and feeling; and part of it is localized in the brain, the organ of memory and thought. Thinking is merely the combination or separation of material sense-images. When death renders the body inorganic, the soul is diffused to the winds while the rest of the body separates more slowly into other combinations of atomic structures, such as dust. If you want to call the soul immortal, this would be correct in the loose sense that the atoms which compose the soul are indestructible, each in0 ‘THE AL . JOURNAL itself. But the possibility of a continuation of life after death Becomes a contradiction in terms, Thus, the service which philosophy and scionce aro duty-bound to render to mankind is to free him from all fear of a life after death, a vengeful deity, salvation, and any other superstitions which may distarb him. Sigmund Freud gave an interosting turn to this theory. Ho urged that man in his prosent state of evolution needs to invent such ideas as a fatherly god because it gives him makeshift security until such time as enlightenment through scientific knowledge can equip him with the confidence to cast out such child-like fictions. One can understand the strong appeal of Materialism when one considers the brilliant advances made by the physical sciences. Where it has been least effective is in the life-sciences of biology, psychology and the humanities. I leave it to you as to why its weaknesses should be exposed by these particular schools, abe ‘The fourth philosophical concept of the soul was the work of a humanitarian who relentlessly opposed Materialism. This is the platonic Socrates - or tho socratic Plato - they aro virtually reciprocal. Plato theorizod that the universe is the creation of a God who is of necessity supremely good. Thus, of all the worlds God could have created, He chose to create this "best of all possible worlds.” ‘ng creature, and like all such ereuturos rust possoss a birth, a life, and a death. On earth, all beings aro'seen to be either inanimate or animate. By Plato means anything which has a principle of self-motion - in other words, a soul - and this would include blade of grass, a cauliflower, an ant, a lion, man, and the heavonly bodies as well. The souls of animals have something in common with plants, bout in addition they have a principle of sense-perception and locomotion. What distinguishes man is the fact that he has, in ‘addition to the appetitive and vital functions of animals and plants, reason and free will- Plato usually speaks of man's soul as a trinity of roason, will and love (of desire). But, just as the thoologians talk of the teinitarian character of God, so Plato moans that the soul is in itself « roal unity, separable only in our thought into faculties. Boing absolutely simple and, unlike a pie, not divisible into parts,PHILOSOPHIC METHOD APPLIED TO THE CAYCE READINGS 21 the soul cannot suffer change and must therefore be immortal. Body, on the other hand, is always dependent on something other than itself, either other bodies of souls, and it is never the same at any two consecutive moments. In Plato's words: ‘It is that which is always becoming, but never is.* He intorprots ‘birth’ as the ingression of a soul into matter, or body - his analogy being that of a ceptain assuming control of a ship - and ‘death’ as a separation of soul and body whoroin the soul continues to exist after the body has reverted back to its material components. For Plato, the soul not only endures from now to eternity; it always so endured, and never had « beginning. How does he prove this? Anything which has had a beginning must have been caused by something other than itself, on which it is dependent for its being. But the soul - a principle of self- motion, and independent of anything other than itself - can never have been other than what it is and will continue to be. This does not mean that the soul is innocent of inconsistency. Plato is merely assuring us that it is the same, identical soul that can be So vicious at one moment and so virtuous at another. What happens to the soul after death? It persists in a heavenly state until God's judgment, which will be based on the kind of existence it led on earth. If a man’s soul was noble and aspired to the love of God through actions based on reason instead of appetite, he is judged pure and purged, and he will live for eternity in a’ state of blessedness, at one with the source of all boing and existence. Plato. himself questioned the desirability of expressing his insight into language, and Socrates, of course, never wrote down 4 word of philosophy. Both Socrates and Plato were aware of the mystic cults of Pythagoras and the Orphies, but I believe that influence to have been negligible. Far more probable is the hypoth- esis that Socrates and Plato, or both, had clairvoyant powers, or at least unusual psychic talents. Throughout Plato's dialogues we find reference to Socrates’ ‘inner voice,’ which he only heard when he was about to do something wrong. Oaly occasionally does he admit that it also provided him with prophetic insight. Plato bogins one of his lastdialoguos, The Critias, by asserting that the myth he is about to tell was handed down from an ancient Egyptian priest. He then gives an account of the lost continent of Atlantis, how it was destroyed, and how its peoples had a highly technological culture. At this point, the dialogue abruptly ends.2 THE A.R.£. JOURNAL, Was Plato aware of himself as a reincamation of this Egyptian priest? He cortainly could not have admitted it to fourth contary Athens = psychic research did not enjoy high repute then, as the mardee of Socrates and his “inner voice” testify. Do these myths merely represent the poetic genius that envelops his philosophical concepts? Or was Plato able to seo things that most of us nover seo; and was this his advantage over Bdgar Cayce, ‘who was nover conseious, and not ablo to temombor what he sav? T submit that even a superficial comparison reveals a close similarity between some of the content of Plato's myths and the Readings of Edgar Cayce. In which case, excluding the Physical Readings and concen- trating on the material of speculative import, the philosopher must first decide whether Mr. Cayco was speaking the language of myth and allegory, or whether he was reporting fact. If ho accepts the fact that Mr. Cayce was reporting fact, the philosopher is obliged to incorporate such fact into that goncral pattern of ideas which constitutes philosophical account. On the other hand, if Me. Cayce's reports are interproted as nythological ot parabolic in character, then the philosopher has the much more difficult task of interproting their significance from scratch. With Plato we do not have the same problem, because, Along with the riddles of his myths, we also have tho hard core of his logically precise philosophic works as a criterion, -6- We can all agree that the Readings stress the unity of being, ‘the oneness of all force.’ Aftor all, wasn't Edgar Cayce an extraordinary person who revealed from cosmic sources the nature ‘tly? Moreover, isn’t the truth as simple as creature of God, through whose Grace he possessed the will by which he intruded into matter and manifosted a physical and spiritual nature; from which point on he experiences a cycle of earthly and planetary existences in order to fulfill his destiny of being reunited (if he so chooses) with God. Why complicate the matter? First, I may agree on faith that Edgar Cayce was a Godly man who possessed a formidable talent; but if we Segin by accepting this, we are like the scientist who presupposes an order in nature, or the theologian who places uncritical faith in the literal truth of Scripture. As philosophors, we must aspiro to a speculative theory of man;PHILOSOPHIC METHOD APPLIED TO THE CAYCE READINGS 23 the teuth of which shall be determined by its cohoronce and con- sistoncy. Thus we should come not so much to praise Cayce, as to under- stand him For common sonse satisfaction on a practical level, I agree that the simpler we can make our analysis, the better; but the concepts in the Roadings are anything but simple. Leafing through the Readings, one finds man’s nature generously analyzed into body, body-physical, body-spiritual, astral-body, soul-body, soul, entity, soul-entity, spiritual entity, superconseious, subconscious, spirit, mind, conscious mind, material mind, will, and so forth and so on. Whether we like it or not, we are faced with complexity; and ‘as philosophers we are obliged to search for the logical significance of such terms. This task is more difficult than it looks, and I confess that initially my professional feathers were somewhat ruftied by what I suspected to be consistent equivocation to the point of ‘double- talk’, In Reading 900-16, in answer to the question: What is this spirit entity in the body... Cayce's reply is: This is omly the portion that develops other than in earth's plane... For soul's development is in the earth’s plane. In 1728-1, he has said: There is also the spiritual body, the entity, the whole of the body and its attributes... This turns out to be the subconscious mind; or, as he said later, that mind of the Soul and its ideal - the soul of the body being that of the spirit, or the life But in 2475, wo find: The soul is all that the entity is, has been, or may be; and the ‘all? is emphasized. Now, [ won't insist on blatant contradiction hero, if we can at east agree that there is some confusion. Moreover, this confusion is not desultory; it seemed to me to be the rule rathor than the excoption. Persistent research, however, finally reveals that these con- fusions are virtually inevitable; and that the fault may lie more often with the inquirer than with the source. Some of the Readings humorously show how Hugh Lynn Cayco, in his freshman days as interrogator, had his knuckles verbally rapped by his father for posing ambiguous questions. Little wonder that one finds a diffusion of terms pertaining to man, when so many poople posed their own questions, each question governed by the semantics of its owner's preconceived idiosyncracies.2 THE A.R.E, JOURNAL, Edgar Cayce claimed over and over again that in his psychic condition he functioned merely as a channel, and that the validity of the answers would of necessity be determined by the manner which the questions were framed. This at once involved the interrogator’s own thoughts, attitudes, and values. ‘A second source of ambiguity again involves the inquirer - the mistake of emphasizing the ‘letter’ and ignoring the ‘spirit? of Edgar Cayce's psychic answers, I confess my own guilt in this respect, until I took into account the function and Limitations of human language. Like the veriost layman, 1 was mistaking the metaphor for the moral, the symbol for the referent, and the emblem for the real. This is a gratituous blunder, because all through the Readings we are warned against this very perversion in communication, both in our thought and our traffic with others. What is a clear illustration of this problem? Someono asked Edgar Cayce if it were true that God created the world in six days, as recorded in Genesis. His answer: Not if by ‘a day’ is signified a twenty-four hour period, and he then explained that the authors of Genesis had employed this rhetorical device to represent symbolically a truth too profound for the limitations of human language. Thus the Readings themselves warn you that the truths within them can be rendered incoherent by the provincialism of literal linguistics. Granting any idiom of communication to be symbolic of thought, (including thought itself), then by virtue of this two- fold removal, isn’t our whole system of communication reduced to this provincial inarticulation? Stated another way: ‘Can ono mind communicate its thought via language to another mind? My answer is: ‘Strictly speaking, no,” and [ think this view is also implicit in the Cayce Readings. But isn't language considered a highmark of human evolution? If I say yes, [ still insist that it is more of an effect than a cause. It is part of the baggage of human nature as it travels a three- dimensional world. It is quite proper to talk of language as the vehicle of discovery and communication of truth - indeed, it is this activity which makes man lord of the earth - but we mus? recognize its limitations; its provincialism, as I have called it. Language in action is a manip- ulation of symbols and symbols of symbols. The fruit of its laborPHILOSOPHIC METHOD APPLIED TO THE CAYCE READINGS 25 always rofers to something prior to itsolf - quite naturally, because it is prejudiced in favor of the immediate needs of the human family in a materialized form. To argue that the exchange of thought by means of language is theoretically impossible is simply to recognize the uniqueness cof each person by virtue of his individual history. No two of us are identical, or, as Leibnitz pointed out, we would be indistir guishable, Then, what happens when we talk? Simply this: when I think, the activity is compressed into a pattern of ideas, which in turn is further reduced to sound vibrations; all of this determined by my own unique history. You, within the limits of your own peculiar history, respond to my sounds by synthesizing them into your pattern of ideas, which may be more or less like mine, but never identical. ‘This seems to be made quite clear in Reading 254-68: To bring from one realm to another those experiences through which an entity, a soul, may pass - in obtaining those reflections that are necessary for transmission of the information sought ... much is manifested in the material plane in the form of images or symbolic expressions, in order that there be conveyed to the mind of the seeker something of his own type of experience ... Like houses built of wood; wood in its essence is what? Books in their essence fare what? What is more real, the book with its printed pages, its gilt edges; or the essence of that told of in the book? Which is the the love manifested in the Son, the Savior, for his brethren; or the essence of love that may be seen even in the vilest of passion? They are one. They bring into being, in mate- Hlalized form, different elements of the one source. Socrates was right. We never teach anyone anything; he teaches himself, through suggestion. And the Cayce Readings are likewise right. The art of communi- cation is ‘conveying to the mind of the seeker something of his own type of expenience.* There is only one truth, one cosmic reality; and each of us must discover it for himself. If we choose to express or communi= cate this truth, we are obliged to accept the language limitations characteristic ‘of the ‘metes and bounds? of a spatio-temporal order of being. ‘This is what convinces me I am right in urging this distinction between the ‘relative truths’ of our spatio-temporal world, and a ‘something else" to which they all refer. T do not intend to imply that our objective experience is merely6 ‘THE A.R.E, JOURNAL a crestive fabrication of ourselves. On tho contrary, my intor- pretation of the Roadings is that they possess an objective reality, f unity of substance, which admits of intrinsic differentiations, but not of unconnected divisions. What may we infor? Can the fractured naturo of language over hope to mirror tho continuous coherence of the cosmos? Maybe not. But it can point the way adequately; #0 long av we are attentive enough to distinguish the literal from the spiritual. But how? ‘A modest proposal would be, first, that the human family cease their feverish talking, writing and printing, and become silent and listen; and then harken to the fow lonely voices which, thank God, have ever been among us. Thero was Socrates" ‘inner voico’, and another - of porhaps the same - was Edgar Cayce's psychie source. Their message is quite simple: KNOW THYSELF. CAST