There Is a River

by Thomas Sugrue

  They met him at the station and bustled him off to a streetcar. He was aware of a line of taxicabs, but his father carefully avoided these, asking questions the while and joking about friends in Selma. His mother squeezed his arm, pointed out public buildings, and told him he looked fat. Finally they got home.

  It was an upstairs apartment, in a not too fashionable section. Miss Davis was wearing the same dress he had seen on her in the studio in Selma.

  He let them talk themselves out. Then he asked, point-blank, what the matter was. Where was Lammers with all his money? His father explained. Lammers had got into financial difficulties. He was enmeshed in lawsuits that kept him in Cincinnati and required his presence in court every day. All his money was tied up. He was in danger of losing his home in Dayton. He had been unable to contribute to the work since early in November.

  “Let’s go back to Selma,” Hugh Lynn said. He was cold. The wind whistling against the windowpanes frightened him.

  Edgar shook his head.

  “I have lots of things to talk to you about,” he said. “They are the things that make it impossible for me to go back. I’ve got to stick to this work now, no matter what happens. This setback is just a test. And whatever happens to Lammers, he has done a lot for me. He opened my eyes to many things. He has been a great help.”

  “Dinner’s ready!” Gertrude called. She put an arm around Hugh Lynn and walked him to the dining room.

  “You must be hungry,” she said.

  “Where did the money come from to get me here?” Hugh Lynn asked.

  He had taken a quick look at the meal on the table. It was scanty.

  “Oh, that was an old twenty-dollar gold piece I had lying around,” his mother said. “I had no other use for it.”

  Hugh Lynn asked the blessing. They ate silently for a while. Then Edgar, Gertrude and Miss Davis began to talk, guardedly, about the “new developments” in the readings. Hugh Lynn listened, saying nothing.

  When they finished eating, they told him about the new type of reading—it was called a Life Reading—and about reincarnation.

  “You never told me anything about that in Sunday school,” Hugh Lynn said. “Is it true? Do you believe it? Is it in the Bible?”

  He asked questions quickly, to cover the feeling of bitterness and shame that was sweeping over him. It was bad enough that his father was psychic; the boys continually asked him, “What’s the matter with your dad? What’s that stuff he does?” But now it was worse. They weren’t even to be Christians any more. They were to be heathens. And not even rich heathens; just poor heathens, living with Yankees.

  “I don’t know whether I believe it or not,” Edgar said. “The readings say it’s true. A lot of people believe it. It sounds logical.

  “We asked a lot of questions. We asked why reincarnation isn’t in Christianity.

  “The answer was that it used to be in Christianity in the early days. There was a sect of Christians called the Gnostics. The readings say they kept the line unbroken between the old religions and the new one.

  “You see—” Edgar was trying to convince himself as well as Hugh Lynn—“Christ was predicted by the old religion. The people who built the great pyramid in Egypt predicted Him.”

  “I never heard that,” Hugh Lynn said.

  “We found some books about it,” Edgar explained. “There’s a movement in England called British Israel, that’s founded on the pyramid prophecies.

  “Anyhow, you know that Christ didn’t intend to found a new religion. He meant to reform the Jewish religion, which was one of the old religions worshiping the one God.

  “Now, just like the other old religions—they are called ‘mystery’ religions—the Jewish faith had a secret doctrine. It was called ‘cabala.’ The students who learned it were called ‘initiates,’ and these were the high priests. They learned the esoteric part of the religion, and the people were given the exoteric version: they were given the same fundamental philosophy and the same moral code, but with a simple explanation.”

  “Is that the way it is today?” Hugh Lynn asked. “Do the heads of the church believe in reincarnation?”

  “No,” Edgar said. “The readings say that when the leaders of the early church decided to propagate the faith to all people, indiscriminately, they decided to drop the doctrine of reincarnation. It was difficult to explain, for one thing, and it was difficult to swallow, for another. It made life more complex. It made virtue even more necessary. A man had to be pretty brave to face the fact that one life of suffering was only a step toward heaven.

  “On the other hand, people who didn’t examine the theory could easily say, ‘Oh, well, we have other lives to live. We won’t be sent to hell after this one. So let’s enjoy it.’

  “So they fought the Gnostics and won the battle. What they did was right, I suppose, because without a simplification of the faith it wouldn’t have spread. It would have remained a small sect, for intellectuals and students of metaphysics.”

  “Is that what we’re supposed to be?” Hugh Lynn asked.

  “Students of metaphysics, maybe,” his father said, “though I don’t know anything about it. I never heard of it until two months ago.

  “But the readings say that no sect, or schism, should ever be allowed to form around this work. They say we are merely to present what we have, to those who seek it. Truth will prove itself, in time.

  “And the first thing to do—the most important—is to make it work in our own lives. We can’t teach truth to others when we do not possess it ourselves.

  “That’s the way we are supposed to do it. First we are to bring it to ourselves, then to other individuals, then to groups, then to the classes and masses. But it must always be presented as something which is the natural property of all.”

  “I don’t understand reincarnation,” Hugh Lynn said.

  “Neither do I,” Edgar said, “but then, there are a lot of things we believe but don’t understand. I believe what Einstein says about relativity, but I don’t understand it. I believe in atoms, but I don’t understand them. Do you?”

  “No, but some people do. Scientists do.”

  “Some people understand reincarnation. The Hindus believe in it. They understand it.”

  Hugh Lynn was silent.

  “I believe Jesus taught it, too,” Edgar said.

  He got up and went for his Bible.

  “Listen to this,” he said. “It’s from John, the third chapter, where He is talking with Nicodemus. He tells Nicodemus that unless a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. Now, in the fifth chapter of Matthew, you remember, Jesus says that unless a man be perfect he cannot enter the kingdom.

  “Well, what man, when he dies, is perfect? Once in a while a man dies who is good enough to go to heaven, but not often. So, isn’t it logical that we have to be born again, and keep trying?

  “Then, when Nicodemus asks Him how these things may be, He says, ‘Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?’ Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin. He was one of the initiates of the cabala, then, and should have known about reincarnation.”

  “Why wasn’t Christ more specific?” Hugh Lynn said. “Why didn’t He instruct the disciples to teach it?”

  “He taught the common people,” Edgar said. “He said that He came not to change the law, but to fulfill it. The world was at a point where it could—and should—realize that virtue is more mental than physical, and love is not a matter of receiving, or bartering, but of giving. It’s all in the fifth chapter of Matthew.

  “Now, if you will examine that, you will find that it fits exactly into the theory of reincarnation—the idea that only the mind is real, and that thought builds the soul more than deeds. Deeds are only the expressions of thought, anyhow.

  “So Jesus gave them the law which results from a belief in reincar
nation. The theory itself was too complex for the people, so He let the emphasis go to Himself, as an example of the perfect life.

  “There is no doubt about what He taught. Only a perfect soul may enter heaven. Only Jesus was perfect.

  “But Christianity gradually allowed people to think of Jesus as an unattainable ideal. Nobody nowadays thinks it necessary to be like Jesus in order to get to heaven.

  “Yet He said so Himself.”

  “It isn’t the church’s fault that people aren’t good Christians,” Hugh Lynn said.

  Edgar was turning the pages of the Bible.

  “This is the ninth chapter of John, where He heals the man blind from birth. Remember, the man was born blind. ‘And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?’

  “Well, since he was born blind, how could his own sin have caused his blindness, unless it was committed in another life? Doesn’t that indicate that the disciples were familiar with reincarnation and the law of karma?

  “And here’s another one, in the seventeenth chapter of Matthew. It is after the Transfiguration, and Jesus tells the disciples not to reveal what they have seen, ‘until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.

  “‘And his disciples asked him, saying, Why then say the scribes that Elias must first come?

  “‘And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.

  “‘But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.

  “‘Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.’

  “Now, how did they understand that He was speaking of John the Baptist, unless they understood that John the Baptist was the incarnation of Elias?”

  “All that’s farfetched,” Hugh Lynn said. “Anybody can prove anything by the Bible. You said that yourself.”

  “All right; listen to this one. This is from Revelation, thirteenth chapter, tenth verse. ‘He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.’

  “Certainly every man who killed another with a sword wasn’t killed by a sword himself—not in the same life. And what is the patience and faith of the saints but an understanding that surpasses man’s understanding and leaves justice to God’s law?”

  Gertrude and Miss Davis had finished the dishes. They sat down at the table and joined the discussion.

  “I want to know why if I was very beautiful and exotic once, I’m not that way now,” Gertrude said.

  “You are,” Edgar said gallantly.

  “I’m not,” Gertrude said. “Men don’t follow me in the street and send me orchids, do they?”

  “You didn’t use it in the right way when you had it,” Edgar said. “Now you’ve got to do without it. Whatever virtue you possess and misuse, you lose. That’s the way I understand it. So I’m poor and you don’t get orchids.” Hugh Lynn leaned forward, interested.

  “Who were you?” he said.

  They told him, then showed him their readings and the other Life Readings which had been taken. An average one began by saying, “We find the spirit and soul took possession and completed this entity, as we have it at present, late in the evening—11:29. We find the soul and spirit took its flight—from that of Venus’ forces, with those of Jupiter, Mercury, Neptune being the ones in assistance to the conditions bringing the forces to this present plane’s development, with afflictions in Mars and in that of Septimus.”

  After an explanation of the astrological urges, some of the incarnations were described.

  “It is to be understood that only that which may be helpful is given. It is also to be understood that only those former appearances in the earth’s plane which are now affecting the entity are given.”

  The incarnations stretched back a long way, but there was a similarity observable: all seemed concerned with the same basic problems of soul development. In this they were related, however diverse were the lives in other respects: place, time, occupation, social status, etc. It was the task of working out these basic problems that concerned the present personality. All that had been done about them previously, one way or the other, was active in the personality. The rest of the individuality was passive.

  “What I like about the Life Readings is that they tell you what to do,” Miss Davis said. “Most people don’t know whether they are doing the right thing. They like their work but they don’t know whether it’s the job they should be doing.

  “The Life Readings tell what the abilities are and what the person should be doing.”

  “Why don’t people know those things about themselves?” Hugh Lynn asked.

  “They do,” Edgar said, “but they are afraid to follow their inner feelings. They take a job because it’s a job, and then for economic reasons they are afraid to leave it and try what they really want to do. Other people talk them out of it, sometimes.

  The free will has to face all those obstacles. If the person knew what he was to do and just did it, without opposition or doubt, it would be a cut-and-dried affair. Life would be easy.”

  “Have you found out how you got your psychic power?” Hugh Lynn said.

  They showed him the explanation, as given in Edgar’s Life Reading. Two things were responsible for it. He had once attained a great height in soul development, only to slip downward through a series of lives until he had reached an almost opposite position of instability. The present life was a chance to atone for some of his mistakes. It was a crucial life: he had purposely been given a great temptation, balanced by an equal opportunity for good.

  During one of his appearances he had been wounded in a battle and left on the field for dead. He lived for several days, conscious and in extreme agony. Being unable to move or help himself in any way, he had only his mind as a weapon against pain. Just before he died he succeeded in elevating his mind beyond reach of his body and its suffering. Since no achievement, good or bad, is ever lost, the ability to subdue the body and its feelings became part of the pattern of his individuality. It was now being employed to present the test to the personality of Edgar Cayce. Used for good, it would raise him back to a portion of the spiritual estate he once possessed. Used for selfish, material purposes, it would sink him to the lower levels of humanity.

  “Have you got a Life Reading on me?” Hugh Lynn was interested, but he hated to show it. It sounded plausible, but it couldn’t be right. And it put him beyond all legitimacy. The church wouldn’t have anything to do with such stuff and neither would the public. Just the nuts—that was all they would have coming to them, that was all he would have to associate with.

  Up to now he had been able to say that his father was a photographer. The other stuff was just a hobby—“experiment.” Now when people asked him what his father did, he would have to say, “He’s a psychic medium.” And he would have to say it to Yankees.

  They showed him his Life Reading. They had got it a few days before, as a sort of Christmas present.

  “I don’t understand it,” he said when he had read it. “If I were these people, I don’t recognize myself. They weren’t like me.”

  “They weren’t like you,” Edgar said. “But you’re not the same person now that you were a few days ago in Selma; you’re not the same person you were a few hours ago on the train. You’re not the same person you were when you sat down here to dinner a little while ago.

  “Every time a thought goes through your head it changes your whole being. Some thoughts change you only a little; some thoughts change you a great deal. But all of them change you.

  “Your conscious mind compares every new experience and every new thought with all the experiences and thoughts of a rela
ted nature which you have had in this life.

  “Your subconscious mind—the soul mind—compares every new experience and thought with every related experience and thought you have had in all your lives. And beyond that the superconscious mind—the awareness of your spirit—compares every new experience and thought with truth—the law itself.

  “But what you are going to experience and think is affected by what you have already experienced and thought.

  “For instance: you experience something. Your conscious mind makes its comparison and judgment; your subconscious mind makes its comparison and judgment; your superconscious mind makes its comparison and judgment. As a result of these comparisons and judgments you, as a whole, adopt an attitude, an opinion, a feeling, about the experience.

  “It may take a little time. For a few days the judgment of your conscious mind will be uppermost. Then after what you call ‘reflection,’ a more reasonable, long-range opinion is adopted. And finally, after a period of ‘understanding,’ a wise, detached, universal opinion prevails.

  “But that’s not the end, either. All your future experiences and thoughts which are related to this experience influence your attitude toward it, your opinion.

  “So, while your past is continually influencing you, you are continually influencing your past. Your past, your present, and your future all change from day to day, from minute to minute, from thought to thought.”

  “Do you think this reading fits me?” Hugh Lynn said.

  “As far as you have gone, I’d say it does. You’re only sixteen. This is a full-length portrait. Some of the characteristics attributed to you are those of a mature person. We’ll have to wait and see.

  “I know that mine fits me!” he added.