Theos-Talk Archives (June 1997 Message tl00237)

Dear Tim and all,

I had actually started with a more personal and longer section,
and cut it down.  Have redone it dramatically and invite
editorial comments:

Post-modern readers may wish to know something of an author's
biases at the outset.  The intention behind this book is to
provide a fair, balanced, sympathetic but objective
introduction to the Cayce readings.  In Tidewater Virginia,
where I was born and lived most of my life, Cayce is viewed
fondly by most locals as an adopted native son; as a child I heard only
good things about him from my relatives, some of whom had known
the Cayce family personally.  I first read about him as a young
teenager, when my cousin Doris Agee wrote a highly
favorable book about him, *Edgar Cayce on ESP*.  I joined the
A.R.E. for a year in 1977-78 before going on to spend the next
seventeen years focusing most of my attention on Theosophy.  As
an adult I have been influenced by the readings' guidelines on
health and meditation, and have participated in three Search
for God study groups at widely-spaced intervals.  In 1995, I
renewed membership in the A.R.E., but have never been involved
in the organization apart from Study Group participation.  Thus
I approach Cayce neither as an insider nor an outsider.
Perhaps the best phrase to describe my approach to Cayce (and
Blavatsky, subject of my previous books) is "skeptical
believer."  Balancing sympathy with objectivity entails a
struggle to prevent one's perception of facts from being
clouded by one's appreciation for the person or movement
studied.  The cost of such a marginal position is being
condemned by believers as too skeptical and by skeptics as too
credulous.  But the benefit, which outweighs the cost, is an
ability to perceive possibilities that are not recognized by
partisans on either side.

Inelegant perhaps, but straight from the heart.  How is it?
This will go at the end of the acknowledgments, rather than in
the introduction where I consider it too intrusive.

Editing welcome.