Photo: Edgar Cayce.
It’s occasionally painful to read the editorials here in the Pagosa Daily Post.
Our editor seems to view our little mountain town — and the world in general — through a peculiar lens. Perhaps, a glass lens manufactured by the amateur philosopher Baruch Spinoza, when he was trying to make enough money to pay the rent, back in 1675? Produced while he was recovering from a hangover?
It’s one thing to see the world through a slightly distorted lens. It’s quite another thing to write honestly — in a publicly-available journal — about what you’re seeing.
Honesty is not all it’s cracked up to be. As any married man will tell you.
But our editor is not married. And neither am I. That doesn’t mean we need to be honest. But the ability to be honest is, like, a consolation prize.
Is it possible to completely stop lying? Good question.
I’ve been reading about Edgar Cayce this week, in a book by Gina Cerminara. Some readers may be familiar with Mr. Cayce, who may have been clairvoyant, or maybe just incredibly clever. I’m going with ‘clairvoyant’. He was allegedly able to diagnose illnesses ‘long-distance’ — in people who were not physically present, and whom he’d never met.
In 1910, he was profiled by The New York Times in a story titled “Illiterate Man Becomes a Doctor When Hypnotized.”
The medical fraternity of the country is taking a lively interest in the strange power said to be possessed by Edgar Cayce of Hopkinsville, Ky., to diagnose difficult diseases while in a semi-conscious state, though he has not the slightest knowledge of medicine when not in this condition.
During a visit to California last Summer Dr. W. H. Ketchum, who was attending a meeting of the National Society of Homeopathic Physicians, had occasion to mention the young man’s case…
“My subject simply lies down and folds his arms, and by auto-suggestion goes to sleep. While in this sleep, which to all intents and purposes is a natural sleep, his objective mind is completely inactive and only his subjective is working.
“I next give him the name of my subject and the exact location of the same, and in a few minutes he begins to talk as clearly and distinctly as any one. He usually goes into minute detail in diagnosing a case, and especially if it is a very serious case…”
A strange power, indeed. I wonder what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would make of such a situation. Maybe hypnotism will make a comeback at Health & Human Services.
But the part of the book — Many Mansions: The Edgar Cayce Story on Reincarnation — pertinent to today’s column, included a brief reference to ‘honesty’.
Honesty… when it becomes translated by human beings into actual conduct, is not a unitary thing. There is honesty-with-respect-to-money, honesty-with-respect-to-examinations, honesty-with-respect-to-games, honesty-with-respect-to-conversations, honesty-with-respect-to-personal-relations, and any number of separate honesties…
I hadn’t ever considered honesty to be so complicated. In my mind, you were either honest, or you weren’t. But author Gina Cerminara has opened up a can of worms for me. A person can be honest with respect to a poker game, for example, and still be lying his head off with respect to his tax return.
Honesty with respect to politics has never been a concern, of course. If you’re a politician, you are required to lie. The more, the better.
But for us normal folks, there’s a vague assumption that we’re supposed to speak and act honestly. Except sometimes, we don’t. It’s the same old story.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel, your brother?”
Cain said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
And God said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground…”
Which illustrates the fact that you might be able to lie to the IRS and get away with it, but you can’t lie to God. We don’t know exactly what Cain was thinking here, that he could lie to God. The only explanation I can imagine is that he was in training to be a politician.
There’s one person that I never lie to. (Besides God.) That one person is my cat, Roscoe. (I’m going out on a limb to call Roscoe a “person” but that’s how he seems to me. ) So, how is it, that I can lie to everyone else, but I never lie to Roscoe? I’ve given a bit of thought to this question, and I suspect it’s because Roscoe doesn’t care if I live or die, so long as he gets fed.
We lie to people, when we care about what they think of us, and when we want to appear ‘better’ than we really are.
Want to stop lying? Spend all your time with a cat.