It seems to have an impact on a person’s body and mind for them to receive a message from beyond their understanding and experience.  I don’t know why this is so.  I don’t know whether or not this should be so.  I only know there are instances of this.

During the early 1940’s, American psychic Edgar Cayce received a large number of requests for “readings,” where he would address a particular person’s medical condition and recommend a treatment.  Sometimes the request was for information about a person who was missing in combat.  He said he could not refuse people who felt they needed his help, and he increased the frequency of his readings to eight per day to try to make an impression on the ever-growing pile of requests. He said this took a toll on his health as it was emotionally draining and often fatigued him. He even went so far as to say that the readings themselves scolded him for attempting too much and that he should limit his workload to just two readings a day or else they would kill him.  Edgar Cayce died of a stroke in 1945.  Was he doing the right thing to do eight readings a day?  Was it foolish of him to ignore the warnings his readings were giving him?  Or was he showing compassion for people?

Helen Schucman, the scribe of A Course in Miracles, died 9 years after receiving A Course in Miracles, 6 years after its publication.  The last two years of her life were a time of great suffering from both pancreatic cancer and deep depression.  Some people say “Well, if A Course in Miracles is so great, why didn’t it help Helen Schucman?”

I recall Marshall Vian Summers saying that in the early days of his receiving messages, it would take weeks for him to recover from receiving a message.  I don’t believe that the time it took to recover had anything to do with the particular content of a message, but from the very experience of receiving a message.  I recall Marshall saying during the Steps vigil of 2012, that receiving Steps to Knowledge in 1989 was like being a kitchen stove, as if a great deal of energy was moving through him.  I know very little details of his experience of throat cancer and recovery in 2010. He is currently 64 years old, and moved fluidly through a T’ai Chi routine when I saw him in 2012.

When I wrote about how Edgar Cayce disregarded the instructions of his readings, I thought to myself “Marshall would never do that.”  At the very least, there was an inconsistency between what Edgar Cayce was receiving, and the choices he was making.  Why didn’t A Course in Miracles help Helen Schucman during the last two years of her life?  I don’t know.  I wish I did.  I don’t know what Marshall Vian Summers did to be able to receive the message he has received, without it taking too great a toll on him.  But I’m glad he did.

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