The Search for Bridey Murphy (11 page)

The principal character, Philip, had been given a Persian rug by an artistic reprobate, who assured our hero that by studying the carpet he would be able to comprehend the meaning of life. Long after the donor’s death Philip was still puzzled. How could the intricate and illusory pattern of a Persian rug solve the problem of life’s meaning? But later he suddenly got the point. The answer was obvious. Life had no meaning.

Ah, now there was a boy with common sense. This Philip character was practical. And since he had been created by no less a master than Somerset Maugham, I now had real authority for my own beliefs. It was just as Philip said: “The rain fell alike upon the just and the unjust, and for nothing was there a why and a wherefore.”

Why couldn’t everyone, I wondered, see just as Philip did that life was meaningless, without purpose—and that death peremptorily ended the whole show? And why all the argument about the possibility of life after death? Anyone could plainly see that a dead body was very dead indeed. How could anyone seriously believe otherwise? Three hundred years of science had failed to prove the immortality of a single soul. So why try to make something out of nothing?

I was fifteen years old then.

But this pattern of thinking had started as early as the first grade. If I hadn’t noticed it before, then I surely observed during my first year at school that there were glaring inequities among the kids in the class. Keith, for instance, was brilliant; he knew all the answers. He was taller and huskier than the others; any girl would willingly tell you that he was the best-looking boy in the class. And he was the best all-around athlete, could play anything. To top it all, his parents seemed to have plenty of money; he
dressed better, lived in the biggest house, and his father drove the biggest car. Orlando, on the other hand, had been short-changed in every department. The poor lad was so dull that the most elementary exercise was beyond him. On the playground he was so clumsy that he soon picked up uncomplimentary nicknames. And there was no denying that he was unattractive to look upon, really an ugly kid. His clothes, because his family lived in poverty, were so shabby and ill-fitting as to draw derision. Then one day a truck ran over Orlando, and he died in pain a few weeks later.

I would ask my mother the “why” of these things. Why did the Keiths have everything while the Orlandos had been blessed with nothing but misery? My poor mother did her best to answer, but it was clear that she was bewildered too.

This was also the beginning of another kind of education. I was learning that the grownups didn’t have all the answers. Before this I had always been comforted by the feeling that no matter what the problem the grownups would have the solution. Now even that solace was fading away. Not only didn’t they have all the answers, but many that they did offer, I was later to learn, were dead-wrong.

In any event, in those days it seemed that any philosophy which embraced a meaningful pattern was strictly a myth. How could there be any sort of divine justice which would permit, apparently without reason, one person to have intelligence, health, beauty, and wealth while it consigned to another stupidity, sickness, ugliness, and penury? If there really were a larger plan, it seemed to me, it was either too ineffective or too imperfect to do anything about these grave inequities, and in either case there might as well be no plan.

I had gone to Sunday school every week. But I never did realize that we were actually expected to
believe
the Bible stories. I had always taken for granted that they were merely moral tales, like
Aesop’s Fables
. David’s slaying of Goliath, for instance, was just like the tortoise’s defeat of the hare. I didn’t comprehend that there was actually supposed to have been a real person named David. And when Moses struck a rock and water gushed out, that was solid proof that these were mere myths. Not even my father could get water from a rock. So a fable it had to be. And Sunday
school, I figured, was just another parental device to keep us in school one more morning.

It never occurred to me that my parents were sending me to church to learn about immortality. When I quizzed my mother about related topics, I could tell that she was as puzzled as I. And as for my father, he was so busy working night and day, making it possible for me to wear clothes like Keith’s, that I was sure he had no time to think about any kind of philosophy. I came, therefore, to my own conclusion: Religion and immortality are fables. Life is an accident—an accident that begins at birth and ends in death.

That was a long time ago.

But it was not so terribly long ago that I was in college, and there my earlier convictions were confirmed. The most brilliant student I knew wasted no time in assuring me, and anyone else who would listen, that “religion is a have for the have-nots.” For the ignorant, for the downtrodden, for all the unfortunates, he steadfastly maintained, faith in immortality is something to cling to. A last hope. But we who were at the college level were supposed to be too enlightened to accept such a superstitious credo.

And if there were any college professors who had a different view, they managed to keep it a secret. Looking back, I grant that there must have been, as a matter of simple statistics, those who would not concede that religion is a “have for the have-nots.” But they never spoke up; perhaps the whole question was taboo. Or maybe it was reserved for the divinity school, and there was a gentleman’s agreement not to bring up this topic before ordinary students of finance. At any rate, it was clear that most of the instructors dreaded being drawn into any discussion concerning man’s true nature.

My “higher” education, therefore, only substantiated my first- grade concepts. I found myself quoting my atheistic companion, deriding those who could be so foolish as to believe there might be a meaning to life, and generally reveling in my smug “intellectual superiority.”

Just before graduation the last assignment in public speaking class provided an ideal opportunity to summarize my position. The subject of our final speech was to be a biography, anyone’s biography. Some in the class made the obvious conventional choices: Lincoln, Edison, Ford. A few clever lads came up with surprises like Rudolph Valentino and Jesse James.

But for me this was a chance to get a professional hearing for my cynical, iconoclastic views. So I selected a character who would fit my theme—Solomon Grundy.

As if Solomon’s career hadn’t been fleeting enough in the first place, I chopped him down still further. I gave him just three days. In my abridged version Solomon entered the world on Monday, took sick on Tuesday, and rigor mortis set in on Wednesday. No use keeping him around for a whole week.

Explaining that every man, whether it be Napoleon or the halfwitted campus caretaker, is a Solomon Grundy, I spent my allotted time in pointing out that all biographies were essentially the same. Man is born: he makes motions and noises; then he dies a meaningless death. So why should I not choose for my subject, I argued, the pattern for the lives of all men—Mr. Grundy?

When I finished the discourse I sat down and awaited the judgment of my professor. It came with two words: “Thoughtful composition.”

Here, I reasoned, was tacit approval of this brand of philosophy. And it had come from a man with several degrees. The higher the education, it seemed to me, the more confirmed became this sort of thinking.

It is no wonder, then, that my opinions as I left college began to harden into a “so what?” attitude, and the whole game appeared somewhat pointless. No matter what goal I set for myself, those two words—“so what?”—would loom over the goal posts. I would think of the end result, imagining that the job had already been accomplished, and then the “so what?” would pop up again. It wasn’t a very pretty picture; it led to the grave, nothing more.

Years later my experiences with hypnosis and subsequently with extrasensory perception hinted that there might be a glim
mer of something more. But I still hadn’t gone far enough to make a real dent in all my previous conditioning.

This, then, was the background, the philosophical setting, when a man named Val Weston walked into my office.

I had been answering the mail and was just removing a cylinder from the dictaphone when a voice behind me said, “Pardon me. My name is Weston. I’m with the Department of Commerce.”

I turned around. He was a six-footer, built like a wrestler who keeps himself in shape. He explained that his division was keeping a list of the steel products available from every distributor in his area. Such a list, during the post-war period of steel shortages, might be helpful in establishing allocations, in spotting various items for which defense industries were searching, and for general coordination.

He was in the office about fifteen minutes. But during that short time the telephone rang repeatedly and a parade of employees and others zipped in and out. Nevertheless, I managed to give him the information he wanted, and I thought that I had seen the last of him as he went out the door.

Five minutes later he was hustling back into my office, his eyes sparkling with obvious interest. He said, “I understand that you are interested in hypnotism and extrasensory perception.”

I wondered how he had suddenly picked up that bit of knowledge until he explained that he had encountered my father just before leaving the building and he reconstructed the conversation for me.

I admitted my hobbies to Weston, and the two of us promptly became engrossed in a general bull session. It turned out that he had long been interested in the same matters. And he had really been around. He had been in the Orient, was very well read; and as he was about fifteen years my senior, his education in these fields was somewhat more extensive than my own. To be sure, he had plenty to tell me. But in that madhouse getting it told was no simple task. Our conversation was chopped up by numerous in
terruptions, until at last we gave up. But not before arranging to get together that week end.

Weston had a cabin at Rye, Colorado, a picturesque mountain village in the Greenhorn range, just an hour’s drive from Pueblo. Hazel and I drove there the following Saturday, and we resumed our session where we had left off a few days before.

For a first name, Weston used Val. His real name was Percival, but I suppose that one doesn’t go around calling a king-sized male by the name of Percival. Having been in China and India, he had a rather keen understanding of Eastern philosophy and religion. He had interviewed yogis and fakirs and had witnessed performances which sound incredible to us occidentals no matter how frequently we are told about them. While his reading background was surprisingly comprehensive, he evidently preferred works with a philosophical flavor, I was decidedly impressed. He was well informed regarding the subjects in which I was interested. Hazel and I were fascinated; the time was flying by.

And then the roof fell in.

Abruptly, and without warning, he swung into a ridiculous subject: reincarnation! For a few minutes I continued to listen; I wanted to make sure whether he could possibly be serious. He was. Reincarnation—oh no!

How could this intelligent-looking man, apparently normal in every other respect, be talking in earnest about a subject so preposterous!

Interrupting Weston, I reminded him that it was growing very late; it was time for Hazel and me to get back to town. I wasted no time in getting out of there, practically pulling Hazel with me.

All the way home I kept muttering words like… and he seemed so intelligent… just can’t tell by looking at someone… have to be more careful in the future….” Hazel paid no attention; she was fast asleep by the time we rolled into our driveway.

About a month later business brought Weston to Pueblo again, but I contrived to be “just too busy” to see him that day.

He very likely sensed that I was avoiding him. And simple deduction would have disclosed that the reason was his reincarnation rantings. He couldn’t have failed to observe that I had been
intensely interested until he had slipped into the you-have-lived before-and-will-live-again theme.

I suppose it was because he was aware of my reason for dodging him that he sent me two books. I had heard of neither. One was called
There Is a River
, by Thomas Sugrue, and the other,
Many Mansions
, by Dr. Gina Cerminara. I noticed that both were concerned with a man named Edgar Cayce (pronounced Casey), who had died only a few years before (1945).

Although I didn’t know it then, picking up those books was a signal for the beginning of a new phase in my life. It was an act that ultimately forced me to dig into fields that I had always regarded as ridiculously out of bounds.

The books started off so sensibly and interestingly that, for a while at least, my attention was diverted from where they were leading me. Edgar Cayce’s story, as it began, was not so very different from thousands of others who had lived at the same time. He was born on a farm near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in 1877. Although he had little formal education—having gotten only as far as the ninth grade in a country school—there was one book he had mastered: the Bible. He reread the Bible every year.

He didn’t take to the farm, so while still in his teens, he moved to town and worked at various sales jobs from stationery to insurance. Up to this point, then, we still have a conventional pattern: A devout Christian farm boy goes to the city and struggles to earn his living at whatever job he can find. But here the Cayce story shifts abruptly.

A severe attack of laryngitis when Cayce was twenty-one finally resulted in the loss of his voice. All medication was ineffective; he just couldn’t talk. This depressing condition cut short his saleswork and kept him at home for several months, where he brooded over his apparently incurable ailment. Finally, however, he went to work as a photographer’s apprentice, a job that would not be so demanding on his voice.