I always introduce myself as your friendly neighborhood psychic and trance channel in the global village. I was born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, which (dealing in what’s considered the unique fields of parapsychology and spirituality and New Age) gives me good, solid Midwestern credentials coming from the state that’s been known as the mother of presidents. Sandusky has mystical claims to fame itself in that it is considered to be a jewel of communities that has been designed by the Free Masons. The entire town is not only famous for its amusement park, Cedar Point; the city itself was famous for its sacred geometry laid out by the Masons. In fact a fellow Sanduskian, one Jeffery Furst, authored the influential book titled Edgar Cayce’s Story of Jesus. I have a well-thumbed copy of the book in my own library.
I was interested in parapsychology at an early age, initially as a hobby. I say parapsychology because that is the scientific investigation of what is normally considered PSI, psychic or the so-called paranormal. I did not approach spirituality religiously, although I had my upbringing in a local Baptist church in Sandusky. My interest in spirituality began with the study of ESP by the work of Dr. Rhine from Duke University who was the inventor of such innovations as the so-called Zenner Cards—those famous cards with the wavy lines, triangles, and circles that would enable one to see if a person was able to predict the pattern in which the cards would emerge after they have been randomly generated.
I went on to form, for about a year or so, an ESP club in my high school. So, as I put it, while other students had been studying putting together model airplanes, I was studying ESP and Zenner Cards. While my classmates went on to become flight engineers and the like, I eventually went on to pursue parapsychology as a full-time career.
Parapsychology is a very progressive science. It’s making some major contributions to our society today. It is almost like a branch of anthropology that has brought prominent practices such as acupuncture into the social mainstream as an alternative healthcare practice and, along with acupuncture, the whole range of the use of herbalism. It was parapsychologists, for instance, who brought Edgar Cayce, probably America’s most famous psychic and trance channel, into prominence in the mainstream. Edgar Cayce is probably the single most important provocateur in bringing the American Holistic healthcare movement to where it is today—almost universally considered to be complementary medicine and an important adjunct to traditional medicine.
On the other hand, Edgar Cayce was a channel. The term “channel” was a way of distinguishing him from orthodox mediumship. Edgar Cayce, although he had the capacity to see people who had passed to the other side, felt that he was in communication with another dimension of his own psyche. Freud had established the concept of the subconscious mind, whereas the psychologist Carl G. Jung established the principle that people also have what is called the collective unconscious or the super subconscious. Edgar Cayce felt that when he would go into a trance state, which initially was hypnotically induced in him, he could tap into a state of consciousness of almost unlimited information. Although Edgar Cayce had a limited 19th century education, under hypnosis or in self-induced trance states, he was able to tap into that level of genius.
What I consider channeling is tapping into the latent genius or extrasensory capacity that is inside of everyone. Edgar Cayce came along at the beginning of the 20th century almost in anticipation of what we now call the Information Age. You might almost think of channeling as sort of "Googling" of the Universe comparable to the Internet where you go to a search engine, type in a question, and then suddenly bodies of information in various thesis in various fragmentary and whole forms are accessible to the person.
Contemporary science tells us that everything can be digitalized—every object, every type or source of energy, can be translated into information and then the challenge is to be able to translate that information in ways that is useful to human beings. Edgar Cayce appeared to have that ability. His emphasis was less on the afterlife (or ones’ past life) and more on the present—the quality of life we live here and now. He offered information to develop the soul so that in perhaps the next so-called reincarnation or incarnation here on the earth plane, souls could live in ever-increasing heightened quality of spiritual awareness. That is really the focus of Edgar Cayce’s work. I also like to think it is probably the overwhelming focus of my own work as a trance channel.
Some people may be aware of me from my work with Shirley MacClaine and from the mini-series based on her own best-seller Out on a Limb. In Out on a Limb, Shirley was mapping out in her book her own spiritual journey. She was exploring who she was and what she was doing here from the context of past lives. What were the roots and sources of her talent? Did they evolve in other lifetimes through what is called karma? She refers to me as sort of like one of the telephones in her life as a way of getting in touch with her spiritual guides and teachers.
When people come to me for what’s called a “life reading,” or an individual consultation, they’re exploring the fundamental issues much like those that Shirley was exploring. Rather than emphasizing the concept of only karma in their sessions, they are emphasizing what in Hinduism is called dharma, which the closest English equivalent might be God-given talents. It also means the “Energy that does the work.” What people are looking for are the talents that can serve them, society and humanity?
We are now as a people and as a society transforming ourselves as human beings. We are moving out of the idea that we must just live by our labor and into an arena in which we are really here to transform ourselves in relationship to deeper energies and deeper talents we have that we are here to be of service to. This is the beginning of entering into the Aquarian Age.
