After such scientific tests one asks oneself what else the human brain is capable of. Can it make mental communications faster than light? The Cayce affair, which has passed into the annals of scientific literature, stimulates such suppositions.
Edgar Cayce, a simple farmer's son from Kentucky, had no idea of the fantastic capabilities that were hidden in his brain. Although he died on 5 January, 1945, doctors and psychologists are still busy evaluating his actions. The strict American Medical Association gave Edgar Cayce permission to hold consultations, although he was not a doctor.
Edgar Cayce fell ill in his early youth; he was wracked by cramps; high fever was consuming his body; he fell into a coma. While doctors were trying in vain to bring the boy back to consciousness, Edgar suddenly began to speak loudly and clearly. He explained why he was ill, named some remedies which he needed and told them to prepare a paste from certain ingredients and smear his spine with it. Doctors and relatives were astounded because they had no idea where the boy had got this knowledge from and the words which were quite unknown to him. Edgar got progressively and visibly better after treatment with the medicaments he had named.
The incident was the talk of the state. Since Edgar had spoken in a coma, many people suggested that he should be hypnotised in order to 'entice' suggestions for cures from him. Edgar would not have this at any price. Not until a friend of his fell ill, did he dictate a precise prescription using Latin words which he had never heard or even seen before. A week later his friend was better again.
If the first case was soon forgotten as a minor sensation, that was not to be taken seriously scientifically, the second incident caused the Medical Association to set up a commission which was to make reports if anything of the kind happened again and to put down in writing every single detail. In a sleeping state Cayce had knowledge and abilities which would normality only be the result of much consultation.
Once Edgar 'prescribed' for a very wealthy patient a medicine that could not be procured anywhere. This man put several advertisements in widely circulating newspapers, including international ones. A young doctor wrote from Paris (!), saying that his father had made this medicine years ago, but that production had long been discontinued. The composition of this medicine was identical with the detailed ingredients supplied by Edgar Cayce.
Later Edgar 'prescribed' a medicine and also named the address of a laboratory in a town a long way away. A telephone call showed that the preparation was only just being developed. A formula had been worked out, they were looking for a name, but it was not yet on sale to chemists.
The commission of professional doctors were no believers in telepathy; they investigated soberly and objectively, verified what they observed and knew that Edgar had never had a medical book in his hands in his life. Besieged on all sides and from all over the world, Edgar gave two consultations a day, always in the presence of doctors and always without accepting fees. His diagnoses and therapeutical prescriptions were accurate, but when he came out of his trance, he could not remember what he had said. When doctors on the commission asked him how he arrived at his diagnoses, Edgar supposed that he could put himself in contact, with any brain required and gather the information he needed for his diagnosis from it. But as the patient's brain knew exactly what his body lacked, it was all very simple. He asked the brain of the sick person and then he sought out the brain in the world which could tell him what should be done. He himself, declared Edgar, was only a part of all brains.
An astonishing idea, which—transferred to the realm of technology—would look something like this. In New York a monster computer would be fed with all the known data on physics. Whenever and from wherever the computer was interrogated, it would give its answer in fractions of a second. Another computer might be in Zurich with the whole of medical knowledge stored inside it. One in Moscow would be stuffed with all the facts about biology, another in Cairo would have no gaps in its astronomical knowledge. In short all the knowledge in the world, arranged by branches, would be stored in various centres in the world. Connected by radio, the computer in Cairo, if asked for medical information, would pass on the questions to the computer in Zurich in the hundredth of a second. Edgar Cayce's brain must have functioned in much the same way as this perfectly credible and already technically feasible computer link-up.
I now put forward the bold speculation: what if all (or even only a few highly trained) human brains have unknown forms of energy at their disposal and possess the ability to make contact with all living beings? We know frighteningly little about the functions and potentialities of the human brain; but it is known that only one tenth of the cortex functions in the brain of a healthy man. What are the remaining nine-tenths doing? The fact that men have recovered from incurable diseases by will power and nothing else is well-known and scientifically documented. Perhaps a 'gear' unknown to us has been engaged and set an additional tenth or two-tenths of the cortex working? If we assume the fantastic idea that the strongest forms of energy operate in the brain, then a strong mental impulse would be noticeable everywhere simultaneously. If science succeeds in making such a 'wild' idea demonstrable, it could mean that all intelligences in the universe belong to the same unknown structure.
Let me give an example. If a strong electrical impulse is released at any point in a tank full of millions of bacteria, it is felt everywhere and by every species of bacteria. The surge of current is perceived everywhere at the same moment. I quite realise that this comparison is imperfect, for electricity is a known form of energy and dependent on the speed of light. I am concerned with a form of energy that is available and effective everywhere simultaneously. I imagine simply an as yet unidentified form of energy which will one day make the incomprehensible comprehensible.
In order to give a semblance of probability to the extraordinary idea, I shall quote the report of an experiment carried out on 29 and 30 May, 1965. In its scope and nature, it must be unique. On these two days 1,008 people concentrated at the same time, indeed at the same second, on pictures, sentences and groups of symbols, which were 'radiated' into the universe by them with concentrated power. The fact of this mass experiment is not the only astonishing thing, the results are strange, too. None of the participants knew any of the others; they lived hundreds of miles apart. Yet 2-7 per cent of the participants answered on ready printed forms that they had seen a picture, namely the model of an atom. Since collusion on the part of the 'guinea-pigs' was impossible, it is surprising that as many as 2.7 per cent should have seen the same 'mental picture'. Telepathy? Hocus pocus? Chance? Admittedly, the whole thing is a science fiction subject, but the experiment, organised by scientists, did take place. It is quite obvious that we don't know everything yet. The result of an experiment by a group of physicists at Princeton University is equally inexplicable. While investigating the disintegration of electrically neutral K mesons, they reached a result that was theoretically impossible because it contradicted a long established principle of nuclear physics.
One more extraordinary example. One part of the relativity theory says that mass and energy are only different forms of one and the same phenomenon. (E=mc<2>.) Put simply, mass can literally be produced from the void. Supposing a strong beam of energy is shot past a heavy atomic nucleus, then the beam of energy disappears into the strong electrical field of energy of the atomic nucleus and an electron and a positron appear in its place. Energy in the form of a beam has changed into the mass of two electrons. To the mind that has not been trained scientifically the process seems crazy and yet it takes place exactly like that. There is nothing to be ashamed of if you cannot follow Einstein; one scientist called him the great solitary because he could only discuss his theory with a dozen or so of his contemporaries.