67,000 VOLUMES

A.R.E. bills its collection as the "the largest metaphysical library in the United States" - 67,000 volumes. They include the collection of Egerton Sykes, a prominent advocate of Atlantis who collected an enormous library of what believers call "Atlantology."

Also here: the collected transcripts of Cayce readings. They're in an alcove right inside the library - 413 volumes in numbered ring binders, each filled with the typing of Gladys Davis, Cayce's nap-monitoring secretary of many decades.

"Just grab one off the shelf, and see if what you read says anything to you," the guide says.

I scan the alcove for the book that includes reading session 1754-1 - the one with the cheery, rolled-up advice from the bowl at the information desk. Ah, here it is.

The reading, in volume 221, was done Nov. 25, 1938, for a 20-year-old woman who had a fling with a 39-year-old man in the District of Columbia area. She was depressed - jilted by the guy after sex in a hotel room.

The 1754-1 transcript has Cayce's trance voice saying that in a past life, the woman lived "in the environments of what is now Jamestown, Yorktown, Williamsburg and the like" during the American Revolution, and was known as Carol Fannenshaw.

Before then, the woman was in the household of a family in which Philemon - a New Testament figure to whom St. Paul wrote an epistle - was a servant. Her name at that time was Teleman.

And before then, in Egypt, she was Tel-Ka-Le.

Cayce's voice fielded six questions from the unhappy woman during the session. The bottom line was that she should ditch the guy: "It would be best NEVER to marry him - thy ideals will be destroyed."

Common sense, to be sure, though what it had to do with Carol Fannenshaw or Teleman wasn't clear. And on my end, Tel-Ka-Le didn't ring any bell or rustle my wind chimes.

THE LAND OF MU

At a tour conclusion, visitors are invited to attend a free lecture back in the auditorium. The daily topic tends to deal with metaphysics - from meditation to dreams, astrology to ancient Egyptian mysticism and so on - all based on or tied to Cayce readings.

Almost all who were on my tour stayed for today's lecture, given by Linda Jewell, a volunteer. She has been an instructor for the Cayce/Reilly School of Massotherapy's class on Quantum Touch massage, which apparently involves life-force vibrations. But today, she was going to discuss the lost continent of Lemuria, also called Mu.

Jewell said she became intrigued by this subject after working with A.R.E. trips to foreign lands. She said she might become overly detailed in her discourse and could easily speak for hours. Because of time and interest limitations, Jewell said, folks were welcome to leave whenever they wished, and thanked us all for coming: "Take what you will, and discard the rest." Jewell also noted that there is no physical proof of Mu.

And yet. ...

The bedrock for her contentions were Cayce's "life readings" - instances where the Sleeping Prophet would mention past lives - and the farthest back he would go is to the land of Mu. This presents problems, Jewell said: Cayce's comments on Mu were "often a sentence or paragraph or two at the max." In comparison, his trance musings on Atlantis and ancient Egypt were prolific.

So to the mix, Jewell added theories and observations of those who got the Mu/Lemuria ball rolling more than a century ago. One she noted was British Col. James Churchward, who claimed that while stationed in Victorian India, he learned a language that was dead and lost to all but three high priests there - the tongue of Mu, an ancient advanced civilization that a cataclysm plunged under the Pacific Ocean.

Remember those strange statues of Easter Island? Coincidence? Maybe not.

Mainstream science never fell into the Mu embrace. Various occult gurus, however, added their own interpretations of the lost land.

And what about those other odd ruins around the Pacific Rim?

The pattern to Jewell's talk was set: Can't-explains gingerly linked with what-ifs.

The group listened attentively. I did, too.

A series of "can't explains" were transformed into "what ifs" that were nudged into an invisible footbridge over the chasm between wishful thinking and acknowledged fact. It's the metaphysical twin to a salesmanship seminar. Eventually, you either buy in - or watch, intrigued, as other listeners apparently do.

At least the "lost continent" talk was interesting. Laugh if you will, but a look for "Lemuria" on amazon.com brought up 1,631 items while motivational speaker "Zig Ziglar" returned only 92 more.

After 90 minutes, the A.R.E. audience was still listening. That's when Jewell postulated that a portion of the eastern edge of Mu is still around - on the coast of California, near Santa Barbara.

I left at that point because I knew what's really there. Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch.

Coincidence? Maybe not.