by Gina Cerminara

In our daily experience with others, all of us come to recognize certain different types or traits which we classify by value systems of our own devising. There is the sociable, easy-to-talk-to-type, the reserved, difficult-to-talk-to-type, the selfish type, the egocentric type, and so on. Many psychologists have concluded also that people array themselves into fundamental groupings; and it was natural that they should attempt to establish a scientific basis for the groupings or types which they felt existed. From this point of view many typologies have emerged, notably those of Jung, Spranger, Kretschmer, and Rosanoff, all of which have merited serious scientific recognition.

Like a wise Solomon, the reincarnation principle supports both the trait and the type theory of personality; it also points up the incompleteness of both. If we take into consideration one system of types in the light of the Cayce readings, we shall see how this is so.

The scientific typology perhaps best known to the general public is that originated by Carl Jung—namely, the introversion-extraversion typology. According to Jung’s original formulation of the concept, the fundamental distinction between all human personalities lies in their concern with outer or inner realities. This can be seen in the original Latin of the terms which he chose for this purpose: vert meaning “turned”; intro, “within”; and extra, “without.” In the opinion of reincarnationists, however, Jung and the psychologists who have come after him have not provided satisfactory ultimate explanations of why one person should be allotted by life, so to speak, the fate of introversion and another the fate of extraversion. These two basic psychic situations are attributed by Jung and most other authorities to biological causes—the reincarnationist view is, here as elsewhere, that biological causes are only secondary, while past-life conduct is a primary determinant.

The manner in which the experience of past incarnations predisposes toward introversion is clearly seen in many cases in the Cayce files. An examination of such cases indicates that the Continuity Principle apparently operates here in the carrying over of certain attitudinal elements, or mental “sets” in the psyche.

A case in which this is clearly shown is that of a girl of twenty-one, a college student of some musical ability. In spite of personal attractiveness, she was abnormally shy and fearful, had great difficulty in making friends, and was concerned over not having been admitted to a college sorority. The early life circumstances of this girl are not known—very probably there were factors in her family conditioning which would account for her being an introvert or as Overstreet called it, a contractive type.

According to her life reading, however, this temperamental outlook was of past-life origin. She had been a French lady of much talent, beauty, and affability, but her husband like the haughty Duke in Browning’s “My Last Duchess” could not bear to see her graciousness extended to all and sundry. Consequently he suppressed her every natural impulse with cold and merciless tyranny, sometimes even beating her with a whip. This caused her to withdraw fearfully into herself; the dread of being misunderstood and chastised had persisted in her unconscious even to the present.

A similar sort of suppression pattern appears in the following case, though the personal and historical circumstances are widely different. The young man was twenty-eight at the time of his reading; he was of a studious and introverted nature. In his past life, according to Cayce, he suffered persecution in Salem in the course of the witchcraft trials. This experience had a twofold effect on his present temperament. First, it left him with a hatred of all forms of oppression. Second, it gave him a strong urge to study, and an equally pronounced urge to keep his knowledge to himself.

It should be noted here that the readings placed a slightly different interpretation on the Salem witchcraft trials than that ordinarily given by historians. That is to say, the readings indicate that there was then a genuine epidemic of spiritistic phenomena, and that a number of people were undergoing authentic experiences of a psychic or mediumistic nature, which of course offended the orthodox views of the time. In the case of this young man, the reading does not indicate precisely what his experience was, but—judging from other Salem period cases in the files—it may have been that in an impulse to tell some strange psychic experience of his own or one that he had witnessed, or through an impulse to defend someone whom popular frenzy had condemned, he was seized and brutally persecuted. Even a dog or cat who has been mistreated will learn to distrust mankind. And so it is not difficult to understand why, deep in the unconscious recesses of this man’s mind, there was the instinct to be wary of men, to be hesitant of seeking their company or of telling all he knew.

The Cayce files record many cases dealing with experiences in Salem similar to the one above and which have resulted in a similar contractive tendency. Still other cases reveal different causes for psychic withdrawal. A doctor of marked uncommunicative nature had acquired the tendency in the practice of silence as a Quaker in a previous life. The temperament of a New York sales manager showed great lack of sociability; in a previous life he had been an explorer who had led a lonely and self-sufficient life in South Africa. A high-school girl felt a deep sense of inferiority; an experience as an American Indian girl who felt hopelessly inferior to the white settlers laid the basis for her diffidence. An Ohio doctor, though competent in his profession, was of an extremely retiring disposition and experienced self-doubt constantly. The origin for this tendency was seen in a Colonial experience in which he had made disinterested efforts in behalf of public welfare in early Georgia. His contribution was unjustly belittled and scorned; hence he became disillusioned and bitter, and, doubting both himself and mankind withdrew into himself.

Introversion, then, on the testimony of the foregoing and of many other cases in the Cayce files, proceeds in a natural continuity from one life to the next, stemming from an experience which has caused the ego to withdraw.

The continuity principle operates in a similar manner in the case of extraversion. An outstanding example is that of a woman—a divorcee in her late thirties—with a completely uninhibited personality who is currently preoccupied with her third matrimonial venture. The basis for her vivacious social competence was, according to the Cayce reading, laid in two past lives: one as a dance-hall entertainer in early frontier days; another as one of the mistresses of Louis XIV in the court of France. From the latter experience came her gifts of diplomacy and fascination, and the ability, as the reading puts it, “to wind everyone around her finger, from king to scullery maid.” As a dance-hall entertainer she capitalized on these gifts and developed them still further, until a reversal of fortunes and a change of heart led her to become a kind of ministering angel in her community.

A second interesting example is the case of a New York entertainer and magician of great personal charm who makes friends easily and has a marked gift for the comic. These enviable extravertive tendencies are attributed to the reading to two past life experiences. The first was as an early settler in the Mohawk Valley, where he tried to unify the various settlements in the locality. “Though the entity was short-lived, the abilities gained through the sojourn and the one just previous give him his powers to attract and control people in the present.”

Much of the leadership quality and the charm of the man stem, then, from his idealistic struggles in early America; much of his quickness of wit and perception of the comic from the previous life as a kind of court jester in England to Henry VIII. Apparently he was active in politics, had a serious interest in promoting the welfare of the country, and developed his art to diplomatic advantage at court.

In short, all cases of extraversion in the Cayce files seem to be the result of socially outgoing activity of one kind or another in previous lives.

It is interesting to analyze how introvertive personalities become extravertive, and vice-versa, over the span of many lives. It must be remembered that by derivation the words introversion and extraversion mean a turning inward or a turning outward of attention; the words themselves imply a direction of psychological movement. It would seem, then, that psychological motion inward or outward like any other type of motion, tends to continue on its path until forcibly stopped.

A soul may go along for many lives with the healthy placidity of an animal which can be said to be neither introverted nor extraverted. But then, in Life 19, let us suppose that something happens which makes this soul turn inward on itself. Perhaps a lame foot or a weak physique makes it impossible for him to live with the same healthy, relaxed extraversion of his fellows.

The inward tendency thus begun is at first a healthy (though perhaps uncomfortable) thing. Even though it first appears as a compensation mechanism, it is good in that it sharpens the man’s power of analysis, his sense of values, his awareness of non-material realities. But the inertia of motion leads him to persist in his inward direction until with his increasing self-preoccupation he has built himself an ivory tower where the rest of the world seems no longer necessary or worthy of concern. A sense of aloofness and cold superiority isolates him more and more from his fellows; a negativistic attitude begins to render him inactive and unsocial.

These tendencies persist with increasing intensity through Lives 20 and 21, until finally the unhealthy ingoing and the karmic causes set in motion by the accompanying sins of omission or commission toward his fellows occasion a breakdown of one kind or another. This intolerable situation, this impasse, finally frightens the ego into a determination to change the direction of his attention. To invoke a homely (and incomplete) analogy, it is as if an ingrowing toenail were permitted to continue its growth with unconcern, until finally the pain became so great that the indolent host decided to go to a chiropodist and have it removed.

The bankruptcy of his situation in Life 22, then, leads to the desperate efforts of the ego to become more social and outgoing. In Life 23 the impulse will have gathered momentum by virtue of the earth life plus the planetary sojourn; the momentum continues in force through Lives 24 and 25, until finally in Life 26 a full-fledged extravert or expansive type comes into being.

But now there is another crucial period. Can he remain extraverted and happily adjusted to society without exploiting his social gifts for self-indulgence and self-aggrandizement? Just as the extreme of introversion holds subtle dangers to the self-exalting tendencies of the solitary ego, so the extreme of extraversion holds subtle dangers to the self-gratifying tendencies of the socially competent ego. And so in Life 26 our subject becomes arrogant and sensual, and we discover in him selfish conduct born of his complacent social competence and self-assurance.

Once selfishness acts, however, karma comes into play. So in Life 27 or 28 we find him, a richly endowed personality, but constructed by early life circumstances into introvertive and very possibly neurotic tendencies such that he is forced to think in social terms once again, and act upon more spiritual bases, if he is to survive as a personality.

Again a struggle for balance ensues. And thus we discover that Hegel’s classic thesis, antithesis, and synthesis may be more than a hypothetical pattern of movement in historical events; it may also represent the pattern of movement in the growth of the soul. It would seem, then, that the general areas of temperamental outlook called introversion and extraversion, or expansiveness and contractiveness, actually exist as conditions of the soul; they represent a true intuition on the part of Jung and Overstreet respectively, and are two fundamental and polar-opposite attitudes of the psyche. But they exist, not as pigeonholes in a desk, into which the names of all the people in the world can be consigned, but more in the nature of tourist-camp hostels, in which at one time or another, all travelers encamp.

Introversion and extraversion would seem to be polar opposites as female and male are polar opposites. And just as the soul sometimes incarnates in a female and sometimes in a male body, but must learn the virtues of both polarities in becoming androgynous, similarly the soul becomes (in successive lifetimes or cycles of lifetimes) both a predominantly introvert and predominantly extravert personality, though his ultimate purpose is to acquire the strength of both and become ambivert. The process seems to continue through pendulum swings, until finally the soul becomes so exquisitely poised in an attitude of pure receptivity and pure expression, pure inward-looking and pure outward-going, that the terms introverted or extraverted could no more be applied to it than to an oak tree.

In the Cayce files there are many cases of successful and unsuccessful social adjustment which provide substantiating evidence for the principles just outlined. One such case concerns a woman of a pronounced talkative, aggressive, extravertive nature. Her early ambition had been to be an actress, but difficult family circumstances plus a rather short, squat figure made this an unattainable goal, and she entered the business world instead. According to her life reading she had been an entertainer at the time of the American Revolution. She had achieved social position and luxury, but at the expense of personal principle. Her abilities to influence others and her conversational and dramatic gifts arose from that sojourn, but because she had used them then “without spiritual insight,” as the reading puts it, she is faced with frustrations in the present.

This entity apparently finds itself now in that crucial period referred to above. Her bodily structure and her family circumstances have inhibited the expression of her dramatic gifts in a professionally spectacular way; her conversational ability appears relatively uninhibited, but she is explicitly warned by the reading not to use her gifts of expressiveness without spiritual insight, the implication being: lest something worse befall you.

Cases such as this show the inextricability of spiritual and vocational problems. Frequently a vocational frustration occurs, as in this case, not for any lack of ability, but because of the existence of some spiritual defect whose correction would be impossible if the vocational ambition were fulfilled. The reading advised this woman—she was thirty-two at the time—to become a reader of stories, or a companion to the young or to shut-ins, or, in any case, to use her gifts in a constructive and unselfish way.

Another case which presents a picture of corrective psychological circumstances in the present necessitated by misuse of extravertive gifts in the past concerns a woman forty-nine years old, a private secretary in Washington, D.C. Her letters reveal that she feels herself unwelcome in any social group that she enters—probably because as a child her older sisters and brothers excluded her from their company.

She writes: “I grew up with a fear complex, which has followed me all the way. When out with a crowd, I always feel that I am not wanted, and am at a loss to know what to do or say. I want to enter into things but don’t know how . . . I always have the feeling that I must do more than is expected of anyone else for fear I won’t be liked. So I sacrifice my comfort and health to do something for someone else. I want to be needed.” She further relates that she had three disappointing love affairs, in two of which the man, though assuring her of his love, left her and married someone else.

The life reading indicates that she had previously been an early settler in Ohio; she had been gracious in her treatment of others, but only for her own selfish purposes. “Thus the entity disappointed many, though it was satisfied with what it had attained. The entity wielded power among those very individuals who are problems in the experience today. To use others as stepping stones is to bury yourself in karma that must be met within yourself.”

The universe is honest. It gives back, measure for measure, what has been put into it. Like a true reflecting mirror, the circumstances of this woman’s life revealed the circumstances she had once created in the lives of others. In reality, in her previous incarnation, she had not wanted other people’s company—except insofar as it might benefit herself. In her present incarnation, her childhood position in the family was such that she felt her own company to be unwanted. She was thus led to an insecurity and an introversion which persisted throughout her adult life. She was sufficiently personable and had sufficient social gifts to attract several men, but though they led her to believe they loved her, in all of them she was disappointed.

By her own admission, her sense of being unwanted and her introversion led to the effort to help other people, so that she might be liked and needed. In this way the beneficent corrective purpose of karma is being accomplished. The social competence, misused in selfishness and insincerity in the past, led to social inhibition in the present, from which she can escape only through sincere unselfishness.

The experience of being disappointed in people appears to be a fairly common one and seems almost invariably to be an example of boomerang karma on the psychological level. No terser summary of this could be found in the readings than the following paragraph, spoken, as indicated by the italics, in emphatic tones:

“The entity has often been disappointed in others. Know that first rule, a law that is eternal: The seed sown must one day be reaped. You disappointed others. Today, from your own disappointments, you must learn patience, the most beautiful of all the virtues, and the least understood.”

It is typical of the extravert to be heedless of the feelings of others; no better corrective could be found than that he should later find himself the victim of the insensitivity of others, at their mercy through his own now introverted social ineptitude.

These and many similar cases substantiate the concept that a tendency of soul proceeds unhindered, as though by the inertia of motion, until some inner corruption sets up a corrective check. The opposite direction is then induced, so that eventually the diametrically opposite state is reached. These alternations proceed with pendulum swings until equilibrium is reached. The passage between the extravert and the introvert states offers, then, an almost exact parallel to alternations of health and fortune.

We have here scrutinized the readings with respect to only one current system of types, the Jungian; but the same conclusion can be reached in all the typological systems yet formulated. Whether they be psychological typologies, like Spranger’s classification of men on the basis of their “values,” or bodily typologies like that of Kretschmer, they are all concerned with the outer manifestation of deep-lying qualities of mind and spirit—qualities which change from lifetime to lifetime through an evolutionary process. Whatever the final judgment of science on the validity of typologies, it would seem that the Cayce readings establish, for those who accept them, at least one fact: that current systems of typology place no eternal and final brand upon the soul. For the sake of convenience a personality may be said to belong to one type or another; but whatever type that may be, it is only at temporary fixation of consciousness, only a provisional stage in the growth of the eternal identity.

Excerpt from Many Mansions