A lack of awareness. Sometimes evil can be understood as a deficit in conscious awareness, a state of being “asleep” spiritually. Evil constantly tugs at us to become less and less conscious, more and more distracted. Temptation surrounds us daily.
Extremism. As noted earlier, Cayce sometimes liked to remind seekers that Christ Consciousness is the meeting point between two extremes—that is, the middle path. Therefore, one face of evil involves embracing an extreme point of view, even denying the validity of any counterbalancing view, and surely our world is full of such extremists right now. What’s a little harder to see is our own tendency to go to extremes. For example, we may be tempted to embrace other-worldliness in the extreme in an attempt to have a more spiritual life and in the process lose connection with and appreciation of the practical aspects of material life. But just as likely, we might be tempted to go the other way and become so pragmatically down-to-earth that we ignore the invisible side of life. Either approach is a kind of evil. Christ Consciousness creates a meeting ground for the two extremes, creating a life that integrates the mystical with the mundane.
Aggression and invasion. We think of these terms in connection with warfare, but all human relations have the potential for these forms of evil. We try to subvert the free will of others by overpowering them with our own will. One gift of authentic practical spirituality is the capacity to stand up for oneself (and one’s ideals) with integrity but without becoming aggressive and invasive in the process.
Transformation. Here is a particularly hopeful way of viewing evil. Evil is something that just falls short of the mark, just misses it. “How far, then, is ungodliness from godliness? Just under, that’s all!” (254-68). That doesn’t mean ignore the fact that evil falls short; it means stay engaged with anything ungodly and keep working to transform it. Sometimes, only a mere readjustment is required.
For example, an individual might have a destructive tendency to manipulate others, but that trait may be just short of something that is constructive and healthy. While he may have a talent for motivating people, that talent has become distorted or is being misused in such a way that it qualifies as manipulation. Instead of rejecting that manipulative trait, he can uplift and transform it into its full potential. If he only tries to suppress the fault, he will miss out on a valuable side of himself.
Rebellion and willfulness. This is Edgar Cayce’s most fundamental idea about evil. We are given the choice daily between good and evil. Perhaps what tips the scale toward evil is rebellious willfulness, as Gerald May refers to it in his 1987 book Will and Spirit. “Evil seeks to mislead or fool one into substituting willfulness for willingness, mastery for surrender.”
And so the choices are always ours in the big and little decisions we make each day in response to evil. As concerned as we must be about evil on the national and international scale, an essential principle Cayce challenges us to look at is our own relationship to these very themes.
12. Learn to stand up for yourself; learn to say no when it’s needed.
Life-affirmation is great, but sometimes we must learn to say no before we can say yes. Hearing this may give us pause, fearing that we’re about to go down a path to negativity. Do we really want to honor negation in this way? But, in fact, a higher degree of mental health is required to set boundaries and define ourselves with a no.
Consider Cayce’s bold advice: “So live each and every day that you may look any man in the face and tell him to go to hell!” (1739-6). People usually laugh nervously when they first hear this passage. Surely this is not Edgar Cayce, the life-affirming spiritual counselor, saying something like this! Perhaps it’s just another example of his wry humor. But Cayce was dead serious about the need for us to define and defend our boundaries vigorously, and sometimes that means telling someone to go to hell. More often, it’s enough to just firmly say no, letting it be known who you are and how you need to be treated.
It’s all a matter of affirming one’s personhood. Beneath the negation there is actually a more significant affirmation of something. The point is this: There is no love and no intimacy with others unless we can first define our own boundaries. Saying no is a matter of the most basic practical spirituality. Then, from that position of relative strength, we can enter into relationship with another individual. As strange as it may sound, loving someone may start by stepping back, saying no, defining oneself, and then reaching out and building an authentic bridge to that person.
This sounds a lot like self-assertion, as popularized in modern psychological practice and as Edgar Cayce himself sometimes advocated. One good example was advice given to a thirty-four-year-old machinist foreman who suffered from the social illness of letting other people take advantage of him. Cayce’s blunt advice: “The entity because of his indecisions at times allows others to take advantage of him. The entity must learn to be self-assertive; not egotistical but self-assertive—from a knowledge of the relationship of self with the material world” (3018-1).
Another example is Cayce’s repeated admonition of just how important it is to be able to get angry. Anger is an emotion directly related to saying no. Of course, he isn’t saying we need to run around blowing our stacks every day, but he did emphasize the need to express anger in the right way. “Be angry but sin not. For he that never is angry is worth little” (1156-1). But then Cayce adds how important it is to have a container for that anger. “But he that is angry and controlleth it not is worthless.” Note here that control does not mean “suppression” but “proper direction.” It’s a crucial distinction.
THE MODELS AND STRUCTURES OF THE CAYCE PHILOSOPHY
With the twelve essential themes of Edgar Cayce’s philosophy in mind, we’re still left wondering how it all fits together. What are the structures and universal laws of life that integrate these dozen principles? Over the years, Cayce proposed several different formulas and models in his readings. Taken together, they create a comprehensive map of how life works for a spiritual being who is experiencing materiality.
1. Links among body, mind, and spirit.
The holistic philosophy presented by Edgar Cayce emphasized the interconnections of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. Often he offered a formula showing the sequence of how material reality (including physical health or the lack of it) comes into being: “The spirit is the life, mind is the builder, and the physical is the result.”
The spirit is the life means that there is just one fundamental energy of the universe. It is the life-force, and it is fundamentally a spiritual, nonmaterial vitality. It can, however, manifest itself in the material world.
Mind is the builder means that with the mind each of us is able to give that one spiritual life-force a vibration or a pattern. We create with the mind. Thoughts are things, so to speak, although the reality of a thought-form, as Cayce sometimes called it, is not immediately apparent to our physical senses.
The physical is the result means that all we perceive as material reality is an expression in the physical world of what was previously mental. Our life circumstances, and even the condition of our physical bodies, are shaped by our attitudes and emotions.
One analogy that Cayce proposes is that of a movie projector. The projector’s lightbulb is like the spiritual life-force; the images on the film are like the mental creations of our thoughts and feelings; and the image projected upon the screen is analogous to what we experience as our physical reality.
All of this emphasizes the creative element within us. We create our own reality in the world; we create our own future. The arts—painting, music, dance, etc.—are profound ways to bridge the apparent gap between the spiritual and the material. So emphatic was Cayce about the significance of this creative principle that a frequent synonym he invoked for God was the Creative Forces.
2. Links among ideals, free will, and soul growth.
A second formula from Edgar Cayce’s philosophy is not stated explicitly in the readings but can be gleaned form the spiri
tual advice he gave to hundreds of people. There are three factors involved in this formula, and they flow out of the relationship among the three: ideals, free will, and the development of our potential as souls. In the formula, they are presented in sequence: “Envision an ideal, awaken and apply the will, and soul growth will be the result.”
We noted earlier that one essential theme in Cayce’s philosophy is that “changing anything starts with an ideal.” And here that theme is expanded upon and linked to other essential principles. One explication has the ideal as something we envision rather than figure out logically—“it comes and find us,” so to speak. Our task is to be open and attentive, ready to notice and reaffirm what arises spontaneously from the soul. In fact, if one’s ideal is merely something that has been figured out logically, then probably its potency and impact is limited to the material world of cause and effect where logic reigns supreme. An ideal that is truly life-transforming must come from a deeper place within ourselves. It is something we intuit as it reveals itself to us. Envisioning an ideal is the recognition and affirmation of something that calls to us from our own depths.
Once the ideal has been discovered, we have to do something with it. That requires the use of the free will, which is the hallmark of our individuality. But the free will tends to be asleep inside us; we cruise through life on automatic pilot just reacting to things that trigger us. For the ideal to make a difference in our lives, the free will has to be awakened and then applied.
Applying the ideal is at the heart of what Cayce calls soul-growth. No authentic transformation of the soul can take place unless guided by the ideal. And, just as important, the essence of developing the soul is allowing for the free will to emerge.
3. Three levels of the mind.
One way to understand the human mind is to see it as three levels, or layers, that interact and influence one another. Edgar Cayce calls these layers the conscious mind, the subconscious mind, and the superconscious mind. Because the subconscious and the superconscious tend to be outside our immediate awareness, together, they make up what is widely termed the unconscious.
While Cayce was not alone in proposing this three-layer scheme, or the first to employ these terms, his image of the relationship between the layers is special. Many schools of psychology suggest that the higher mind (or superconscious) is like the attic of a house, the lower mind (subconscious), as the storehouse of all memory, is like the basement, and the mind of everyday awareness (conscious) is in between, the main floor of the house. Cayce felt such a scheme was misleading. Relative to the conscious mind, the subconscious and superconscious are not in different directions, so to speak; rather, we must pass through our subconscious memories in order to make a connection with the unlimited potential of our superconscious.
The three-layer model shown in Figure 1 on page 36, therefore, is different than a three-story house. It’s based on a dream that Cayce had in 1932: “There was a center or spot from which, on going into the state, I would radiate upward. It began as a spiral, except there were rings all round—commencing very small, and as they went on up they got bigger and bigger.” He offered an interpretation of his dream in a reading (294-131), indicating how, when giving a reading, he was able to elevate his consciousness (which he likened to a dot or tiny speck), through the subconscious, and on into the superconscious (or what he termed the heavens). As he put it, “[A] tiny speck, as it were, a mere grain of sand; yet when raised in the atmosphere or realm of the spiritual forces it becomes all inclusive, as is seen by the size of the funnel—which reaches not downward, nor outward, nor over, but direct to that which is felt by the experience of man as into the heavens itself.” Herbert Puryear, a clinical psychologist, drew the V-shaped diagram shown in Figure 1 to illustrate Cayce’s interpretation of his own dream.
Cayce’s model has significant implications for how we understand our spiritual quest. As we strive to make a connection with the higher self—or the divine—then we should expect to encounter our own subconscious “stuff ”—our unconscious desires, fears, resentments. Quite simply, it means that our quest to connect with the superconscious very likely will involve a profound encounter with ourselves, including those aspects we are ashamed or afraid of—our shadow, to use a term from Jungian psychology. And although Edgar Cayce was not conversant in the ideas of Carl Jung, his picture of the human mind bears a strong resemblance.
FIG. 1. A Model of the Nature of Humanity
Cayce’s model of the mind, furthermore, is insightful regarding the source of his information in a given reading. He claimed it came from his own superconscious, that he acted as an open channel so that it could reveal its wisdom through him. But it’s not what is called psychic channeling of other noncorporeal beings, as with a medium. Cayce affirmed the validity of mediumship—at least as demonstrated by a gifted few—but he denied that he was one. Only with a few rare readings (perhaps a dozen total) did his subconscious mind serve as a mouthpiece for another being, such as an angel or a disembodied soul. In more than ninety-nine percent of Cayce’s readings he claimed that his source was the knowledge within himself—or, for that matter, within any of us if we are only willing to learn how to tap into it.
4. The seven spiritual centers.
Edgar Cayce echoed the wisdom of the East in proposing that human experience can be understood largely in terms of seven spiritual centers of the body. Theology, philosophy, and psychology traditionally have been concerned about the connection between the finite and the infinite. If there is such a thing as a soul, with its infinite nature, how is it able to affect the finite physical human being? One ancient answer was to codify the spiritual centers of the body, what are known as the chakras (Sanskrit for “wheel,” referring to the wheels, or vortices, of energy that clairvoyants claim to perceive in the body).
Spiritual centers can be found primarily in man’s higher-energy body—the subtle body, as it is sometimes called, although Cayce preferred the term finer physical body, emphasizing the strong connection to the physical even though the spiritual activity of these centers is difficult if not impossible to measure with scientific instrumentation. Cayce also emphasized that each of the seven centers has its own representation in the flesh, in the endocrine glands, organs that secrete chemical hormones directly into the bloodstream and thereby influence every cell of the body. From the first spiritual center up to the seventh, he named the respective glands as follows: the gonads (the testes in the male, the ovaries in the female), the cells of Leydig, the adrenals, the thymus, the thyroid, the pineal, and the pituitary.
According to Edgar Cayce’s model for health, the activity of the endocrine centers represents in the flesh what is happening in the mind and spirit. The term to describe the function of these centers is transducer, which is defined as a device activated by one form of power from one system and supplying another form of power to a second system. With the spiritual centers, the two systems are: the soul (with its access to an infinite supply of energy), and the energy system we perceive as the physical human being. Although not an exact analogy, the centers function somewhat like valves in regulating the flow of the creative life-force into the physical body. What’s more, they are a storehouse of patterns of consciousness in the soul, and our thoughts, feelings, and memories (even past-life memories, Cayce would argue) find expression in the body largely through the spiritual centers and the endocrine glands linked to them.
5. Four phases of self-care for health.
Edgar Cayce emphasized learning how to care for one’s own health. In the 1930s and 1940s, he sent many people to the New York City clinic of Dr. Harold J. Reilly, who became an insightful interpreter of Cayce’s healing and health maintenance recommendations. Reilly identified four aspects of Cayce’s formula for physical well-being, a model that has become the foundation from which many health care professionals have attempted to research and apply what Cayce had to offer. They spell out the anagram CARE:
Circulation. Paying attent
ion to the body’s need for both blood and lymph circulation. Poor circulation can result in a host of ailments.
Assimilation. Eating nutritionally and breathing properly. Also, creating the right conditions in the body so that nutrients can be absorbed and used by the body.
Relaxation. Practicing stress-releasing techniques. Our bodies can quickly become out of balance and toxic, and illness is sure to follow. Elimination. Just as important as assimilating nutrients in the body is eliminating waste products from the body. Many of Cayce’s remedies involved not so much putting something in the body as stimulating the body’s nature wisdom to get rid of what is no longer needed.
EDGAR CAYCE AS CREATOR OF A NEW CULTURAL MYTH
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Some of the most fascinating material presented by Edgar Cayce involves stories that seem to fly in the face of modern historical scholarship. Tales of Atlantis. Tales of ancient Egypt and the building of its great monuments, but with a timeline that violates the timelines of virtually all mainstream Egyptologists. Tales of elaborate ancient civilizations in the Gobi Desert and in Persia completely unknown to historians. What are we to make of these remarkable pronouncements?
The Essential Edgar Cayce Page 4