The Essential Edgar Cayce by Mark Thurston Read Free Book Online

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