Edgar Cayce A Seer Out of Season. Harmon Hartzell Bro

to serve as their own final judges; too often they usurped the place of divinity, even taking secret pride in the condemning process. While attacking themselves or attacking others, they were belittling a part of creation dear to the Creator: a soul, a unique person, brought into being for God’s own companionship.

      Of course, those who failed to examine themselves, just as those who repressed deserved guilt (and therefore dodged seeking forgiveness), were urged by Cayce to “step aside and watch self go by,” for ultimately each soul “must give account of itself” for its actions and inactions. Some were asked where they would be if God treated them as they treated themselves and others, and the pungent answer might be “oblivion unthinkable.” So the quiet voice of the entranced Cayce pleaded with his hearers to be responsible but not to condemn, turning for mercy to their Source while they turned toward their fellows with the compassion which they themselves required. Always, Cayce insisted, “As ye do it unto your fellows, ye do it unto your God.”

      What, then, could free one of all that must be eliminated as regret, guilt, and condemnation? Once the violation of deep values had been stopped and the renewing mercy of God called upon, then forgiveness and release or elimination of spiritual poisons would be found by generous giving to others. Here Cayce could be explicit as he was with medication. For he might name the precise relationships in one’s family or business associates where forgiving must begin in order to free up the individual’s clogged life force.

      Yet the entranced man was careful not to humiliate or frighten. He protected the privacy and final self-respect of his counselees in the loving spirit already noted. Not amputation but cleansing and washing, so well emblematized by immersion baptism in Cayce’s church tradition, was the general spirit of counsel on elimination, whether physical or spiritual. He did not advocate fierce asceticism and penance for most, though there were some self-indulgent persons for whom he advised regimes of ascetic simplicity and sacrifice. Surgery in the spiritual realm was reserved for the divine, unless it were clear that the individual already sensed it was time to pluck out a corrosive temper, a business fraud, or a destructive extramarital affair. In such instances Cayce spoke to further the person’s own resolve.

      The motif of “emptying self to be filled” also appeared as part of the spiritual dimension when Cayce urged meditation for everyone.³⁰ He was not dogmatic in his urging, nor did he offer colorful benefits of mind or body control, yet he saw meditation as part of total health. When the subject came up, he spoke clearly and persuasively about it, decades before meditation became a countercultural theme in American society and slowly crept into organized religious practice. In prayer, which he suggested was the foundation of meditation, one properly filled the consciousness with thought, speech, and emblems until turning to God overflowed with thanksgiving, praise, and commitment, within which petitions might have their rightful place. Such activity was the heart of public worship and private devotions alike. By contrast, meditation meant emptying one’s consciousness so that a deeper movement of thought and being might develop, which could be called listening to God, not so much by pursuing thought and symbols as by receiving the divine into one’s stilled being.

      In Cayce’s trance view, the psyche had level upon level below surface consciousness, with innate dynamics as powerful as those which enabled a tiny plant to move a boulder as it reached for the sunlight. Meditation, which emptied and cleansed surface consciousness by a peaceful fasting from discursive thought, could set free a potent inward movement towards full and healthy humanness. He encouraged the use of focalizing phrases to start the process, whether bits of scripture or sayings familiar to the person, or more formal “affirmations” (his versions were actually as much prayer as assertions) on which individuals could model their own words. These small phrases functioned like the mantras from Eastern religions or like tuning from the texts and tones of anthems in choirs.

      In his view, what was released in meditation was much deeper than the mere action of suggestion. It was the true and natural bent of the soul as the self held up its best chosen ideal. For what was “on the mind” at primary levels of the psyche would surface and bring accompanying energies in meditation. If the ancient art were practiced daily in concert with prayer, intercession, and service, and embedded in covenant community, the inner noble form of the person would assert itself, just as the plant grows from the seed or the embryo from the meeting of two cells. The process of pushing “out” whatever was not essential for stilled and hushed turning to God in prayer-based meditation was a prized kind of elimination, not just for soul growth but ultimately also for bodily health and wholeness.

      In passages dealing with meditation, he employed the language of kundalini yoga³¹ from India and Tibet, right alongside material from the Psalms about meditating on God’s law. For the entranced Cayce, the concept of chakras, or spiritual centers, at seven key points in the body was helpful to understand being “filled with the Spirit,” since all creativity used the same circuits in the body. What had to be emptied to allow the fiery life force to rise secretly within the person and be met by invisible tongues of flame from Beyond was self-will and self-aggrandizement—not self-identity. Here Cayce departed from some forms of Hindu thought and practice that emphasized dissolution of the ego and individuality into the larger whole. In his view, identity was precious to the Creator; else why the creation? But self-dictated autonomy needed purging, as truly as a clogged bowel.

       In, Or Assimilation in Health

      The little word in appeared in my notebook when Cayce counseled ingestion, absorption, and assimilation for healing. Here the focus was not emptying, but replenishing and nurture and absorption of whatever was taken into the person. The principle might be “We are what we eat” or drink, breathe, swallow, rub in, soak in, and sniff. The process was also affected by how we did the intake, whether indulgently, absently, or anxiously. And it was also important to consider what we deeply meant in the process, whether to save or to serve, to dominate or cooperate, in trust or in fear.

      It was rare that a medical reading for a severe illness did not spell out a regimen or diet for feeding and supplying the body. As poisons and drosses were removed, the struggling tissues had to be given the needed resources to restore natural function. Aiding assimilation might, of course, be as simple as providing more oxygen through exercise or time out-of-doors. But even then the circulation had to be in shape to carry the blood’s freight to be assimilated, perhaps requiring massages, osteopathy, special packs, or baths. Sluggish organs charged with handling input by respiration or digestion might require stimulus or tempering, whether through osteopathic or massage action, to free and quicken nerve impulses, or through chemical or even surgical intervention, where poisons had collected or were strangling an organ or tissue. But once the body were set free to take in and use what was offered, then the game was to supply its needs soundly—and in balance. The two processes went on together, for elimination and assimilation continued unceasingly and could not be suspended for a few weeks to overhaul the plumbing and wiring or the girders and stewpots of the flesh.

      Most of the diet suggestions seemed so sensible that people acted on them more readily than other aspects of his treatment regimes, even more than exercise and relaxation. To be sure, the special intervention diets or nutriments to provide substances for very sick bodies were difficult to evaluate: Jerusalem artichoke for diabetes, plantain weed poultice for certain cancers, carefully prepared beef juice for badly weakened bodies, a product called Kaldak for calcium deficiency, and much more. Preventive foods were easier to follow, not only the three almonds a day for cancer, but the lowly cabbage for pinworms.

      But it was the normal diet which Cayce repeatedly outlined that appealed not only to nutrition experts but to thoughtful laypersons. Alternating eggs and cereals for breakfast, featuring salads for lunch, choosing fish, fowl, or lamb for dinner more often than the unchanging beef which Americans prize, two vegetables above the ground to one below, balancing yellow and green vegetables, eating foods grown in one’s immediate environment, adding gelatin as a catalyst to assure vitamin absorption—the list was full and varied, but sensible, and in later years would generate a number of widely read books³² as well as research.

      Cayce was not fanatical in advising food distributions, and counseled moderation rather than rigidity.