Beyond Death. Edgar Cayce

ye call appetites are changed, or not aware at all. The ability to communicate is that which usually disturbs or worries others.

      Then, as to say how long—that depends upon the entity.

      For as has been given, the psychic forces of an entity are constantly active—whether the soul-entity is aware of same or not. Hence as has been the experience of many, these become as individual as individualities or personalities are themselves.

       Q: If cremated, would the body feel it?

      A: What body?

      The physical body is not the consciousness. The consciousness of the physical body is a separate thing. There is the mental body, the physical body, the spiritual body.

      As has so oft been given, what is the builder? mind! Can you burn or cremate a mind? Can you destroy the physical body? Yes, easily.

      To be absent (what is absent?) from the body is to be present with the Lord, or the universal consciousness, or the ideal. Absent from what? What absent? Physical consciousness, yes.

      As to how long it requires to lose physical consciousness depends upon how great are the appetites and desires of a physical body!

       Reading 2174-2

      In Him, the Christ, as manifested in Jesus, ye find this—the first, the greatest commandment—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God (that as manifested in self as life itself), and thy neighbor as thyself.”

      That which brings these both in awareness is that so well and yet so badly named love. God is love. An individual entity, each soul, each entity, each body, finds the need of expressing that called love in the material experience; from its first awareness until its last call through God’s other door—the need of love, expressed, manifested, by self and from others.

      As ye sow, so shall ye reap—this again becomes the foundation of what self, as well as others, may expect. If ye would have friends, show thyself friendly; if ye would have love, love ye one another. These are unchangeable. They do not alter. Man alters them only in the application—as to whether it is to satisfy the ego or the animal, or the flesh, or the mind.

      These expressions, then, to self, as is experienced in motherhood, give the greatest glory manifested in the earth.

       Reading 2927-1

       Q: What journeys should I take for pleasure, which would be most interesting to me in this life?

      A: These should be chosen from the promptings of that as would be contributory to meeting some of the hobbies of the entity, and in its relationship to the general contribution of knowledge to the universal activity.

      Let that mind be in thee which was in Him, who gave, “I and the Father, God, are one.” So become ye in thine own mind, as ye contribute, as ye attune thy inner self to those greater ideals; for it is not all of life just to live, nor yet all of death to die. For, they that put their whole trust in Him have passed from death unto life. And to such there is no death, only the entrance through God’s other door.

       Reading 3954-1

      Yea, pray oft for those who have passed on. This is part of thy consciousness. It is well. For, God is God of the living. Those who have passed through God’s other door are oft listening, listening for the voice of those they have loved in the earth. The nearest and dearest thing they have been conscious of in earthly consciousness. And the prayers of others that are still in the earth may ascend to the throne of God, and the angel of each entity stands before the throne to make intercession. Not as a physical throne, no; but that consciousness in which we may be so attuned that we become one with the whole in lending power and strength to each entity for whom ye speak and pray.

      For, where two or three are gathered together in His name, He is in the midst of them. What meaneth this? If one be absent from the body, He is present with His Lord. What Lord? If you have been the ideal, that one to whom another would pay homage, you are then something of the channel, of the ideal. Then thy prayers direct such an one closer to that throne of love and mercy, that pool of light, yea that river of God.

       Reading 5749-3

      Q: Discuss the various phases of spiritual development before and after reincarnation in the earth.

      A: This may be illustrated best in that which has been sought through example in the earth.

      When there was in the beginning a man’s advent into the plane known as earth, and it became a living soul, amenable to the laws that govern the plane itself as presented, the Son of man entered earth as the first man. Hence the Son of man, the Son of God, the Son of the first Cause, making manifest in a material body.

      This was not the first spiritual influence, spiritual body, spiritual manifestation in the earth, but the first man—flesh and blood; the first carnal house, the first amenable body to the laws of the plane in its position in the universe.

      For, the earth is only an atom in the universe of worlds!

      And man’s development began through the laws of the generations in the earth; thus the development, retardment, or the alterations in those positions in a material plane.

      And with error entered that as called death, which is only a transition—or through God’s other door—into that realm where the entity has builded, in its manifestations as related to the knowledge and activity respecting the law of the universal influence.

      Hence the development is through the planes of experience that an entity may become one with the first cause; even as the angels that wait before the Throne bring the access of the influence in the experience through the desires and activities of an entity, or being, in whatever state, place or plane of development the entity is passing.

      For, in the comprehension of no time, no space, no beginning, no end, there may be the glimpse of what simple transition or birth into the material is; as passing through the other door into another consciousness.

      Death in the material plane is passing through the outer door into a consciousness in the material activities that partakes of what the entity, or soul, has done with its spiritual truth in its manifestations in the other sphere.

      Hence, as there came the development of that first entity of flesh and blood through the earth plane, he became indeed the Son—through the things which He experienced in the varied planes, as the development came to the oneness with the position in that which man terms the Triune.

      Q: Describe some of the planes into which entities pass on experiencing the change called death.

      A: Passing from the material consciousness to a spiritual or cosmic, or outer consciousness, oft does an entity or being not become conscious of that about it; much in the same manner as an entity born into the material plane only becomes conscious gradually of that designated as time and space for the material or third dimensional plane. In the passage the entity becomes conscious, or the recognition of being in a fourth or higher dimensional plane takes place, much in the same way as the consciousness is gained in the material.

      For, as we have given, that we see manifested in the material plane is but a shadow of that in the spiritual plane.

      In materiality we find some advance faster, some grow stronger, some become weaklings. Until there is redemption through the acceptance of the law (or love of God, as manifested through the Channel or the Way), there can be little or no development in a material or spiritual plane. But all must pass under the rod, even as He—who entered into materiality.

       Reading 262-52

      Q: Explain how so called good and evil forces are one.

      A: This has just been explained. When there is delegated power to a body that has separated itself from the spirit (or coming from the unseen into the seen, or from the unconscious