Toward a Deeper Meditation. John Van Auken

roles in the healing and health maintenance process.

      Finally, Cayce gives the best attitude to hold for maintaining youth and youthful influences:

      Let age only ripen thee. For one is ever as young as the heart and the purpose. Keep sweet. Keep friendly. Keep Loving, if ye would keep young.

      3420-1

      Unique to Cayce’s vision is the idea that seekers of healing and health must attune themselves to the Divine within every cell of their bodies in order to fully realize the perfected condition. It’s like a pattern, a code, and a vibration that possesses life in its ideal condition. It is continual and healthy. When we attune to it, we begin to imbue ourselves with this perfected life pattern or state of being.

      It will require that there be such an attitude in mind, in purpose, in hope, and in relationships to others, that each cell of the body may be attuned to the divine within. Each cell must become expectant, that there may be the renewing, the revivifying of the relationships that the soul-entity bears to Creative Forces.

      3511-1 (my italics)

      Thus there may be a revivifying, a resuscitating, and a creating of an environment such that the body-mind, with its spiritual concepts and its spiritual understanding, may arouse the whole of the body-forces to their better functionings.

      1620-1 (my italics)

      For the body mentally, in its spiritual attributes for the physical self, may hold much in this manner—as the applications are made, osteopathically, electrically—not for things to be gotten through with, but see, feel, know that these are channels and measures through which the divine may operate for effective activity in this body!”

      1299-1 (my bold)

      In this next case, we see that some problems are so big, so deep, so painfully possessing that divine help is needed to fully overcome their influence upon the individual.

      The addition of energy-building forces has not removed the hurt, the disappointment. For this has attacked the physical body through the sensory and sympathetic nervous system, causing the reaction. Not that there is any mental disturbance, no. It is rather a hurt, an injury, a disappointment such that there can only come the renewing, the revivifying, by putting the whole trust, faith and renewed life in divine hands.

      4037-1 (my italics)

      Being able to raise within the vibrations of individuals to that which is a resuscitating, a revivifying influence and force through the deep meditation (the attunement of self to the higher vibrations in Creative Forces), these are manifested in man through the promises that are coming from Creative Forces or Energy itself!

      993-4

      (my italics but Cayce’s parenthetical comment)

      Meditation, especially deep meditation, is one of the most commonly recommended practices in the Edgar Cayce work. For Cayce, meditation was necessary in order for humans to bridge the gap between this world of outer, physical consciousness and the inner world of the subconscious soul and spirit forces. In this particular discourse, he is identifying the deep meditation practice as a means to attuning self “to the higher vibrations in Creative Forces.” Creative Forces is a Cayce term for those forces many of us associate with God, Nature, and the powers of Life itself—or as he says himself, “Energy itself!” Learning to become outwardly still and quiet while awakening inwardly to the deeper vibrations, especially those with a spiritual quality to them, can result in higher vibes and the flow of energy, resuscitating energy, through our bodies, minds, and souls.

      Let’s continue looking into attunement, especially attunement to the divine within.

      Put hope and trust and faith in the divine within—the revivifying, the rejuvenating of that spirit of life and truth within every atom of the body. This will put to flight all of those things that hinder a body from giving expression of the most hopeful, the most beautiful.

      572-5

      There are those forces as may be had from the study, the analyzing of those truths presented in the light of His ministry—that One who is the way, the truth and the light. The analyzing of these, and the application of same in the lives of individuals is an individual experience. But the closer, the nearer one applies those tenets, those truths, those principles in one’s daily experience, the greater is the ability of the mental and spiritual self to revivify the physical activities of any given body.

      2074-1 (my bold)

      Again, we see Cayce driving hard on the principle of applying ourselves—seeking, studying, analyzing those tenets and principles we know to be of great importance to us, mentally and spiritually. As the great psychologist Carl Jung pointed out, we cannot deny that there is a spiritual component to humans, no matter how illogical it may appear to some of us. Spirit and spiritual truths are important to the overall health of humans, from the most primitive to the most sophisticated.

       Section Two

       CLASSICAL POINTS OF VIEW

       7

       Yoga Sutra

      The concept that the human body is designed for both physical and metaphysical experiences goes way back in history some 2,500 years. Perhaps the first text to clearly identify the body as a spiritual device as well as a physical one is Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. He wrote that within the human body are pathways and energy zones that may be stimulated in such a manner as to bring about nonphysical activity and higher consciousness. Of course, today many of us are familiar with these pathways and zones: chakras, padmes, sushumna, and ida and pingala (see further elaboration in “Chakras and the Kundalini,” chapter 16). Patanjali organized his Yoga Sutras into four parts (padas):

      1. Samadhi Pada I: Contemplation and Meditation

      2. Sadhana Pada II: The Steps To Union

      3. Vibhuti Pada III: Union Achieved And Its Results

      4. Kaivalya Pada IV: Illumination and Freedom

      Though his original text was written in Sanskrit, making it difficult to translate into modern English, and his writing style is thousands of years old, Patanjali’s views are understandable by most modern seekers. I will be using a translation by Swami Venkatesananda, which I’ve modified according to my own studies and experiences.

      Patanjali begins by stating the most fundamental principle of yoga—by yoga he means the unity that happens when an entity realizes its oneness with the Whole. Here are his own words:

      Yoga [unity] happens when there is stilling [in the sense of continual and vigilant watchfulness] of the movement of thought. In the light of stillness … self is not confused with nor confined to any of these. Then [when yoga thus happens], the seer or the homogeneous intelligence which is ignorantly regarded as the separate experiences of sensations and emotions, and the separate performer of actions, is not split up into one or the other of the states or modifications of the mind, and exists by itself and as itself.

      Thus, according to Patanjali, union occurs when an individual perceives that he or she is not simply individual, but universal, one with the Whole, the All; and this is realized when in the deepest stillness, when the form-shaping, identity-focused mind is quiet, clear, and yet alert.

      Patanjali goes on to explain the subtleties of union:

      The kindling of the inner psychic fire that at once burns away all the impurities and limitations of the mind-stuff, the study both of scriptural texts