Toward a Deeper Meditation. John Van Auken

from Edgar Cayce’s trance-like connection to the Universal Consciousness, he saw and taught oneness: “The first lesson … should be One—One—One—One; Oneness of God, oneness of man’s relations, oneness of force, oneness of time, oneness of purpose, Oneness in every effort—Oneness—Oneness!” (900-429) For Cayce, our thoughts are not just ours! In fact, he could tell exactly what others had been thinking, because thoughts leave an impression upon the Universal Consciousness. Cayce could “read” these impressions. Thoughts, for him, were “deeds.” When giving a reading for an individual, Cayce had difficulty determining if he or she had actually manifested a particular behavior or just thought about it, because thoughts make as strong an impression on the Collective Consciousness as actions! That’s a scary thought—oops, I just made another impression on the Collective Consciousness! Cayce was concerned that we all grasp the implications of this unavoidable oneness.

      Is it possible that everyone and everything is a part of some unseen Collective, some indivisible Whole, within which all multiplicity exists, and each affects the composition of this Collective? Cayce says yes: “Not only God is God, but self is a part of that oneness.” (900-181) In several readings, Cayce pressed us to simply believe this and live as if it were true! In this way we would come to know that it is indeed true. “Let this, my children, be the lesson for you: The intent in relating to each and every individual should be to bring forth that best element in each, in Oneness of purpose, in oneness of spirit, in oneness of mind, towards each and every one that you contact—for the individuals, in the final analysis, are one.” (288-19) In some manner that we don’t readily perceive, you and I—and all the individuals we meet and interact with each day—are one.

      These are hard teachings to understand and harder to live by. We’ve all heard the admonition think before you speak, but this level of oneness would suggest that we should think before we think. Does thinking negative thoughts about another person actually affect that person at some unseen level? Do these negative thoughts make a recording upon a Collective Consciousness, a recording that someone like Cayce can read? Ancient Hinduism included the concept of an Akasha, an etheric film that records all thoughts, all words, and all actions from the first Om of creation until the last Om of silence. Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten. Nothing is unknowable. Watching Cayce give readings on the activities of celestial godlings who lived before the Earth even existed certainly suggests that nothing is forgotten or lost or unknowable. While his body was on the couch and his conscious mind was for all intents and purposes asleep, his deeper mind could tell us about a long-forgotten event in one’s early childhood that still had its effect on the present, or an ancient past life that influenced the outer self’s feelings in the present life. In some readings for individuals, he would mention the house they lived in and what they were doing as the reading was about to begin, such as: “Yes, we have the red mail box. We are entering the house. She is in the bedroom praying.”

      In the 1960s and ‘70s, when meditation was taking hold in this country, meditators began to speak of experiencing a sense of oneness with all of life when they reached deeper levels in their meditation. When questioned about this, all they could say was that, at some moment in their meditation, all life seemed connected. But the gap between this inner meditative feeling and our outer-sensory perception is a chasm. There is simply no outer-sensory corroboration for such a position. Oneness is an inner perception that defies outer evidence. Apparently, oneness has to be experienced firsthand in order to overcome all the outer contradictions to its existence. And short of rare miraculous epiphanies, meditation appears to be the best way to perceive the unseen oneness. Even Jesus had trouble making the oneness argument with his disciple Philip at the Last Supper, finally conceding that if he could not believe Jesus’ oneness with the Father and that Philip had therefore known the Father by knowing Jesus, then let the outer miracles act as evidence of this oneness with God.

      But let’s press this oneness idea a little further. How can selfish or evil people still be in oneness with the Collective? And if they are, simply because there is no way to be outside of the Whole, then why are they allowed to do so much harm to others in the Collective? In a very complex discussion between one of the greatest questioners of Edgar Cayce, Morton Blumenthal, #900, and the “sleeping” Edgar Cayce, attuned to the Collective, we can find some insights into these hard questions. Since the discussion is so complex, I’ll paraphrase here:

      Morton: On Oct. 15, Thursday, at home I had this dream: It seemed my mother and I were in a hotel where many people were passing by. Then there was a typewriter with a sheet of blank paper in it, waiting to be used by one of the many applicants for the position of stenographer. The typewriter also seemed to be waiting for my more perfect understanding of something else—some final thing—the first three principles of which I had two. In the midst of all of this, a voice said: ‘All of these are God!’

      Cayce: This dream is presenting to the entity the oneness of purpose, of intent, of the whole being as one. For all is of God, see? And as the entity gains knowledge from living the various phases of oneness, he gains that first principle of which the other two he already has. That first principle is this: God is in you, manifesting to other individuals through every phenomenized situation that is presented in a physical world. For, every force which may not be separated or produced by man is of God and of the Universal Forces. These are the three forces in man: (1) Spiritual—of God; (2) Cosmic—the forces made by man; and (3) Subconscious—the force that bridges the Spiritual and the Cosmic, connecting the spiritual with the cosmic.

      Morton: It seems to me that this dream imagery tries again and again to drive home to my dense physical mind that God is One …

      Cayce: (Interrupting) Correct.

      Morton: God is all of these people passing in the hotel and all of the applicants for the stenographer job …

      Cayce: (Interrupting) Correct.

      Morton: All these people are phenomenized forms of God. Also God is all of these consciousnesses …

      Cayce: (Interrupting) Except that God is not the cosmic forces made by free-will man. These are not related to spiritual forces. These are earth made.

      (Based on 900-147)

      In many of his readings, Cayce explained that evil is man’s misuse of the gift of free will. The Creator allows this because free will is the only way for any soul to reach its original purpose for existence: to know itself to be itself yet choose to be one with the Whole, with the Creator and the creation. If free will is taken away, then the soul no longer has the potential to become an eternal companion with its creator. As the theological concept goes, man was made a little less than the angels but with the potential to judge even the angels. This is why souls misusing free will are allowed more time to discover their true purpose, even if they do much harm along the way. Eventually, as recorded in the Revelation, God will stop time and separate misusers from those who have tried to fulfill their purpose. He/She will then “wipe the tears from everyone’s eyes” and set up “a new heaven and a new earth” for the companionable souls to enjoy with God.

      According to Cayce’s readings and many other classic sources, before anything was created there existed something that caused the creation to begin. The potential for the creation—what Cayce often referred to as “the first impulse, the first cause”—was latent in pre-creation emptiness. A good way for us to grasp how there could be anything before the creation is to think of the infinite emptiness as a consciousness, much like our own, except that this consciousness was infinite and perfectly still; no thoughts; quiet. Imagining this with our own minds is one of the states of meditation: a clear, quiet mind—hard to do for even a few minutes. At some moment, this infinite mind began to move, to conceive, and the creation began. Imagine how the idea of light awoke, and playing with this idea, the infinite mind conceived of stars and galaxies of all shapes, sizes, and colors. At some moment in this conception process, Cayce says, the Universal Consciousness conceived of companions to itself, companions made in its own image: minds, with life, creativity, and free will. Countless little minds were conceived in the one, infinite mind.

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