Many people find the discourses somewhat difficult to read, especially at first. They often seem rather stilted, and they are full of references to the King James Bible. The sentences are frequently long, complex, and discursive in nature, and much reads like poetic advice-giving. Those new to Cayce may find reading appendix 1, “How to Read and Study a Cayce Reading,” page 263, helpful before starting the text.
Given the wide range of topics that Edgar Cayce addressed over the years, what was it that finally allowed his work to make a significant impression both here and overseas? Beginning in the 1960s, the increased appreciation of Cayce ultimately came not from sensationalistic earth-change prophecies or even clairvoyant diagnoses; it came from his holistic philosophy of life, his skillful blending of Eastern and Western traditions to heal the body and feed the soul. What’s more, Cayce himself is an exemplar of Americana: raised in a lower-middle-class, rural environment, with only an eighth-grade education, he “made good” somehow. But his achievements weren’t typically American entrepreneurial; they were life-enhancing, and they were for the common good. In many ways, he was ahead of his time, and truly appreciated only after all these decades following his death.
THE ESSENCE OF THE CAYCE PHILOSOPHY
Before exploring theories and models of human experience proposed by Edgar Cayce, let’s identify the key themes that run throughout his work. Here are twelve points that speak to the heart of his philosophy—the “Cayce dozen,” as it were, of the essential principles of life. Some, such as the purposefulness of life and the reality of evil, are explored in much more detail in later chapters.
1. Everything is connected—all is one.
The oneness of all life is the foundation on which the teachings of Edgar Cayce rest. He even said on one occasion that those interested in studying spiritual law should first study the principles of oneness for six months before moving on. Clearly, oneness means more than just some platitude we toss about—“All is one”—and then keep living our lives based on superficial distinctions rather than the deeper reality of unity.
To call Cayce a mystic means to see his work in terms of oneness, for surely the essence of mysticism is a belief in the underlying unity of all things that otherwise appear to be distinct. Mysticism means going beyond differentiating such qualities as inner and outer, light and dark, good and bad, and bringing together the extremes. As Cayce often put it, “Only in the Christ Consciousness do the extremes meet.” His point here was not to rank one religion over another but to champion a state of consciousness that lives as potential within all of us.
But Cayce’s mystical approach takes things a step further. Once we perceive that unity links the apparent differences in life, then it’s our challenge to return to the world of distinctions and apply what we have learned as practical mystics. We can bring this sense of oneness to everything we do, which leads to the second essential principle.
2. Life is purposeful.
Edgar Cayce’s readings remind us that life has a central purpose. We are born to bring the creative, spiritual world into the daily material world—“making the infinite finite.” What’s more, each of us is born with a personal mission, a “soul-purpose,” which we will examine in more detail in chapter 5, “The Soul’s Journey.” Essentially, Cayce suggests that each of us is created with certain talents, skills, and aptitudes that equip us for a unique “way of being” in the world. That way of being promotes our own spiritual awakening; and, equally important, that way of being promotes the well-being of others. There is an aspect of service to soul-purpose, a sense of making a contribution to the world. Cayce often helped people see the soul-purpose in their lives by articulating individual personal mission statements for those receiving life readings.
3. Approach life as an adventure.
Life is meant to be a playful search for the truth. It is research in the broadest sense of the word. Edgar Cayce named his holistic facility the Cayce Hospital of Research and Enlightenment. And when it failed financially, he and his supporters launched a new venture: the Association for Research and Enlightenment. Its very name speaks of its commitment to explore the experimental side of Cayce’s concepts.
Edgar Cayce repeatedly taught that we learn only by testing ideas in our own lives. He often emphasized, in fact, that people should take from his teachings only what worked for them personally, which can be determined only through personal research and application. To those who wanted to jump straight to wisdom or enlightenment without the hard work of testing, he might comment:
Let there be outlined each phase that is to be studied, each phase that is to be a research. It’s often stated that the work IS a research and enlightenment program; but how much research have you done? Isn’t it presented rather as enlightenment without much research? Then, don’t get the cart before the horse! It doesn’t work so well! 254-81
4. Be noncompetitive; show compassion.
Nothing takes us away quicker from the sense of oneness, and therefore away from our own soul-purpose, than the drive for competitiveness. Here, competition is not so much about playing sports in which one team tries to outscore the other but about comparing ourselves to others and making a bid for superiority—competition that paralyzes the growth of the soul. It is the opposite of compassion.
Compassion is the capacity to be present for another person and experience how we are all really the same. It is a matter of feeling with another person, not taking responsibility for that person but being responsible (and responsive) to that person. And compassion is a matter of serving others, not just feeling a connection to them but helping them in a way that demonstrates that oneness. As Cayce sometimes put it:
For, to obtain the consciousness and awareness of coming into His presence, or as one would call to heaven, it will be as if it were leaning on the arm of someone ye have tried to help. For as ye do it unto thy brother, ye do it unto thy Maker. Know they are immutable laws. God is, and ye as a daughter, as a servant of the most high God, are His handmaid. Then act like it!
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5. Take responsibility for yourself.
No one else can fix things for you. Yes, help is available, but ultimately each soul is accountable for itself and each of us must use our free will to promote purposeful, healthy living. This principle of self-responsibility is a cornerstone of Edgar Cayce’s holistic health recommendations, and it’s core to his approach to spiritual development as well.
People usually don’t take this personal responsibility message seriously. It’s far easier to blame others for our problems; in fact, it takes considerable maturity to see how we create our own difficulties. The question Cayce would ask us all to ponder is: What am I going to do with the challenges, limitations, and obstacles that I face in my life right now? Too readily, we can end up wasting time and energy by trying to pin blame on someone else—our parents, other family members, the government. Take responsibility for your own life and find the resources, both inside and outside yourself, that can lead to a resolution.
Edgar Cayce was especially adept at articulating this responsibility issue for those suffering from health problems. And yet, rather than embracing self-responsibility and self-care, it seems so much easier to let someone else take care of us, especially doctors and other health care professionals. Cayce was quick to affirm that prescriptive medicines and surgery have their place, but real healing—in body, mind, and spirit—is going to happen only if we take hold of the situation and do our own part fully.
6. Look ahead rather than back.
Edgar Cayce had a strong sense of history, especially history as presented in the Old Testament. For him, the present and the future cannot be understood outside the context of the past. Yet as rooted as Cayce was in this worldview, it came as a shock to him when his readings spontaneously began to address reincarnation—in his case, reincarnation as previous human lives and not other life-forms. The idea that each of us has had previous lives was totally alien to his conservative Chri
stian belief system, and it took years for him to become comfortable with the concept personally.
This reincarnation aspect of Cayce’s spiritual philosophy is still a major obstacle for many. Although the percentage of people in the Western world who accept (or at least entertain) the idea of reincarnation has grown in recent decades, it is still a minority point of view, and it is generally viewed as coming from Eastern religious thought. One argument against reincarnation is that it becomes counterproductive as a belief system, easily leading people into a preoccupation with the past, and an easy excuse to put off today the work of spiritual development.
In chapter 5, we will look more closely at Edgar Cayce’s concept of reincarnation and karma (that is, the law of cause and effect that governs reincarnation). Since a majority of his nonmedical discourses include extensive material about reincarnation, we can hardly expect to grasp the “essential” Edgar Cayce without addressing this controversial topic. But, surprisingly, Cayce’s emphasis was on the future. Reincarnation and past lives are only meant to help the individual understand the present and how it and the past play a powerful role in shaping the future. Rather than have the individual obsess on who or where he was hundreds of years ago, Cayce helps him understand how it all leads to the future.
Although Edgar Cayce never used the term, it was almost as if he was more interested in preincarnation than reincarnation. In essence, he was saying to always look ahead and never back. Realize that you have been here before. But, more interesting, realize you’re going to be here again. So make choices in this lifetime that will help create the best possible results in the next lifetime.
This line of reasoning, of course, can be taken too far, and you can lose touch with today because of preoccupation with tomorrow. But Cayce’s readings always seem to steer a pragmatic course through such pitfalls. Live today, he taught, but know you have a stake in tomorrow, and not just because it’s the world your children will inherit but because you may be part of it, too.
7. Changing anything starts with an ideal.
Motives, purposes, and ideals are at the center of Edgar Cayce’s psychology. We shape our own material life with our own attitudes and emotions. “Mind is the builder,” as he often put it. But behind any attitude or emotion is always a motive. If you want to change anything in life, you need to start at the motivational level. Then you need to decide what is the purpose—what Cayce called the ideal—for making the change. Once you’ve settled on your purpose/ideal, something almost magically seems to shift inside. It’s a shift in intentionality that allows you to start seeing and responding to life in a whole new way. As your motives clarify, in turn, your attention focuses. You begin to see things about yourself and other people that escaped your notice before. And with a new orientation toward your purpose in life, you begin to see opportunities for creative expression where before you saw only obstacles.
Of course there are many ideals that can promote soul growth and health: love, joyfulness, freedom, truth. Echoing the first of our twelve principles (Everything is connected—all is one), an ideal that Cayce encouraged people to adopt was oneness, a motivation to relate to the world around them in terms of their connectedness with it rather than their differences from it. And with oneness comes the intentionality to act in a way that benefits not just the self but everyone involved. The desire to use one’s talents to serve others becomes a natural impulse.
Psychologically, the essence of a health reading was to challenge the recipient to find a higher motivation for getting well other than to just be free of discomfort. If getting well is just a matter of going back to what you were doing before, then it’s very likely you would get sick all over again. To change anything, including your health, in a truly lasting way requires a fundamental shift in life orientation. It’s a matter of finding a new vision of the purpose of your life and setting a new ideal.
8. All time is one time.
Common sense tells us that the past is unchangeable and the future unknowable. But sometimes something else stirs inside us to suggest otherwise. Sometimes, often in subtle ways, we get hints about the deeper mysteries of time—a precognitive dream, perhaps, or a déjà vu experience. If we pay as close attention to our inner lives as our outer lives, we find clues that time is more complex than we thought.
“All time is one time—see?” Cayce recorded. “That is a fact . . .” (294-45). A radically new idea of time is required if we hope to understand how the universe is structured and how we can meet the practical challenges of spirituality. But what are the chances of actually understanding how time works? Modern physics presents a dizzying analysis of time that allows for time frames of a relativistic nature that move at different speeds and, more mystifying yet, might even move backward. Could this be part of what Cayce meant by “All time is one time”?
Or consider the human wish to experience eternity. What does eternity really mean? Is it the desire to live for a long, long time—maybe forever? A different understanding emerges once we release the simplistic idea that time is only a line that stretches back into the distant past and forward into the endless future. Eternity has much more to do with the quality of how we experience the present moment. It is this experience of the infinite that cuts through every moment in time. Just imagine how life would change if we redirected energy devoted to worrying about the future into trying to awaken to the eternity of right now.
9. Success cannot be measured by material standards.
Measuring success, especially in terms of one’s soul, is elusive. We can’t use the same standards for measuring our outer life as we use for measuring our internal life. As Edgar Cayce put it, we should not “attempt to measure spiritual things by material standards, nor MATERIAL things by SPIRITUAL standards” (254- 60). In other words, while the conditions of one’s life may seem a dismal failure outwardly, inwardly there may be authentic spiritual progress being made.
While this way of looking at the relative nature of success seems to fly in the face of the West’s preoccupation with achieving, even the business world today has started to seize on certain spiritual and holistic disciplines because they, too, promise certain outward results—whether it’s using meditation to manage stress and promote greater employee productivity, or employing dream guidance to make better decisions about the stock market. Yet outward success does not necessarily translate into concurrent spiritual growth.
To push this line of reasoning a little further, sometimes it is our failures in the practical, material world that stimulate us to look more deeply into the invisible world of our spiritual life. This anomaly applies to Cayce’s own story. How often he seemed to fail at what he tried to do. His story is full of disappointments, even catastrophes (his photographic studio burned down twice), and yet when we read his biography with an eye toward spiritual success we see that sometimes his failures outwardly pushed him deeper inwardly into his spiritual gifts. He often made this point to people in the midst of apparent failure. And he often perceived clairvoyantly that inner success was possible even if the outer world was in disarray.
10. Courage is essential to any spiritual growth.
As important as high aspirations and ideals are, we have to do something with them, and that takes courage. “He without an ideal is sorry indeed; he with an ideal and lacking courage to live it is sorrier still. Know that” (1402-1).
The spiritual quality of courage is indeed a crucial yet often misunderstood key to the growth of the soul. We are presented with superficial, sensationalistic images of courage by the media. It’s depicted as a kind of daredevil recklessness. But true courage is something different. The Latin root word for courage is cor, which means “heart.” Courage awakens in us not in the absence of fear but in the face of it. Courage is the decision that there is something more important than the fear we feel.
11. Evil is real and comes in many forms.
Edgar Cayce treats evil as very real, and two points from his philosophy are worth consi
dering in that regard. First, evil has many “faces,” many ways it presents itself in daily life. Unless we are prepared to deal with its multifaceted ways, we surely will be confused and overwhelmed by it as it swirls around us.
Second, we recognize and deal with evil in the outer world only to the extent that we undertake the distasteful yet courageous work of meeting it within ourselves. Cayce sometimes made this point with the following aphorism: “There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.” And so even though our self-justifying minds are quick to point out that we don’t do those atrocious, abusive things we see on the nightly news, there are nevertheless ways in which each of us—albeit on a smaller scale—acts out some of the same themes in our own lives.
In order to see our personal role in evil, it’s useful to return to the first point that there are many faces of evil and that some of these faces are more alive in us personally than others. According to Cayce, there are at least five angles from which we can understand and relate to evil (or bad, as he sometimes referred to it):
The Essential Edgar Cayce Page 3
