The Essential Edgar Cayce (7 page)

Atlantic University offers in-depth study not only of the teachings of Edgar Cayce but also of a wide range of body-mind-spirit practitioners. The university also maintains an extensive Web site at
www.atlanticuniv.edu
, and is accredited through the Distance Education and Training Council, an organization authorized by the U.S. Department of Education to monitor schools’ delivery of curricula to students off-site.

The third organization cofounded by Edgar Cayce is also still active today, and it is by far the largest of the three endeavors. Soon after the demise of ANI, several of Cayce’s most ardent supporters helped him start a new nonprofit organization to continue his work, even though the treasured hospital project had been abandoned. The Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE), created in 1931, has for more than seventy years served to make Cayce’s work known to a wide array of audiences through publishing, membership, small group study, and conferences. As of the early twenty-first century, more than thirty thousand people are dues-paying members of ARE worldwide, but there are also literally hundreds of thousands of others who are students of Cayce’s work and access the various resources of ARE, especially its online materials at
www.edgarcayce.org
.

One prominent branch of ARE is publishing. Not only has ARE Press issued a CD-ROM edition of all the Cayce readings and supporting documents, each year it also publishes several new books about how the principles detailed in the readings can be applied to daily life.

Since 1931, ARE also has maintained a small group study program under the aegis of “A Search for God,” initially a single group in which Edgar Cayce himself was involved, eventually expanding over the decades to thousands of groups around the world. Cayce’s teachings have found a welcome audience in dozens of countries, many with their own organizations and translations of his teachings.

Edgar Cayce had some very specific intentions for ARE, which he articulated in a lecture he delivered on June 27, 1935, to the fourth annual gathering of members of ARE. Most pointedly, he said:

Do not get the idea that the Association is trying to revolutionize the world; or that it is entirely different from or better than that which anyone else has. As I understand the purpose of the Association, it is like this: If ONE individual during the past year has been aided in finding his relationship to God, then indeed the Association has been a marvelous success. On the other hand, if this has not been done, then, it has been a failure—no matter how many members it may have or how great an outward show it may make.

REPORT ATTACHED TO 254-87

And so it is the actual transformation of individual lives that Cayce himself set as a benchmark against which to evaluate the effectiveness of his teachings. The individual reader needs to decide for himself what in the teachings seems ripe for study and application and see if he feels his life is being changed for the better because of it. In this book, we will explore the “essential” Edgar Cayce, in eight chapters organized by theme, by examining the readings at the heart of his philosophy.

CHAPTER ONE

THE NATURE OF REALITY

ALTHOUGH THE VAST MAJORITY OF EDGAR CAYCE’S READINGS were for ordinary people and dealt with everyday issues, there was a foundation underlying his pragmatic advice, a metaphysical system defining the orderliness of the universe.

In this opening chapter, we explore three readings that present the essence of Cayce’s view of reality and our place in it. While the first of these readings was for a middle-aged woman who was ardently seeking her own spiritual answers, it has a profound message for
all
seekers. The second reading was Cayce’s attempt to depict reality in the broader sense, to paint the big picture, which was intended to be part of the 1943 biography
There Is a River.
Indeed reading 5749-14 is the pivotal reading given to Thomas Sugrue dealing with the overall philosophy governing the readings. The third reading addresses the problem of good and evil, and it was presented originally to a small group of Cayce’s followers who were preparing study materials for dissemination worldwide.

In exploring these three readings, notice how often Cayce attempts to weave together the theoretical and the personal—the head and the heart—and how often he satisfied (or at least intrigues) the mind while speaking to the heart and its need for values, ideals, and inspiration.

THE LAWS OF LIVING

At the heart of Edgar Cayce’s view of reality is this essential teaching: The universe is a lawful, orderly place, and there is a rhyme and reason to the events that unfold there, that life is built on dependable rules. Reading 1567-2 spells out this philosophy in its most direct and succinct expression. It was given to a fifty-two-year-old woman who was deeply involved in “New Thought,” spiritual teachings originating in the late nineteenth century that contain many principles that overlap Cayce’s own, including the importance of self-discipline, meditation, and prayer. No doubt this background made her a particularly good candidate to receive his message.

In many ways, here is Edgar Cayce the metaphysician at his best. Metaphysics largely deals with two issues: the nature of existence or being (
ontology
), and the orderly systems of the universe (
cosmology
). Cayce deals eloquently with both issues in the reading: he addresses who we are really and how we came into being; he addresses the question of God’s most basic nature; and he addresses the laws that govern our experience—for example, the roles of mind and free will in shaping our experience, or the deeper meaning of astrology. The following four points stand out as centerpieces of Cayce’s metaphysical system:

All life is an expression of the one God, who truly exists.
God is not a figment of our imagination, something that humans dreamed up long ago because they feared death. God is the foundation of all that is. Furthermore, the life that comes from God is continuous, eternal, and therefore our own lives as spiritual beings are continuous, eternal, and go beyond the grave.

Life is purposeful.
God started with a plan for us as souls. And even though each one of us chose to drift away—we made an “error of individual activity,” as Cayce puts it—that plan is still available to us. The good new is that the plan is all-inclusive, including all aspects of ourselves: physical, mental, and spiritual. That means that in discovering and fulfilling God’s plan for us, we are not required to deny any aspect of our human experience.

The outer universe is represented in our own inner universe.
The macrocosm reflects the microcosm, and vice versa. An event that happens on the broader scale of the universe also happens on the narrower scale of ourselves. One illustration of this principle is found in astrology (see appendix 2, “Edgar Cayce and Astrology,” page 267, for more detail).

Each of us has a free will and the power to create.
Mind and free will are the two attributes through which each soul can express spiritual energy. The mind exists with one foot in the material world, the other in the spiritual world. While the mind has the potential to be creative in either world, it’s the free will—the “ability to choose for self”—that determines which one will dominate the other. Those choices of the will shape the very essence of one’s character and individuality.

As valuable as these four principles are, we nevertheless need to look for an even broader message in reading 1567-2. Edgar Cayce is more than a teacher of metaphysics, and this reading clearly shows he goes beyond how and why things are the way they are and ventures into the dimension of purposes, moral values, and ethics. It’s that extra dimension that lends his philosophy its depth.

We miss the point of Cayce’s life and work if we reduce his philosophy to the metaphysical exclusively.
It’s easy to fall into this trap because he does such a good job answering tough metaphysical questions. For instance, reading 1567-2 is full of fascinating clues about the many riddles of our existence. But in our delight in finding such a treasure chest of explanations, we need to notice some of the quieter, less sensationalistic truths about our purposes and ideals, about our values and ethics. Two such truths stand out especially in this reading.

There is meaning in suffering.
Suffering is not simply punishment for things we’ve done wrong in the past. Suffering is unavoidable; each of us experiences frustrations, disappointments, and pain. That’s just the character of physical life, as the Buddha said. Or, as Edgar Cayce said, we’ve entered into a realm of “trials of body and of mind” that tend to cloud the glories we might see. The good news is that even suffering can serve a higher purpose: It’s where we are tested so that we may be open to receive the reassuring, healing grace of the Divine. And what does suffering teach us about values and ideals? It shows us a new way of seeing and understanding our own pain, that guilt and shame aren’t appropriate, that it is at these very times that quiet encounters with the spirit are most likely to occur.

We are responsible to each other.
The essential issue of life is how we treat our fellow human beings. We aren’t so much responsible
for
each other as we have obligations
to
each other. In fact, it’s in this social realm that we have the best chance to fulfill the purpose that our soul enters into the material realm in the first place. We’re here to become aware of our relationship to God, and that awareness comes primarily in the ways we think about, talk to, and interact with other human beings.

Taken together, these two truths of Edgar Cayce’s philosophy give us the big picture of his thinking: insightful, metaphysical laws that teach us why things are the way they are alongside the quieter, more modest reminders of what we need to value most in who we are. When we understand and apply what the readings have to offer from
both
these points of view, then we become students of Edgar Cayce in the deepest sense. The following life reading was given in 1938, and although intended for a specific individual, it is a beautiful illustration of what Cayce had in mind for all of us.

THE READING

THIS PSYCHIC READING, 1567-2,
WAS GIVEN BY EDGAR CAYCE ON MAY 26, 1938.
The conductor was Gertrude Cayce.

EC:
Yes, we have the records here of that entity now known as or called Miss [1567].

These as we find may be said to be very beautiful records, yet in ways such that it may be questioned by some as to why one who has been so far advanced in some experiences has been so little in the limelight or in the position of prominence through the same ways in the present.

If the varied experiences are studied with an eye single to service, these may possibly be understood or comprehended. For remember that God looketh on the heart and not, as man, upon the outward appearances.

Hence there are lessons to be gained by the entity from even those feelings, those innate urges that cry for expression. For in their very expression, not finding outlet they turn as it were upon those influences from within.

But we find that if these are used, the entity may yet find a peace, a manner or way of expression that will bring joy into the experience in this sojourn.

In giving the interpretations, know that these are chosen with the purpose that they are to become helpful experiences.

An experience, then, is not only a happening, but what is the reaction in your own mind? What does it do to you to make your life, your habits, your relationships to others of a more helpful nature, with a more hopeful attitude?

These are the criterions for every individual’s experience—sincerity of purpose, of desire; putting the whole law into effect in the activities—which is to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, thy mind, thy body, and thy neighbor as thyself.

This is the whole law. All the other things given or written are only the interpreting of same.

Then what does such a proclaiming preclude? From what basis is the reasoning drawn? What is the purpose of an individual experience of an entity or soul into the earth at any given period?

These answered then give a background for the interpreting of
why.

There are urges latent and manifested in the experience of each soul, each entity, each body.

First we begin with the fact that God
is;
and that the heavens and the earth, and all nature, declare this. Just as there is the longing within
every
heart for the continuity of life.

What then is life? As it has been given, in Him we live and move and have our being. Then He, God,
is!
Or life in all of its phases, its expressions, is a manifestation of that force or power we call God, or that is called God.

Then life is continuous. For that force, that power which has brought the earth, the universe and all the influences in same into being, is a continuous thing—is a first premise.

All glory, all honor then, is
due
that creative force that may be manifested in our experiences as individuals through the manner in which we deal with our fellow man!

Then we say, when our loved ones, our heart’s desires are taken from us, in what are we to believe?

This we find is only answered in that which has been given as His promise, that God hath not willed that any soul should perish but hath with every temptation, every trial, every disappointment made a way of escape or for correcting same. It is not a way of justification only, as by faith, but a way to know, to realize that in these disappointments, separations, there comes the assurance that He cares!

For to be absent from the body is to be present with that consciousness that we, as an individual, have worshiped as our God! For as we do it unto the least of our brethren, our associates, our acquaintance, our servants day by day, so we do unto our Maker!