Edgar Cayce – The Healing Channel
Edgar Cayce had no medical degree, and yet doctors used him to diagnose the most obscure illnesses and to recommend the correct treatments. It was his great frustration that he knew nothing of what he had directed them to do, he could only find out when they gave him the records of what he had said.
IS it possible to see into the past or future? Can an ordinary man obtain knowledge he has never learnt or heard? Do human beings have extraordinary powers?
In the August of 1 902, Edgar Cayce was called to the house of Mr. and Mrs. Dietrich of Hopkinsville, USA Their five year old daughter Aime had been ill for three years, after an attack of flu at the age of two, she had stopped developing mentally. The Dietrich’s were quite wealthy and had tried many specialists, with no avail. It must have been desperation that urged them to ask a young, rather shy book-shop assistant to see if he could help the girl.
Cayce explained that he was not a doctor and knew nothing of medicine, or why the child had convulsions. The Dietrich’s said they understood this, but urged him to continue. Loosening his shoes and tie, Cayce reclined on their sofa and went to sleep. Standing nearby, A. L. Layne, a friend of Cayce, began to ask him questions about Aime. Remaining asleep, Edgar answered in a clear voice and in great detail.
When he woke up, Mrs. Dietrich was crying ‘You have given us the first hope we have had that Aime can recover.’ Edgar’s only reply was: ‘What did I say?
While asleep, he had explained that a few days before catching ‘flu, Aime had slipped and hit the end of her spine displacing one of her vertebrae. The flu germs had been able to enter the spine, but he said that osteopathic adjustments to the vertebrae would cure her.
This was done, and a few days later Aime spoke the name of a doll, a thing she had not done since her first attacks. From then on she rapidly developed into a normal five year-old. Some years later, the case became headlines in the New York Times (9/10/1910) due to a corroborative medical report.
Diagnosing While Asleep
How did he do it? The Dietrich case was one of thousands he helped or cured through diagnosing and prescribing while asleep. Awake, he was a man with little education, asleep he was an amazing doctor, physiologist, seer, historian, philosopher, mystic and much else besides. At a time when he suffered an incurable loss of voice and after unsuccessful attempts by hypnotists, he found he could put himself into a sleep state at will.
In this condition, A. L. Layne asked him to diagnose his illness, which he did, and it resulted in a cure. Layne who was himself ill asked Cayce to try diagnosing for others. Being a very orthodox Christian, Edgar felt very apprehensive about this strange ability, but eventually agreed to try. To everyone’s amazement, a detailed medical report was given to Layne, along with treatments, Layne too recovered.
From this small beginning,’ news spread, and in 1910, when the New York Times printed a report, people from all over the world began to ask his help. Cayce was himself baffled at first by his ability. During his sleep state, he explained that due to his endeavours in his past lives, Edgar Cayce had the ability to tap the knowledge of his own and other people’s unconscious mind. Not only this, but his unconscious could also draw information from the universal mind or memory of nature (sometimes called the superconscious) and express it consciously.
Everybody, he maintained, also tapped the superconscious, but most people through their activities, attitudes and way of life, had built a barrier within, making it difficult to make this knowledge conscious.
Edgar Cayce could also sometimes look ahead in time, not always accurately, but often amazingly so. In 1932 he said, when asked about the next fifty years, ‘This had best be cast after the great catastrophe that’s coming to the world in ’36, in the breaking up of many powers that now exist as factors in the world affairs. The first noticeable change will be the acceptance or rejection of the first Court of Last Resort in the world. Then the break up in ’36 will be the change that will make different maps of the world.’
Later, he said peace would be established in ’44 and ’45. Looking further ahead, he said that between the years 1968 and ’98, the world would experience enormous earthquakes and geophysical changes. Much of Japan, New York and California would be devastated. These, he said, were all part of the changes preparing man and the world for the next stage in evolution
personal consciousness of God. But prophecy was a difficult business, he explained, as mankind creates their own future by their present actions. Thus one can gain an idea of the present direction, but this could be altered by changes of heart, of ideal on the part of individuals and nations.
Cayce not only looked into the future, or into an individual’s present history, he also looked into their past lives, and into man’s historical past. He gave many ‘life readings’, which were descriptions of an individual’s past lives, and what influences they brought to bear on present activities. The many doctors, scientists and historians who became fascinated by his information, found his comments on reincarnation hard to take. Nevertheless, he helped many in this way.
David Greenwood was an average fourteen year-old when his sister requested a life reading for him. She wished to help him choose a suitable career. In his reading, Cayce said that David had lived in the France of Louis XIII as a keeper of the Robes in the royal court. This gave him an ability in the present to be very aware of fashion and clothing.
In a life prior to that, he had been a tradesman called Colval, on the Aegean coast of Greece. He achieved a position of power through being in the right place at the right time when one government was overthrown, and a new one begun. But he misused his position. This life helped him develop the ability to fit himself in well when meeting a variety of people and situations.
Before this, as one Abiel in Persia during an invasion, he again reached a position of authority due to social unrest, and he became a court physician. In his present life, this produced a desire to be a physician, and interest in chemical compounds. Also, he lived in Egypt once more during an invasion, and the three such lives giving him an insight into mass psychology, and how to cope with social stress.
As Isois in the Egyptian life he was a diplomat between the people and the conquerors. In this life too, he was connected with special clothing. David eventually got work in the clothing trade, selling school and band uniforms. He became the top salesman in his company, uniting his trading instincts with those of anticipating a person’s clothing needs. During the war he became officer in charge of clothing incoming troops, dealing with clothing on an enormous scale.
Another man seeking a life reading was Dave Kahn. Dave was told he had been an Irishman, and worked as an aide to Lord Howe, a famous English soldier. Cayce went on to say that General Somerville of the American forces was in fact the reincarnation of Lord Howe, and if Dave would go to him, without knowing why, General Somerville would take him on as an aide. Dave Kahn did get an introduction to General Somerville, and was taken on as an aide. Because of other past life influences, Dave was also advised to go into the wood and metal business. Needless to say, he did. He became a millionaire through the results.
These are just two examples of Cayce’s 2,500 Life Readings, just as the Dietrich case is but one’ of even more thousands, all recorded and open to view in a huge cross-referenced file of his 14,000,000 words. These are kept at Virginia Beach, USA and are made available to the public by The Association for Research and Enlightenment. (Books about him can be obtained from A.R.E. Press, 80 St. James Road, Surbiton, Surrey.)
During his life, Cayce became the spiritual teacher, or guru, of many people. Out of him came detailed information on meditation, self development, discovery of talents, dream interpretation, and many other areas of individual self realisation.
Looking at some of the vast store of information in those 14,000,000 words, can be fascinating, like his remedy for tired eyes – one part of glyco thymoline to three parts of distilled water. Place cotton wool pads dipped in the solution on the eyes for ten minutes, and all the soreness is gone.
A recipe I have used myself for years is his tooth powder: equal parts of salt and bicarbonate of soda mixed together. The salt has a mild scouring effect, and the bicarb’, being a strong alkali, clears mouth acids. This often takes the ‘sting’ out of aching teeth, as the ache is usually due to sugars causing acids to eat away at the teeth. Alkalinity. and salt are also germ inhibitors.
For girls who want a lovely skin, Cayce recommended a 20 minute soak in a warm, but not hot, bath. Wash well and massage with a good soap, such as Castile. Have a lotion ready containing two oz. of peanut oil (arachis), two oz. of olive oil, two oz. of rose water, and one tablespoon of dissolved lanolin. After wiping dry, rub this thoroughly into the skin all over the body, especially the face and neck, hips and diaphragm. A chemist can make up the lotion for you, and it will last for many treatments of once of twice a week.
But even at the beginning of the century, Cayce, in his sleep state, said that most disease had its origins, its source of development, in the emotions, and attitudes. Lack of forgiveness, jealousy, and the other negative emotions are as disease-producing as any germs. Time and again he said ‘Mind is the builder’, and what thoughts and attitudes you hold on to are built gradually into your being. ‘No one’ he said, ‘can hate his neighbour, and not have stomach or liver trouble.’
When asked what was the point of a mentally defective or handicapped child being born, he said that here the entity was facing the result of actions in past lives. Nevertheless, the experience was really an opportunity for the soul-personality, not a punishment. Through it, a new attitude to life could be learnt. The parents too can profit by the relationship. ‘Don’t put the body away’ he said. ‘It needs the love, the attention.’ In one such case of idiocy, he said the personality had practised sexual abnormalities on women slaves during a past life in Egypt. A woman who nursed him had been one of these slaves, and felt a horrible repulsion, but through persistently putting her repulsion aside and offering as much love as she could muster, the patient slowly learnt the lesson of love. Instead of smearing himself’ with faeces, tearing all his clothes, refusing food, he began to keep himself clean, eat normally, and follow her every movement with loving devotion, and generally improved.
One night, when Edgar and his wife were just going to bed, there was a knock on the front door. Edgar went, and his wife heard him talking for about an hour. When he came back to bed, she asked him who it was. The strange reply was that it was a friend they had known some time ago. She had died, and had come to Edgar to help her understand her situation. This was not an unusual event for him. ‘When we are born in the physical body we die to the spiritual life,’ he said. ‘When we die to the physical life, we are born to the spiritual. After death the soul and spirit feed upon and, in a sense are possessed by that which was created – thought and realised -by the mind in the earth experience.’
Lastly, can we too have such insights, such helpfulness to others, such capabilities? Yes, says Cayce, we can each come to these. But there is no need to attempt a cultivation of them. Seek rather to consecrate all of yourself to God. These abilities will then come naturally of themselves -Spontaneously in the ministering to and listening to the needs of others.
Cayce died from overwork in 1945. He tried to help too many people, but nevertheless he has left us a heritage of his many words, and a great many changed lives.