Reading 294-202

TEXT OF READING 294-202 M 64

Text

Date: 6/20/1941 Sex: M Age: 64 ReadingID: 2161

This Psychic Reading given by Edgar Cayce at the office of the Association, Arctic Crescent, Virginia Beach, Va., this 20th day of June, 1941, in accordance with request made by those present at the Tenth Annual Congress of the Ass”n for Research & Enlightenment, Inc.

[Edgar Cayce; Gertrude Cayce, Conductor; Gladys Davis, Steno. Helen Godfrey, Mildred White, Ruth LeNoir, Enid Smith, Kathryn Patterson, Henrietta McClelland, Beatrice & Richmond Seay, Burt Davis, Ralph Courtney, Mme. Felipe, Beulah Emmet, Florence Edmonds, Mary Wirsing, Hannah Miller, Minnie Barrett, Esther Wynne, Frances Y. Morrow, Gladys & Charles Dillman, Malcolm Allen, Arnette Lane, Mignon Helms, Almeda Newman, Sallie Jones, Lucille & David Kahn, Marion Wolfe, Helen Williams, Leona & Charles Rosborough, Hugh Lynn Cayce and others.]

Time of Reading 3:45 to 4:10 P. M. …, Va.

1. GC: Considering the fact that a major portion of the information given through Edgar Cayce has dealt with bettering the physical health of individuals, and in view of the fact that the information appears to be based upon certain fundamental principles, you will give at this time a discourse on the truths of human anatomy and health upon which the analyses and suggestions for treatments are based. You will then answer any questions that may be asked.

2. EC: Yes, we have the question sought. Yet those analyzing and attempting to secure information have not rightly judged sources nor the conditions surrounding that which prompted the activities of the individual entity, Edgar Cayce, in seeking to be a channel to give helpful information for human ills.

3. First, then, in dealing with the whys and wherefores of the fact that the greater portion of that given has proved beneficial to others in correcting and in meeting the ills in their physical being, - let’s turn for the moment to the individual entity, Edgar Cayce.

4. Consider the fact that there was first the study, the meditation and prayer upon His Word, which brought that desire, that hope, that purpose to give self as a channel through which help might come to those who would in Him seek for the betterment of their physical forces and conditions.

5. Then consider the vision, the spoken word: “ASK! WHAT SEEKEST THOU? WHAT DESIREST THOU TO DO?” Then: “THY PRAYER HAS BEEN HEARD.”

6. The desire was that there might be the ability to help others who were ill, - especially children.

7. The results through the years speak for themselves. As to whether or not there has been the remitting of those disturbing factors in the human ills, - this has come to those who have in their seeking put God first.

8. As to a discourse upon the sources of the information for human ills, then, and how or why such may be helpful to others:

9. First, there are those influences that arise in the minds of those who hear of such. Then there is set in motion DESIRE, PURPOSE, AIM.

10. Those that seek, then, attune themselves to that promise which was made to this entity, Edgar Cayce. Then the entity when in that state, that condition where the physical self is laid aside, becomes the channel. Then only SPIRIT-MIND, as may attune itself with the purpose of the seeker, may give that as may be helpful in the experience of any of those who seek to know better their relationships to their Maker.

11. Who knows better than the individuals themselves that which has hindered them from being physically, mentally, spiritually in accord with the divine that IS life manifested in the body?

12. From whence comes that individual entity’s ability to cope with the problems?

13. Are ye not all children of God? Are ye not co-creators with Him? Have ye not been with Him from the beginning? Is there any knowledge, wisdom or understanding withheld if ye have attuned thyself to that Creative Force which made the worlds and all the forces manifested in same? Thinkest thou that the arm of God is ever short with thee because thou hast erred? “Though ye be afar, though ye be in the uttermost parts, if ye call I will HEAR! and answer speedily.” Thinkest thou that speakest of another, or to thee?

14. Open thy mind, thy heart, thy purpose to thy God and His purpose with thee.

15. As to why this or that information may be indicated oft to individuals through this channel, - this may be determined by those who analyze same from a practical, material experience - as a psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst. An individual who understands the pathology of a physical body is taken where he is, and is supplied that information which if applied in that condition existent will be helpful in his relationship to that he worships!

16. God seeks all to be one with Him. And as all things were made by Him, that which is the creative influence in every herb, mineral, vegetable or individual activity IS that same force ye call God, - and SEEKS expression! Even as when God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. For, this is law; this is love.

17. Hence those who seek in sincerity, in hope, in purpose, to KNOW, receive; only to the measure that they manifest their hope, their belief, their desire in a God-purpose through a promise made to a man!

18. Thus ye have the source. Thus ye have the manner. The seeker answers. For, know ye, all: Ye give an account unto God for every deed, for every idle word, for every purposeful hope ye have made manifest.

19. Then, to all:

20. Let not thy heart be troubled. Let it not be afraid. For ye believe in God.

21. Then, as His children - for thy sake, for thy Lord’s sake - act like it!

22. We are through.

Reports

Reports & Follow-up

R1. See subsequent Ck. Physical rdgs. and subsequent dreams, not interpreted, listed under 294-196 Reports.

R2. 8/24/41 EC obtained aura chart rdg. 294-204.

R3. 6/21/41 See Thos. Sugrue’s address below:

THE MEANING OF EDGAR CAYCE by THOMAS SUGRUE

An address delivered before the dinner meeting of the 10th Annual Congress of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc., at the Warner Hotel, Virginia Beach, Virginia, June, 21, 1941.

Now and again there occurs in the history of each of us a crisis which brings up the old, fundamental questions of why we exist, what purpose our lives are meant to have, and what eternity holds for that part of us which survives.

Such periods of crisis occur also in the history of families, communities, states, and nations.

At these times we, as people, find that we must think not only about what we are and what we mean as persons, but about what we are and what we mean as groups, as societies, as cultures, as civilizations.

It is then that we discover that no life - no matter what its form or substance - exists without a plan and a purpose.

We are aware of this, of course, at all times; but we are content to be aware of it dimly, intuitively, as we are aware of tomorrow, next week, next year - as we are aware that other people have inner lives similar to our own. We know it, but we do not think about it: we lose ourselves in what is close at hand - in today, in yesterday, in our wants and likes and dreams. Desire overcomes purpose. It is only when desire is threatened that we turn to purpose. The crusades, reformations, and new religions spring up. Saints are made out of sinners, and man seems at last to have set out on a highway to heaven.

But as soon as purpose has overcome the threat to desire, man returns to his former love. The wagons of the caravan stand unmoving. The oxen are cut from the traces, and the marching feet begin to dance.

Still, each time this happens a few keep moving forward, and all of us are a little farther along the road.

Until now there has never been a time when the world as a whole faced the same crisis - and turned with all of its people toward the questions of life and death and destiny.

It has happened in our time; all of us, tonight, tomorrow, and in the days which stretch ahead, must answer to ourselves and to each other the old questions: we must answer to ourselves for the life we have lived and are living now; to each other for the world we have made - the world we hoped to leave for our children.

We must account for everything we have done, if we are honestly to face the future. We must account for this organization we call the Association for Research and Enlightenment. What is it? What is its purpose? Why should it not go in flames with the rest of the smug way of life we have built?

Perhaps, if we are honest with ourselves, we can answer those questions.

During the past forty-one years we have so modified space and time that the world - which once seemed as disconnected and as far-flung as the universe - is now a community. Catastrophe does not face one army, or even all armies; it faces everyone, everywhere.

And so, even at this moment, people in all the lands of the earth are digging up the old, familiar questions: who are they? what do they mean? where are they going? why should they choose one course rather than another? why should they resist evil if evil makes their lives less painful, more bearable? what is the difference between right and wrong anyhow? who is God? where is He? why does he permit sorrow and pestilence, aggression and terror? is life more than a biological process? why fight for principles, instead of bread?

The Japanese, the Chinese, the peoples of India and Persia, the Turks, the British, the Germans - all of the peoples of Europe and of the Americas are asking themselves these questions - turning within themselves for answers, just as Greeks and Romans and Syrians turned within themselves for answers in the first days of Christianity, when they heard of a Man Who was crucified in Jerusalem and Who rose from the dead.

Before we can discover what the world is, and where it is going, we must discover what we are, and where we are not going: the whole is only the sum of its parts - it is not different from them; it is not separate from them; it cannot proceed except in the direction which its parts, by their separate movements, ordain.

We take the study of ourselves for granted - we confuse it with study of the external world. Each of us, at one time or another, does a certain amount of thinking about God and the universe and his soul: after a little searching, a little listening, a little weighing of that notion against this, he settles himself in the theory which is most comfortable to his desires and least difficult to maintain. Then he returns to thinking about himself in relation to other people, and to what he wants: for he thinks, as do all of us, of nothing but himself - other things are considered only in relationship to this self, this consciousness of identity which is the only reality we know.

Then, when a crisis arrives which demands the practical use of this knowledge of himself and his purposes, to guide him through sacrifice and terror and grief, it appears for what it is: a lazy makeshift, a jerry-built contraption which collapses under the weight it is supposed to support - the weight of truth.

This is what is happening to all of us, throughout the world, today, in the face of destruction and chaos which faces us. As yet it is only an inarticulate wondering, a questioning which cannot shape its own demands. While the war goes on it will remain thus suppressed - but nurtured to greater and greater strength as man sets about destroying, brick by brick, the mightiest of the civilizations he has built.

Some people, of course, are secure in a faith. Others, a fortunate few, are secure in a faith which is bolstered by knowledge. You who are here tonight are among the fortunate few: fortunate in the knowledge which bolsters your faith: fortunate or unfortunate, as you yourself deem it, in the fact that this knowledge makes of itself, at this time, a duty.

To easy-living Americans, accustomed to do, think, say, write, and believe what they please, the word duty has an unpleasant sound - in their thoughts it is somehow connected with lack of freedom, hard work, and sacrifice - with the realities of life which this generation was educated to believe had been done away with: by cleverness, not goodness.

There once lived, in this state of Virginia, a man who gave up his career, his home, his lands, his happiness, for a thing which he believed to be more sacred and worthwhile than any of these blessings. It was he who gave the proper definition of duty. “Duty,” said Robert E. Lee, “is the sublimest word in the English language.”

It is time now for us, for all peoples everywhere, to consider what it is which for us is more sacred and worthwhile than our careers, our homes, our lands, our happiness - for that is the thing which will fashion for us our duty.

To one man it will be what happens inside him when the lamps are lighted on the altars of an ancient faith; to another it will be what he feels when the bands play and the flags wave; to another it will be the touch of his child’s hand, the memory of his mother, the tick of the kitchen clock - something glimpsed, something caught, something held, of that finer, larger, grander existence that lies beyond the gates of ourselves - that other reality.

To each man it will be different; yet to each, in the end, it must be the same - his little weapon of truth; all he has to hold against the armies of despair that stalk him, now that this night of the time of man has reached it’s darkest hour.

It is what this thing is for you - as members of this association, that concerns us tonight; the thing which makes of itself your duty.

This association is founded on the work of Edgar Cayce, who for want of a better term has been called a psychic medium.

During the past winter and spring I have been engaged in writing the story of this work, and the story of Edgar Cayce

• a task which is now nearly finished.

The central problem of a biographer is to find the meaning of his subject - without a meaning the subject is not worth writing about. The meaning of Edgar Cayce and his work, at first glance so obvious, has proved elusive. As I pursued it, it went higher and higher into regions of plan and law, and deeper into the tangled tragedy of man.

To most of the thousands who have met him and used his powers Edgar Cayce has been just an odd sort of fellow - a man with a peculiar talent: a swami in homespun, a Kentucky version of the Oracle of Delphi. Most of them have liked him; many of them have been grateful for the help they received; but for the most part he has been treated like the doctor who cures a bad cold - nice fellow, and they’ll call him again when they need him.

Yet more than thirty years ago, in the earliest days of readings, a question was answered by a statement which should have meant something deep and significant to all those who knew Edgar Cayce and all who thereafter met him and heard his story.

The question was, “Where does this information come from?” The answer was, “Edgar Cayce’s mind is amenable to suggestion, the same as all subconscious minds, but in addition thereto it has the power to interpret to the objective minds of others what is acquired from the conscious mind of other individuals. The subconscious mind forgets nothing. The conscious mind receives the impression from without and transfers all thought to the subconscious, where it remains even though the conscious be destroyed. The subconscious mind of Edgar Cayce is able to communicate with other subconscious minds, either of individuals in the earth or those who have passed on - if they have passed from this sphere their patterns, or impressions remain - and is capable of interpreting through his objective mind, to other objective minds, the impressions and the knowledge thus received.” [294-1]

The implications of this statement are obvious: the singleness of all mind as a force, the immortality of the soul, the identification of the subconscious as the mind of the soul, and the continued development of the soul after death.

Apparently none of these implications was drawn at the time. The statement was included in a report read before the Clinic Research Society of Boston, and was published in newspapers throughout the country. The report included physical cases in which the subconscious mind of Edgar Cayce had given diagnoses which were admittedly correct, and suggested treatments which were helpful.

If the diagnoses were correct, and the treatments were helpful, was not the statements as to the source of the information also valid?

And so every person who thereafter met Edgar Cayce and heard his story was faced with proof - of the modern, scientific type, - that his soul was immortal and his thoughts imperishable.

Nothing whatever was made of this fact.

For that was 1909, when the country was comfortable and prosperous. The middle class was installing telephones, the rich were buying automobiles, and the poor were going to see the new-fangled moving pictures at nickelodeons.

God and His plans were very far away. They belonged to an hour on Sunday morning - an hour that was very much apart from all of the rest of the week. There was a reassuring feeling perhaps, after all, the dour preachings of the church were wrong. Science said so, and hadn’t science produced the electric light, the telephone, the phonograph, the automobile, the steam train, and all sorts of wonders, including an airplane that really would fly? Science said the either God did not exist or that He was just an intelligence that ran the winds and tides and ordered the lives of the vegetables and animals - leaving man pretty much alone. Some modern philosophers said that God did not interfere with man because man was gradually becoming God - and wasn’t there proof of it everywhere? People were getting richer and times were getting better - the hand of God had not been raised against His children in many a day - it was probably just a lot of superstition that He ever had done such things.

Why bother, then, about proof that the Old God existed, when there was so much other, and more comforting proof, that He didn’t?

Fourteen years later, in Dayton, Ohio, the implications of the 1909 statement were taken up in a series of readings which gave the geography, plan, strategy and tactics of creation, and this history of man’s concern in it and in the earth.

In the intervening years, between 1909 and 1923, hundreds of readings were given for sick people. The diagnoses were apparently correct; the treatments, when followed, brought relief and help. The same source told the story of creation and the history of man. Was the story not also correct? And if correct, was it not a rare opportunity for every person who thereafter met Mr. Cayce to know the story and to put its truth into action in his own life?

Apparently it was not; for that was the Roaring Twenties, when bootleggers were our national heroes, ugly prose and sordid details were the stuff of literature, and everyone was going to make a million dollars in the bull market. Truth was an interesting thing to know; it was pleasant and even fashionable to talk about it - but inconvenient to practice - and unnecessary.

Now it is 1941. We have taken quite a beating since 1929; so much so that some of us are willing to admit that it is necessary not only to know the truth, but to practice it.

Necessary, that is, unless we want to destroy not only our civilization and our culture, but the only reality we know - the consciousness we have of ourselves - our souls.

And we know, now, that knowledge is not only power, but a trust - and a trust is a duty.

Our duty is to make the truth we know and to build it into our consciousness, so that we are never unaware of it: and within our minds to shape and whet it, until it is a shining instrument that makes our every thought and action a movement toward the camps of heaven - a weapon that will defend us through the sacking and pillaging of our institutions and society, our dogmas and beliefs, our possessions and our fancies - that will cut through the burned wreckage of our mistakes and build upon them a new age - not of desire, not of reason, not of science - but of spirit and faith.

This we must do for our children, not for ourselves - by now we know that nothing we build for ourselves; only that which we do for others has a firm foundation.

We have talked of this before - in quiet times, in good times. All that is over now. This is the 10th Annual Congress of the association. When the 20th is held the old age will have ended, the new age will have begun. If the association means anything, if Edgar Cayce means anything, if we mean anything, the time has come to live what we have learned and give the world what we have gathered.

Lest you have forgotten some of it, or gotten details mixed, let me briefly review for you what it is that you know - I will read some excerpts from those chapters of THERE IS A RIVER which deals with the story of creation and man as it is has been given by readings. This is the story, told in symbols which are familiar to human experience.

In building the soul there was spirit, with its knowledge of identity with God; there was the active principle of mind; and there was the ability to experience the activity of the mind separately from God. Thus a new individual, dependent upon and issuing from God, but aware of an existence apart from Him, came into being. To the new individual there was given, necessarily, the power to direct and choose its own activity: without free will it would remain a part of the mind of God, since there would be no course of action open but that of His thought. Mind, issuing as a force from God, would naturally fulfill His thoughts, unless directed otherwise. The power to so direct the force of mind was what man calls the consciousness of the individual. The record of this consciousness - this free will - began with the first expression which it made of its desires, through the force of mind. That was the beginning of the soul.

The nucleus of the soul was in balance, positive and negative force in equal amounts, producing harmonious activity: the positive initiating, impregnating, thrusting forward; the negative receiving, nourishing, ejecting. The steps of this action were the stages of thought, perception, reflection, opinion.

Thus the soul consisted of two states of consciousness: that of the spirit, bearing a knowledge of its identity with God; and that of the individual bearing a knowledge of everything it experienced.

The plan for the soul was the cycle of experience, unlimited in scope and duration, in which the individual would come to know creation in all of aspects, at the discretion of will. The cycle would be completed when the desire of will was no longer different from the thought of God. The consciousness of individuality would then merge with the consciousness of identity with God, and the soul would return to its source as the companion which it was intended to be.

In this state the soul would retain its sense of individuality and the knowledge that of its own free will it acted as a part of God. Until this state was reached the soul would not be a companion in the true sense of the word.

(The idea that a return to God means a loss of individuality is paradoxical, since God is conscious of everything that happens, and must therefore be conscious of the individuality of each soul. Thus the return of the soul is the return of of the image to that which imagined it, and the individuality of a soul could not be destroyed without destroying God Himself. When a soul returns to God it becomes aware of itself not only as a part of God, but as a part of every other soul and everything.

What is lost is the ego - the desire to do other than the will of God, and this, when the soul returns, is VOLUNTARILY relinquished: this is the symbol of the crucifixion.)

The plan for the soul included experience of all creation, but it did not necessarily mean identification with and participation in all forms and substances. Nor did it mean interference in creation by souls. It did not mean that they were to spin their own little worlds, twisting and bending laws to make images of their dreams.

But these things could happen. The soul was the greatest creation; it had free will. Once free will was given God did nothing to curb it: however it acted it had to act within Him; by whatever route, it had to return to Him.

(The fact that man’s body is a speck of dust on a small planet leads to the illusion that man himself is a small creation. The measure of the soul is the limitless activity of the mind and the grandeur of the imagination).

Certain souls become bemused with their own powers and began to experiment with them. They mingled with the dust of the stars and the winds of the spheres, feeling them, becoming part of them. One result of this was the unbalancing of the positive-negative force, by accentuating one or the other: to feel things demanded the negative force; to express through things, and direct and manage them, required the positive force. Another result was the gradual weakening of the link between the two states of consciousness - that of the spirit and that of the individual. The individual became more concerned with his own creation than with God’s.

(This was the fall in spirit, or the revolt of the angels.

It is a step in the story of God and man which was either omitted or not stressed in most of the pagan philosophies, though Pythagoras included it as a basic part of his metaphysical structure.)

To move into a portion of creation and become part of it a soul had to take on the consciousness of that portion. In man this is represented by the physical body, the five senses, and the awareness which is called the conscious mind. In other worlds, in other systems, the cloaks which the soul had to put on differed: only the range and variation of man’s own thoughts can give an idea of the number of these other worlds and systems and the aspects of divine mind which they represent.

When a soul thus took on the consciousness of a portion of creation it separated itself temporarily from the consciousness of its own individuality, and became thus further removed from the consciousness of its spirit. Thus instead of helping to direct the flow of creation, and contributing to it, it found itself in the stream, drifting along with it. The farther it went from shore, the more it succumbed to the pull of the current, the more difficult was the task of getting back.

Each of the systems of stars and planets represented, in this manner, a temptation to the souls; each represented also an opportunity for development, advancement, and growth toward the ideal of complete companionship with God - the position of co-creator in the vast and wonderful system of universal mind.

The solar system attracted souls, and since each system is a single expression, with its planets as integral parts, the earth came into the path of souls.

It was an expression of God with its own laws, its own plan, it’s own evolution. Souls, longing to feel the beauty of the seas, the winds, the forests, the flowers, mixed with them and expressed themselves through them. They also mingled with the animals, and made, in imitation of them, thought forms: they played at creating; they imitated God. But it was a playing, an imitating, that interfered with what had already been set in motion, and what had been set in motion gradually entangled the souls, so that they became trapped in the plan of earth’s evolution, inside the bodies they had themselves created.

(This is incomprehensible from what man terms the scientific standpoint, for it involves the law of relativity and laws of atomic structure which have not yet been discovered. This period in the earth’s history, however, is very well-documented: it was the Age of Fable, when gods and goddesses - the souls - roamed the earth, turning into trees, speaking from rocks, and inhabiting the bodies of Centaurs, Cyclops, and other creatures which were half animal, half human.)

Sex already existed in the animal kingdom, but the souls, in their thought forms, were androgynous. Therefore, to experience sex, they created thought forms for companions, isolating the negative force in a new thought form, retaining the positive in themselves. This objectification is what man calls Lilith, the first woman.

This entanglement of souls in what man calls matter was a probability from the beginning, but God did not know it would happen, or when, until the souls, of their own choice, had caused it to happen. Then a way of escape from the predicament was created.

A form was chosen to be a proper vehicle of the soul on earth and the way was paved for souls to enter earth and experience it as a part of their cycle. The form already existing which most approached the needs of the souls was what man would call one of the anthropoid apes. Souls descended on these bodies - hovering above and about them rather than inhabiting them - and influence them to move toward a different goal than the simple one they had been pursuing. They came down out of the trees, built fires, made tools, lived in communities, and began to communicate with each other. Swiftly, even as man measures time, they lost their animal look, shed bodily hair, and took on refinements of manner and habit.

All this was done by the souls working through the glands, until, at last, there was a new inhabitant of the earth: man.

He appeared as a consciousness within an animal. Soon he was that which his pattern demanded of objectification in the earth; he was a little higher than the beasts, a little lower than the angels.

The appearance of man - of his consciousness in this world - was in five different places, as the five different races, at the same time. The white race appeared in the Carpathian basin, the yellow in Tibet, the red in Atlantis, the brown in Lemuria, the black in Africa. The difference in color represented an adherence to laws already set in motion for the earth. The world of the earth was to be cognized by five senses - five methods of awareness. Thus the earth had to be experienced, and perfection had to be reached, in these five methods of awareness. The races represent these five.

There were males and females in these new, pure races; and both had complete souls. Eve replaced Lilith, and became the complement to Adam, the perfect helpmeet, the ideal companion for the three-fold life of earth: physical, mental, and spiritual. In even the positive pole was suppressed and the negative pole expressed; in Adam the negative pole was suppressed, the positive expressed.

Which a soul would become was a matter of choice, unless it was already entangled and unbalanced. Eventually the positive-negative would have to be brought in balance, so there was not, basically, any difference. For souls in balance it was a device for the duration of the earth cycle. It was not a voluntary assumption of an attitude, not a fall into error.

Man became aware, with the advent of his consciousness, that sex meant more to them than to the animals. To him it represented the door by which new souls were to enter the earth. It was the only means the trapped souls had of getting out of their unfortunate predicament. It worked not as an integral part of creation, of God’s mind, as it did in animals, but separately, at the direction of man’s own soul. It was a creative power that could be used for good or evil. Used rightly, the race would be kept pure, the earth would be a paradise, for souls in perfect bodies, and the trapped souls could gradually be freed from their cycle of rebirth in monstrous, half-animal forms, and provided with perfect bodies.

The plan for the earth cycle of souls was a series of incarnations, interlarded by periods of dwelling in other dimensions of consciousness in the system - the planets - until every thought and action of the physical body, with its five senses and conscious mind, was in accord with the plan originally laid out for the soul. When the body was no longer a hindrance to the soul, when its atomic structure could be spiritualized so that it no longer existed as matter, the earth cycle was finished and the soul would go on to new adventures. This conquest of the physical body could not be attained until there was perfection in the other dimensions of consciousness in the system, for, by the law of relativity, these made up, with earth, the total expression of the sun and its satellites.

The race of man was fostered by a soul which had already returned to God and had become a companion and co-creator with Him. This is the soul man knows as Christ.

The Christ soul was interested in the plight of its brother souls trapped in earth, and after supervising the influx of the pure races, it took form itself from time to time to act as a leader to the people who were often bewildered. Souls at first only lightly inhabited bodies; they remembered their identity. Gradually, life after life, they descended into earthiness, into less mentality, less consciousness of the mind force. They remembered themselves in dreams, in stories, in fables. Thus religion came into being, and the arts of music, numbers, and geometry. These were brought to earth by the incoming souls; gradually their heavenly source was forgotten, as the source of he story of themselves and their God was forgotten.

Finally man was left with a conscious mind definitely separated from his own individuality, which he now calls the subconscious mind. He felt the influence of himself, and he was able to reason with this conscious mind - for all mind, left to itself, will work out the plans of God.

So man built up reasons for believing what he felt to be true, but what he no longer knew by inner knowledge. Philosophy and theology resulted. Finally man began to look around him and discover, in the earth, the secrets of which he carried within himself but could no longer reach with his consciousness. The result was science.

The plan went into action. Downward went man from heavenly knowledge to mystic dreams, to revealed religions, to philosophy and theology, until the bottom was reached and there was no more connection with that which he had left. Then he began to fight his way beck toward it with the tool of reason, and with suffering, patience, and faith. Atlantis and Lemuria sank; civilizations rose and fell; man was here a little better, there a little better. Downward he went to the depths of immersion in the consciousness of earth; backward he slowly began to climb.

The Christ soul helped him. As Enoch, as Melchizadek, He took on flesh, to teach and lead. He was not born, He did not die, as these persons, and He realized that He could not show the way to mankind unless He made a pattern for them. He could not descend into their midst and teach them and expect them to follow; He had to suffer and think and experience earth as they did, and show them how to emerge from it.

He was born as Joseph, again as Joshua, again as Jeshua, the scribe of Ezra who rewrote the Bible, and finally as Jesus. He showed the way: He became the way: He overcame death and the body, and returned to God, laying down the ego of the will, accepting the crucifixion.

All this you know, all this you have heard before. You know the law of cause and effect - that the errors of the flesh must be met in the flesh, the errors of the spirit must be met in the spirit. You know that you cannot go around or go away from, or stand aside from the cross. You know that you must go back, and you must go back the way you came.

You know the world today has reached the great parting of the ways, when the forces that led us downward are making their last stand against the forces that have turned and begun the march upward: this is the darkest hour, the hour before dawn. We have been headed toward this since the first soul looked down through the trees and saw a violet, and wanted to pick it.

Hate, prejudice, ignorance, misunderstanding, fear, violence, stalk the land, the sea, and the air. They will be followed by other things: hunger, pestilence, despair. This is not the cry of a Casssandra; this is not a reading of handwriting on the wall. You know this; you have heard it before. You can fill in the horrid details for yourselves.

The point is, we can no longer avoid doing something about it. Those who know this truth must live it: for them it is that thing which is more sacred and worthwhile than career, home, lands, happiness. It is what makes for them their duty.

It is what Edgar Cayce means to you. It is what you mean to him: for why else, through forty years, should he have kept inviolate the well from which you have drawn waters to quench the thirst of your mind and heal the wounds of your body; why else, through the ages, has this been kept for you? So that you might do something about it, for yourselves and others.

Edgar Cayce has done his part; he has kept it for you and for me and given it to us whenever we asked: to some of us he has been giving it for a long time. We were reminded of this by some verses which were written for him on his last birthday.

Sunrise over the flooded Nile, Dawn on the coast of Tyre, Morning waits for a little while Till the Dover cliffs take fire. Here where the feet of Ra-Ta moved, There where the Persian walked, On hills where the Roman deeds were grooved Destiny is stalked… Stalked by the golden hands of God That finger the earth with thought, Making the trails the heart has trod, Pricing the loves it brought.

Sunrise over the flooded Nile, Dawn on the coast of Tyre, Follow the clipper ships a while Till Hatteras takes fire. Here where the east and the north winds strafe, In the face of the running tides, The pattern of dream is safe The sacred flame abides…

What must you do? Let the source of the truth which you know tell you. I quote from a reading which asked this question.

“Not in mighty deeds of valor, not in exultation of thy knowledge or power; but in the gentleness of the things of the spirit: love, kindness, longsuffering, patience; these thy elder brother, the Christ, has shown thee - that thou, applying them in thy associations with thy fellow man day by day, here a little, there a little, may become one with Him as He has destined that thou shouldst be! Wilt thou separate thyself? For there is nothing in earth, in heaven, in hell, that may separate thee from the love of thy God, of thy brother, save thy self.

“Then, be up and doing; knowing that as thou hast met in Him those things that would exalt thy personal self…these ye must lose in gentleness, in patience. For in patience ye become aware of thy soul; thy individuality lost in Him; thy personality shining as that which is motivated by the indi- viduality of thy Lord and Master. Thus does your destiny lie within yourself, and the destiny of the world.

“Hold fast to that faith exemplified in thy meditation, in thy counsels, in thy giving out to they fellow man. For he that hides himself in the service of his fellow man through gifts, through the promises as are in Him, hides many of the faults that have made him afraid through his experience in the earth. For it is not what one counts as knowledge that is important, nor what one would attain in material realms, but what one does about that which is known as constructive forces and influences in the experience of thy self and thy fellow man. For, as He has given, “As ye do it unto others, ye do it unto me.” He is the way, the life, the light. He IS the creator; He is the giver of all good and perfect gifts. Man may sow, man may act in material manifestations, in matter, of spiritual forces - yet the returns, the increase, must come from and through Him who is the gift of life. It is not a consideration of where or even how the seed of truth in Him is sown; for He gives the increase if it is sown in humbleness of spirit, in sincerity of purpose, with an eye-single that He may be glorified in and among thy fellow man. This is the way; this is the manner, that He would have thee follow.

“Let thyself, then, become more and more a channel through which His manifestations in the earth may arise, through thy efforts, in the hearts, the minds, of thy fellow man. For mind - in man, to man - is the builder, ever. That, then, must be directed, given, lost in singleness of purpose, that there may come the greater awakening within the consciousness of thy fellow man that HE is in the earth; that His words are as lights to men in dark places, to those that are weak, to those who stumble. For He will give thy efforts that necessary force, that necessary power, to quicken even those that are asleep in their own selfishness, in their own self-indulgences, and bring to their awakening that which will make for glorious activities in the earth.

“Keep, then, the faith thou hast had in Him; for He is thy strength, He is thy bulwark; He is thy Elder Brother. In Him, ye may find that which will bring to thee, and others, joy, peace, happiness, and that which makes men not afraid. For He IS peace; not as men count peace, not as men count happiness, but in that harmonious manner in which life, the expression of the Father in the earth, is one - even as He is one.

“Keep the faith.”

In just what manner each of us will keep the faith we do not know. Tomorrow we scatter, each to his particular environment, there to labor in his own field, to speak in his own tongue.

Let this, then, be our promise tonight.

That in the days and years which are now to assail us, when that which would destroy our hope, our faith, our honor, is abroad - we will take this truth we know and go with it to the temple of our spirit, and wait there, at the door…

Then, when we go forth to meet that which will come against us, we shall not walk alone.

[This article was reprinted in 6/47 A.R.E. Bulletin Statements of Purpose, now out of print.]

Background

Background

B1. 6/20/40 See 294-198 on psychic sources.

B2. See subsequent dreams of EC, not interpreted, listed under 294-196 Reports.

Mentioned Entities

Soul, Purpose, Subconscious Mind, Dreams, Free Will, A.R.E. (Association for Research and Enlightenment), Destiny, Physical Body, Ideal, Jesus Christ, Adam and Eve, Crucifixion, Crucifixion of Jesus, Law of Moses, Thomas Sugrue, Thought Forms, Angels, Atlantis, David Kahn, Entity (Cayce Term)

Source: The Complete Edgar Cayce Readings, A.R.E. CD-ROM (2006). Reading 294-202, ReadingID 2161.