Читать книгу Edgar Cayce A Seer Out of Season - Harmon Hartzell Bro - Страница 38

When the term out appeared in my notes beside Cayce’s references to the spiritual dimensions of healing and health maintenance, his suggestions developed the theme of “emptying self to be filled.” Of course, the idea was not to cleanse one’s house and let seven demons rush in from the unconscious or the culture. The intent was a particular kind of disciplined emptying which would enable one’s habitual will to conform more closely to the will of God, and one’s mind to be transformed by the renewing action of larger Reality.

One form of this emptying, or elimination in the spiritual mode, was forgiveness. Repeatedly the counseling man struggled to soften the self-condemnation in those he advised. He warned that while sin and guilt before God were real and universal, there was danger in arrogating to oneself the function of divinely authorized judge, whether over oneself or others. Humans, in this view, were not well equipped with the wisdom, justice, and mercy to serve as their own final judges; too often they usurped the place of divinity, even taking secret pride in the condemning process. While attacking themselves or attacking others, they were belittling a part of creation dear to the Creator: a soul, a unique person, brought into being for God’s own companionship.

Of course, those who failed to examine themselves, just as those who repressed deserved guilt (and therefore dodged seeking forgiveness), were urged by Cayce to “step aside and watch self go by,” for ultimately each soul “must give account of itself” for its actions and inactions. Some were asked where they would be if God treated them as they treated themselves and others, and the pungent answer might be “oblivion unthinkable.” So the quiet voice of the entranced Cayce pleaded with his hearers to be responsible but not to condemn, turning for mercy to their Source while they turned toward their fellows with the compassion which they themselves required. Always, Cayce insisted, “As ye do it unto your fellows, ye do it unto your God.”

What, then, could free one of all that must be eliminated as regret, guilt, and condemnation? Once the violation of deep values had been stopped and the renewing mercy of God called upon, then forgiveness and release or elimination of spiritual poisons would be found by generous giving to others. Here Cayce could be explicit as he was with medication. For he might name the precise relationships in one’s family or business associates where forgiving must begin in order to free up the individual’s clogged life force.

Yet the entranced man was careful not to humiliate or frighten. He protected the privacy and final self-respect of his counselees in the loving spirit already noted. Not amputation but cleansing and washing, so well emblematized by immersion baptism in Cayce’s church tradition, was the general spirit of counsel on elimination, whether physical or spiritual. He did not advocate fierce asceticism and penance for most, though there were some self-indulgent persons for whom he advised regimes of ascetic simplicity and sacrifice. Surgery in the spiritual realm was reserved for the divine, unless it were clear that the individual already sensed it was time to pluck out a corrosive temper, a business fraud, or a destructive extramarital affair. In such instances Cayce spoke to further the person’s own resolve.

The motif of “emptying self to be filled” also appeared as part of the spiritual dimension when Cayce urged meditation for everyone.³⁰ He was not dogmatic in his urging, nor did he offer colorful benefits of mind or body control, yet he saw meditation as part of total health. When the subject came up, he spoke clearly and persuasively about it, decades before meditation became a countercultural theme in American society and slowly crept into organized religious practice. In prayer, which he suggested was the foundation of meditation, one properly filled the consciousness with thought, speech, and emblems until turning to God overflowed with thanksgiving, praise, and commitment, within which petitions might have their rightful place. Such activity was the heart of public worship and private devotions alike. By contrast, meditation meant emptying one’s consciousness so that a deeper movement of thought and being might develop, which could be called listening to God, not so much by pursuing thought and symbols as by receiving the divine into one’s stilled being.

In Cayce’s trance view, the psyche had level upon level below surface consciousness, with innate dynamics as powerful as those which enabled a tiny plant to move a boulder as it reached for the sunlight. Meditation, which emptied and cleansed surface consciousness by a peaceful fasting from discursive thought, could set free a potent inward movement towards full and healthy humanness. He encouraged the use of focalizing phrases to start the process, whether bits of scripture or sayings familiar to the person, or more formal “affirmations” (his versions were actually as much prayer as assertions) on which individuals could model their own words. These small phrases functioned like the mantras from Eastern religions or like tuning from the texts and tones of anthems in choirs.

In his view, what was released in meditation was much deeper than the mere action of suggestion. It was the true and natural bent of the soul as the self held up its best chosen ideal. For what was “on the mind” at primary levels of the psyche would surface and bring accompanying energies in meditation. If the ancient art were practiced daily in concert with prayer, intercession, and service, and embedded in covenant community, the inner noble form of the person would assert itself, just as the plant grows from the seed or the embryo from the meeting of two cells. The process of pushing “out” whatever was not essential for stilled and hushed turning to God in prayer-based meditation was a prized kind of elimination, not just for soul growth but ultimately also for bodily health and wholeness.

In passages dealing with meditation, he employed the language of kundalini yoga³¹ from India and Tibet, right alongside material from the Psalms about meditating on God’s law. For the entranced Cayce, the concept of chakras, or spiritual centers, at seven key points in the body was helpful to understand being “filled with the Spirit,” since all creativity used the same circuits in the body. What had to be emptied to allow the fiery life force to rise secretly within the person and be met by invisible tongues of flame from Beyond was self-will and self-aggrandizement—not self-identity. Here Cayce departed from some forms of Hindu thought and practice that emphasized dissolution of the ego and individuality into the larger whole. In his view, identity was precious to the Creator; else why the creation? But self-dictated autonomy needed purging, as truly as a clogged bowel.