Читать книгу The Edgar Cayce Handbook for Health Through Drugless Therapy - Harold J. Reilly - Страница 21

Millions of people in the so-called civilized world are suffering from “future shock.” The last half-century has tremendously increased the speed, quantity, and range of sensory stimuli that strike the brain. Our senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are assaulted by human-made pollution at every waking and sleeping moment. The increase of tension in modern life—the competitive strains in work, worry, and insecurity all adding up to stresses, even in so-called recreation and leisure—are being discussed ad nauseam with appropriate alarm in all the media, and fill the psychiatrists’ offices with patients. The consequences can be observed in the increase in mental disease, drug addiction, and alcoholism, and in a population of pill-poppers living on tranquilizers, stimulants, and sleeping pills, swallowed like candy in the search for peace of mind and soul.

Dr. Hans Selye, whose studies on “stress” have won worldwide acceptance and acclaim, attributes a great many physical as well as mental ills to stress: “The body’s ductless glands—mainly the pituitary and the adrenals—strive to maintain an unchanging environment inside the body. Let any threat—any stress-be applied and these glands react instantly. The response is exactly the same whether a rat is subjected to extreme fatigue or a boss bawls out his secretary. Blood pressure and blood sugar rise, stomach acid increases, arteries tighten.”

In The Stress of Life, Dr. Selye calls this the “alarm reaction”: “In animals under emotional stress, fats are drawn from body deposits, emptied into the blood and deposited along artery walls. Presumably the same thing happens in man, producing those top killers, atherosclerosis and coronary-artery disease.”

Other stress diseases are skin disorders, including psoriasis and eczema; disorders of the respiratory system; sterility; diabetes, colitis, ulcers, and other gastrointestinal troubles; fall of the stomach and intestines; glandular disorders; backache and muscular aches and pains; and arthritis, to name just a few.

Although the beginning of the twentieth century—when Cayce lived and started work—seems by hindsight a quieter and more serene time, his generation did live through two world wars and the worst depression in the history of this country. He was quite sensitive to the effect of stress on people, and according to Gladys Davis Turner never dismissed anything as “just nerves.” Each reading contained a detailed analysis of the two nervous systems and a great deal of importance was attributed to their delicate mechanism.

The activity of the mental or soul force of the body may control entirely the whole physical [body] through the action of the balance in the sympathetic system, for the sympathetic nerve system is to the soul and spirit forces as the cerebrospinal is to the physical forces of an entity . . . (5717-3)

Cayce often recommended in nerve conditions that rebuilding properties be carried into the system through vibration rather than through some other means, and to this end he invented (while in trance) two appliances—the wetcell battery and the impedance device, giving precise directions for their construction:

The vibrations aid in producing that vibration necessary, not only for coordination of the glandular system, but for the ability in the nerve itself to be rejuvenated . . . This works directly upon the glandular system—the thyroid, the adrenals and the thymus, all the glands of the body; thus enabling them to react as assimilating forces.

For that is the process or the activity of the glands: to secrete that which enables the body, physically throughout, to reproduce itself. (1475-1)

The wet-cell appliance was prescribed in 609 cases for ailments such as arthritis, multiple sclerosis, paralysis, Parkinson’s disease, nerve deafness, and incoordination of the nervous systems, where it was necessary for the body to rebuild tissue and restore lost body functions. The impedance device was recommended predominantly as an instrument of relaxation in cases of nervous tension, poor circulation, insomnia, neurasthenia, debilitation, etc.

It would be too complicated and take too much space to explain how they were built and operated, but suffice it to say that the wet-cell battery produced a very low electrical current that could not be felt but could be measured on a meter. It was passed through solutions that might be gold chloride, silver nitrate, Atomidine, or camphor, depending on the individual’s requirement and the Cayce prescription. It was attached by plates to the body and the placement of these also varied depending on the individual’s needs and complaints. Sometimes specific instructions were given for the placement and sometimes Cayce sent people to me to teach them how to use the device.

The impedance device was a gadget that had two steel poles in a small steel case lined with glass and charcoal which was to be set in ice for thirty minutes and then wired to the wrist and opposite ankle, and it stimulated circulation and relaxed the user—in fact, it usually put the person to sleep immediately. It was especially good for insomnia.

For a time, from 1933 to 1935, the appliances were made at my farm in New Jersey under the supervision of a relative of the Cayce family and then under Robert Ladd. My colleague, Betty Billings, used it with great success on her mother, who was paralyzed and suffered from degeneration of the spinal-cord nerves. Mrs. Billings had spent many years in a wheelchair and she suffered keenly from extremely cold hands and feet. The impedance device seemed to improve her circulation dramatically. “After only two days she was so warm that the family thought Mother had a fever,” Miss Billings recalls.

Actually it has been very difficult to make a scientific assessment of the appliances, because we do not have enough clinical data and follow-up on them. My own feeling is that if and when the appliances are tested for research purposes, this should be done in a medically supervised research center, where the patient comes for the treatment and the treatment itself is administered by trained professionals. The answer to this Cayce therapy still lies in the future and I hope some day it will be researched.

The impedance device was a gadget that had two steel poles in a small steel case lined with glass and charcoal which was to be set in ice for thirty minutes and then wired to the wrist and opposite ankle, and it stimulated circulation and relaxed the user—in fact, it usually put the person to sleep immediately. It was especially good for insomnia.—H.J.R.

While the theory behind this device was little understood when Cayce gave it, great advances have been made in modern times since his death in the use of electricity in healing, and scientists are finding out that there is great healing power in low-wave vibrations. Further research should be done, because it is clear that Cayce anticipated electromedicine as he did so many other medical advances.

Electrosleep devices for insomniacs have been used and marketed for a long time now in the Soviet Union, Japan, India, and Western Europe. Thus there is possibly something to back up the statement of many users of the Cayce impedance device that “it puts us to sleep.”—H.J.R.

Newsweek magazine (November 8, 1971) reported that researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have successfully used direct electrical current to accelerate the rate of healing of a patient with bone fracture.

The Wall Street Journal of March 27, 1972, carried a front-page report in depth on a “host of current research projects,” many of them conducted with human patients involving the application of electrical signals to the nervous system in attempts to kill pain, to put insomniacs to sleep, and to relieve asthma, ulcers, and high blood pressure. According to this report, electromedicine may soon emerge as a major new approach to many diseases.

At Temple University in Philadelphia, a neurosurgeon has implanted a dorsal “column stimulator,” an “electric pain killer,” in the back of a salesman incapacitated by a slipped spinal disk. Dr. C. Norman Shealy of the Pain Rehabilitation Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Dr. William Sweet of the Massachusetts General Hospital, who developed the device, now have research tests going on in fifteen medical centers, and they report that 85 percent of all properly selected patients are being helped “to dial their pain away.” (Of course, this involves major surgery.)

Electrosleep devices for insomniacs have been used and marketed for a long time now in the Soviet Union, Japan, India, and Western Europe. Thus there is possibly something to back up the statement of many users of the Cayce impedance device that “it puts us to sleep.”

Hugh Lynn Cayce told this amusing story about the impedance device and sleep. At the time this happened, it was being made by Marsden Godfrey, who was a close friend of the Cayces in Norfolk, Virginia. “One day Dad got a letter from a woman who had received one of the appliances and said, ‘Mr. Cayce, I was sleeping part of the night before I got this appliance that you recommended and now I can’t sleep at all. I have gotten so nervous. What should I do?’

“Well, Dad didn’t know what to do either, so he suggested she send the appliance back to us, and when it arrived at Marsden’s shop they decided the thing to do was to get a reading. They did that and the suggestion came that Godfrey use a magnet to remove the anger that he had built into it.

“As it turned out, Godfrey had had a violent argument with his wife at the time he was building the appliance and the vibration of their anger was picked up by the appliance. They put the magnet over the appliance and then sent it back to the woman. She subsequently reported that it worked beautifully.

“This is an incredible story, but there is a complete record of it. Of course, we could never explain to the woman what was wrong with her appliance because the explanation was harder to accept than the original malfunction.”

Dr. William McGarey writes in a Medical Research Bulletin⁷ on the work of Drs. Wheeler and Wolcott at the University of Missouri, reported in Neuroelectric Research:

These men have brought about remarkable regeneration of tissue in healing old chronic ulcerations of many years’ standing. In their discussion of their ideas and the direction their work is taking them, they make several very interesting observations. They mention, for instance, that

Contrary to dogma, constant electric current does not confine its physiological effects solely to the make-and-break points, but, rather is capable of causing subtle, undefined changes during a prolonged period of application.

Cayce suggested weak, electrical currents to be applied to the body in recurrent, hourly periods, and the amperage was not unlike that suggested in the University of Missouri work reported on above. His interpretation of the “subtle, undefined changes” Wheeler mentions are discussed in different terms in the following reading given for a sixty-seven-year-old woman suffering from senility and debilitation. She was told to use a wet-cell battery:

And as the electrical vibrations are given, know that Life itself—to be sure—is the Creative Force or God, yet its manifestations in man are electrical—or vibratory.

Know then that the force in nature that is called electrical or electricity is that same force ye worship as Creative or God in action!

Seeing this, feeling this, knowing this, ye will find that not only does the body become revivified, but by the creating in every atom of its being the knowledge of the activity of this Creative Force or Principle as related to spirit, mind, body—all three are renewed. For these are as the trinity in the body, these are as the trinity in the principles of the very life force itself, as the Father, the Son, the Spirit—the Body, the Mind, the Spirit—these are one. One Spirit, One God, One Activity. Then see Him, know Him, in those influences. (1299-1)

Then, in discussing further their ideas, Wheeler and Wolcott point out that the role of biomagnetic effects in work of this kind cannot be truly separated from bioelectrical phenomena. They state further that:

It is known, for example, that the majority of biologic processes are based on chemical reactions. The chemical properties involved in these reactions result from the arrangement and motion of electrons and atomic nuclei, which are, in turn, determined by electric and magnetic field interactions of elementary particles. As a result, the principles of chemistry are the consequence of the sciences of electrodynamics and quantum physics. In living organisms these effects are seemingly amplified by the semiconductor properties ascribed to biologic structures. It is these effects that now strongly influence our ongoing clinical and basic research.

We believe that one of man’s most human qualities is his preoccupation with the mysteries of conception, growth, disease, aging, and death. Modern technology reveals that some older intuitive hypotheses were remarkably accurate, especially in . . . areas concerned with electricity and other physical phenomena. Therefore, part of our research is now directed toward the integration of selected products of past and present science, and toward the further development of a theoretical guide for the deeper understanding of living plants and animals.

The power of relaxation to heal has been dramatically emphasized in experiments conducted by Dr. Elmer Green, former head of the Psychophysiology Laboratory in the Research Department of the Menninger Foundation. He has used “biofeedback training” or “autogenic feedback” in training subjects to produce alpha brain waves in a meditative state of quiet relaxation. When in that state, his subjects have been able to cure migraine headaches, control their blood pressure, raise or lower the temperature of a finger, and control the involuntary bodily processes with relaxation.

Cayce frequently recommended meditation for its therapeutic as well as spiritual value. In the following case he advised a twenty-eight-year-old traveling salesman, whose disordered lifestyle resulted in digestive disorders, back trouble, head noises, and other symptoms, in the following manner:

(Q) How can I overcome the nerve strain I’m under at times?

(A) By closing the eyes and meditating from within, so that there arises—through that of the nerve system—that necessary element that makes along the pineal (don’t forget that this runs from the toes to the crown of the head!) that will quiet the whole nerve forces, making for that—as has been given—as the true bread, the true strength of life itself. Quiet, meditation, for a half to a minute, will bring strength—will the body see physically this flowing out to quiet self, whether walking, standing still, or resting. Well, too, that oft when alone, meditate in the silence—as the body has done. (311-4)

An excellent book on Cayce’s approach to meditation is Meditation: A Step Beyond with Edgar Cayce by M. E. Penny Baker. There are other excellent works on this subject by Cayce himself and by Elsie Sechrist. Of course, the Search for God books by Edgar Cayce published by the A.R.E. Press are musts for any person who wants to pursue the Cayce path to spiritual enlightenment through both prayer and meditation. The difference, I have been told, between prayer and meditation is that with prayer “you talk to God”; in meditation “you listen to God” within.

Drs. Herbert Benson and Robert K. Wallace of Harvard Medical School, who have been running tests on meditators under stringent laboratory conditions, verify the claims of enthusiasts that meditation does indeed lower oxygen consumption, decrease the heart rate, and increase skin resistance, and that other physiological changes occur that bring about complete rest. The general medical acceptance today of the benefits of meditation chalk up another precognitive hit for Cayce, who advocated it long before Americans had ever heard of yoga and other mind- and body-control exercises.

Cayce and I agree on the importance of exercise, especially in the fresh air, as an aid to relaxation. The best way to get rid of destructive emotion is to take a long walk or work off your hostility with some vigorous exercises, such as tennis, hard calisthenics, throwing a medicine ball, or punching a bag. Baths can be very relaxing or stimulating at different temperatures (see Chapter 10). And, of course, massage and manipulation can relax as well as stimulate. Cayce frequently recommended participation in a relaxing sport—not one that gets one frustrated and angry over scores—as well as music, art, theater, or the pursuit of any hobby that brings a sense of peace and fulfillment. Dr. Selye emphasizes the importance of a change of activity to relieve stress.

Above all, Cayce was a strong advocate of balance in all things, as in this letter that he wrote to me on June 3, 1933:

I certainly do not want to take “no” for the answer regarding your being here [in Virginia Beach] on the 15th, 16th, 17th, or 18th. While I know your farm and your work at this particular time require every bit of your energy, I am sure you preach and demonstrate to those who come to you for relief that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

. . . budget the time so that there may be a regular period for sustaining the physical being and also for sustaining the mental and spiritual being. As it is necessary for recreation and rest for the physical, so it is necessary that there be recreation and rest for the mental. (3691-1)

Do not overdo same at the expense of the physical or the mental body.

The tendency . . . is to do the whole thing or nothing! Now be rather a middle-ground man once, and see how much better it will be! Work as well as you play—play as well as you work! (279-2)