Читать книгу Edgar Cayce and the Kabbalah - John Van Auken - Страница 9

The Kabbalah teaches that behind the visible life is a vast, invisible reality from which the visible came into being and in which the visible exists. Cayce adds that these unseen forces are more powerful, more influential than the seen. (EC 262–8) He and the Kabbalah teach that the seen is actually an expression or emanation of the unseen, even a result of unseen dynamics. Life begins in the spirit, Cayce says, takes shape in the mind (thought form), and then manifests in the physical life—not the other way around. “As we have given, every force—in its manifestation—is from the One, or God. And that which is manifested in material things is a result, and not the motive force; for mind, mental (which may not be seen with the eye as termed in the material world, but with the spiritual eye) is the builder.” (EC 347–2; parenthetical comments are Cayce’s.)

Now you might quickly ask, If it is all from God, then why is the evening news so horrible? The answer is free-willed souls! They are allowed, for a time, to do as they choose. This is clearly expressed in Scripture: “I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil” (Deuteronomy 30:15), the implication being that it is ours to choose which influence we will bring into this world, this life.

The conscious man Cayce was able to see and perceive beyond normal human ability. His psychic readings for himself explained that these sensitivities were a natural result of his level of spiritual development and that all humans would eventually become so sensitive as to see the invisible. Cayce could see discarnate souls among the incarnate. He could hear them and talk to them. He explained that it was like having a switch in his head, which he flipped on in order to see ghosts and communicate with them. He also saw auras around the bodies of incarnate people. These auras emanated colors and patterns that gave him insight into a person’s mental, emotion, and spiritual condition, even as it changed during a conversation. Here are a few examples in his readings (notice his use of the Kabbalistic concept of “emanations”).

[An] aura is the emanation, or the influence that is ever present with an animate body, that may change or alter as to that which is the impelling influence of or about same—or from within. Aura changes, to be sure, [according] to the temperament.

EC 282–4

The aura, then, is the emanation that arises from the very vibratory influences of an individual entity mentally, spiritually—especially of the spiritual forces.

EC 319–2

We find in the aura the physical and the mental and spiritual emanations, that show for developments and retardments as well as abilities for the studying, classifying and applying of same.

EC 1612–1

(Q) Am I beginning to see auras?

(A) Beginning to see auras. As life, light, and love—with understanding—is reflected in self, so may there be seen those of the same reflection from others.

(Q) What is the significance of the flashes and forms which I frequently see?

(A) Those of the higher vibrations of inter-between, as well as spiritual forces taking forms in or before the mental self.

EC 281–4

If Cayce came in proximity to a person, he psychically knew what he or she had been doing and thinking. His longtime secretary confided that she would sometimes avoid him because “it was just none of his business.”

Cayce’s wife, Gertrude, shared a story about the two of them asleep on the second floor of their home when someone tapped on their bedroom window! Edgar immediately knew who this spirit was and went downstairs to let the ghost in. He explained that she needed help finding her way to the next life because she had died recently and was lost as to what she should do and where she should be. She knew Mr. Cayce would know, but having arrived at his home after he and his wife had retired, she simply tapped on their bedroom window rather than enter into their private space.

Science tells us that there is much more reality than we physically see. Humans can see only within a very narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum (EM spectrum), a range less than 5 percent of the entire EM spectrum. (See illustration 16.) The rods and cones on the inside of the human retina are nerve endings physically tuned to respond to a narrow range of energy wavelengths. When energy frequencies within the “visible light” spectrum strike the retina, electrochemical impulses are created that are transmitted to the area of the brain responsible for vision. A pattern in the visual cortex is created by these electrochemical impulses that mimics the visible light pattern striking the retina. Energy outside this narrow range of visible light produces no response from the retina’s rods and cones, yet we know that many non-human species have rods and cones tuned to energy frequencies outside the visible light spectrum. Owls, hawks, and eagles, for example, can see infrared frequencies, that is, they can see the energy waves created by body heat. And even this is still a very narrow portion of the massive EM spectrum.

From the time he was a very little boy, Edgar Cayce could see fairies, sprites, angels, and invisible friends. As a child, he thought that everyone was seeing them, but as he grew, he learned that it wasn’t so. He began to keep quiet about his abilities because they caused unpleasant reactions in others and ridicule of him and his family. When he became a more self-confident adult, he shared this recollection, which follows, and his stenographer recorded it:

I remember so distinctly the garden at my mother’s old home place when I was a very small child. My mother’s father was one of the first settlers in southwestern Kentucky; had a fine old place, and the old-fashioned garden, with all the old-fashioned flowers, was known throughout that part of the country. Your mentioning your mother destroying bleeding hearts [flowers] calls to my mind what beautiful bunches of these grew in that garden, with a large bunch of striped grass, some very old peonies, all kinds of buttercups, and the like; a gorgeous bed of sweet violets, and all those old flowers. It was here that often in my early childhood I met and played with those that others could never see. These are at least some of my experiences.

As to just what was the first experience, I don’t know. The one that appears at present to be among the first, was when I was possibly eighteen or twenty months old. I had a playhouse in the back of an old garden, among the honeysuckle and other flowers. At that particular time much of this garden had grown up in tall reeds, as I remember. I had made a little shelter of the tops of the reeds, and had been assisted by an unseen playmate in weaving or fastening them together so they would form a shelter. On pretty days I played there. One afternoon my mother came down the garden walk calling me. My playmate (who appeared to me to be about the same size as myself) was with me. It had never occurred to me that he was not “real,” or that he wasn’t one of the neighbors’ children, until my mother spoke and asked me my playmate’s name. I turned to ask him but he disappeared. For a time this disturbed my mother somewhat, and she questioned me at length. I remember crying because she had spied upon me several times, and each time the playmate would disappear.

About a year or eighteen months later, this was changed considerably—as to the number of playmates. We had moved to another country home. Here I had two favorite places where I played with these unseen people. One very peculiarly was in an old graveyard where the cedar trees had grown up. Under a cedar tree, whose limbs had grown very close to the ground, I made another little retreat, where—with these playmates—I gathered bits of colored glass, beautifully colored leaves and things of that nature from time to time. But, what disturbed me was that I didn’t know where they [the playmates] came from or why they left when some of my family approached. The other retreat was a favorite old straw stack that I used to slide down. This was on the opposite side of the road (main highway) from where we lived, and in front of the house. The most outstanding experience (and one that I am sure disturbed her much) was when my mother looked out a window and saw children sliding down this straw stack with me. Of course, I had a lovely little retreat dug out under the side of the straw ring, in which we often sat and discussed the mighty problems of a three or four year old child. As my mother looked out, she called to ask who were the children playing with me. I realized I didn’t know their names. How were they dressed, you ask? There were boys and girls. It would be impossible (at this date) to describe their dress, figure or face, yet it didn’t then—nor does it now—occur to me that they were any different from myself, except that they had the ability to appear or disappear as our moods changed. Just once I looked out the window from the house and saw the fairies there, beckoning me to come and play. That time also my mother saw them very plainly, but she didn’t make any objection to my going out to play with them. This experience, as I remember now, lasted during a whole season—or summer.

A few years afterwards (when I had grown to be six or seven years old) our home was in a little wood. Here I learned to talk with the trees, or it appeared that they talked with me. I even yet hold that anyone may hear voices, apparently coming from a tree, if willing to choose a tree (a living tree, not a dead one) and sit against it for fifteen to twenty minutes each day (the same time each day) for twenty days. This was my experience. I chose a very lovely tree, and around it I played with my playmates that came (who then seemed very much smaller than I). We built a beautiful bower of hazelnut branches, redwood, dogwood and the like, with wild violets, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and many of the wild mosses that seemed to be especially drawn to this particular little place where I met my friends to talk with—the little elves of the trees. How often these came, I don’t know. We lived there for several years. It was there that I read the Bible through the first time, that I learned to pray, that I had many visions or experiences; not only of visioning the elves but what seemed to me to be the hosts [angels] that must have appeared to the people of old, as recorded in Genesis particularly. In this little bower there was never any intrusion from those outside. It was here that I read the first letter from a girlfriend. It was here that I went to pray when my grandmother died, whom I loved so dearly and who had meant so much to me. To describe these elves of the trees, the fairies of the woods, or—to me—the angels or hosts, with all their beautiful and glorious surroundings, would be almost a sacrilege. They have meant, and do yet, so very much to me that they are as rather the sacred experiences that we do not speak of—any more than we would of our first kiss, and the like. Why do I draw such comparisons? There are, no doubt, physical manifestations that are a counterpart or an expression of all the unseen forces about us, yet we have closed our eyes and our ears to the songs of the spheres, so that we are unable again to hear the voices or to see the forms take shape and minister—yea strengthen us—day by day!

Possibly there are many questions you would ask as to what games we played. Those I played with at the haystack were different from those in the graveyard, or in the garden. Those I played with in the wood were different. They seemed to fit more often to what would interest or develop me. To say they planted the flowers or selected the bower, or the little cove in which my retreat was built, I don’t think would be stretching it at all, or that they tended these or showed me—or talked to me of—their beauty. It was here that I first learned to read. Possibly the hosts on high gave me my first interpretation of that we call the Good Book. I do not think I am stretching my imagination when I say such a thing. We played the games of children, we played being sweethearts, we played being man and wife, we played being sisters and brothers, and we played being visitors and preachers. We played being policemen and the culprits. We played being all the things that we knew about us.

No, I never have any of these visions now, or—if any—very rarely.

EC Report 464–12

When Cayce was fifty-four years old, he had a dream in which these same fairies and elves appeared to him again. The psychic reading on this dream (EC 294–128) explained that these were warnings that his soul would likely return to the spirit realms (to those on earth, that meant that he may die) if his mind did not become more active in this world and find more people requesting his unique services.

When asked during one of his psychic readings to explain brownies, he answered:

The manner in which those of the elementals—entities who have not entered into materiality—have manifested and do at times manifest themselves to the entity. Brownies, pixies, fairies, gnomes are not elementals, but elements that are as definite entities as man materialized.

EC 1265–3

In a past-life reading for another soul, he gave this account:

[B]efore this [incarnation] the entity was in the Scotch land. The entity began its activity as a prodigy, as one already versed in its associations with the unseen or the elemental forces; the fairies and those of every form that do not give expression in a material way and are only seen by those who are attuned to the infinite.

EC 2547–1

Seventy-two of Edgar Cayce’s discourses mention the “the unseen forces,” defined in the readings as “a consciousness of that divine force that emanates in Life itself in this material plane.” (EC 281–7; italics mine) Notice how beautifully this description fits with the Kabbalistic concepts of the Unseen Infinite Eternal (Ein Sof) and the knowable emanations (sefirot).

All projected life in this world comes from unseen influences within, not without. Even human weaknesses and evil are a result of the misuse of free will, a misuse that began in the spirit and mind, long before material life began to express it. The implication here is that all outer influences, whether they are good or evil, emanate from the unseen realms of spirit and mind through the use and misuse of free will.

Consider the worst criminal acts by humans. These are due more to unseen forces within the spirit and mind of the perpetrator than his or her upbringing or genes (not to exclude the effects of both of these). Many souls have been raised by bad parents or nonexistent ones and in terrible environments; some of these children become good people and make much of their lives, while others grow up to virtually destroy everything and everyone they touch. The key element is the influence of the spirit within them and the dark thoughts that make them so dangerous and coldhearted versus the disposition of those that keep on keeping on in ways that are constructive rather than destructive, despite the surrounding circumstances.

Cayce’s readings acknowledge the “warring” that often occurs within humans, between the unseen realms and the seen. (EC 281–7) His readings even call this war the true Armageddon (EC 3976–15, from Revelation 16:16), a battle within each soul between the energies and thoughts of dark, destructive influences and the energies and thoughts of illuminating, constructive influences.

Even the Light-bearing souls have to struggle to maintain their hold on the Light. It is difficult to be pure channels of the Light in this life, in our families and workplaces and in our own hearts and minds. It is a terrible battle between selfishness, contention, and faultfinding versus loving care for others and for self, and valuing the light of truth, hope, and love.

Cayce’s readings warn the Children of God, the Children of the Law of One (as he often referred to them), to seek and maintain their awareness of the Divine Forces, for these will protect them from dark motivations within themselves and dark intentions in others.

As experienced by many, in opening self to the unseen forces about us, yet warred ever by those influences save when in the presence of His [God’s] influence, then as the forces are raised in self know—without doubt—there are His protecting influences, able, willing, capable, and will aid in that direction in which such vibrations, such influences, are raised to those individuals to whom they be directed, even by the spoken word; for, as is seen, as is understood by many, by most, the unseen forces are the active forces, the active principles.”

EC 281–7

To avoid the influence of evil and selfishness, even the best among us must seek the protection and assistance of the Divine’s influence, that consciousness of the Divine with us in our daily lives. “The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak,” taught the masterful Jewish teacher Jesus, who faced Satan’s temptations and walked away, free from the temptations. (Matthew 26:41 and Mark 1:3) And when we fail to maintain our mindfulness of the Divine and the higher bodily vibrations of the Divine awakened within us, we must get up and try again, never condemning ourselves or limiting the Divine’s ability to redeem us, to cleanse us, and to make us stronger. Cayce taught:

Be not faint hearted because failure seems to be in thy way, or that self falters—but “how many times shall I forgive, or ask forgiveness—seven times?” “Yea, seventy times seven!” or, “not how I faltered, but did I seek His face again?” “Could ye not watch with me one hour?” The man crying out! “Sleep on, now, and take thy rest, for the hour cometh when I shall be even alone.” So we find the changes, the weaknesses in the flesh—yet he that seeks shall find, and as oft as ye knock will the answer come. Seek to be one with Him [God], in body, in mind, in soul!

EC 281–7

Life is a challenge. It is a dance between the loneliness of self-consciousness and the cooperative consciousness that is aware of and seeking the guidance of the Creative, the Good Forces, and the higher vibrations.

Consider the challenges Jesus, a Jewish-trained master, faced—as described in this Cayce discourse.

In sending such forces out, then, be mindful that there is no doubt that these will bring that as He [God] sees fit, “Not my will, Of Father, but Thine be done!” What did this bring to Him [Jesus]? The cross, the burdens, the crown of thorns—yet in its essence it brought those abilities to overcome death, hell and the grave. So, as in our raising ourselves to that understanding that His [God’s] presence is guiding and directing those influences about those to whom we would direct His cause (for they have called on us), then know His will is being done in the manner as thou hast sent same to that individual!”

EC 281–7

Why the struggle? Why the confusions and misgivings? Because we are godlings in the making, lost angels with the potential to become God’s companions forever. We are not simply newly born humans trying to live our lives so that our deaths will lead us to a good afterlife. We are celestial entities that have been alive from the moment our Creator said, “Let there be Light” (Genesis 1:3), “Let us make them in our image, after our likeness,” (Genesis 1:26) and “You are gods, sons and daughters of the Most High.” (Psalm 82:6). We come into this incarnation with many, many karmic influences from preincarnation activity. We need to become aware of our lives as celestial souls, not just our lives as physical personalities.

Our present reality is too terrestrial and too physical. Deep within us is a celestial soul that has existed before, exists now, and will exist after our physical death. The transition from terrestrial, self-conscious beings to celestial souls and minds consciously one with the forces of Life and Light requires some adjustments, some breakthroughs. Holding us back are deep, karmic habit patterns that we have built over many incarnations and even in sojourns in nonphysical dimensions of life. These transitions can be compared to a woman pregnant who is attempting to adjust her body to deliver a new life. We have conceived in the wombs of our consciousness our true selves, our divine nature, yet we have to dilate our minds and hearts sufficiently to deliver this soul self, this resurrected, wiser self, which is destined to be an eternal companion to the Creator of the entire Cosmos.