Читать книгу Edgar Cayce on the Akashic Records - Kevin J. Todeschi - Страница 10

The records that have been written have been written . . .

Then the natural question of the entity, from that which has been given, is: From what source, or how, is such a record read of the activities in the past? How may self know that there is being given a TRUE record of the activities in a period of which there is no written WORD [of] history? Yet the entity itself sees, and is being taught, and is studying, the records that are written in nature, in the rocks, in the hills, in the trees, in that termed the genealogical log of nature itself. Just as true, then, is the record that the mind makes upon the film of time and space in the activities of a body with its soul that is made in the image of the Maker; being then spirit, in its form, upon the records IN time and space.

487-17

Imagine having a computer system that keeps track of every event, thought, image, or desire that had ever transpired in the earth. Imagine, as well, that rather than simply a compilation of written data and words, this system contains countless videotape film and pictures, providing the viewer with an eyewitness account of all that had ever happened within any historical time frame. Finally, imagine that this enormous database not only keeps track of the information from an objective perspective but also maintains the perspectives and emotions of every individual involved. As incredible as it may sound, this description gives a fairly accurate representation of the Akashic Records.

Edgar Cayce, who has been called the most documented psychic of all time as well as a twentieth-century mystic, helped thousands of people through the use of his remarkable intuitive ability. For over forty years, Cayce gave readings, or psychic dissertations, using the Akashic Records as his primary resource material. Cayce’s essential talent was his ability to access and describe information from these records, information which would enable people to discover everything from their essential purpose in life to the underlying cause of a long-standing problem. It was a resource of information, Cayce claimed, which was and is available to everyone.

In an effort to describe how this is feasible, Edgar Cayce stated that it is possible for individuals to attune to the Akashic Records in the same manner that a radio could be built to tune in to radio waves. Although the records are not physical in nature, an individual in attunement can “hear,” “read,” and “experience” the information nonetheless. In order to illustrate what an individual might perceive while viewing this information, Cayce told an eighteen-year-old girl that the Akashic Records of the mental world might be compared to a movie theater of the physical world (275-19). This movie could be replayed in an effort to understand what had occurred in an individual’s experience in any period, at any time, or while in any place in history. Also within this data was a record of lessons learned, opportunities lost, faults acquired, and experiences gained. In addition, although an individual’s actions could be misinterpreted or misconstrued in the physical world, the Akashic Records maintained an objective record of a person’s “real life” because it reported his or her true intent.

In 1934, while giving a reading to a twenty-eight-year-old freight agent (416-2), Edgar Cayce tried to define these records further. Not only did he discuss what the Akashic Records are, but he explained how they are written, and clarified how an individual could gain access to the information. Apparently, any type of endeavor—whether action, thought, desire, or deed—creates some kind of vibration. This vibration produces a mark upon (what Cayce called) the skein of space and time and is somehow permanently identified with the individual responsible. Although unseen, it is an etheric energy that is as evident to a sensitive as the printed word is to a sighted person:

When there is the thought or the activity of the body in any particular environ, this very activity makes for the impressions upon the soul . . .

As to the records made by such an activity, these are written upon what is known as time or space; much in the form or manner as are the messages that are of a familiar nature to the body in its present activity. As the instruments of recording are used, so does the activity of ENERGY expended leave its imprint upon the etheric wave that records between time and space that DESIRED to be put, as to that impelling or producing. Just as the figures or characters make for communications between individuals, so does the soul upon the pages or records of time and space.

416-2

Complicating our ability to understand and work with these records, however, Cayce explained to his wife, Gertrude, in reading 538-32 that it is very possible for anyone attempting to read the records (a psychic, a sensitive individual, the entity itself, etc.) to misinterpret the information. Perceiving the Akashic database is apparently shaded by the mental experience and background of the person reading the information UNLESS the intent is totally selfless and desirous of being of help. In other words, two individuals could acquire very different interpretations from the very same records because of their own belief systems, backgrounds, experiences, and personal motives.

During the course of a reading given to a thirty-eight-year-old physician, the subjective nature of the Akashic Records was explained as follows:

Hence the interpretations of these may vary somewhat, dependent upon what phases the approach is made. In the same manner that in material experiences entities, viewing an event or happening, are prompted to give THEIR version according to the reaction upon their ideal—and upon those promptings of the purpose of the individual so viewing same.

1448-2

The same person was told that every experience encountered in an individual’s life could leave a good or a bad impression upon these Akashic Records. Apparently each occurrence in life has the capacity to be a constructive or a destructive influence, based upon what an individual does with that experience. Different choices will leave very different impressions upon the records.

Since these records are so complete, so accurate, and so individualized, a logical question might be: Just what is the purpose of the Akashic Records in the first place? Simply put, the answer is to keep track of and assist with each soul’s personal growth and transformation. However, in order to adequately discuss and understand Edgar Cayce’s perception of the records, one needs to possess an adequate background in what might be termed “the Cayce Cosmology.” Essentially, that cosmology can be summed up in the statement: God is essentially love and the Universe is completely orderly. Beyond that concept is the premise that each individual was purposefully created, as a soul, to become a companion with the Creator.

Confirming Scripture, according to the Cayce readings, we were created in “God’s image” (Genesis 1:26) and therefore our natural state is spirit. Life did not begin at the moment of physical birth, rather there was an existence in spirit prior to physicality. God gave to each soul complete freedom of choice and the opportunity to find expression—to find themselves, so to speak. Because souls are created in God’s image, it would only be through a process of personal experiences—one choice leading to another, and then another, and then another—that God’s companions could gain their own individuality, truly being a part of Him and yet individuals in their own right. Once they have discovered their individuality they would once again return in consciousness to be His companions and cocreators.

From Cayce’s perspective, although we are currently having a physical experience, our bodies are simply a temporal home. Just as an automobile is discarded when the owner no longer finds it useful, so too are our bodies set aside when they have completed their function. We are not physical bodies with souls, but are spiritual beings who happen to be having a physical existence. If this is true and we are fundamentally spirituals beings, then we might ask: So, just what are we doing here? The answer proposed by the Cayce information is that we are essentially gathering experiences.

According to the readings, the soul, basically creative in nature, longs to find self-expression. In fact, the essential question repeatedly posed by the soul might be: Who am I? This question is addressed in infinite ways as each soul chooses specific experiences to meet itself. The soul gains firsthand knowledge not only about its own identity but also learns how choices lead to certain experiences. In time, soul experiences and acquired knowledge will lead to wisdom. Inevitably, wisdom will lead to compassion and eventually love will be the end result. At this point, the soul will know its individual identity as well as its true relationship with God. The soul will have come to understand that its primary essence and God’s are one and the same, LOVE:

Thus innately the entity is ever desiring to try something new. This is well, provided the basis of such is builded upon truth. For truth in any clime is ever the same—it is law. And love is law, law is love. Love is God, God is Love. It is the universal consciousness, the desire for harmonious expressions for the good of all, that is the heritage in man, if there is the acceptance of the way and manner such may be applied, first in the spiritual purpose and then in the mental application, and the material success will be pleasing to any.

3350-1

The soul’s education in self-awareness is undertaken through a process of cause and effect. This cause-and-effect growth pattern was examined in nearly two thousand Cayce readings which explored the topic of reincarnation. Rather than being a fatalistic process, the influence from one’s past merely provides a framework of potentials and probabilities. These possibilities are all inscribed upon the Akashic Records. An individual’s choices, actions, and free will in the present actually determine the experience lived this time around. For Cayce, it wasn’t nearly so important as to who an individual had once been (or even what they had been doing), as it was paramount that the individual focus on the present and the opportunities and the challenges that faced the person in this time, in this place, right now. In the language of the readings:

In the studies, then, know WHERE ye are going . . . to find that ye only lived, died and were buried under the cherry tree in Grandmother’s garden does not make thee one whit [a] better neighbor, citizen, mother or father!

But to know that ye spoke unkindly and suffered for it, and in the present may correct it by being righteous—THAT is worth while!

5753-2

One young woman was told that from the past she had an innate gift for music (275-33), and that through meditation and attunement she could reawaken those talents in the present: “For, as an individual attunes itself to that which it has attained, even at a MOMENT of time, there is aroused the abilities to KNOW even that which WAS known through the [past] experience.” In another instance, a forty-six-year-old woman who received a reading about her past lives was told which lifetimes were having the greatest effect upon the present (757-8). Her reading detailed incarnations in Colonial America, England during the Crusades, ancient Persia, and ancient Egypt. From each of these experiences, certain inclinations had been developed and still remained a part of the woman’s personality and individuality. In America, she had acquired the ability to assist individuals in cooperating and communicating with one another so that people of various backgrounds and motives could learn to work together. From long periods of isolation in England, she retained an inner longing to always make time in her life for personal reflection and contemplation. From an incarnation as Persian nobility, she had acquired the desire to be surrounded by finery and beauty. Her interest in religious thought was traced to a similar work she had begun in ancient Egypt. Each of these traits simply acted as influences in the woman’s current life. Nothing was fixed; instead, the woman could use, abuse, or even ignore these inclinations in her life right now.

For example, the woman’s impulse to be alone could be used in the present as times for personal rejuvenation in order to better assist those around her; however, it might just as easily be directed into a sense of aloofness or the selfish desire to always put her own needs first. In Cayce’s understanding, influences from the past are always molded and shaped by an individual’s will, desires, and purposes in the present.

In addition to the past-life material, interesting insights presented themselves in this woman’s case. During the course of the reading, Cayce described what manner of information was written upon the Akashic Records, how that information made its impression, as well as the influence this type of material could have upon an individual in the present. After putting himself into the trance state and journeying in consciousness to the Akashic Records, Cayce began his discourse. The woman’s reading states in part:

Yes, we have the entity and those relations with the universe and universal forces, that are latent and manifested in the personalities of the entity now known as—or called—[757], as recorded by the experiences in the soul’s activity and journey through the environs that make for those impressions—or those that become manifested influences or forces in the experience of an entity in its present sojourn in the earth.

Questions naturally arise in this particular experience of this entity as to how or in what manner the records are made of an entity’s sojourn or activity in a sphere or space, so that there are the abilities of one to read or interpret same. Are they as letters written? Are they as pictures of the experiences of an entity? Are they in forms as of omens or characters that represent certain influences or activities about the earth? Yea, all of these, my friend, and more; for they are as but the skein of life itself, the expression of a divine force from the God-Father itself, making manifestations in forms that become manifestations in a material experience. For truly to be absent from the body is to be present with those infinite influences and forces that may act upon and be acted upon, from the emanations of divine influences that may be either visions as picturized, written as thought in characterizations from the various influences through which such entities make for the communication—whether in ideas or in characters that represent those ideas in their expressions as one to another. As in all forms of communicative influences from one entity or soul to another—in a look, in an expression of some portion of the anatomical influences or form, or from word, or from the turn as from the cut or form of eye, shape or form of mouth, the rising of the brow, or in any communicative influences—these either bespeak of those things that are for the aggrandizement of self’s own motives or impulses, or are the expressions of that purpose, that desire, whereunto such a soul or expression or entity has been called. These are forms or manners through which such are written, as in the Book of Life; and may be read and known of men.

757-8

In essence, life is an adventure of experiences whereby an individual is challenged to become a better person for having had those experiences. An experience alone doesn’t determine who the individual is as a person, rather it is how the individual chooses to face those experiences. From the perspective of reincarnation, an individual’s growth is predicated primarily upon how well he or she deals with the opportunities and circumstances that present themselves in daily life.

Unfortunately, rather than seeing that individuals are very much active “cocreators” in the unfoldment of their life journeys, too often reincarnation has been misinterpreted as a fatalistic journey through experiences and relationships that belong to an individual because of her or his “karma.” With this approach, choices made in the past have somehow etched in stone the future, and life is simply a process of going through the motions. This is definitely not the Cayce approach to reincarnation and karma in which each lifetime is one of nearly limitless opportunities. At one point, Edgar Cayce stated that approaches to reincarnation that do not take into account the importance of free will, created what he called a karmic “bugaboo” (136-18)—a total misunderstanding of the laws at work. From his perspective, individuals are very much active participants in their life journeys and not simply sometime-reluctant observers.

The word karma is a Sanskrit term that means work, deed, or act. It can also be interpreted to mean “cause and effect.” Although agreeing with this concept, the Edgar Cayce readings make perhaps one of the most intriguing and unique philosophical contributions: the idea that karma can be defined as memory. It is not really a debt that must be paid, nor is it necessarily a set of specific circumstances that must be experienced because of deeds or misdeeds from the past. Karma is simply patterns of memory. It is a pool of information stored in the Akashic Records that the subconscious draws upon in the present. It has elements that are positive as well as those which seem negative. For example, an immediate affability toward an individual just met is as likely to be “karmic” as is an immediate animosity toward someone else. To be sure, this subconscious memory has an effect and an influence upon how we think, how we react, what we choose, even how we look! But the component of free will is ever within our grasp.

In one respect, this idea of “karma as memory” can be broken down even further so that we possess memory in terms of desires that we’ve brought with us from the past, memory in terms of situations that may still need to be learned, and even memory in terms of patterns that we keep choosing to experience, but in simplest terms it can be understood as memory. Although the memory is there, freedom of choice allows an individual to determine the path he or she takes in this present life. In practical terms, we may not always be able to understand why a certain situation was drawn to us, and in fact the why may not be of primary importance; what is important is how we choose to respond.

In 1944, while giving a reading to a forty-year-old fireman, Cayce discussed the fact that the past-life information he was drawing upon was specifically related to the life cycle that the individual presently faced. The suggestion given by Gertrude Cayce for accessing the information from the Akashic Records and a portion of the reading follows:

Gertrude Cayce: You will give the relations of this entity and the universe, and the universal forces; giving the conditions which are as personalities, latent and exhibited in the present life; also the former appearances in the earth plane, giving time, place and the name, and that in each life which built or retarded the development for the entity; giving the abilities of the present entity, that to which it may attain, and how. You will answer the questions, as I ask them:

Edgar Cayce: Yes, we have the records here of that entity now known as or called [3902].

In giving the interpretations of the records, written or imposed or impressed upon the skein of time and space, or the Akashic records in God’s book of remembrances, these we find:

We would choose from these records that which if applied in the experience will bring a better interpretation of the how and why that there are certain latent and manifested urges in the abilities of the entity in the present, which if applied in a constructive, creative way may bring a better ability of the entity to apply itself in being a channel, a manifestation of those divine influences that are the cause and purpose of the entity’s appearance in the earth in the present . . .

As to the appearances in the earth, we find that these have been quite varied. Not all may be given by any means but these that are a part of the awareness or consciousness of the entity in the present cycle of its experience. And these are at that period that they may be applied. As indicated the mental is to be applied for the development of the material as well as the mental and spiritual self. Keep self from condemnation ever. [Author’s emphasis]

3902-2

Regardless of which cycle has surfaced in one’s life, the soul constantly experiences the consequences of its previous choices. This concept is expressed in biblical terminology as “What you sow you must reap” and is generally labeled as “Like attracts like” by students of reincarnation. This essentially means that individuals get to experience for themselves the effects that their previous choices have had upon others. Rather than being predestined, individuals continue to be in control of their lives (and their perceptions) through how they choose to respond to the situations they’ve drawn to themselves. Ultimately all experiences are for one’s personal growth.

It is worth noting that soul growth can occur even when an individual has made the “wrong” choice. For example, in one case which will be explored in greater depth in the next chapter, one woman (1523) had obviously made the wrong choice when she married her first husband. However, that choice enabled her and her husband both to overcome certain patterns that had originated two hundred years earlier. Although the memory (or the karma) from the past had to be dealt with, it might have been overcome in an easier fashion. It is interesting to note that the readings often suggested it was better to make an erroneous choice than it was to be idle and to do nothing, because soul development was only possible through movement, growth, and activity.

In Cayce’s cosmology, each soul’s wealth of experiences from the past acts as subconscious memory in the present. By coming to terms with that memory—which manifests through such things as one’s desires, feelings, attributes, even fears—faults and shortcomings can be overcome and talents and abilities expressed.

In terms of personal relationships, Edgar Cayce stated that we never meet anyone by chance, nor do we ever have an emotional connection (positive or negative) to another individual for the very first time. Relationships are an ongoing learning and experiential process. In other words, we pick up our relationship with another person exactly where it was left the last time around. As one example, two individuals from the Cayce files (cases 288 and 294) were told that “These two have ever been together,” (294-9) and have experienced every imaginable relationship from father and daughter, employee and employer, mother and son, to husband and wife. In another instance (1222-1), a woman was told that part of the reason her husband was so controlling and demanding was because he had purchased her in a previous life. Cayce stated, “He bought you! Doesn’t he act like it at times?” to which the woman responded, “He sure does!” The nature and ongoing development of all relationships are a portion of that which is recorded by the Akashic Records.

An interesting twist on the idea that individuals are constantly meeting the memory they have previously built in relationships with one another is that there really isn’t karma between people; instead, there is only karma with one’s own self. These patterns of behavior and memory are stored within one’s own records. The conceptual challenge, however, is that individuals seem to most effectively come to terms with their own karmic memory, or “meet themselves,” through their interactions with others. It is this interesting dynamic of meeting oneself through relationships with others that often causes individuals to perceive “them” as the basis of one’s frustrations and challenges rather than accepting personal responsibility.

And yet, in spite of the fact that karma belongs to oneself, each soul is constantly drawn toward certain individuals and groups that will enable them to meet themselves in circumstances and relationships. Those individuals and groups, in turn, are drawn toward specific people in an effort to come to terms with their own karmic memory.

This concept of cyclic patterns with groups of individuals is evidenced among Cayce’s contemporaries. A number of people who had readings were frequently given lifetimes in history that progressed along the following lines: Atlantis, ancient Egypt, Persia, Palestine, Europe, Colonial America, and then as a contemporary of Cayce’s in the first half of the twentieth century. Because of this pattern, and the number of individuals who requested past-life readings for themselves and their families, some individual relationships can be traced for thousands of years.

In an effort to understand the dynamics of group karma that may be at play in our own lives, it’s possible to gather insights from the experiences of others. The experiences of these people and the development of their relationships through time can provide us with some interesting insights into how this process of coming to terms with the Akashic Records of the past works, as well as the interconnected dynamic between free choice and karmic memory. By exploring the biographical stories of others against their soul histories, we might discover karma-in-action. The process of life and death, rebirth, and the movement toward individuality is similar for each of us. Looking at the records and the soul histories of others might enable us to make more educated choices for ourselves as we come to terms with our own karmic memory and the meeting of patterns from the past.

With that in mind, one of the most fascinating case histories in the Cayce files is that of a twenty-nine-year-old woman who received her first reading in January 1938. What distinguishes this case from hundreds of others is that over the next six and a half years (before Cayce’s death in 1945) this woman procured an astonishing eighty-three readings for seventeen family members. These readings enabled her to understand how some of her current problems related not only to the present, but to a period that had occurred more than one hundred years previously—before she had even been born! More than that, she discovered how a majority of her family grouping had been “entangled” for thousands of years. These events and experiences continued to be written on the Akashic Records, giving impulse and reason to many of the woman’s current experiences.