Читать книгу Experiments in a Search For God - Mark Thurston - Страница 8

Preface

It is difficult to say what is the most significant portion of the psychic material given by Edgar Cayce. The more than 9,000 physical readings have opened a new perspective to health and the relationship between body, mind and soul. Readings on prayer and meditation have introduced to the Judeo-Christian world teachings well known in the Orient. More than 2,500 life readings have presented the challenging concepts of reincarnation and the continuity of life. However, for many people the readings that make up the Search for God material have had the most profound and lasting effects upon their spiritual search. These readings—only 130 in number and given over an eleven-year period to a dedicated group—provide a detailed and systematic statement of the process of spiritual awakening. The material is presented as a growth sequence: a guidebook to the unfoldment in materiality of our deeper, truer selves.

I can say that these readings have had a tremendous impact upon my life. By working over the past eight years with several groups which were applying this material, I have discovered that the Edgar Cayce readings are not just to be studied and analyzed, but lived and experienced. For me the group experience has been invaluable. We so easily go astray when we walk the path alone. The demands of spiritual transformation are sometimes not easy, and a group can be a stabilizing and sustaining influence.

I have chosen three passages which for me summarize the depth of meaning in the Search for God readings and in their application through groups. Those three quotes appear on the previous page. The first is taken from A Search for God, Book I (one of the two study books written by the group that received these 130 readings). It suggests that each day we selectively decide upon a spiritual principle and apply it in our lives. It is this approach that I have attempted to incorporate into the book.

The second passage is a promise. It says that the teachings found in the Edgar Cayce readings can form the foundation of a renewed understanding of God’s relationship to man. In my opinion, this applies especially to the Search for God material. The thousands of people working with these readings can literally lift the consciousness of humanity.

And finally, I have chosen a quote from the writings of the poet Rainer Marie Rilke. His beautiful metaphor captures the way in which all humanity is a part of a greater whole. In applying the Search for God material we wake up to the fact that we are all leaves on a tree—a tree that has a great purpose. This can be the most exciting discovery of our lives.

In writing this book I have made a careful study of the original Search for God readings as well as A Search for God. Book I. The universality of this approach to growth is illustrated by passages from parallel works. The experiments are drawn from many sources: those I have done with groups in the past, those suggested by other groups, and experiments I have developed especially for this book. I would like to acknowledge three people in my life who have had a significant influence in my writing of this book. Hugh Lynn Cayce and Herbert Puryear have been special friends and teachers over the years and I am sure many readers will feel their presence in these pages. And to Carl Bohannon I extend a thank-you for my first experience with a Search for God Study Group. His patience was remarkable in that first year-and-a-half when I was so inquisitive and skeptical.

Mark A. Thurston