Theos-Talk Archives (December 1995 Message tl00382)

Herewith a progress report on my research for a book about
Edgar Cayce with comments relevant to Theosophical and Baha'i
concerns.

At present I'm in the middle of Vol. 07 of the Cayce Library
Series each volume averaging 500 pages with 18 to go I
skipped #5; there are 24 total. The first volume is excerpts
from the readings on Life and Death. The next two volumes are
Meditation I and II; then come Dreams and Dreaming I and II
after 600 pages of dream interpretations I needed a break;
thus skipping Vol. V. Sixth comes Early Christian Era just
finished; #7 is Study Group Readings. While I feel more and
more sure that this is something I must write about and must
therefore spend the next year or two studying there is a very
definite ambivalence developing; an inner split that causes
something which feels like emotional fabric being ripped.

The inner tearing comes between the intensely positive lyrical
mysticism evoked by the Meditation readings the Life and Death
volume and the Study Group readings and the loud screeching
of my bullshit detector set off by the Early Christian
readings-- with the dream material at an intermediate level of
moderate interest and appreciation. The Early Christian volume
reveals that dozens nay scores of people who got past life
readings from Cayce *just happened* to have been eyewitnesses
to the life of Christ. Without arguing for my perception I'll
simply state that I *intuit* that this is simply regurgitation
of the Bible turned into fictional past lives not done with
deceptive intent but rather fulfilling some psychic need of
Christians to imagine themselves living in immediate proximity
to their Lord. It definitely comes across at a much lower
level of plausibility than the medical readings or the
psychological advice on attitudes and emotions or several
other elements of Cayce's work. On the other hand the
Atlantis descriptions and prophecies of drastic earth changes
will also set the BS detector off no doubt.

So there's the feeling of "Oh no all this wonderful
uplifting helpful solid advice on meditation and dreams on
basic patterns of living RUINED by nutty implausible occult
pretensions about past lives future earthquakes lost
civilizations." And an inner ...rrrrip... as
the part of me that finds overwhelming value in *some* of Cayce's readings
*resists* the awareness that there is some *junk mail* in the
akashic records.

Here now to Theosophical and Baha'i parallels. The very same
stress between part of one that sees immense spiritual wisdom
and clarity in a source and another part that sees misleading
dangerous and even *silly* elements in the very same source's
teachings-- has been felt in those other contexts. From that
small sample I conclude that probably *any* spiritual
affiliation sets up a force field in which one must contend
with the cognitive dissonance between those parts that *ring
true* and those parts that *thunk* and just don't seem
plausible. Each of us who contends with that dissonance has an
evolving capacity to work out the conflicts. But there are
many strategies and we probably experience most of them along
the way. True believers been there done that whether in Blavatsky
Baha'u'llah Cayce etc. simply say "I
*know* the inner voice telling me of the ultimate spiritual
authenticity of this message is reliable; therefore the other
inner voice saying `watch out this stuff is fill of holes' is to
be *ignored* *silenced* and *destroyed.*"

On the other hand the cynic says "I know that the flaws my
critical reasoning finds in this system are really there I
trust my thinking and the evidence *therefore* when I was
imagining some ultimate spiritual value to the teachings it was
all *imagination and self-deception.*" So people define
themselves as believers or unbelievers thereby missing out on
a great growth opportunity. To feel *simultaneously* the awe
reverence joy of recognizing something as emanating from a
divine source *and* the unease regret and perplexity caused by
recognizing that it has been contaminated distorted and
limited by *human contraints* is the beginning of wisdom.

I'm sure that sorting out the wheat from the chaff in the Cayce
readings will lead into controversies based on past experience
with Theosophists and Baha'is. But the compulsion to
separate fact from fiction is the fuel that keeps the search
for truth going forward step by step day by day.

Happy holidays to everyone still reading at this point!