Theos-Talk Archives (July 1996 Message tl00664)

According to Frank J. Dyer:
> 
> What kinds of specifics do you have in mind?

Meditation guidelines, information on attitudes and emotions,
astrological insights, dream work suggestions, programs for
group study of practical spirituality, and such.

 I would say that many, if not most,
> TS members have little difficulty in applying the teachings to practical
> problems of self-development.  Applying them consistently is the hard part, of
> course.

And gaining anything from our association with
fellow-Theosophists to help deal with practical issues is also
hard.
> 
> You note that you found a good deal of practical guidance in the Cayce
> materials. Cayce has always been something of an enigma to me.  His recorded
> sessions contain much wisdom; however, he was evidently...how should one put
> it...lacking in sophistication?... in his conscious moments.

Seems true from everything I have read,
  I would be very
> interetsed in your take on Cayce's persona. Was he just goofing on everybody or
> was he really a back country hog sticker who periodically "fell out" and
> sleep-talked surprisingly spiritual things.

He was profoundly interested in spirituality from childhood,
and read the Bible voraciously.  But he used his clairvoyance
for 22 years on solely medical readings before being led into
questions of occultism, cosmology, Atlantis, the Great White
Brotherhood, etc. by a Theosophical inquirer, Arthur Lammers,
in 1923.  For the remaining 22 years of his life he gave
readings on every imaginable Theosophical/occultist topic.  My
guess is that he did just what he said (in trance() he was
doing-- make a deep connection between his subconscious mind
and that of the person receiving the reading.  The "akashic
records" are *in the person* not off somewhere, according to
Cayce.  As for the doctrines that emerged in the readings, they
seem to have been a gradually accumulating synthesis of the
types of esoteric influences-- Theosophy, astrology,
Spiritualism, New Thought, Fourth Way, osteopathy, Jung, etc.
etc.-- that were familiar to the people who received readings.
Cayce himself was not consciously familiar with all this stuff,
but the people who came to him were.  Which suggests that he
really did get paranormal access to his information, but also
that sometimes that information was far from reliable.

 And can you really cobble together a
> yoga out of his sessions?

You don't even have to cobble.  It's all pretty well laid
out, presented in fairly simple secondary sources from
A.R.E. Press.  Meditation, dream work, group study of practical
material, all readily available.

Cheers
Paul