6/21/41 See Thos. Sugrue's address below:
THE MEANING OF EDGAR CAYCE by THOMAS SUGRUE
An address delivered before the dinner meeting of the
10th Annual Congress of the Association for Research
and Enlightenment, Inc., at the Warner Hotel, Virginia
Beach, Virginia, June, 21, 1941.
Now and again there occurs in the history of each of us
a crisis which brings up the old, fundamental questions
of why we exist, what purpose our lives are meant to have,
and what eternity holds for that part of us which survives.
Such periods of crisis occur also in the history of families,
communities, states, and nations.
At these times we, as people, find that we must think not
only about what we are and what we mean as persons, but about
what we are and what we mean as groups, as societies, as
cultures, as civilizations.
It is then that we discover that no life - no matter what its
form or substance - exists without a plan and a purpose.
We are aware of this, of course, at all times; but we are
content to be aware of it dimly, intuitively, as we are aware
of tomorrow, next week, next year - as we are aware that
other people have inner lives similar to our own. We know
it, but we do not think about it: we lose ourselves in what
is close at hand - in today, in yesterday, in our wants and
likes and dreams. Desire overcomes purpose. It is only when
desire is threatened that we turn to purpose. The crusades,
reformations, and new religions spring up. Saints are made
out of sinners, and man seems at last to have set out on a
highway to heaven.
But as soon as purpose has overcome the threat to desire, man
returns to his former love. The wagons of the caravan stand
unmoving. The oxen are cut from the traces, and the marching
feet begin to dance.
Still, each time this happens a few keep moving forward, and
all of us are a little farther along the road.
Until now there has never been a time when the world as a
whole faced the same crisis - and turned with all of its
people toward the questions of life and death and destiny.
It has happened in our time; all of us, tonight, tomorrow,
and in the days which stretch ahead, must answer to ourselves
and to each other the old questions: we must answer to
ourselves for the life we have lived and are living now; to
each other for the world we have made - the world we hoped to
leave for our children.
We must account for everything we have done, if we are
honestly to face the future. We must account for this
organization we call the Association for Research and
Enlightenment. What is it? What is its purpose? Why should
it not go in flames with the rest of the smug way of life we
have built?
Perhaps, if we are honest with ourselves, we can answer those
questions.
During the past forty-one years we have so modified space and
time that the world - which once seemed as disconnected and
as far-flung as the universe - is now a community.
Catastrophe does not face one army, or even all armies; it
faces everyone, everywhere.
And so, even at this moment, people in all the lands of the
earth are digging up the old, familiar questions: who are
they? what do they mean? where are they going? why should
they choose one course rather than another? why should they
resist evil if evil makes their lives less painful, more
bearable? what is the difference between right and wrong
anyhow? who is God? where is He? why does he permit sorrow
and pestilence, aggression and terror? is life more than a
biological process? why fight for principles, instead of
bread?
The Japanese, the Chinese, the peoples of India and Persia,
the Turks, the British, the Germans - all of the peoples of
Europe and of the Americas are asking themselves these
questions - turning within themselves for answers, just as
Greeks and Romans and Syrians turned within themselves for
answers in the first days of Christianity, when they heard of
a Man Who was crucified in Jerusalem and Who rose from the
dead.
Before we can discover what the world is, and where it is
going, we must discover what we are, and where we are not
going: the whole is only the sum of its parts - it is not
different from them; it is not separate from them; it cannot
proceed except in the direction which its parts, by their
separate movements, ordain.
We take the study of ourselves for granted - we confuse it
with study of the external world. Each of us, at one time or
another, does a certain amount of thinking about God and the
universe and his soul: after a little searching, a little
listening, a little weighing of that notion against this, he
settles himself in the theory which is most comfortable to
his desires and least difficult to maintain. Then he returns
to thinking about himself in relation to other people, and to
what he wants: for he thinks, as do all of us, of nothing
but himself - other things are considered only in
relationship to this self, this consciousness of identity
which is the only reality we know.
Then, when a crisis arrives which demands the practical use
of this knowledge of himself and his purposes, to guide him
through sacrifice and terror and grief, it appears for what
it is: a lazy makeshift, a jerry-built contraption which
collapses under the weight it is supposed to support - the
weight of truth.
This is what is happening to all of us, throughout the world,
today, in the face of destruction and chaos which faces us.
As yet it is only an inarticulate wondering, a questioning
which cannot shape its own demands. While the war goes on it
will remain thus suppressed - but nurtured to greater and
greater strength as man sets about destroying, brick by
brick, the mightiest of the civilizations he has built.
Some people, of course, are secure in a faith. Others, a
fortunate few, are secure in a faith which is bolstered by
knowledge. You who are here tonight are among the fortunate
few: fortunate in the knowledge which bolsters your faith:
fortunate or unfortunate, as you yourself deem it, in the
fact that this knowledge makes of itself, at this time, a
duty.
To easy-living Americans, accustomed to do, think, say,
write, and believe what they please, the word duty has an
unpleasant sound - in their thoughts it is somehow connected
with lack of freedom, hard work, and sacrifice - with the
realities of life which this generation was educated to
believe had been done away with: by cleverness, not
goodness.
There once lived, in this state of Virginia, a man who gave
up his career, his home, his lands, his happiness, for a
thing which he believed to be more sacred and worthwhile than
any of these blessings. It was he who gave the proper
definition of duty. "Duty," said Robert E. Lee, "is the
sublimest word in the English language."
It is time now for us, for all peoples everywhere, to
consider what it is which for us is more sacred and
worthwhile than our careers, our homes, our lands, our
happiness - for that is the thing which will fashion for us
our duty.
To one man it will be what happens inside him when the lamps
are lighted on the altars of an ancient faith; to another it
will be what he feels when the bands play and the flags wave;
to another it will be the touch of his child's hand, the
memory of his mother, the tick of the kitchen clock -
something glimpsed, something caught, something held, of that
finer, larger, grander existence that lies beyond the gates
of ourselves - that other reality.
To each man it will be different; yet to each, in the end, it
must be the same - his little weapon of truth; all he has to
hold against the armies of despair that stalk him, now that
this night of the time of man has reached it's darkest hour.
It is what this thing is for you - as members of this
association, that concerns us tonight; the thing which makes
of itself your duty.
This association is founded on the work of Edgar Cayce, who
for want of a better term has been called a psychic medium.
During the past winter and spring I have been engaged in
writing the story of this work, and the story of Edgar Cayce
- a task which is now nearly finished.
The central problem of a biographer is to find the meaning of
his subject - without a meaning the subject is not worth
writing about. The meaning of Edgar Cayce and his work, at
first glance so obvious, has proved elusive. As I pursued
it, it went higher and higher into regions of plan and law,
and deeper into the tangled tragedy of man.
To most of the thousands who have met him and used his powers
Edgar Cayce has been just an odd sort of fellow - a man with
a peculiar talent: a swami in homespun, a Kentucky version
of the Oracle of Delphi. Most of them have liked him; many
of them have been grateful for the help they received; but
for the most part he has been treated like the doctor who
cures a bad cold - nice fellow, and they'll call him again
when they need him.
Yet more than thirty years ago, in the earliest days of
readings, a question was answered by a statement which should
have meant something deep and significant to all those who
knew Edgar Cayce and all who thereafter met him and heard
his story.
The question was, "Where does this information come from?"
The answer was, "Edgar Cayce's mind is amenable to
suggestion, the same as all subconscious minds, but in
addition thereto it has the power to interpret to the
objective minds of others what is acquired from the conscious
mind of other individuals. The subconscious mind forgets
nothing. The conscious mind receives the impression from
without and transfers all thought to the subconscious, where
it remains even though the conscious be destroyed. The
subconscious mind of Edgar Cayce is able to communicate with
other subconscious minds, either of individuals in the earth
or those who have passed on - if they have passed from this
sphere their patterns, or impressions remain - and is capable
of interpreting through his objective mind, to other
objective minds, the impressions and the knowledge thus
received." [
294-1]
The implications of this statement are obvious: the
singleness of all mind as a force, the immortality of the
soul, the identification of the subconscious as the mind of
the soul, and the continued development of the soul after
death.
Apparently none of these implications was drawn at the time.
The statement was included in a report read before the Clinic
Research Society of Boston, and was published in newspapers
throughout the country. The report included physical cases
in which the subconscious mind of Edgar Cayce had given
diagnoses which were admittedly correct, and suggested
treatments which were helpful.
If the diagnoses were correct, and the treatments were
helpful, was not the statements as to the source of the
information also valid?
And so every person who thereafter met Edgar Cayce and heard
his story was faced with proof - of the modern, scientific
type, - that his soul was immortal and his thoughts
imperishable.
Nothing whatever was made of this fact.
For that was 1909, when the country was comfortable and
prosperous. The middle class was installing telephones, the
rich were buying automobiles, and the poor were going to see
the new-fangled moving pictures at nickelodeons.
God and His plans were very far away. They belonged to an
hour on Sunday morning - an hour that was very much apart
from all of the rest of the week. There was a reassuring
feeling perhaps, after all, the dour preachings of the church
were wrong. Science said so, and hadn't science produced the
electric light, the telephone, the phonograph, the
automobile, the steam train, and all sorts of wonders,
including an airplane that really would fly? Science said
the either God did not exist or that He was just an
intelligence that ran the winds and tides and ordered the
lives of the vegetables and animals - leaving man pretty
much alone. Some modern philosophers said that God did not
interfere with man because man was gradually becoming God -
and wasn't there proof of it everywhere? People were
getting richer and times were getting better - the hand of
God had not been raised against His children in many a day -
it was probably just a lot of superstition that He ever had
done such things.
Why bother, then, about proof that the Old God existed, when
there was so much other, and more comforting proof, that He
didn't?
Fourteen years later, in Dayton, Ohio, the implications of
the 1909 statement were taken up in a series of readings
which gave the geography, plan, strategy and tactics of
creation, and this history of man's concern in it and in the
earth.
In the intervening years, between 1909 and 1923, hundreds of
readings were given for sick people. The diagnoses were
apparently correct; the treatments, when followed, brought
relief and help. The same source told the story of creation
and the history of man. Was the story not also correct? And
if correct, was it not a rare opportunity for every person
who thereafter met Mr. Cayce to know the story and to put its
truth into action in his own life?
Apparently it was not; for that was the Roaring Twenties,
when bootleggers were our national heroes, ugly prose and
sordid details were the stuff of literature, and everyone was
going to make a million dollars in the bull market. Truth
was an interesting thing to know; it was pleasant and even
fashionable to talk about it - but inconvenient to practice -
and unnecessary.
Now it is 1941. We have taken quite a beating since 1929; so
much so that some of us are willing to admit that it is
necessary not only to know the truth, but to practice it.
Necessary, that is, unless we want to destroy not only our
civilization and our culture, but the only reality we know -
the consciousness we have of ourselves - our souls.
And we know, now, that knowledge is not only power, but a
trust - and a trust is a duty.
Our duty is to make the truth we know and to build it into
our consciousness, so that we are never unaware of it: and
within our minds to shape and whet it, until it is a shining
instrument that makes our every thought and action a movement
toward the camps of heaven - a weapon that will defend us
through the sacking and pillaging of our institutions and
society, our dogmas and beliefs, our possessions and our
fancies - that will cut through the burned wreckage of our
mistakes and build upon them a new age - not of desire, not
of reason, not of science - but of spirit and faith.
This we must do for our children, not for ourselves - by now
we know that nothing we build for ourselves; only that which
we do for others has a firm foundation.
We have talked of this before - in quiet times, in good
times. All that is over now. This is the 10th Annual
Congress of the association. When the 20th is held the old
age will have ended, the new age will have begun. If the
association means anything, if Edgar Cayce means anything, if
we mean anything, the time has come to live what we have
learned and give the world what we have gathered.
Lest you have forgotten some of it, or gotten details mixed,
let me briefly review for you what it is that you know - I
will read some excerpts from those chapters of THERE IS A
RIVER which deals with the story of creation and man as it is
has been given by readings. This is the story, told in
symbols which are familiar to human experience.
In building the soul there was spirit, with its knowledge of
identity with God; there was the active principle of mind;
and there was the ability to experience the activity of the
mind separately from God. Thus a new individual, dependent
upon and issuing from God, but aware of an existence apart
from Him, came into being. To the new individual there was
given, necessarily, the power to direct and choose its own
activity: without free will it would remain a part of the
mind of God, since there would be no course of action open
but that of His thought. Mind, issuing as a force from God,
would naturally fulfill His thoughts, unless directed
otherwise. The power to so direct the force of mind was what
man calls the consciousness of the individual. The record of
this consciousness - this free will - began with the first
expression which it made of its desires, through the force of
mind. That was the beginning of the soul.
The nucleus of the soul was in balance, positive and negative
force in equal amounts, producing harmonious activity: the
positive initiating, impregnating, thrusting forward; the
negative receiving, nourishing, ejecting. The steps of this
action were the stages of thought, perception, reflection,
opinion.
Thus the soul consisted of two states of consciousness: that
of the spirit, bearing a knowledge of its identity with God;
and that of the individual bearing a knowledge of everything
it experienced.
The plan for the soul was the cycle of experience, unlimited
in scope and duration, in which the individual would come to
know creation in all of aspects, at the discretion of will.
The cycle would be completed when the desire of will was no
longer different from the thought of God. The consciousness
of individuality would then merge with the consciousness of
identity with God, and the soul would return to its source as
the companion which it was intended to be.
In this state the soul would retain its sense of
individuality and the knowledge that of its own free will it
acted as a part of God. Until this state was reached the
soul would not be a companion in the true sense of the word.
(The idea that a return to God means a loss of individuality
is paradoxical, since God is conscious of everything that
happens, and must therefore be conscious of the individuality
of each soul. Thus the return of the soul is the return of
of the image to that which imagined it, and the individuality
of a soul could not be destroyed without destroying God
Himself. When a soul returns to God it becomes aware of
itself not only as a part of God, but as a part of every
other soul and everything.
What is lost is the ego - the desire to do other than the
will of God, and this, when the soul returns, is VOLUNTARILY
relinquished: this is the symbol of the crucifixion.)
The plan for the soul included experience of all creation,
but it did not necessarily mean identification with and
participation in all forms and substances. Nor did it mean
interference in creation by souls. It did not mean that they
were to spin their own little worlds, twisting and bending
laws to make images of their dreams.
But these things could happen. The soul was the greatest
creation; it had free will. Once free will was given God did
nothing to curb it: however it acted it had to act within
Him; by whatever route, it had to return to Him.
(The fact that man's body is a speck of dust on a small
planet leads to the illusion that man himself is a small
creation. The measure of the soul is the limitless activity
of the mind and the grandeur of the imagination).
Certain souls become bemused with their own powers and began
to experiment with them. They mingled with the dust of the
stars and the winds of the spheres, feeling them, becoming
part of them. One result of this was the unbalancing of the
positive-negative force, by accentuating one or the other:
to feel things demanded the negative force; to express
through things, and direct and manage them, required the
positive force. Another result was the gradual weakening of
the link between the two states of consciousness - that of
the spirit and that of the individual. The individual became
more concerned with his own creation than with God's.
(This was the fall in spirit, or the revolt of the angels.
It is a step in the story of God and man which was either
omitted or not stressed in most of the pagan philosophies,
though Pythagoras included it as a basic part of his
metaphysical structure.)
To move into a portion of creation and become part of it a
soul had to take on the consciousness of that portion. In
man this is represented by the physical body, the five
senses, and the awareness which is called the conscious mind.
In other worlds, in other systems, the cloaks which the soul
had to put on differed: only the range and variation of
man's own thoughts can give an idea of the number of these
other worlds and systems and the aspects of divine mind
which they represent.
When a soul thus took on the consciousness of a portion of
creation it separated itself temporarily from the
consciousness of its own individuality, and became thus
further removed from the consciousness of its spirit. Thus
instead of helping to direct the flow of creation, and
contributing to it, it found itself in the stream, drifting
along with it. The farther it went from shore, the more it
succumbed to the pull of the current, the more difficult was
the task of getting back.
Each of the systems of stars and planets represented, in this
manner, a temptation to the souls; each represented also an
opportunity for development, advancement, and growth toward
the ideal of complete companionship with God - the position
of co-creator in the vast and wonderful system of universal
mind.
The solar system attracted souls, and since each system is a
single expression, with its planets as integral parts, the
earth came into the path of souls.
It was an expression of God with its own laws, its own plan,
it's own evolution. Souls, longing to feel the beauty of the
seas, the winds, the forests, the flowers, mixed with them
and expressed themselves through them. They also mingled
with the animals, and made, in imitation of them, thought
forms: they played at creating; they imitated God. But it
was a playing, an imitating, that interfered with what had
already been set in motion, and what had been set in motion
gradually entangled the souls, so that they became trapped in
the plan of earth's evolution, inside the bodies they had
themselves created.
(This is incomprehensible from what man terms the scientific
standpoint, for it involves the law of relativity and laws of
atomic structure which have not yet been discovered. This
period in the earth's history, however, is very
well-documented: it was the Age of Fable, when gods and
goddesses - the souls - roamed the earth, turning into
trees, speaking from rocks, and inhabiting the bodies of
Centaurs, Cyclops, and other creatures which were half
animal, half human.)
Sex already existed in the animal kingdom, but the souls, in
their thought forms, were androgynous. Therefore, to
experience sex, they created thought forms for companions,
isolating the negative force in a new thought form, retaining
the positive in themselves. This objectification is what man
calls Lilith, the first woman.
This entanglement of souls in what man calls matter was a
probability from the beginning, but God did not know it would
happen, or when, until the souls, of their own choice, had
caused it to happen. Then a way of escape from the
predicament was created.
A form was chosen to be a proper vehicle of the soul on earth
and the way was paved for souls to enter earth and experience
it as a part of their cycle. The form already existing which
most approached the needs of the souls was what man would
call one of the anthropoid apes. Souls descended on these
bodies - hovering above and about them rather than inhabiting
them - and influence them to move toward a different goal
than the simple one they had been pursuing. They came down
out of the trees, built fires, made tools, lived in
communities, and began to communicate with each other.
Swiftly, even as man measures time, they lost their animal
look, shed bodily hair, and took on refinements of manner and
habit.
All this was done by the souls working through the glands,
until, at last, there was a new inhabitant of the earth:
man.
He appeared as a consciousness within an animal. Soon he was
that which his pattern demanded of objectification in the
earth; he was a little higher than the beasts, a little lower
than the angels.
The appearance of man - of his consciousness in this world -
was in five different places, as the five different races, at
the same time. The white race appeared in the Carpathian
basin, the yellow in Tibet, the red in Atlantis, the brown in
Lemuria, the black in Africa. The difference in color
represented an adherence to laws already set in motion for
the earth. The world of the earth was to be cognized by five
senses - five methods of awareness. Thus the earth had to be
experienced, and perfection had to be reached, in these five
methods of awareness. The races represent these five.
There were males and females in these new, pure races; and
both had complete souls. Eve replaced Lilith, and became the
complement to Adam, the perfect helpmeet, the ideal companion
for the three-fold life of earth: physical, mental, and
spiritual. In even the positive pole was suppressed and the
negative pole expressed; in Adam the negative pole was
suppressed, the positive expressed.
Which a soul would become was a matter of choice, unless it
was already entangled and unbalanced. Eventually the
positive-negative would have to be brought in balance, so
there was not, basically, any difference. For souls in
balance it was a device for the duration of the earth cycle.
It was not a voluntary assumption of an attitude, not a fall
into error.
Man became aware, with the advent of his consciousness, that
sex meant more to them than to the animals. To him it
represented the door by which new souls were to enter the
earth. It was the only means the trapped souls had of
getting out of their unfortunate predicament. It worked not
as an integral part of creation, of God's mind, as it did in
animals, but separately, at the direction of man's own soul.
It was a creative power that could be used for good or evil.
Used rightly, the race would be kept pure, the earth would be
a paradise, for souls in perfect bodies, and the trapped
souls could gradually be freed from their cycle of rebirth in
monstrous, half-animal forms, and provided with perfect
bodies.
The plan for the earth cycle of souls was a series of
incarnations, interlarded by periods of dwelling in other
dimensions of consciousness in the system - the planets -
until every thought and action of the physical body, with its
five senses and conscious mind, was in accord with the plan
originally laid out for the soul. When the body was no
longer a hindrance to the soul, when its atomic structure
could be spiritualized so that it no longer existed as
matter, the earth cycle was finished and the soul would go on
to new adventures. This conquest of the physical body could
not be attained until there was perfection in the other
dimensions of consciousness in the system, for, by the law of
relativity, these made up, with earth, the total expression
of the sun and its satellites.
The race of man was fostered by a soul which had already
returned to God and had become a companion and co-creator
with Him. This is the soul man knows as Christ.
The Christ soul was interested in the plight of its brother
souls trapped in earth, and after supervising the influx of
the pure races, it took form itself from time to time to act
as a leader to the people who were often bewildered. Souls
at first only lightly inhabited bodies; they remembered their
identity. Gradually, life after life, they descended into
earthiness, into less mentality, less consciousness of the
mind force. They remembered themselves in dreams, in
stories, in fables. Thus religion came into being, and the
arts of music, numbers, and geometry. These were brought to
earth by the incoming souls; gradually their heavenly source
was forgotten, as the source of he story of themselves and
their God was forgotten.
Finally man was left with a conscious mind definitely
separated from his own individuality, which he now calls the
subconscious mind. He felt the influence of himself, and he
was able to reason with this conscious mind - for all mind,
left to itself, will work out the plans of God.
So man built up reasons for believing what he felt to be
true, but what he no longer knew by inner knowledge.
Philosophy and theology resulted. Finally man began to look
around him and discover, in the earth, the secrets of which
he carried within himself but could no longer reach with his
consciousness. The result was science.
The plan went into action. Downward went man from heavenly
knowledge to mystic dreams, to revealed religions, to
philosophy and theology, until the bottom was reached and
there was no more connection with that which he had left.
Then he began to fight his way beck toward it with the tool
of reason, and with suffering, patience, and faith. Atlantis
and Lemuria sank; civilizations rose and fell; man was here a
little better, there a little better. Downward he went to
the depths of immersion in the consciousness of earth;
backward he slowly began to climb.
The Christ soul helped him. As Enoch, as Melchizadek, He
took on flesh, to teach and lead. He was not born, He did
not die, as these persons, and He realized that He could not
show the way to mankind unless He made a pattern for them.
He could not descend into their midst and teach them and
expect them to follow; He had to suffer and think and
experience earth as they did, and show them how to emerge
from it.
He was born as Joseph, again as Joshua, again as Jeshua, the
scribe of Ezra who rewrote the Bible, and finally as Jesus.
He showed the way: He became the way: He overcame death and
the body, and returned to God, laying down the ego of the
will, accepting the crucifixion.
All this you know, all this you have heard before. You know
the law of cause and effect - that the errors of the flesh
must be met in the flesh, the errors of the spirit must be
met in the spirit. You know that you cannot go around or go
away from, or stand aside from the cross. You know that you
must go back, and you must go back the way you came.
You know the world today has reached the great parting of the
ways, when the forces that led us downward are making their
last stand against the forces that have turned and begun the
march upward: this is the darkest hour, the hour before
dawn. We have been headed toward this since the first soul
looked down through the trees and saw a violet, and wanted to
pick it.
Hate, prejudice, ignorance, misunderstanding, fear, violence,
stalk the land, the sea, and the air. They will be followed
by other things: hunger, pestilence, despair. This is not
the cry of a Casssandra; this is not a reading of handwriting
on the wall. You know this; you have heard it before. You
can fill in the horrid details for yourselves.
The point is, we can no longer avoid doing something about
it. Those who know this truth must live it: for them it is
that thing which is more sacred and worthwhile than career,
home, lands, happiness. It is what makes for them their
duty.
It is what Edgar Cayce means to you. It is what you mean to
him: for why else, through forty years, should he have kept
inviolate the well from which you have drawn waters to quench
the thirst of your mind and heal the wounds of your body; why
else, through the ages, has this been kept for you? So that
you might do something about it, for yourselves and others.
Edgar Cayce has done his part; he has kept it for you and for
me and given it to us whenever we asked: to some of us he
has been giving it for a long time. We were reminded of this
by some verses which were written for him on his last
birthday.
Sunrise over the flooded Nile,
Dawn on the coast of Tyre,
Morning waits for a little while
Till the Dover cliffs take fire.
Here where the feet of Ra-Ta moved,
There where the Persian walked,
On hills where the Roman deeds were grooved
Destiny is stalked...
Stalked by the golden hands of God
That finger the earth with thought,
Making the trails the heart has trod,
Pricing the loves it brought.
Sunrise over the flooded Nile,
Dawn on the coast of Tyre,
Follow the clipper ships a while
Till Hatteras takes fire.
Here where the east and the north winds strafe,
In the face of the running tides,
The pattern of dream is safe
The sacred flame abides...
What must you do? Let the source of the truth which you know
tell you. I quote from a reading which asked this question.
"Not in mighty deeds of valor, not in exultation of thy
knowledge or power; but in the gentleness of the things of
the spirit: love, kindness, longsuffering, patience; these
thy elder brother, the Christ, has shown thee - that thou,
applying them in thy associations with thy fellow man day by
day, here a little, there a little, may become one with Him
as He has destined that thou shouldst be! Wilt thou separate
thyself? For there is nothing in earth, in heaven, in hell,
that may separate thee from the love of thy God, of thy
brother, save thy self.
"Then, be up and doing; knowing that as thou hast met in Him
those things that would exalt thy personal self...these ye
must lose in gentleness, in patience. For in patience ye
become aware of thy soul; thy individuality lost in Him; thy
personality shining as that which is motivated by the indi-
viduality of thy Lord and Master. Thus does your destiny lie
within yourself, and the destiny of the world.
"Hold fast to that faith exemplified in thy meditation, in
thy counsels, in thy giving out to they fellow man. For he
that hides himself in the service of his fellow man through
gifts, through the promises as are in Him, hides many of the
faults that have made him afraid through his experience in
the earth. For it is not what one counts as knowledge that
is important, nor what one would attain in material realms,
but what one does about that which is known as constructive
forces and influences in the experience of thy self and thy
fellow man. For, as He has given, "As ye do it unto others,
ye do it unto me." He is the way, the life, the light. He
IS the creator; He is the giver of all good and perfect
gifts. Man may sow, man may act in material manifestations,
in matter, of spiritual forces - yet the returns, the
increase, must come from and through Him who is the gift of
life. It is not a consideration of where or even how the
seed of truth in Him is sown; for He gives the increase if it
is sown in humbleness of spirit, in sincerity of purpose,
with an eye-single that He may be glorified in and among thy
fellow man. This is the way; this is the manner, that He
would have thee follow.
"Let thyself, then, become more and more a channel through
which His manifestations in the earth may arise, through thy
efforts, in the hearts, the minds, of thy fellow man. For
mind - in man, to man - is the builder, ever. That, then,
must be directed, given, lost in singleness of purpose, that
there may come the greater awakening within the consciousness
of thy fellow man that HE is in the earth; that His words are
as lights to men in dark places, to those that are weak, to
those who stumble. For He will give thy efforts that
necessary force, that necessary power, to quicken even those
that are asleep in their own selfishness, in their own
self-indulgences, and bring to their awakening that which
will make for glorious activities in the earth.
"Keep, then, the faith thou hast had in Him; for He is thy
strength, He is thy bulwark; He is thy Elder Brother. In
Him, ye may find that which will bring to thee, and others,
joy, peace, happiness, and that which makes men not afraid.
For He IS peace; not as men count peace, not as men count
happiness, but in that harmonious manner in which life, the
expression of the Father in the earth, is one - even as He
is one.
"Keep the faith."
In just what manner each of us will keep the faith we do not
know. Tomorrow we scatter, each to his particular
environment, there to labor in his own field, to speak in his
own tongue.
Let this, then, be our promise tonight.
That in the days and years which are now to assail us, when
that which would destroy our hope, our faith, our honor, is
abroad - we will take this truth we know and go with it to
the temple of our spirit, and wait there, at the door...
Then, when we go forth to meet that which will come against
us, we shall not walk alone.
[This article was reprinted in 6/47 A.R.E. Bulletin
Statements of Purpose, now out of print.]
Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993, 1994, 1995 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation