The greatest surprise of Edgar Cayce’s health readings
were the apparent causes given for various illnesses. The Source, speaking
through the sleeping Cayce, cited reasons for illness that ranged from what now
might be considered old-fashioned, like getting one’s feet wet or exposure to
the elements, to more unusual reasons, like washing one’s food down with a
drink without chewing it properly. The Source veered furthest from accepted
medical philosophy when he offered more cosmic-related reasons—such as the karmic
repercussions of choices made in a previous life. Perhaps just as unusual in
his time, Cayce frequently connected illness to the mental and emotional states
of the patients. In one reading he was quoted as saying, “Thus you can
…[suffer] a bad cold from getting mad…[or] from…[cursing out] someone.”
For some physical disturbances Cayce also described
primary causes which then, as now, remain unrecognized by the medical
profession. These included conditions such as psoriasis which Cayce said was
caused by the thinning of intestinal walls and the resulting leakage of toxins
back into the system. The body then attempts to throw off those toxins through
another system of elimination—the skin; migraine headaches, which he said were
frequently the result of congestion in the colon; and morning sickness in
pregnant women, which he attributed to the lack of certain minerals which were
being taken from the mother to build the baby’s body. He said that the causes
and symptoms were similar to those of a teething infant. And the treatment was
the same for both. He also said that spinal injuries could cause problems as
diverse as asthma, stuttering and even violent behavior.
Cayce’s Four Basic Elements of Good Health
When studying the readings, doctors working with Cayce
were forced to expand their understanding of the role that four basic processes
played in governing the health of the body. These four processes, which Cayce
said affected our cells’ ability to reproduce and function properly were:
ASSIMILATION
Assimilation, which appeared in almost one quarter of
the medical readings, referred not only to the body’s intake of nutrients, but
also to process of digestion. Cayce frequently warned against eating
when upset, angry or distressed, saying that due to the resulting
physiological changes in the body, food would remain undigested and become
toxic to the system. Cayce also spoke of avoiding certain food combinations,
specifically those foods requiring different acids to be digested. If such
foods were eaten together, Cayce said, one type would be digested while the
other would sit and ferment in the stomach thus becoming toxic to the body.
Just as mass-produced foods were beginning to appear,
and decades before the whole-food movement became popular, Cayce was issuing
warnings. He repeatedly stated that refined foods, sugars, red meat,
and fried food were generally harmful to the body. “What we think and what
we eat—combined together,” Cayce said, “make what we are, physically and
mentally.”
Cayce did not just warn patients away from certain
foods, he encouraged the consumption of others. For instance, in keeping with
what is now known about the importance of ingesting act food enzymes, he
recommended eating one meal per day of primarily raw vegetables. He
also consistently instructed patients to eat whole rather than refined grains,
saying that refined products not only lacked nutrients the body needs, but that
such foods, with all enzymes and other elements removed, are actually toxic to
the human body. And although he didn’t use the contemporary term
phyto-chemicals—the nutritional element related to the color of foods—he often
recommended foods of a certain color for particular ailments.
Cayce also spoke of the acid-alkaline balance in the
body, which he said was affected by the foods we eat—an area of nutrition that
was virtually unheard of in the 1920s, and has only recently become popular. Cayce’s
general diet guidelines recommended the consumption of twenty percent acid
producing foods, such as meats, starches and sugars, and eighty percent
alkaline producing foods, such as vegetables, fruits and dairy products. To
a forty-eight-year-old woman, Cayce said: “The less physical exercise…the
greater should be the alkaline reacting food taken. Energies or activities may
burn acids, but those who lead the sedentary life can’t go on sweets or too
much starches.”
He also recommended that vegetables from below the ground,
such as carrots, beets, and potatoes, should constitute only twenty-five
percent of one’s diet of vegetables, while above the ground vegetables, such as
lettuce, squash, and tomatoes, should account for the other
seventy-five percent. He recommended that only ten percent of our diet be fats,
another ten percent proteins, five percent refined starches and sugars and the
other seventy-five percent complex carbohydrates such as vegetables, fruits and
grains.
Long after Cayce’s death, many of the seemingly
radical guidelines he offered in the 1930s would be seen as having merit. But
some of Cayce’s recommendations still seem strange to this day. For instance,
he stated in several readings that while tomatoes contain more nutrients than
any other single food, when not vine-ripened, they are toxic to the human body.
He also stated that carbonated drinks were to be almost always avoided, not
just because of the sugar or artificial sweetener in them, but because they
interfered with the interaction between the liver and the kidney. Other gems
offered by Cayce included such statements as: apples should never be eaten raw,
only baked or cooked, unless used for fasting purposes; only the peel of the
white potato was of any real nutritional value; and coffee and tea become toxic
when combined with milk or cream.
ELIMINATION
Poor elimination was cited as being at the root of a
great number of illnesses, and references to it appeared in over half of
Cayce’s medical readings. Apart from taking in nourishment, human cells must
also eliminate waste products and toxins to remain healthy, and according to
the Cayce readings, “[if] the assimilations and eliminations…[were] kept nearer
normal in the human family, the days might be extended to whatever period as
was so desired, for the system is…able to bring resuscitation so long as the
eliminations do not hinder.”
Cayce suggested many different aids to elimination.
One of the simplest was to drink a cup of hot water with a squeeze of lemon
juice each morning upon rising and before eating, which apparently helped the body eliminate the toxins
thrown off during sleep. Similarly, he recommended doing deep breathing
exercises each morning to eliminate toxins pooled in the lungs from the shallow
breathing characteristic of sleep. Dietary measures were also recommended to
improve bowel activity, which included eating leafy vegetables and stewed
fruit such as figs and raisins. He also suggested drinking as much as six to
eight glasses of water a day.
In extreme cases of toxemia, Cayce recommended enemas
and colonics, adding that these could also be used by healthy people. “For
everyone—everybody—should take an internal bath occasionally as well as an
external one.” Cayce also frequently recommended three-day apple fasts,
and occasionally four-day grape fasts or five-day orange fasts for more extreme
cases of toxemia. While the apple fast in particular was intended to have a
cleansing effect on the intestines, it would also, according to Cayce, “cleanse
the activities of the liver, the kidneys and the whole system.”
CIRCULATION
The third aspect of sustaining good health, according
to Cayce, was circulation. “The circulation…is the main attribute to the
physical body, or that which keeps life in the whole system,” he often said in
trance, and references to circulation turned up in approximately sixty-percent
of the readings. Highlighting the role that circulation plays in assimilation
and elimination, he pointed out that “there is no condition existent in a body
that the reflection of same may not be traced to the blood supply, for not only
does the blood stream carry the rebuilding forces to the body, it also takes
the used forces and eliminates same through their proper channels.” In the same
reading, Cayce made a startling prophetic remark: “The day may yet arrive when
one may take a drop of blood and diagnose the condition of any physical body.”
Cayce made reference not only to arterial circulation,
but lymphatic circulation, which he considered to be just as important. The
Source referred to the fluid in the lymphatic system as “white blood” or “lymph
blood,” and pointed out that unlike the arterial system which has both the
heart and the muscle-lined wall of the arteries to move the blood along, the
lymph system has no pump of its own, and it relies on other methods to move
waste matter out of the body. One method Cayce recommended was massage.
Although it was considered by many to be nothing more than idle pampering,
Cayce saw massage as curative, particularly for the inactive.
The most natural way to sustain good overall
circulation, both of the lymph and the blood, Cayce said, was exercise. As he
pointed out in a reading for a forty-six-year-old woman, “Exercise is
wonderful, and necessary—and little or few take as much as is needed, in a
systematic manner.” To another patient he said exercise “is not something
merely to be gotten through or gotten rid of.” Daily stretches, head and neck
rolls and walks, preferably of twenty minutes, were all recommendations Cayce
gave.
RELAXATION
The fourth process Cayce considered vital to good
health was what he referred to as relaxation. In trance, Cayce stated that “the activity of
the mental or soul force of the body may control entirely the whole physical
[body] through the action of the balance in the sympathetic [nervous] system,
for the sympathetic nerve system is to the soul and spirit forces as the
cerebrospinal is to the physical forces of an entity.” The nervous system was
the vehicle through which Cayce’s “mind as the builder” could most directly
influence the body.
Cayce’s physical readings divided the nervous system
into three parts: the cerebrospinal system, made up of the brain and the spinal
cord; the sensory nervous system, which included the sense organs; and the
sympathetic nervous system, or the autonomic nervous system, over which a
person has no conscious control. According to the readings, the sympathetic
nervous system could be considered “the brain manifestation of soul forces in
the body.” Cayce also suggested that within this system, habits—both good and
bad—are formed and retained. These habits govern the links between our mind and
our body. And apparently anyone could “correct habits by forming others! That
[goes for] everybody!”
Although modern-day medical practitioners often look
upon the power of “suggestion” as pseudo science, Cayce often recommended that
positive suggestion be a part of a patient’s daily treatment. Cayce
said that emotions, both positive and negative, moved as electric energies
through the nervous system, affecting the entire organism. His message here
was that the nervous system acts as a conduit and carries impulses and
instructions to every cell in the body. Positive and negative thoughts could
therefore physically alter each cell’s functioning. Again, Cayce was far ahead
of his time in pinpointing the role that stress played in one’s overall health.
In one reading Cayce—in trance—stated that “worry and fear [are] the greatest
foes to [a] normal healthy physical body .” For another patient he said, “For
thoughts are things! And they have their effect upon individuals…just as
physical as sticking a pin in the hand!”
This same theme was expanded upon in a reading Cayce
did for a forty-four-year-old physician. “While [it is] true [that] medicines,
compounds, mechanical appliances, radiation, all have their place and are of
the creative forces, yet the…[ability] of arousing hope, of creating
confidence, of bringing the awareness of faith into the consciousness of an
individual is very necessary,” the Source said. “Only when any portion of the
anatomical structure of a human being is put in accord with the divine
influences…may real healing come.”
Cayce also said that a preoccupation with a particular
illness could result in the manifestation of that illness in one’s own life. To maintain health, Cayce suggested that “quiet,
meditation, for a half to a minute, will bring strength…[if the body will] see
physically this flowing out to quiet self, whether walking, standing still, or
resting.” And Cayce urged patients to find balance in their lives: “Budget the
time so that there may be a regular period for sustaining the physical being
and also for sustaining the mental and spiritual being. As it is necessary…for
recreation and rest for the physical, so it is necessary that there be
recreation and rest for the mental.”
ALL CURATIVE FORCES MUST BE FROM WITHIN
In contrast to the predominant view that doctors
healed exclusively through medicine or surgery, Cayce’s trance view was that
“unless it be for a removal of conditions that have become acute by neglect or
other causes of the same nature, all curative forces must be from within self
and are of the whole of a physical being: for the human anatomical body is as
the working of a perfect whole.” In this sense, Cayce viewed the human body as
a miracle of creation in its ability to heal itself. His view became more
apparent in a statement he made to a group of entrepreneurial doctors seeking information
on health products they wanted to produce. In this reading requested on their
behalf by Cayce’s son Hugh Lynn and nephew, Tommy House, Cayce said, “There is
no greater factory in the universe than that in a human body in its natural,
normal reacting state. For there are those machines or glands within the body
capable of producing, from the very air or water and the food values taken into
the body…any element at all that is known in the material world!” Cayce would
also say, more than once, that “every cell of the body is a universe in
itself.”
In other readings, Cayce took the generative
properties of the body one step further, to suggest that if a person were to
maintain the proper attitude and to keep their organs properly coordinated with
one another, they could live as long as they wanted: “For, as may be told by
any pathologist, there is no known reason why any individual entity should not
live as long as it desires. And there is no death, save in thy consciousness.
Because all others have died, ye expect to, and you do!
The ability of a human being to prolong their life,
according to Cayce, depends on the proper functioning of the endocrine system.
The glands, Cayce said, were “that which enables the body, physically
throughout to reproduce itself.” The glandular system also, according to Cayce,
serves as the physical point of contact between a person’s nervous system and
his or her “spiritual bodies.” The readings identified seven glands which are
also referred to as seven centers, or “chakras,” which act as both growth
centers for the physical body and major spiritual centers. These seven include
the gonads—also referred to as the cells of Leydig or Leyden—the adrenals, the
thymus, the thyroid, the pineal, and the pituitary. In the 1930s, when Cayce
did readings on these glands, their purposes were being hotly contested,
and to a certain degree, none would be completely understood by the medical
profession until a half-century or more later.
As with the nervous system, Cayce described how a
person’s emotions affect the glands’ activities: “For as has been indicated in
some manners, some activities, there is an activity within the system produced by anger, fear,
mirth, joy, or any of those active forces, that produces through the glandular
secretion those activities that flow into the whole of the system.” These
emotion-caused secretions could wreak havoc with one’s health. “Anger causes
poisons to be secreted from the glands,” he said. “Joy has the opposite
effect.” On another occasion he noted: “No one can hate his neighbor and not
have stomach or liver trouble. No one can be jealous and allow the anger of
same and not have upset digestion or heart disorder.” Perhaps the most radical
assertion he made along these lines was to say that all disease was caused by
sin, most notably the sin of fear, for that represented a lack of faith. ” Fear
is the root of most of the ills of mankind,” he said in a reading given in June
of 1928.
Cayce would also state, while in trance, that while
the spiritual body is not actually contained in the physical body, “there is
the pattern in the material or physical plane of every condition, as exists in
the cosmic or spiritual plane.” It was for this reason, perhaps, that Cayce
did not view illness as strictly caused by physical problems, or did he see its
cure only in the physical realm. Belief and anticipation played an important
part in the healing process, too. He reminded patients that “..what ye ask in
His name, believing, and thyself living, [mind will build].” He also said that
“a good laugh, an arousing even to… hilariousness, is good for the body,
physically, mentally, and gives the opportunity for greater mental and
spiritual awakening.” In another reading he said: “one is ever just as young as
the heart and the purpose. Keep sweet. Keep friendly. Keep loving, if ye would
keep young.”
According to Cayce, the attitude that truly heals is
the “Christ Consciousness…the only source of healing for a physical or mental
body. “ As the source
once put it: “There are in truth, no incurable conditions…that which exists is
and was produced from a first cause, and may be met or counteracted, or
changed.” In another reading Cayce said that “all strength, all healing of
every nature is the changing of the vibrations from within, the attuning of the
divine within the living tissue of a body to Creative Energies. This alone is
healing. Whether it is accomplished by the use of drugs, the knife or…[anything
else], it is the attuning of the atomic structure of the living force to its
spiritual heritage.”
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