This blog is part of our 2021 Enlightenment Courses, an exclusive benefit for members of Edgar Cayce's A.R.E. Each month John Van Auken provides a lesson with a worksheet, a video, a blog, and in each issue of the member magazine, Venture Inward, he writes an article about this topic. For 2021, the topic of study and practice is Enhancing, Our Minds, Intuition, and Dreams. Members can access all of the available material in the Member-only section of our website at EdgarCayce.org/members.
Research into the Mind
- John Van Auken
The brain is the most complex part of the body. It is composed of 100 billion nerves that communicate in trillions of connections called synapses. It has layers, hemispheres, lobes, glands, fluid, and several specialized regions. The brain sits in fluid inside the protection of the bony skull. It weighs about three pounds (1.4 kilograms). It is mostly water with fatty acids. In recent years research has found that fatty acids are among the most crucial molecules that determine the brain's integrity and performance. It triples its size in the first year of life but isn't fully formed until about 25 years of age. Its storage capacity is virtually unlimited. It processes information faster than the fastest computer. A cord runs out of it and down the spine, with nerves reaching out to all regions of the body through openings in the bony spinal column. Through this cord information travels from and to the brain.
The most interesting aspect of understanding human existence is in searching for the answer to how a physical organism generates consciousness? How does a person emerge from within what is essentially a watery flesh vessel? According to researcher H.H. Mitchell in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, up to 60% of the adult body is water. How does consciousness occur?
Most all scientists believe that human consciousness is a purely biological phenomenon. They believe that mental development is the result of successive stages of physical development. These include an enhancement of memory toward the end of the first month of life, speech sounds by the first birthday, connected speech by the second birthday, the ability to relate concepts and categories by the sixth birthday, and the ability to detect consistency or inconsistency in arguments by ten or eleven years. The development of these increasingly more complex levels of intellectual competence is a function both of increasing organic development and of learning experiences employing memory. In this view, death of the organism is death of the consciousness.
French philosopher and mathematician, René Descartes, postulated that all humans were born with innate knowledge and knowledge through the higher power of God. However, English philosopher John Locke held that all knowledge is acquired through sensory experience – empiricism. Interestingly, Cayce's channeled information supports both views. The human psyche possesses knowledge prior to physical birth, and yet, it acquires knowledge as it lives and learns.
In Edgar Cayce's teachings, and many others throughout history and across many cultures, all these views are upside-down. It places the physical as the primary condition of life when the primary is spirit-energy that animates the physical. Matter is a lower manifestation of the life-energy. Materialistic scientists believe energy is derived from physical or chemical processes, but mystics believe that energy affects matter. Even so, in the deepest of mystical thought, energy and matter are one. Physicist have come to agree. Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2, reveals how energy and matter are two expressions of the same reality. Let's use light as an example.
Light is energy composed of photons. Photons have no mass, and all matter has mass, so light is not matter. An object with zero energy and zero mass is nothing. Therefore, if an object with no mass is to physically exist, it must not be at rest. Light is a manifestation of energy in motion. Einstein's equation shows that light is matter at rest and energy in motion. Light only stops when it is absorbed by an electron in an atom, and human bodies are composed of atoms with electrons. Mystically, this indicates that when physical humans are in a state of rest (as in deep meditation, deep sleep, or post-death (RIP)), they are again only spirit-energy. When they are materially active, their atomic matter is animated by energy. It is simply two states of existence. If, however, a person only focuses on the material world, then the energy fades, the material organism exhaust itself and stop. The spirit-energy returns a nonmaterial condition. Even so, Cayce taught that its deeper mind retains all that happen during the incarnation and even a well-defined cluster of thoughts related to the recent physical incarnation and body.
Supporting Evidence
Confirmation that consciousness exists independent of the physical body can be found. I've selected two: 1. Since very ancient times humans in both the Eastern and Western cultures have experienced consciousness beyond the material body and world. These are the result of longtime practices with deep prayer and meditation, as well as out-of-body movement, visions, and dynamic dreams. And 2. Modern medicine's recordings of a person's consciousness being present while their physical body is dead on an emergency room or operating room table. These many reports are now referred to as "near-death experiences," NDEs. We can infer from these that consciousness does exist independent of the body.
Non-Local Mind
A growing body of evidence suggests that human consciousness is not limited to itself and its close surroundings. It is not confined to specific points in space, such as its brain, or specific moments in time, such as the present. This is a condition that all humans have but are rarely aware of. Even so, many humans report having perceived an event beyond all physical contact, such as injury or death of a loved one. "I knew the moment she was hurt." Our minds are interconnected at subliminal levels, often referred to as a collective consciousness; some call it social cognition.
Most fascinating evidence comes from quantum physics' discovery that objects may instantaneously know about each other's state, even when separated by long distances, even light years apart! Albert Einstein called it, “spooky actions at a distance.” In the quantum world instantaneous action or transfer of information appears to be occurring. This is in direct contradiction of the "principle of locality," the idea that distant objects cannot have direct influence on one another, and that an object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings. Evidence shows that that is not so. Also, Einstein believed that the speed of light was the maximum speed for anything in the universe, but it turned out not to be true. Cayce said that thought is the fastest speed, much faster than light. In the collective or universal consciousness connectedness is instantaneously, despite distance or even time! Cayce taught that in the ultimate reality there is only one time, one space. This is difficult for a three-dimensional mind to comprehend, but Cayce also said that our deeper mind can comprehend this easily.
Music and the Mind
Cayce's channeled messages from the Universal Mind taught that music is a bridge for our minds to reach beyond daily consciousness. Surprisingly, the message was that most types of music provide a means for lifting daily mental thoughts and memories.
Here are some of Cayce's comments:
“Music is of the soul, and one may become mind and soul-sick for music, or soul and mind-sick from certain kinds of music.” (5401-1)
“Music alone may span the distance between the sublime and the ridiculous. Between spirit and body, mind and soul.” (3253-2)
“Music is that which spans the distance between the finite and the infinite. Keep the music, for it is oft a help to you to quell the storms of life.” (3179-1)
“Do learn music. It is part of the beauty of the spirit. For remember, music alone may span that space between the finite and the infinite.” (3659-1)
Some twenty years ago I discovered a composer to music specific for spiritual-mental elevation, his name is Karunesh, my three favorite pieces are Moon Temple, Ancient Voices, and Calling Wisdom. You can find his albums on Amazon, or simply go to YouTube and listen to them for free.
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