Everyone today, man or woman, lives as a soldier on an economic front of competition where one must constantly be on the alert to maintain security, keep the home and family, and put away something for the future.
The curious thing is that if it were not for your body, you wouldn’t have to make that adjustment. If it were not for your body, you wouldn’t have to conduct that lifelong fight!
If you had only a mind, and not a body, the world of economics would disappear. You wouldn’t need a house, or food to put in your body, or clothes to cover it, or cosmetics to disguise it, or an automobile in which to move it around. Marriage would not be necessary, because sex would not exist in the physical sense and would not result in children. It is the body that causes economics, marriage, politics, and war.
But a fact that has amazed me all my life is that the body, which causes these elements of struggle and pressure and work, is not only neglected but also misused and abused. It would seem that the ancient Greeks, who respected and even worshiped the body, were closer to a reasonable attitude toward daily living than we are. They at least recognized that the body is the focal point of life in the world.
It is the body that causes us to be here in this three-dimensional world. It is therefore the body that must be kept in harmony and in balance—healthy, in other words—so that through the body, the parts of us that are nonphysical, but that give us our greatest pleasures and make us human beings—that is, the mind and the spirit—can function well enough to reach their greatest potential.
In modern living, we concentrate on putting the body out of balance rather than in balance. We overburden it to the point of exhaustion in our efforts to make money and achieve success. Every misused, overworked, or neglected part of the body must be accounted for in the whole condition of the body itself.
If there is one thing that the readings of Edgar Cayce prove, it is that a human being cannot be broken into parts—each with a structure and a system of its own, capable of being understood and treated without regard to the other parts.
Edgar Cayce stated over and over again that everything we do and think is directly related to what we are as complete human beings; that what we eat has an influence on what we think; that what we think has an influence on what we eat; and that what we eat and think together influence what we do, how we feel, and what we look like. I quote an example from Case 288-38, which states,” . . . what we think and what we eat—combined together—make what we are, physically and mentally.”
In another reading (2528-2) Cayce says, “But when the law is coordinated, in spirit, in mind, and in body, the entity is capable of fulfilling the purpose for which it enters a material or physical experience.”
It has been my exceptional privilege to have known and worked with Edgar Cayce. Through him, we have access to the timeless wisdom that this great human being and psychic tapped from his “universal sources” of knowledge. I think that this wisdom was never needed so urgently as we need it today in the midst of the external and internal ecological chaos that humanity, science, and technology have wrought.
The purpose of this book is to teach you how to stay well by sharing with you the natural drugless therapies, mental attitudes, and spiritual attunement that Edgar Cayce prescribed in his over 14,000 readings for some 6,000 individuals. You must bear in mind that a majority of the people who sought help from Mr. Cayce and me were medical rejects—discouraged, disheartened souls who had tried everything that orthodox and unorthodox healing had to offer. In turning to Cayce, many were appealing to a court of last resort. Cayce was able to diagnose their troubles by slipping into a trance, although he almost never saw the subject, who might have been thousands of miles away. He then prescribed the therapies to help them. Many recovered in what seemed miracle cures. Others did not. Although the method was strange and psychic, there was nothing mysterious about the therapies—which included osteopathy, correction of nutrition, exercise, massage, hydrotherapy and electrotherapy, packs applied externally, remedies and formulae based on natural foods, herbs, and occasionally even chemical medicines and surgery. It required persistence and mental and spiritual attunement to achieve results, as Cayce often explained:
Then keep that attitude of constructive, creative forces within self. For all healing of every nature must arise within the self. For there is the ability within the physical body to re-create or reproduce itself, as well as the activities for assimilating that from which the re-creation is to be brought about. (1663-1)
For all healing, mental or material, is attuning each atom of the body, each reflex of the brain forces, to the awareness of the divine that lies within each atom, each cell of the body. (3384-2)
In the following reading (528-9) Cayce emphasizes the importance of persistence and consistency:
The Big Picture of Holistic Health
If there is one thing that the readings of Edgar Cayce prove, it is that a human being cannot be broken into parts—each with a structure and a system of its own, capable of being understood and treated without regard to the other parts.
Edgar Cayce stated over and over again that everything we do and think is directly related to what we are as complete human beings; that what we eat has an influence on what we think; that what we think has an influence on what we eat; and that what we eat and think together influence what we do, how we feel, and what we look like.
—H.J.R.
. . . what we think and what we eat—combined together—make what we are, physically and mentally. (288-38)
But when the law is coordinated, in spirit, in mind, and in body, the entity is capable of fulfilling the purpose for which it enters a material or physical experience. (2528-2)
. . . the body must not, should not, lose courage to carry on, but working in patience knowing that all healing, all help, must arise from constructive thinking, constructive application, and most and first of all constructive spiritual inspiration. Use [body] . . . disturbances as stepping-stones for higher and better and greater understanding.
For all healing, mental or material, is attuning each atom of the body, each reflex of the brain forces, to the awareness of the divine that lies within each atom, each cell of the body. (3384–2)
Over the last fifteen years of Edgar Cayce’s life (1930 to 1945) I worked with nearly 1,000 cases that he referred to me. There seemed to be a bewildering difference in the readings from individual to individual, even when their complaints fell under the same medical classification. (In this regard, as in so many others, Cayce was far ahead of his time in recognizing the biochemical individuality of each person, a subject we will take up in detail in later chapters.) At the time, I must confess I often did not understand some facets of the therapy. But as I applied the treatments in the sequence suggested by Cayce to thousands of patients in my forty-five years of clinical experience with them, I began to recognize the underlying philosophy and the principles involved. These principles are based on the basic structure and processes of the human body, mind, and spirit.
It soon became clear to me that no matter which of the therapies or combination of therapies he was prescribing, he was aiming at four basic goals: improvement and normalization of the functions of assimilation, elimination, circulation, and relaxation. With the restoration to normal balance of these four basics, the body then proceeds to heal itself of the disorders that manifest as symptoms of disease. In fact, both Cayce and I always dealt with causes, not symptoms, and therefore his readings seldom used medical labels. As a physiotherapist, I did not diagnose, but in clinical practice I found that a large percentage of the medical diagnoses with which patients arrived dealt with symptoms of a breakdown in bodily functions. In any case, no matter what the label, when the attitude of the patient was right and the treatments were followed with persistence and consistency so that the assimilation, elimination, circulation, and relaxation were once more normal, the results were full or partial recovery and many remarkable Cayce cures.
I like to make an acronym of the vital four goals mentioned above: when you do, you come