26Ken Wilber, Eye of Spirit: An Integral Vision for a World Gone Slightly Mad (Boston: Shambhala, 1997), 279.
27873-1, emphasis added
282794-3
29Harold W. Percival, “Life,” The Word (Winter 2001): 5.
30281-4, emphasis added
31Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 41.
321158-5
33Thomas Edison, Harper's Magazine (February, 1890).
34Alice Bailey, (1922, pp. 42-3), The Consciousness of the Atom, e-book.
35900-237
36108-2
37900-47
38Sri Aurobindo, (1939-40, p. 78), The Life Divine, e-book.
39900-47
40900-14
41Bailey, The Consciousness of the Atom, 49.
42As quoted by Rudolf Steiner in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, (1894, p. 154), e-book.
43Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness, 1.
44L.W. Rogers, (1917, p. 206), Elementary Theosophy, e-book.
45Barbara Marx Hubbard, “Conscious Evolution Defined” Foundation for Conscious Evolution, retrieved from barbaramarxhubbard.com.
46J.B.S. Haldane, The Inequality of Man, (London: Chatto, 1932), 113.
47136-37
48Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 41.
49Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 276-77.
Chapter 4:
The Evolutionary Perspective of the Cayce Readings
Much has been written respecting that represented in the Great Pyramid, and the record that may be read by those who would seek to know more concerning the relationships that have existed, that may exist, that do exist, between those of the Creative Forces that are manifest in the material world. As indicated, there were periods when a much closer relationship existed, or rather should it be said, there was a much better understanding of the relationship that exists between the creature and the Creator.
5748-6
Rediscovery is one of the methods of progress. Very much that we believe to be original with us at the time of its discovery or invention proves in time to have been known to earlier civilizations.
L.W. Rogers, Elementary Theosophy*
Before going on to explore the promise of awakened consciousness as the product of evolution, it's important to address something that may be a sticking point for students of the Edgar Cayce material. Were we really so unconscious until a few thousand years ago? What about ancient civilizations like Atlantis and Egypt, which Cayce places well before the Axial Age? Is higher consciousness a new attainment for the human race or the re-attainment of something that has been lost? Another way to put the question would be to ask whether evolution has had one steady forward direction, or whether there have been backtracks and retrogressions along the way.
While few would claim that evolution has been one steady forward movement with no setbacks or repetitive loops, it is true that most contemporary lines of evolutionary thought are predicated upon a single forward trajectory. Under this assumption, the great wisdom traditions of the world are typically cast as less complete apprehensions of truth than what is currently accessible to human consciousness. But Cayce—along with the theosophical exponents of evolution—presents a more complex story, claiming that “…Many times has the evolution of the earth reached the stage of development it has today and then sank again, to rise again in the next development…”50 How does this jibe with the idea that contemporary humanity faces a unique opportunity that is the product of 13.7 billion years of evolution?
Furthermore, what of the idea that an increase in consciousness follows an evolutionary trajectory? If the attainment of self-reflective awareness is the product of a 13.7 billion year process that began with the Big Bang, how does that fit with the Cayce story of conscious, free-willed souls whose existence preceded the earth plane? It would seem that we have two incommensurate paradigms. One involves self-aware beings who descended into matter and one involves protozoa emerging from the primordial soup to follow a very long evolutionary path toward sentience. Many a thoughtful reader, when confronted with the Cayce story of souls in the earth, has encountered the crux of the issue in wondering “Where do cavemen fit into this picture?”
Where, indeed, do we put an anthropological record which shows primitive homo sapiens still chiseling out spearheads long after Cayce and other esoteric sources claim Atlanteans had mastered air travel? Is the fit too artificial for us to properly class the Cayce legacy as part of the evolutionary canon? It would be disingenuous to ignore these significant differences between the Cayce evolutionary view and the prevailing view in today's evolutionary spirituality movement. But I think we will see, after a closer examination, that these are differences in detail rather than substance.
Matter to Life to Mind to Spirit
Most of the evolutionary spirituality movement, in presenting the big picture of cosmic evolution and humankind's place in it, suggests a progression from matter to life to mind to spirit. We might illustrate it like this:
We might think, from this diagram, that spirit is a product of mind and life is the product of matter, each simply being further developments of an earlier state. In fact, for purely scientific evolutionists, that might not be too far off. Witness the excitement over the “God gene,” a seemingly biological foundation for the capacity for spirituality and those neuroscientists who take the position that mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain. It is true that for thoroughgoing materialists matter has combined itself in such a way as to produce life in each of its successive manifestations. But for evolutionaries of a spiritual bent the developmental chain is not about the absolute beginnings of life or mind or spirit but rather their breaking through in this three-dimensional world of form. As we will be seeing, this point is crucial in our attempt to place Cayce in the context of mainstream evolutionary thought.
In its existence beyond the realm of manifest form, Spirit, God, Ground of Being, Consciousness Itself (by whatever name we call it) is complete and needs no development. But within manifestation, there is growth and evolution of spirit. In the eastern and platonic traditions, this distinction has been described as that of “Being” vs. “Becoming.” As Being, the Absolute is changeless and formless. As Becoming, it is both the world of form and the consciousness that is awakening within it. As cosmological and biological evolution provide an ever more sophisticated means by which it can manifest, Becoming becomes more conscious. The non-dual nature of the Absolute—in the language of the Cayce readings its oneness—includes both Being and Becoming. To exclude the manifest realm as “other” than the Absolute is to slip into dualism.
Of course, there is always a problem in describing the Absolute that is within yet beyond all time and space. Because it is beyond all limits, the minute we attempt to describe it with words, we limit it and therefore introduce incorrect concepts. As it is