Generally speaking, science knows that the planet itself and all life on the planet are engaged in a molecule exchange program. Although our eyes learn to see boundaries, such as the bark that surrounds a tree, the feathers that surround a bird, and the skin that surrounds us, all living beings are extracting needed substances from the environment (such as humans needing to breathe oxygen) and giving off unneeded substances that are in turn needed by other life forms (such as all of us exhaling carbon dioxide, which is used by plants). The planet is one living being, and we are a part of this whole. Cayce constantly reminds us to be mindful of what we are putting out and what we are taking in. People in the “green” movement express the same sentiment today, being concerned about everything from what is in our food to what we put into the trash, and ultimately the environment.
But Cayce went beyond these simple physical principles to include our thoughts in this equation. He reminded us that “thoughts are things” and that everything we think has either a positive or a negative influence upon the outer world—impacting others as well as the overall environment. Science has also given several demonstrations that there is an environment of thoughts, sometimes called the “field of consciousness.”
The “Global Consciousness Project,” for example, studies the effects of world events that grip global awareness on radioactive devices. These devices, housed in numerous laboratories around the world, have previously demonstrated their sensitivity to consciousness effects. When events such as the death of Princess Diana or the 9/11 World Trade Center destruction grip the awareness of the world, these devices respond to the effective force of having so many people’s awareness focused in the same manner. Clearly Cayce was correct when he said that our thoughts become part of the environment we all live in. Such a realization begins to put upon us a tremendous responsibility for how we think. Just as we might cover our cough in public so as to not spread germs, we might consider cleaning up our fear and anger thoughts so that they will not “pollute” or harm the world. Developing ourselves spiritually, so that we have more constructive responses to the events in life, is what we need to do individually as our own part in cleaning up the “thought environment.”
It becomes apparent fairly quickly that the concept of oneness takes on many dimensions, and begins to reshape our view of the world, of our lives, of how we are connected to one another, and of how we may need to address some of our response patterns. Cayce often pointed out to inquirers that the reality of oneness could not help but characterize their experience of the world. On the one hand, he noted the oneness of soul, mind, and body, whereby the shape, functionality, and experiences of the body ultimately mirrored that of the soul. Along the same lines, researchers of reincarnation have often noted bodily marks that correspond with recalled incidents from past lives. For example, a traumatic injury in one life, such as a critical wound, can result in a mirrored-image “birthmark” in the next. Another indication of oneness is reflected in Cayce’s oft-repeated quote, “Spirit is the Life, Mind is the Builder, and the Physical is the result.” This certainly illustrates the Cayce view of personal creation—essentially a downward causation model in which attributes of the soul are mirrored and represented in the mind, which in turn is mirrored in the physical conditions that are eventually created.
An even more profound dimension of this oneness within a person is the oneness between the person and his or her life experiences. Frequently, an individual would approach Cayce and inquire about the meaning or purpose of a specific life circumstance only to learn that the situation was a lesson that somehow provided a mirror of that person, and her or his attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Sometimes this oneness is expressed by the slogan, “You create your own reality.” We can take this on the micro level, meaning that the “you” (your ego, your choices), makes a difference in the world. At a more macro level, however, what Cayce means is that the external “movie” that you call “life” mirrors an internal “movie”—the two are one and the same.
While we are desperately aware of our life’s circumstances, we are more often ignorant or unconscious of the deeper aspects of ourselves that become projected and reflected in our life’s events. We can see the result, but not the cause, and it was the cause that often lay at the heart of Cayce’s explanations. Every one of our life’s experiences is like a personal mirror that invites us to learn more about our relationship to All-That-Is, or Reality, or God—for ultimately oneness demands that God is all there is. Our life’s experiences are reflections of our soul—mirrors that we can learn from in the same way that we can learn from our dreams. Our experiences reflect who we are. Our spiritual path moves us from perceiving ourselves to be as our ego experiences us—as separate, autonomous individuals. Yet life is attempting to teach us a different consciousness of reality: Although we are individual, we are one with All-That-Is; we are one with God.
As a personal example of trying to apply Oneness, Travis was a twenty-year-old college student who had decided to try to work with this concept for a week by “seeing the light of God in everyone I contacted.” His approach was to simply look at people directly when he passed them, smile, and in his mind think the words: “I salute the light of God in you.” Several days into the exercise, he had an experience.
Travis was standing in a hallway at school waiting for a class to end before he could enter the room. While waiting, he made a point of looking at everyone who passed him in the hallway and practicing his oneness exercise, when something suddenly happened: “All at once it was like I was connected to everyone! As someone walked down the hall toward me, and I looked at them, suddenly it was like I was looking out through that person’s eyes, and I could even feel that person’s footsteps walking through the hallway. I felt as though everyone was a part of me and somehow I was a part of everyone. The thought came to me, ‘I wonder if this is how God sees us?’ And as soon as I had a thought, the experience was gone.” Travis became convinced that he had personally experienced Oneness.
Achieving this shift in perspective and perception requires using more of our consciousness than simply our mind or head consciousness. It requires “heart,” as Cayce notes, as the purpose of our heart awareness is to allow us to conceive of ourselves, and directly experience ourselves to be individual, yet one with God.
We can actually see this parallel in science. Destroying the illusion of separation between observer and the external world, the science of atomic physics discovered that “the observer affects the observed.” Later on, quantum physics discovered that the “things” that we assumed were the building blocks of the universe—electrons—were not really things (little separate particles) unless you observed them in a certain manner. Otherwise these “things” were really waves that spread infinitely outward, with no boundary or set location. Here we see the notion of two realities: one kind of perception sees the world of bounded, separate things, while another kind of perception sees the world as interacting waves of vibrations, a cosmic dance of not “things” but expressions of energy. Edgar Cayce made a similar distinction, noting that the reality that we perceive with the senses is not the only reality. He advised us to learn to see with the soul mind, which uses the imagination or the realm of the heart.
Just as your heart can feel “close” to someone far away, science has discovered “non-locality.” When electron pairs in a molecule are separated from one another and propelled quickly in opposite directions, they nevertheless react instantaneously to each other’s actions. Even though they are far apart, what scientists do to one also affects the other at the same moment, no matter how far apart the two electrons may have traveled. Science has discovered what they call a “non-local” effect, something that scientists of consciousness find quite similar to a psychic effect. There is no separation by distance or time. In a very radical statement, Cayce described space and time as illusions that enable us to experience cause and effect and ultimately learn from that experience. In other words, God created these illusions in consciousness to provide