The attitude of the patient is of primary importance in achieving success with the “Cayce CARE” therapy. Long before the medical profession had generally accepted the concept of psychosomatic illness, Cayce recognized the unity of body, mind, and spirit.
Some of you may remember Adelaide’s famous song from the musical Guys and Dolls, in which she blames her cold on frustration caused by her lover. Many years before this Broadway success, Cayce told a thirty-six-year-old man: “ . . . when there is the ruffling of your disposition, when there is any anger, it prepares the system so that it blocks the flow of the circulation to eliminating channels. Thus you can take a bad cold from getting mad. You can get a bad cold from blessing [cursing] out someone else, even if it is your wife.” (849-75)
Edgar Cayce on Anger
For anger can destroy the brain as well as any disease. For it is itself a disease of the mind! (3510-1)
(Q) Any other advice or counsel?
(A) Only as to the attitude. As indicated for most people and it is very well here: don’t get mad and don’t cuss a body out, mentally or in voice. This brings more poisons than may be created by even taking foods that aren’t good. (470-37)
(Q) Am I working too hard for my health?
(A) If the body imagines that it is working too hard, it’s working awfully hard! But if you will make play of the work [seeing] that as an opportunity, it’s not so hard. (1968-6)
(Q) How can I keep from worrying so much about my wife’s health?
(A) Why worry, when ye may pray? Know that the power of thyself is very limited. The power of Creative Force is unlimited. (2981-1)
Here are a few examples of Cayce’s insight into the effect of emotions and attitudes on the body:
To be sure, attitudes oft influence the physical conditions of the body. 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. (4021-1)
For the powers within must be spiritualized. Not that the body is not spiritual-minded, but there is the necessity to be spiritual-minded and then able to gain control sufficiently over the power of mind in the body as to cause the vibrations from the atomic structures to produce health-giving forces, rather than taking the continual suggestion, “I’m sick and going to stay sick.” These reactions should be brought about by suggestion as well as application. For know, as was given from the beginning, it is necessary to subdue the earth. Man is made, physically, from every element within the earth. So, unless there is a coordination of those elements of the environs in which the animal-man operates, he is out of attune—and some portions suffer. He must contain and command those elements. These are subduing, using, controlling; not being controlled by, but controlling, those environs, and influences about same. (3455-1)
... keep the mind in that condition through the means as has been outlined for the developing of the physical, mental and spiritual forces; keeping those contacts in that manner that brings the awakening of the physical in its ability to re-create in itself that necessary for the developing of the soul and spirit forces through the mental man; ever remembering that the physical must be kept in that way that the mental may manifest . . . (294-10)
Dr. John A. Schindler of Monroe, Wisconsin, author of the bestseller How to Live 365 Days a Year, claims that between 35 to 50 percent of all sick people are sick because they are unhappy. His estimates may have to be revised upwards in the light of the important work on stress done by Dr. Hans Selye, director of the University of Montreal’s Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery. Dr. Selye subjected rats to a variety of stresses: cold, fatigue, frustration, noise, poisons, hatred, anxiety, and fear—experiments that revolutionized medical thinking: “No matter what the nature of the stress, the same type of internal wreckage resulted. Blood pressure soared. At autopsy the rats showed gross enlargement of the all-important adrenal glands, shrunken thymus and lymphatic glands and peptic ulcers.”1
The United States Office of Vital Statistics in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare classifies the following as psychosomatic illnesses: ulcerative colitis, hypertension, chronic constipation, headache, fatigue, arthritis, insomnia, backache, and a host of other illnesses, including asthma and allergies.
Modern and more esoteric research techniques with Kirlian photography, a process first developed by the Russians for photographing the bioenergy fields in and around a living organism (which Edgar Cayce could see and called the “aura”), now postulate scientifically that illness shows up in one’s energy field before the symptoms manifest in the body.
A number of notable, respected American scientists are working on this field of research, including Dr. William Tiller, a physicist at Stanford University; Dr. Thelma Moss at UCLA; Drs. Stanley Krippner and Montague Ullman of the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Hospital in New York City; and Drs. Gerald Jampolsky of Tiburon, California, and Gary Poock, who have developed the first Kirlian motion-picture process in the United States.
Let us now examine the means Cayce used to achieve the goals of normalizing assimilation, elimination, circulation, and relaxation. Despite his lack of formal education, when in trance, Cayce’s terminology and understanding of the body processes were medically correct. His physical readings usually contained an analysis of the blood system, the nervous system, the state of the organs and their functioning, and the causes of the symptoms and prescriptions for their relief. Where mental, emotional, and spiritual problems existed, he analyzed them and related them to the physical diseases.
When asked how he could diagnose for a person thousands of miles away whom he had never seen, Cayce replied as follows:
The information as given or obtained from this body is gathered from the sources from which the suggestion [which was given verbally to Mr. Cayce by the conductor of the reading] may derive its information.
In this [trance] state the conscious mind becomes subjugated to the subconscious, superconscious or soul mind; and may and does communicate with like minds—and the subconscious or soul force becomes universal. From any subconscious mind information may be obtained, either from this plane or from the impressions as left by the individuals that have gone on before . . .
Through the forces of the soul, through the minds of others as presented, or that have gone on before; through the subjugation of the physical forces in this manner, the body [Edgar Cayce] obtains the information. (3744-2)
Cayce’s explanation that the correct diagnosis and the healing knowledge lies in the subconscious of the sufferer is not too far from the technique used by the practitioners of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis and psychiatry to treat their patients. Cayce expressed it thus:
All healing comes from the Divine within . . . Thus, if one would correct physical or mental disturbances, it is necessary to change the attitude and to let the life forces become constructive and not destructive. Hate, malice and jealousy only create poisons within the minds, souls and bodies of people.
(3312-1)
On the subject of the body’s capacity to heal itself he said:
... within each physical being [there exist] the elements whereby the organs . . . are enabled within themselves to supply what is needed for replenishing or rebuilding. (3124-1)
Each day our bodies must manufacture millions of new cells. Our health and youthfulness depend on our ability to do so. When we can no longer do this, we age and die. We can see that here again Cayce was far in advance of medical thinking of his time and right up to date with the latest cellular research.
In Nutrition Against Disease, Dr. Roger Williams says, “It is common knowledge that the cells in our bodies get their supply of raw materials largely from the circulating blood. It is not so generally known that each of us has a circulatory pattern of his own and that the dispensing of suitable amounts of oxygen and about forty nutrients to billions of diverse cells all over the body is a huge logistic undertaking.”2
Since we must depend on food, water, and air to nourish these cells and the ability of our body to metabolize these elements and nourish them through the blood supply to the cells, it is easy for even the layperson to understand why efficient assimilation, elimination, circulation, and relaxation are so important to health and so interdependent.
Let us first consider assimilation. Cayce was far ahead of his time in understanding the importance of nutrition in the cause, cure, and prevention of disease:
There should be a warning to ALL bodies [with respect to assimilations and eliminations] . . . for would the assimilations and the eliminations be kept nearer NORMAL in the human family, the days might be extended to whatever period as was desired; for the system is builded by the assimilations of that it takes within, and is able to bring resuscitation so long as the eliminations do not hinder. [Italics added.] (311-4)
In the field of diet and nutrition, Cayce has proven to be as good a prophet as he was in other more glamorous and publicized ways. Current scientific research in biology and biochemistry have confirmed the essential wisdom of many of his theories. Unfortunately, medical practice still has not caught up with current research.
Cayce was concerned with food and drink, the combinations in which they were ingested, and their chemical interaction in the digestive processes; how and where food was grown and reached the table; cooking methods to preserve nutrients; and the condition of the emotions, mind, and spirit at mealtime. He also understood the differences among diet, nutrition, and assimilation. Diet is an outline of what to eat; nutrition is the study of what happens to food in the body after you swallow it; and assimilation, as he used it, is the individual’s capacity to utilize the food and the body’s performance of the complicated metabolic processes of digestion and elimination of indigestible material.
While many factors are involved, your nutrition has a great effect on your personality—on whether you are Caspar or Millie Milquetoast, Superman, or Glamour Gloria.
What happens to the food after you swallow it (assimilation) depends to a large extent on the other three ingredients of the Cayce CARE package—circulation, relaxation, and elimination.
Over the years, I have treated many women and some men who developed osteoporosis in later life. Osteoporosis is a disease involving thinning of the bones, which become porous and decalcified. Many of these patients were milk drinkers all their lives and otherwise followed a good diet, but at some point—usually, for women, after menopause—they lost their ability to absorb calcium. In these cases, many have been helped by a calcium-rich diet accompanied by daily exercise and massage. The increased circulation helps them absorb the calcium. Exercise and exercise equivalents like massage and manipulation, which stimulate circulation, play a vital role in our assimilation of food, a subject that we will go into in great detail in later chapters. Cayce even specified certain exercises to be performed to stimulate assimilation (see Chapter 7).
We all recognize how important relaxation is to digestion. If we eat when we are tired, angry, excited, or under stress or other emotion, the most nutritious food will give us indigestion, and if we make a habit of it, ultimately an ulcer. Too much food, eaten too rapidly, has killed many people. I always told my clients at the institute, “An excellent way to become a widow is to serve your husband a good, well-balanced meal, well cooked and attractively served, and then argue with him or nag him while he is eating.”
I would tell my many men patrons, “Don’t take your business out to lunch with you. It makes a very bad companion and will give you an ulcer. And never take it to dinner—it could give the whole family ulcers or a divorce.”
The Cayce CARE Principle
(Q) Why should there be difficulties with the digestion?
(A) A great many things that are easily digested, if taken when the body is angry, will be hard to digest. This doesn’t matter whether [one is] a baby or 105. At any age it produces poison to eat when angry, as it does with most everything else attempted to be done under such disturbances. (3172—2)
Cayce gave this information:
. . . clear the body as you do the mind of those things that have hindered. The things that hinder physically are the poor eliminations. Set up better eliminations in the body. This is why osteopathy and hydrotherapy come nearer to being the basis of all needed treatments for physical disabilities. [Italics added.] (2524-5)
The word elimination is a broad term. We eliminate through the intestines, through the kidneys, skin, and lungs. If you go through a number of the Edgar Cayce physical readings, however, you will find that all these channels of elimination are covered very thoroughly. In this reading he explains, with uncanny medical accuracy and comprehensiveness, how wastes are accumulated in the body:
. . . each activity, whether the pulsation of the heart or the movement of the hand, the use of the vision, speech, walking, or what activity, is USING energy in the body, and this energy leaves what may be called ash—or what we have chosen to term the drosses. As the circulation passes through the system, the natural activity is that along the corpuscles’ activity; these [drosses] are thrown into the channels of not only the alimentary canal as the drosses from food taken into the body . . . the nerve and muscular reaction carried into the blood supply is to be, through the activity of the liver, the lung, thrown off through one or the other of these channels . . . It is thrown off in the breath, through the liver activity—as an excretory and secretive functioning; that is, the secretions are activities from the system and as these are thrown into blood supply here, with the activity of the pancreas, gall duct, spleen, these all . . . throw out drosses, as in the rest of the system. If the eliminating channels coordinate one with another, then these are thrown off in their regular way and manner. [Italics added.] (480-8)
Many people go through life taking chronic constipation casually, little realizing how serious it is and what diseases it can lead to. Dr. Max Bircher-Benner, the world-famous pioneer in preventive medicine (probably known to Americans chiefly through his organic Swiss breakfast food), was fond of quoting Professor Elie Metchnikoff of the Pasteur Institute, who called the large intestines “murderer of men.”
“Not only are poisons carried often to the blood,” Dr. Bircher-Benner points out, “but the mucous membranes, which are a kind of barricade, allow germs to pass. This is the beginning of the accumulation of bacillus coli in kidney and bile ducts . . . Serious operations become necessary, such as the removal of the gall bladder; there is no end to the trouble.”3
As for remedies, Dr. Bircher-Benner (and I agree) decries the use of laxatives, which has steadily increased since his death in 1939. “The quantities of laxatives which are so largely used by millions of constipated people are by no means harmless. They will never remove the dangers inherent in all constipation: autointoxication and its incurable sequels. The convenience of their use prevents doctors and patients from applying drastic measures that would really cure. Here again we may quote the words of Nietzsche: ‘The seeming shortcuts always mean danger to mankind! As soon as glad tidings of this shortcut are heard, mankind leaves its path and the way is lost!’”4
Before describing the remedies that Cayce used to treat elimination—none of them “shortcuts,” but real corrections—I would like to point out the parallel in philosophy and wisdom of the great doctor Bircher-Benner with Cayce, the simple man who gained his knowledge through his psychic ability. In both cases the men have died, but their work not only lives on but grows more alive and relevant every day.
The great health spa that Dr. Bircher-Benner founded in Switzerland to carry out his theories is more popular today than ever and the greatest celebrities of the world flock to it for rejuvenation.5 Similarly the Cayce health and medical readings are attracting more doctors, osteopathic physicians, therapists of all kinds, and patients to the clinic in Phoenix and to Virginia Beach. And I believe that we still have a gold mine of health information buried in the readings, from which we have only extracted a few nuggets.
How did Cayce cope with the problem of elimination?
In cases of extreme toxemia he recommended a controlled fast for complete bodily cleansing—either a three-day apple diet, a four-day grape diet, or a five-day orange diet, all of which will be described with instructions in Chapter 11.
Unless contraindicated, we always give daily colonic irrigation with these diets, followed by castor oil packs to improve elimination and stimulate the gallbladder, spleen, and digestive organs. Cayce was a great advocate of colonics:
Take a colonic irrigation occasionally, or have one administered, scientifically. One colonic irrigation will be worth about four to six enemas. (3570-1)
The subject of colonics and enemas will be described and instructions given in Chapter 11.
Cayce was also very sold on all forms of hydrotherapy and massage for elimination as well as circulation:
For the hydrotherapy and massage are preventive as well as curative measures. For the cleansing of the system allows the body-forces themselves to function normally, and thus eliminate poisons, congestions and conditions that would become acute through the body. (257-254)
To promote elimination through the kidneys Cayce advised drinking water—six to eight glasses a day:
. . . there should be more water taken into the system in a more consistent manner, so that the system, especially in the hepatics and kidneys, may function more nominally [normally?], thus producing the correct manner for elimination of drosses in the system, for, as we see, there are many channels of elimination from the system. For this reason, each channel should be kept in that equilibrium or in that balance wherein the condition is not brought to an accentuated condition in any one of the eliminating functioning conditions; not overtaxing the lungs, not overtaxing the kidneys, not overtaxing the liver, not overtaxing the respiratory system, but all kept in that equal manner. . .
The lack of this water in system creates, then, the excess of those eliminations that should nominally [normally] be cleansed through alimentary canal and through the kidneys, back to the capillary circulation . . . [This brings about, at times,] congestion and weakened condition. (257-11)
Diet as Therapy
We find that those food values are best that make for the eliminating forces of the body through the alimentary canal; that is, leafy vegetables will make for the better eliminations—also, as a part of the diet (in the mornings or evenings), use either stewed figs, raisins, apricots, or pears occasionally. All of these will be found to be most helpful to the body in these directions. (480-24)
Many patients who came to me from Cayce brought directions and instructions for “sweat” and “fume” baths. The fume bath is a light steam or vapor bath, using certain chemicals, oils, or drugs that vaporize easily. We usually give it in an electric cabinet but we will give you directions for home use in Chapter 10. Cayce often recommended that Atomidine (“atomic iodine”)6, witch hazel or eucalyptus, and balsam or pine oils be used to make the vapor.
Elimination through the skin is very important, for the skin normally does about one-twentieth of the work of the kidneys. When the skin elimination is speeded up, it can take care of practically one-tenth of the work that the kidneys usually do for the body. Therefore, stimulation through the skin is important for elimination, for it can help kidney function and prevent kidneys from becoming overloaded. Fume baths are useful not only for the skin but also are used for inhalations, thus aiding elimination through the lungs.
A great deal of elimination takes place through the lungs, by means of deep breathing. When you take a good deep breath, especially if you exhale it completely, forcing the residual air out of the lungs, you bring about a complete change of air. By doing so, you not only drive oxygen down into the lower part of the lungs, but you also help to speed the elimination of carbon dioxide, which is the end product of fatigue. Protein waste is also eliminated through the lungs in the form of carbon dioxide. The bloodstream picks up some of the acid waste and turns it into gas, which is exchanged for oxygen in the lungs. Cayce placed great emphasis on deep breathing and even paralleled some of the breathing techniques used in yoga, incorporating them and combining them with stretching and bending exercises in the yoga tradition (see Chapters 6 and 7).
The importance of good circulation is apparent even to the lay person when it is realized that cutting off blood to the brain for only a few minutes results in coma; a few minutes more (six to eight, to be exact) and the brain is permanently damaged. The frightening prevalence of atherosclerosis and its grim companions—stroke, heart attack, senility, and other death-dealing diseases-should warn us all to do everything in our power to maintain good circulation. Circulation and the glucose-carrying properties of the blood can be increased to an amazing extent by exercise, and this is what Cayce frequently prescribed—in fact, he did so in over 1,300 readings. Where serious pathology was present (and one must always bear in mind that many who went to Edgar Cayce were seriously ill individuals who had been through the medical mill and had been dismissed as hopeless by conventional medical science), he prescribed exercise equivalents—massage, hydrotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractic, and other manipulative therapies that required a professional expert to administer. Here is what he said about a good blood supply—a state that is so dependent on good circulation:
. . . there is no condition existent in a body that the reflection of same may not be traced in 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 various portions of the system.
(283-2)
Parenthetically, I must point out here that in discussing the blood supply, Cayce scored another bit of precognition: “The day may yet arrive when one may take a drop of blood and diagnose the condition of any physical body.” (283-2)
Today, a small sample of blood is fed into computers that analyze and diagnose and return a complete range of tests as Cayce predicted.
In his explanation of his preference for osteopathy, Cayce makes clear how important circulation is:
As a system of treating human ills, osteopathy . . . is more beneficial than most measures that may be given. Why? In any preventative or curative measure, that condition to be produced is to assist the system to gain its normal equilibrium. It is known that each organ receives impulses from other portions of the system by the suggestive forces [sympathetic nervous system] and by circulatory forces [the cerebrospinal system and the blood supply itself]. These course through the system in very close parallel activity in every single portion of the body.
Hence stimulating ganglia from which impulses arise—either sympathetically or functionally—must then be helpful in the body gaining an equilibrium. (902-1)
It is interesting to note that when I studied manipulative therapy back in 1916 and 1917, I could have taken my degree in osteopathy, before going on to get my master’s and doctorate in physiotherapy. However, osteopathy, which had been founded by a Kansas physician, Dr. Andrew Taylor Still, about 1878 or 1879 was so little thought of that I snubbed that degree and took my examinations and degree as a doctor of massotherapy, which was then accepted by medical doctors. Here again we see Cayce’s powers of precognition at work, for today osteopathic medicine is not only recognized in most states, but both former Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York and former President Richard M. Nixon have taken regular treatments from Dr. Kenneth W. Riland, a noted osteopath. Dr. Riland has traveled all over the world with his famous clients and even accompanied the former president to China and the Soviet Union.
Millions of people in the so-called civilized world are suffering from “future shock.” The last half-century has tremendously increased the speed, quantity, and range of sensory stimuli that strike the brain. Our senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are assaulted by human-made pollution at every waking and sleeping moment. The increase of tension in modern life—the competitive strains in work, worry, and insecurity all adding up to stresses, even in so-called recreation and leisure—are being discussed ad nauseam with appropriate alarm in all the media, and fill the psychiatrists’ offices with patients. The consequences can be observed in the increase in mental disease, drug addiction, and alcoholism, and in a population of pill-poppers living on tranquilizers, stimulants, and sleeping pills, swallowed like candy in the search for peace of mind and soul.
Dr. Hans Selye, whose studies on “stress” have won worldwide acceptance and acclaim, attributes a great many physical as well as mental ills to stress: “The body’s ductless glands—mainly the pituitary and the adrenals—strive to maintain an unchanging environment inside the body. Let any threat—any stress-be applied and these glands react instantly. The response is exactly the same whether a rat is subjected to extreme fatigue or a boss bawls out his secretary. Blood pressure and blood sugar rise, stomach acid increases, arteries tighten.”
In The Stress of Life, Dr. Selye calls this the “alarm reaction”: “In animals under emotional stress, fats are drawn from body deposits, emptied into the blood and deposited along artery walls. Presumably the same thing happens in man, producing those top killers, atherosclerosis and coronary-artery disease.”
Other stress diseases are skin disorders, including psoriasis and eczema; disorders of the respiratory system; sterility; diabetes, colitis, ulcers, and other gastrointestinal troubles; fall of the stomach and intestines; glandular disorders; backache and muscular aches and pains; and arthritis, to name just a few.
Although the beginning of the twentieth century—when Cayce lived and started work—seems by hindsight a quieter and more serene time, his generation did live through two world wars and the worst depression in the history of this country. He was quite sensitive to the effect of stress on people, and according to Gladys Davis Turner never dismissed anything as “just nerves.” Each reading contained a detailed analysis of the two nervous systems and a great deal of importance was attributed to their delicate mechanism.
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 system, for the sympathetic nerve system is to the soul and spirit forces as the cerebrospinal is to the physical forces of an entity . . . (5717-3)
Cayce often recommended in nerve conditions that rebuilding properties be carried into the system through vibration rather than through some other means, and to this end he invented (while in trance) two appliances—the wetcell battery and the impedance device, giving precise directions for their construction:
The vibrations aid in producing that vibration necessary, not only for coordination of the glandular system, but for the ability in the nerve itself to be rejuvenated . . . This works directly upon the glandular system—the thyroid, the adrenals and the thymus, all the glands of the body; thus enabling them to react as assimilating forces.
For that is the process or the activity of the glands: to secrete that which enables the body, physically throughout, to reproduce itself. (1475-1)
The wet-cell appliance was prescribed in 609 cases for ailments such as arthritis, multiple sclerosis, paralysis, Parkinson’s disease, nerve deafness, and incoordination of the nervous systems, where it was necessary for the body to rebuild tissue and restore lost body functions. The impedance device was recommended predominantly as an instrument of relaxation in cases of nervous tension, poor circulation, insomnia, neurasthenia, debilitation, etc.
It would be too complicated and take too much space to explain how they were built and operated, but suffice it to say that the wet-cell battery produced a very low electrical current that could not be felt but could be measured on a meter. It was passed through solutions that might be gold chloride, silver nitrate, Atomidine, or camphor, depending on the individual’s requirement and the Cayce prescription. It was attached by plates to the body and the placement of these also varied depending on the individual’s needs and complaints. Sometimes specific instructions were given for the placement and sometimes Cayce sent people to me to teach them how to use the device.
The impedance device was a gadget that had two steel poles in a small steel case lined with glass and charcoal which was to be set in ice for thirty minutes and then wired to the wrist and opposite ankle, and it stimulated circulation and relaxed the user—in fact, it usually put the person to sleep immediately. It was especially good for insomnia.
For a time, from 1933 to 1935, the appliances were made at my farm in New Jersey under the supervision of a relative of the Cayce family and then under Robert Ladd. My colleague, Betty Billings, used it with great success on her mother, who was paralyzed and suffered from degeneration of the spinal-cord nerves. Mrs. Billings had spent many years in a wheelchair and she suffered keenly from extremely cold hands and feet. The impedance device seemed to improve her circulation dramatically. “After only two days she was so warm that the family thought Mother had a fever,” Miss Billings recalls.
Actually it has been very difficult to make a scientific assessment of the appliances, because we do not have enough clinical data and follow-up on them. My own feeling is that if and when the appliances are tested for research purposes, this should be done in a medically supervised research center, where the patient comes for the treatment and the treatment itself is administered by trained professionals. The answer to this Cayce therapy still lies in the future and I hope some day it will be researched.
While the theory behind this device was little understood when Cayce gave it, great advances have been made in modern times since his death in the use of electricity in healing, and scientists are finding out that there is great healing power in low-wave vibrations. Further research should be done, because it is clear that Cayce anticipated electromedicine as he did so many other medical advances.
Newsweek magazine (November 8, 1971) reported that researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have successfully used direct electrical current to accelerate the rate of healing of a patient with bone fracture.
The Wall Street Journal of March 27, 1972, carried a front-page report in depth on a “host of current research projects,” many of them conducted with human patients involving the application of electrical signals to the nervous system in attempts to kill pain, to put insomniacs to sleep, and to relieve asthma, ulcers, and high blood pressure. According to this report, electromedicine may soon emerge as a major new approach to many diseases.
At Temple University in Philadelphia, a neurosurgeon has implanted a dorsal “column stimulator,” an “electric pain killer,” in the back of a salesman incapacitated by a slipped spinal disk. Dr. C. Norman Shealy of the Pain Rehabilitation Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Dr. William Sweet of the Massachusetts General Hospital, who developed the device, now have research tests going on in fifteen medical centers, and they report that 85 percent of all properly selected patients are being helped “to dial their pain away.” (Of course, this involves major surgery.)
Electrosleep devices for insomniacs have been used and marketed for a long time now in the Soviet Union, Japan, India, and Western Europe. Thus there is possibly something to back up the statement of many users of the Cayce impedance device that “it puts us to sleep.”
Hugh Lynn Cayce told this amusing story about the impedance device and sleep. At the time this happened, it was being made by Marsden Godfrey, who was a close friend of the Cayces in Norfolk, Virginia. “One day Dad got a letter from a woman who had received one of the appliances and said, ‘Mr. Cayce, I was sleeping part of the night before I got this appliance that you recommended and now I can’t sleep at all. I have gotten so nervous. What should I do?’
“Well, Dad didn’t know what to do either, so he suggested she send the appliance back to us, and when it arrived at Marsden’s shop they decided the thing to do was to get a reading. They did that and the suggestion came that Godfrey use a magnet to remove the anger that he had built into it.
“As it turned out, Godfrey had had a violent argument with his wife at the time he was building the appliance and the vibration of their anger was picked up by the appliance. They put the magnet over the appliance and then sent it back to the woman. She subsequently reported that it worked beautifully.
“This is an incredible story, but there is a complete record of it. Of course, we could never explain to the woman what was wrong with her appliance because the explanation was harder to accept than the original malfunction.”
Dr. William McGarey writes in a Medical Research Bulletin7 on the work of Drs. Wheeler and Wolcott at the University of Missouri, reported in Neuroelectric Research:
These men have brought about remarkable regeneration of tissue in healing old chronic ulcerations of many years’ standing. In their discussion of their ideas and the direction their work is taking them, they make several very interesting observations. They mention, for instance, that
Contrary to dogma, constant electric current does not confine its physiological effects solely to the make-and-break points, but, rather is capable of causing subtle, undefined changes during a prolonged period of application.
Cayce suggested weak, electrical currents to be applied to the body in recurrent, hourly periods, and the amperage was not unlike that suggested in the University of Missouri work reported on above. His interpretation of the “subtle, undefined changes” Wheeler mentions are discussed in different terms in the following reading given for a sixty-seven-year-old woman suffering from senility and debilitation. She was told to use a wet-cell battery:
And as the electrical vibrations are given, know that Life itself—to be sure—is the Creative Force or God, yet its manifestations in man are electrical—or vibratory.
Know then that the force in nature that is called electrical or electricity is that same force ye worship as Creative or God in action!
Seeing this, feeling this, knowing this, ye will find that not only does the body become revivified, but by the creating in every atom of its being the knowledge of the activity of this Creative Force or Principle as related to spirit, mind, body—all three are renewed. For these are as the trinity in the body, these are as the trinity in the principles of the very life force itself, as the Father, the Son, the Spirit—the Body, the Mind, the Spirit—these are one. One Spirit, One God, One Activity. Then see Him, know Him, in those influences. (1299-1)
Then, in discussing further their ideas, Wheeler and Wolcott point out that the role of biomagnetic effects in work of this kind cannot be truly separated from bioelectrical phenomena. They state further that:
It is known, for example, that the majority of biologic processes are based on chemical reactions. The chemical properties involved in these reactions result from the arrangement and motion of electrons and atomic nuclei, which are, in turn, determined by electric and magnetic field interactions of elementary particles. As a result, the principles of chemistry are the consequence of the sciences of electrodynamics and quantum physics. In living organisms these effects are seemingly amplified by the semiconductor properties ascribed to biologic structures. It is these effects that now strongly influence our ongoing clinical and basic research.
We believe that one of man’s most human qualities is his preoccupation with the mysteries of conception, growth, disease, aging, and death. Modern technology reveals that some older intuitive hypotheses were remarkably accurate, especially in . . . areas concerned with electricity and other physical phenomena. Therefore, part of our research is now directed toward the integration of selected products of past and present science, and toward the further development of a theoretical guide for the deeper understanding of living plants and animals.
The power of relaxation to heal has been dramatically emphasized in experiments conducted by Dr. Elmer Green, former head of the Psychophysiology Laboratory in the Research Department of the Menninger Foundation. He has used “biofeedback training” or “autogenic feedback” in training subjects to produce alpha brain waves in a meditative state of quiet relaxation. When in that state, his subjects have been able to cure migraine headaches, control their blood pressure, raise or lower the temperature of a finger, and control the involuntary bodily processes with relaxation.
Cayce frequently recommended meditation for its therapeutic as well as spiritual value. In the following case he advised a twenty-eight-year-old traveling salesman, whose disordered lifestyle resulted in digestive disorders, back trouble, head noises, and other symptoms, in the following manner:
(Q) How can I overcome the nerve strain I’m under at times?
(A) By closing the eyes and meditating from within, so that there arises—through that of the nerve system—that necessary element that makes along the pineal (don’t forget that this runs from the toes to the crown of the head!) that will quiet the whole nerve forces, making for that—as has been given—as the true bread, the true strength of life itself. Quiet, meditation, for a half to a minute, will bring strength—will the body see physically this flowing out to quiet self, whether walking, standing still, or resting. Well, too, that oft when alone, meditate in the silence—as the body has done. (311-4)
An excellent book on Cayce’s approach to meditation is Meditation: A Step Beyond with Edgar Cayce by M. E. Penny Baker. There are other excellent works on this subject by Cayce himself and by Elsie Sechrist. Of course, the Search for God books by Edgar Cayce published by the A.R.E. Press are musts for any person who wants to pursue the Cayce path to spiritual enlightenment through both prayer and meditation. The difference, I have been told, between prayer and meditation is that with prayer “you talk to God”; in meditation “you listen to God” within.
Drs. Herbert Benson and Robert K. Wallace of Harvard Medical School, who have been running tests on meditators under stringent laboratory conditions, verify the claims of enthusiasts that meditation does indeed lower oxygen consumption, decrease the heart rate, and increase skin resistance, and that other physiological changes occur that bring about complete rest. The general medical acceptance today of the benefits of meditation chalk up another precognitive hit for Cayce, who advocated it long before Americans had ever heard of yoga and other mind- and body-control exercises.
Cayce and I agree on the importance of exercise, especially in the fresh air, as an aid to relaxation. The best way to get rid of destructive emotion is to take a long walk or work off your hostility with some vigorous exercises, such as tennis, hard calisthenics, throwing a medicine ball, or punching a bag. Baths can be very relaxing or stimulating at different temperatures (see Chapter 10). And, of course, massage and manipulation can relax as well as stimulate. Cayce frequently recommended participation in a relaxing sport—not one that gets one frustrated and angry over scores—as well as music, art, theater, or the pursuit of any hobby that brings a sense of peace and fulfillment. Dr. Selye emphasizes the importance of a change of activity to relieve stress.
Above all, Cayce was a strong advocate of balance in all things, as in this letter that he wrote to me on June 3, 1933:
I certainly do not want to take “no” for the answer regarding your being here [in Virginia Beach] on the 15th, 16th, 17th, or 18th. While I know your farm and your work at this particular time require every bit of your energy, I am sure you preach and demonstrate to those who come to you for relief that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”