in the boarded-up resort town of Virginia Beach, all of this was yet to unfold, while I struggled with the enormous puzzle of evaluating Cayce’s medical aid.
The place to start seemed to be outlining Cayce’s view of normal health maintenance, upon which his specific treatment programs could be mounted for examination. Reviewing the daily entries in my black leather notebook and comparing them with sample transcripts in his thousands of case files led to summarizing the Cayce model of health care with four plain words: Out, In, Push, and Circuits. Each represented a process for keeping healthy, as well as for treating impairment, with variations that ranged from common sense cures to weighty interventions.27 Each process could be tracked not only in bodily health, but in mental and spiritual dimensions to produce well-being and productive wholeness with others (a perspective which would much later be called “holistic health”).28
Out, Or Elimination in Health
The word out went alongside portions of my notes on each day’s readings, standing for elimination as a basic health process. Here the principle seemed to be, “We are what we release” and how we do it, whether grudgingly, patiently, or sporadically, as well as what we deeply mean in the process, by acting in a spirit of trust or of hoarding.
By promptly attending to elimination of wastes and toxins in the ailments that came before his far-seeing vision, Cayce affirmed the body as a self-maintaining, self-restoring system. If alien or stress-producing substances or drosses could be removed, the body would begin to set itself in order—provided that vital processes were not critically damaged and needed nutrients and stimulants were supplied. This was one reason he turned first, in the sequence of examinations in his medical counsel, to circulation, just as physicians routinely got blood workups. For the circulation carried off much of what needed eliminating, whether through kidneys, respiration, or perspiration. Cayce placed more emphasis than many physicians, however, on circulation of the lymphatic system, seeing it as a complete delivery operation for servicing organs and tissues. To foster healthy discharges through circulation, he often recommended massage and sometimes baths or sweats, as well as manipulative therapy to realign skeletal-muscular structures and release cramped or knotted muscles. Readings exhibited a whole array of exercises for parts of the body, as well as for circulation, tonus, and organ support. (The time would come, decades later, when several million Cayce readers contributed to the interest in jogging that would change the shape of American daily routines.)
Cayce in trance attended to actual wastes and poisons just as carefully as he attended to the carriers of what must be eliminated. There were special compounds to stimulate and cleanse the liver and other organs, including the use of fumes from brandy in a charred oak keg for cleansing lungs. There were special cleansing diets, such as eating nothing but apples for three days, followed by a small portion of olive oil. More basically, he counseled that everyone should drink six to eight glasses of water each day, facilitating kidney and bladder elimination processes. One procedure that applied especially to elimination and lymphatic circulation was used in a number of ways: castor oil applied externally in flannel packs under heat for an hour. Later research would show the impact of this unusual substance, with a centuries-old reputation as the Palma Christi, or palm of Christ,29 on the complex chemistry of the immune system.
Among the substances which the readings frequently singled out to be eliminated were residues of medications which had turned into burdens on the body—as even excessive vitamins could do. But often, of course, the gastrointestinal tract required central attention as an avenue for elimination not only for obvious constipation or colitis, but for lesser studied effects of caked fecal matter adhering in patches to the sides of the colon. To Cayce’s vision this material could generate poisons in the bloodstream that resulted in a range of deleterious effects, including migraine headaches. He counseled laxatives in dosages and periods tailored to individual needs, advising alternating mineral and vegetable types so that the body would not become dependent on one or the other. Fasts and special diets aimed at improving gastrointestinal operation were not uncommon, and the use of high colonic irrigations to thoroughly cleanse the bowel from time to time were almost a Cayce trademark.
The general pattern in the readings was careful and slow action, however, not violent purgings, as the campaign for elimination was interfaced with restoring natural capacities of the body to fight disease and rebuild tissue. Fletcher’s Castoria, for example, often appeared as a recommended laxative, but in surprisingly small, “broken” doses given frequently over several hours or a day. This was a compound (one of several) on which readings had shown instant keeping-up with the manufacture, since the trance noted at once when the makers changed the formula slightly, and insisted on adding supplements to restore the needed properties. Yet other compounds were abruptly dropped when changed.
Cleansing and Freeing the Mind
The entranced Cayce set about helping his counselees eliminate poisons or blocks in their minds and emotions as well, where I also wrote out in my little notebook. He did not refer to Freud’s anal type of character structure, meant to describe the person overly committed to holding back or hoarding in order to have power over others through what was withheld, supplemented by excessive order, control, and tightness. But he operated as though this were an important set of psychological patterns. Those who were secretive with their thoughts, feelings, and belongings, and who failed to give themselves fully to relationships, were pushed by Cayce in his medical readings to more free traffic with both persons and things. A banker, for example, was asked how long since he had played with children, or gotten his hands dirty, and was urged to new ventures. Anyone who overly stressed order and control, or who wrongly eliminated either natural drives or natural conscience, might be challenged. Cayce’s constant emphasis on service meant that life was fullest in terms of what was given out rather than what was held back.
Grudges and resentments needed flushing out as truly as poison-making material in colons. He traced how holding onto these negative patterns not only troubled the mind but upset the tissues. In similar fashion he outlined how withholding affection and honest feeling in the effort to impress or control others, or even supposedly to please God, could upset the physical system just as much as indulging in exaggerated emotions. (“One without a temper isn’t worth much, though one who doesn’t control it is worth less.”) In the physical readings, just as in the more psychological and spiritual life readings, he took account of not only what must be cleansed from the psyche, but also what was being wrongly eliminated, denied, repressed, ignored, overcontrolled, or held in. Here he pointed to what Jung described as response to the overdeveloped persona or social mask in a disturbing inner shadow.
Cayce also gave special attention to vows which individuals had made, whether named by them or not. In his view, such strong commitments (for example, a vow not to get hurt again in intimate relationships) could be surprisingly effective for long periods, requiring disciplined cleaning. Indeed, vows could last for several lifetimes, creating severe health-and-wholeness problems. Yet in general Cayce was not an advocate of dumping feelings. Just as in handling the body, he gave priority to measured and repeated small steps rather than drastic catharses or excisions.
Cleansing and Freeing the Spirit
When the term out appeared in my notes beside Cayce’s references to the spiritual dimensions of healing and health maintenance, his suggestions developed the theme of “emptying self to be filled.” Of course, the idea was not to cleanse one’s house and let seven demons rush in from the unconscious or the culture. The intent was a particular kind of disciplined emptying which would enable one’s habitual will to conform more closely to the will of God, and one’s mind to be transformed by the renewing action of larger Reality.
One form of this emptying, or elimination in the spiritual mode, was forgiveness. Repeatedly the counseling man struggled to soften the self-condemnation in those he advised. He warned that while sin and guilt before God were real and universal, there was danger in arrogating to oneself the function of divinely authorized judge, whether over oneself or others. Humans, in this