my spiritual development, to the ideas in that church more readily than in the Baptist, for instance, or Greek Orthodox, or whatever. I had a Presbyterian consciousness.
The incident with the penicillin, along with Cayce’s statement, made it a lot easier for me to understand that everyone has a different approach, a different road to travel as he or she moves through an incarnation. And I needed to be sensitive about what would help patients most—as nearly as I could tell—in their search for healing. If they have a castor oil consciousness, they get castor oil. If they have a surgical consciousness, they undoubtedly need surgery. Or manipulation or radiation or chemotherapy. People need what they truly need until they change their own consciousness in a manner that manifests a different need.
As this bit of information sank into my awareness sufficiently to put it into action, I also became aware of another pertinent factor in the healing process: there is an awakening of consciousness—a psychic event—within the tissues of the body whenever true healing comes about. And the therapy that is used carries within it an essence, a power that enables that awakening to come about. Perhaps it is the faith mentioned earlier that is the pathway, but the power is the creative element that stimulates the atoms and cells into a new awareness. Cayce described it like this:
For, all healing comes from the one source. And whether there is the application of foods, exercise, medicine, or even the knife—it is to bring [to] the consciousness of the forces within the body that aid in reproducing themselves—the awareness of creative or God forces. (2696-1)
It has been vitally interesting for me to probe into the unconscious images Cayce presented about what we are as human beings. The “forces,” for instance. All tissue is composed of atoms, and it was Cayce’s point of view that all atoms have consciousness. Consciousness is a “force” when applied in any situation. Thus Cayce termed those aggregations of atoms and cells as “forces.” And they, knowing their origin after having been awakened by the Divine, respond by attaining their normal status. Some people call this healing, or a cure.
Castor oil packs became the first Cayce therapy I applied in my practice of medicine. It had been described so often in the readings and seemed so simple to use and so innocuous. The results seemed remarkable to me and to the patient. How could an oil pack, applied with a heating pad, bring about the resolution of an intestinal problem or an abscess of the axilla? Or a gallbladder attack? Or a phlebitis of the leg? But these things did happen, and I was compelled to look deeper.
Chapter Five
Castor Oil as a Healing Force
I have always believed that we can tell more about the truth of what is happening inside the human body by studying the individual who is ill rather than consulting a set of data and getting lost in statistics. Dr. Richard Lee wrote about this concept.7 He pointed out that observations of single events in medicine, published or unpublished, are today “condescendingly called anecdotes; stories concocted by well-meaning but scientifically naive clinicians.”
Dr. Lee suggests that numbers and statistics have taken the place of the careful attention to the individual case and the commonplace, previously in the field of medicine recognized as the hallmark of the excellent clinician. He asks, “How many important and interesting biologic events go unnoticed by blinkered academicians working single-mindedly at collecting series of patients or diseases being enough to publish?”
In his paper, Lee reminds us that modern medicine, along with the culture that has shaped it, has noted a steady decline in appreciation and respect for the individual and the unique. “One test, one patient, one problem cannot begin to satisfy the voracious appetite statistically significant doctors have for multitudes of numbers and crowds of patients . . . For the best possible outcome, each patient needs, and has a right to expect, his/her doctor’s undivided attention and effort. To judge the patient, the illness, and the medical effort only by averages and percentages demeans both patient and doctor and diminishes the importance of illness . . . ”
Some of the most important discoveries in medicine have been through observation of only one patient. And Dr. Lee’s message is to keep on seeing the value in single observations. I would add that we need to keep on discovering the mysteries that lie within that human being who has unfortunately fallen ill.
Illness has a purpose and I’m sure it is one associated with learning at the deepest level of the human being. The soul undergoing the experience knows this fact. There is an eternal need for greater understanding of oneself that can come about only from the learning experiences given each person and met in a constructive, helpful manner. These awarenesses always move one forward toward fulfillment of the greater purpose in life. Cayce talked about what one’s purpose might be:
The purpose in life, then, is not the gratifying of appetites nor of any selfish desires, but it is that the entity, the soul, may make the earth . . . a better place in which to live. (4047-2)
The goal and the purpose were a bit different, Cayce often indicated. The goal, he said, was to come to the point of knowing ourselves to be ourselves, yet one with God, or the Creative Forces. That brings the goal and the purpose, the heavens and the earth, closer together in our understanding.
To put Dr. Lee’s words into action, let’s look at a number of single events, and see if they do not spark a new awareness in our minds. The people involved in the following events found the value in castor oil as they explored its use for conditions that afflicted their own bodies.
CASTOR OIL FOR HERNIAS
Healing of the human body comes about in a variety of ways, but the Cayce readings emphasize the concept that consciousness of the individual is the real determining factor. Every organ, every cell, every atom has its own type of consciousness. Each part of God’s world, down to its molecular and atomic structure, is aware of its own individual job, its origin and its destiny, as a manifestation of the Creative Forces of the universe.
This is one of the reasons why I am fascinated by the variety of illnesses and conditions of the body that respond to the oil of the lowly castor bean. It can certainly cleanse the body—most of us recall that effect clearly from our childhood, when we are given a bit of that oil to clean us out. If cleansing is part of the nature of consciousness of castor oil, then logically it will cleanse wherever it is applied. Proper cleansing allows cellular structures to function more normally and often to regenerate themselves.
A recent letter reminded me of this. It came from a man who had suffered a condition usually cleared up only by surgery—inguinal hernia. When he was seventy-one, he began wearing a standard hernia support because he felt a strain in the left inguinal area. Four years later the same condition showed up on the right side, so he switched to a double hernia support. Later on that year, when his right hernia bulged out rather severely, he underwent surgery on that side.
For the next two years he continued wearing the appliance on the left side, but neither side “felt real good.” So, he started to massage both areas with hot castor oil, using a rotary motion—clockwise on the left, counterclockwise on the right.
“I did this in units of 100 massage strokes, then rested for a while and repeated ten or twelve more units,” he told me. “Consequently, each area received 1,000 to 1,200 rotary strokes. Castor oil was applied liberally during the massage and perhaps two to three tablespoonfuls were absorbed by the body. When finished, I would not wash but just wiped off the surplus oil with paper towels. In several weeks both areas felt better. I followed the massage procedure three or four times a week. In several months, things were greatly improved.”
He no longer wore a hernia belt, only an athletic supporter. Occasionally he noticed discomfort and some swelling, but those conditions cleared up after several months. He continued the massages once or twice a week as insurance. When he wrote, at age seventy-nine and a year-and-a-half after starting the oil treatments, he reported that his condition had cleared up: “I lift whatever has to be lifted. Once it was necessary to lift 100 pounds. In fact, I don’t think about the hernia any more.”
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