by olive oil (up to two teaspoonfuls is used most commonly), to stimulate the liver in its activity. Take a teaspoonful or more. Be careful about taking larger amounts.
The most obvious effect that I found in treating the body using a castor oil pack was the enhancement of the immune system. As a portion of their duties, the lymphatics—part of the immune system—drain all parts of the body. When the tissues in any area of the body are cleansed by the eliminatory process, the cells are in much better condition to work normally—and the activity of the immune bodies and substances are able better to do their job in defending the body or rebuilding it.
This has been my way of looking at these things. No proof, of course, but lots of patients are indeed happier than they were and in better health.
Although experiences like the foregoing do not get published in the literature because they seem so strange, the use of castor oil packs has proliferated over the years in many parts of the world and with many physicians and health care practitioners.
At one of our earlier medical symposia in Phoenix, a young orthopedic surgeon reported on how he had every bed on his floor equipped with a K-pack (a special heating pad) and a castor oil pack, and he used them routinely in postoperative situations. Other doctors in his hospital became interested and started using them, but the orthopod never told them that the packs were first described by a psychic. That would have lost his case right there!
Not too long ago, a story came to our attention at the A.R.E. Clinic here in Phoenix about a postoperative patient who nearly died. A licensed practical nurse told us the story; the patient was one to whom she was assigned in her hospital in the northwest part of our country.
The patient was delivered of her pregnancy by Caesarian section and was doing well with her baby, who also was thriving. On the third post-partum day, however, the mother started having trouble with her abdomen and the surgeons on the case agreed it was probably an intestinal obstruction. Surgery was recommended and performed, but the results were not as expected, and the patient’s condition worsened. More surgery was not advised by the surgical team, and the mother’s condition appeared to be deteriorating.
When the female obstetrician was searching for some helpful alternative, the nurse suggested to the doctor that she knew something about castor oil packs and that they might be helpful.
The packs were applied, and after fifteen hours the patient started to pass liquid stools, followed shortly by a normal bowel movement—and the crisis ended. Afterward, nothing was discussed about the packs, but I would suppose there was some awakening in the mind of that physician who was creative and open-minded enough to take a suggestion from a nurse about an unusual therapy, no matter how highly regarded the nurse may have been.
One of the powerful factors operating in the Edgar Cayce material is mystery. Cayce said that mystery excites the imagination of those who find it in their lives—and those who are ready to be awakened are stimulated and move to a greater awareness and a higher consciousness.
An unusual experience I had with serious illness and castor oil packs also involved intestinal obstruction. I was called to see an elderly woman at home; she was a long-time patient and unable to come to the office. She had developed a distended abdomen which worsened rapidly. She had lost her sense of humor, had quit watching her television programs, and had gone to bed.
When I examined her, I found that with her abdomen so grossly distended, the cause was obviously an obstruction and she needed to be hospitalized. A gastric tube had to be inserted in an effort to deflate the belly. She adamantly refused. She was well over eighty years of age, said that she was not going to leave her home and that if she was going to die, it was right there that she wanted to do it.
To ease her pain and discomfort, I instructed her daughter to place a castor oil pack on the abdomen without heat, but to keep it in place constantly. And the patient was to take ice chips to keep her hydrated.
The following day, she was feeling better and her abdomen was not quite as distended. Also, she had started to smile and joke once again. The next day she started having a few liquid stools and her distention was nearly gone. I gave her a suppository and she had a large, nearly normal bowel movement. The obvious diagnosis was a severe intestinal obstruction caused by a fecal impaction.
When I visited her on the third day, she was up in a chair, watching her favorite television programs. All systems were working and she had delayed her time of departure from this plane.
How did the castor oil pack act to make such a radical change in direction in this woman’s state of health? I would say that she had, prior to her illness, established a degree of homeostasis—a state of stability in her internal physiological environment, which for her spelled health.
Then something happened—probably having to do with her nutrition, which caused the fecal impaction to take place. That much we can understand. But when she worsened, what was it about the oil that loosened up the impaction and turned things around? Did the castor oil soak through to the intestinal tract? Was it a vibratory activity in the castor oil, after soaking through, or did it work as vibration without soaking through?
Because of the nature of this dimension in which all of us reside, we know that everything is in vibration. All substances in this physical environment are composed of atoms or subatomic particles. These are in constant motion and are one form of energy. All substances, then, whether they be living or not, give off vibrations which, given time and more research, will eventually be measured and shown to be uniquely specific in their own nature. Thus, castor oil will have a different vibratory force than peanut oil, for instance.
Is it really vibration, then, that carries the healing nature of the castor oil into the body to launch a new approach, a new situation, a new balance inside the structure and functioning of the body so that healing does, in fact, come about? Whatever brought about the change, by the time three days had passed the woman octogenarian had regained her sense of humor, was chatting with her daughter again, and was watching her television. And she was eating normally again. She had regained that state of homeostasis that, for her, added up to health.
FIGURE 1
It might be illustrated, like most events which occur in this dimension, on a graph showing happenings in time. (See Figure 1.)
The Cayce readings had much to say about vibration, and it appears from their perspective that the vibratory influence did bring about the change in the instance of the intestinal obstruction:
Electricity or vibration is that same energy, same power, ye call God. Not that God is an electric light or an electric machine, but that vibration that is creative is of that same energy as life itself. (2828-4)
. . . everything in motion, everything that has taken on materiality as to become expressive in any kingdom in the material world, is by the vibrations that are the motions—or those positive and negative influences that make for that differentiation that man has called matter in its various stages of evolution into material things. For . . . all vibration must eventually, as it materializes into matter, pass though a stage of evolution and out. (699-1)
Then, to find the correct vibration for elements that are lacking in their sustaining forces for a living organism, in such a way and manner as for same to be assimilated by, or become effective in, a living organism . . . is to be able to change that environ of that physical organism as to be creative and evoluting in its activity in that system. (5576-1)
If one were to change the internal environment of the body (the physiology) so that it became creative, wouldn’t one really expect a movement, then, toward health and away from disease? The mystery of the body certainly is not yet fully understood, but it continues to be exciting as one searches, as one stops long enough to smell the dandelions.
In our work at the A.R.E. Clinic, it was our routine, when a pregnant woman started to have any kind of difficulty to apply a castor oil pack to her