I had merely stepped into a stream of thought that, unbeknownst to me, had been developing for at least a few hundred years. Time and time again, I was amazed to come upon ideas and perspectives that had felt original when they first dawned on me via the process of personal attunement. Is there anything more affirming of universal truth than to find that it has sprung up independently in numerous contexts and among otherwise diverse sources? I have also come to realize that this phenomenon is just a small foretaste of the unity consciousness that will characterize the next stage of our collective development.
Over the ensuing decade, I discovered a vast and invigorating world of those who embrace the evolutionary approach to life. Many of these thinkers, both contemporary and historical, will enter into the pages that follow. One special delight was to come upon this reflection from the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854), concerning the very question that had been the original, proverbial stone in my shoe. Schelling wrote, “Has creation a final goal? And if so, why was it not reached at once? Why was the consummation not realized from the beginning? To these questions there is but one answer: Because God is Life, and not merely Being.”1 We will return to this concept that “God is Life”—that is, a life force that seeks manifestation in this visible world of three dimensions—many times in the pages to come, as it is foundational to the evolutionary world view. Concerned with far more than the evolution of the individual soul, evolutionary spirituality focuses instead on the evolution of the entire cosmos and our role in that unfolding story. It is a world view that looks at this vast cosmos, where new stars are continually being born and old ones are dying; at this earth, where life continues to evolve toward ever-greater diversity and complexity; and at human consciousness, which continues to grow to ever more expansive reaches, and sees an underlying unity of purpose. Evolutionary spirituality concludes that the universe is going somewhere and that we are a key part of that journey.
This evolutionary perspective can have a deeply catalyzing effect on one's spiritual life, and perhaps nowhere do we find a more compelling version of this perspective than in the readings of Edgar Cayce. Despite the fact that I was steeped in the readings’ story of the soul in the earth and their repeated reference to the soul's purpose as a “companion and co-creator with God,” I was nonetheless amazed, when I turned to the Cayce source with my evolutionary sensibilities awakened, to see a complex and profound body of evolutionary thought that had been there all along, “hiding in plain sight.” Yet the contemporary conversation about evolution, inclusive of diverse spiritual and scientific perspectives (one of its great strengths, as we shall be seeing), has not so far included the contribution from the Cayce legacy. It is largely for that reason that I have framed this book around Edgar Cayce's distinctive perspective on evolution. I believe it is an important addition to the evolutionary inquiry that may well shape the direction of this century's spirituality.
In presenting the Cayce readings’ perspective on our evolutionary purpose, I have tried to give a comprehensive treatment of their take on the origin and destiny of the human soul. However, there is one aspect of that story that I found to be too large and complex to assimilate into the general evolutionary perspective given here. It has to do with the role of the Christ, his own evolution, and the impact his evolution has had on the rest of the cosmos. Try as I would to weave that important narrative into this work, there was no way I could do it justice without literally doubling the length of this book. Therefore I have opted not to open that discussion here, instead making it the primary focus of a follow-up work that I am tentatively titling The Rest of the Evolutionary Story. For those not familiar with the Cayce readings concerning the Christ, the material dealt with here stands on its own. For those who are already familiar with the importance the Cayce readings ascribe to the Christ, the evolutionary path described here is offered as a significant context within which to place his story.
Regardless of your prior exposure to the Cayce material, my hope is that the concepts and practices described in the chapters ahead will assist you toward finding your place in this great evolutionary framework; for as we each find our own co-creative path, we serve the great ongoing evolutionary agenda of the cosmos, while simultaneously finding our own greatest peace, happiness, and fulfillment in life.
*Friedrich Schelling, (1809), Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, retrieved from en.wikipedia.org.
1Friedrich Schelling, (1809), Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, retrieved from en.wikipedia.org.
PART ONE:
EMBRACING EVOLUTIONARY SPIRITUALITY
“…for time and space are as the evolution upon which the forces of the divine make for that change that brings same into the experiences of those souls who seek to become one with the Creative Energies.”
254-95
“For those who believe in God, or a cosmic intelligence, it would be blasphemous to suppose that the universe has been created without purpose or plan, or that the race has been brought into existence only to eat, drink and make merry with the extravagant expenditure of resources, both mineral and organic, of the earth. There must be a reason why intelligence has been granted to mankind and why a whole planet with all its wealth has been placed at her disposal.”
Gopi Krishna, Kundalini: Empowering Human Evolution*
*Gopi Krishna, Kundalini: Empowering Human Evolution (St. Paul: Paragon House, 1996), 148.
Chapter 1:
Why Evolution Matters
“…The earth's sphere, with the first creation in the mind of the Creator, has kept its same Creative Energy, for God is the same yesterday, today and forever…”
900-340
“The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.”
Samuel Beckett, Proust*
Mine is the generation that came of age as strains of “this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius” wafted through the airwaves to our car radios. A lot of us eagerly looked for the signs of that dawning any day. Now, more than forty years later, we can look back on a number of dates and years that various prophetic voices declared to be the Big One. We've harmonically converged and fired the grid. We've awaited 1998, and once that year came and went, set our sights on 2012. It seems to me that for my whole lifespan thus far we have been waiting for the Big Event that would transform our world.
As I write this, anticipation continues to build all over the world around the great hope that many of the spiritually minded hold for December, 2012, as a pivotal point of prophetic destiny. As you read this, December 21, 2012, (selected largely because the Mayan long count calendar ended on that date) will have come and gone. Now what? (The joke will be on me if December, 2012, turns out to meet its advance press. But in that event, this book probably won't have been published, so it's all right!) Depending on how far this date has receded into the past, by the time you are reading this there may well be yet another future date that has become the object of much hope and—dare I say it?—hype.
It's understandable, really, this human tendency to latch on to particular times and dates as the fulfillment of our spiritual yearnings and the answer to the problems we face as a human race. Who can deny the allure of the expectation that in a single day or year all of our spiritual yearning will be fulfilled and that all of our unfinished business, our failures of will, discipline, and purpose, and our too-often lackadaisical service to a higher good will be swept aside in an influx of transformative grace such as this world has never known? And lest we think this date watching is a distinctly New Age phenomenon, we need only look to the Left Behind books, enormously popular among evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, as just one recent link in a chain of apocalyptic expectations that