Venturing Inward. Hugh Lynn Cayce

completeness and complexity of this unconscious memory play a far more important role in an individual’s life than he is aware. Literally, an individual becomes what he or she feeds into the unconscious. This idea is taking on more and more importance with the development of psychosomatic medicine. Particular thoughts and emotions are believed to be directly related to specific diseases. The meaning of the phrase “mind is the builder,” repeated over and over again in the Edgar Cayce readings, cannot be understood fully. However, it takes on new meaning as one begins to glimpse the depths of the unconscious.

      Consciousness varies from moment to moment. It is like a mixing bowl into which various ingredients are being poured through sense perceptions—sight, hearing, taste, feeling, and smell. Other ingredients which appear now and then do not seem to come from sense perceptions. It is generally assumed that these “extra ingredients” in consciousness are from unconscious memories where previously recorded sense perceptions are stored. A few adventurers in the world of the mind suggest racial memories stored in genes and chromosomes, or a collective unconscious to which we are all connected. These areas of the mind are like the part of the iceberg below water or the invisible rays of the sun. Perhaps in following Edgar Cayce as he seemed to move into the unknown regions of this inner world it will be possible to observe some of the “reaches” of the unconscious.

      In the words of the readings, mind partakes of both the material and the spiritual aspects of man. It is a spark of a force of the Creator, an active principle which governs individuals and expresses itself at many levels of consciousness. At the physical level mind manifests through the senses. It reasons with impressions from the senses. This is the conscious mind.

      Two other large rooms of the mind may be called the subconscious and the superconscious—two broad divisions of the unconscious. The subconscious stores impressions from physical consciousness and, as has been pointed out, picks up far more than is consciously known. The readings suggest that this mind becomes the conscious mind, so to speak, when the physical body is laid aside at death. The superconscious mind might be said to be the part of the mind which has not come into physical expression at all. It is the original spiritual pattern. An individual’s spiritual growth and development depend on the person being able to release spiritual energy from this higher area of the unconscious and bring it into conscious expression. Mind is a part of the soul.

      The Edgar Cayce readings describe the soul as a particular creation, an arrangement or pattern of energy. It might be considered to be made up of spirit, mind, and will. The spirit is the essence of the life force; the mind is the creative building quality; the will is the power of choice, the birthright of every soul.

      It is only natural for us in three dimensions to think of the terms—soul, mind, will, spirit—as taking form in matter. As English poet Edmund Spenser said, “For of the soul the body form doth take: For the soul is form, and doth the body make.”

      In another room of the unconscious mind there seems to be at times a mechanism for establishing attunement with other minds. Some psychologists suggest that it is in a collective unconscious that such telepathic phenomena operate.

      From the unconscious state Edgar Cayce described his own ability as a process of attunement with the subconscious of the person for whom he was giving information. The majority of his readings dealt with diseases of the body. The request for help seemed to set up a telepathic or clairvoyant empathetic bridge, enabling some area of his unconscious to blend with the subconscious of the seeker.

      This activity of the unconscious was described in many readings. Here is one quotation:

      Then in seeking information there are certain factors in the experience of the seeker and in the channel through which such information may come. Desire on the part of the seeker to be shown. And, as an honest seeker, he will not be too gullible; neither will he be so encased in prejudices as to doubt that which is applicable in his experience. Hence the information must not only be practical but it must be rather in accord with the desires of the seeker also.

      This desire, then, is such that it must take hold not only on that which is primarily the basis of all material manifestation of spiritual things, but must also have its inception in a well-balanced desire for the use of such information not only for self but for others. Then there may come, as for this body in the present, that which if applied may be helpful in the present experience.

      On the part of that channel through whom such information may come, there must be the unselfish desire to be of aid to a fellow man. Not as for self-exaltation because of being a channel. Not for self-glorification that such a channel may be well-spoken of. But rather as one desirous of being a channel through which the highest spiritual forces may manifest in bringing to the material consciousness of the seeker those things that may be beneficial in a spiritual and material sense to the seeker.