Quest Magazine

The Essential Edgar Cayce

Edited and introduced by Mark Thurston
New York; Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004. Paperback, 287 pages.

More than twenty years ago, a member of my family who was otherwise quite a conventional Baptist became interested in Edgar Cayce's recommendations for holistic healing and nutrition. Through this relative, Cayce (1877-1945) became my introduction to the world of alternative spirituality, and my respect for this homespun occultist has only deepened since then. Cayce is probably the best-known esotericist in my hometown of Nashville and is often regarded with indulgence, even among church folk, as a local boy having grown up just to the northwest, near Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

I have often wondered what books are best to recommend to folks who are new to Cayce. The psychic readings themselves are notoriously difficult in light of their strange diction and biblical language and Cayce's focus on the individual at hand. Some of the secondary material has been overly focused on the more sensational aspects of Cayce's work-earth changes, psychic powers, and so on. A number of fine books which address only one or two aspects of the readings (Unto the Churches by Richard Henry Drummond; The Edgar Cayce Handbook for Health through Drugless Therapy by Harold Reilly and Ruth Hagy Bond). A Search for God (prepared from Cayce's readings for a study group) is a wonderful text, but often difficult for those who are uncomfortable with a Christian perspective. K. Paul Johnson's Edgar Cayce in Context is absolutely invaluable, but it is a scholarly book and not directed to a popular audience.

The need for a solid, balanced introduction to Cayce, aimed at the spiritual seeker, has been ably answered by Mark Thurston's new anthology. The Essential Edgar Cayce is a splendid book that will doubtless serve to introduce Cayce to a broader audience. Thurston's profound knowledge of the readings, conveyed through clear prose infused with the patient, gentle understanding that comes with long spiritual practice, will be of help to newcomer and longtime student alike.

Thurston addresses all of the major themes in the Cayce readings, from cosmic metaphysics to social vision. His commentary is accompanied by a careful selection of the original texts-many of them in their entirety-to give the reader a taste of the source material. I was pleased to see that acknowledges that some of Cayce's prophecies have not been fulfilled and that some readings appear confusing or irrelevant. How can a seeker after truth do otherwise?

Cayce (and his superconscious mind, which he claimed as the source of the readings) was practical in nature. The most important things are not the development of psychic powers or esoteric knowledge, but rather patience, tolerance, consciousness of our responsibility to others, and selfless dedication to our highest ideals. Many years ago, I was struck by Cayce pointing to the importance of such simple gestures as giving a smile to the people we encounter in our day, as a reminder that someone cares. One of the most transfigured persons I have ever met, who was dying of AIDS at the time I knew him, credited his state of inner acceptance and attunement with the Divine to his work with Cayce's suggestions about attitudes and emotions. Thurston does a fine job of presenting the power of Cayce's practical spirituality.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in Cayce and in the spiritual wisdom that can be found in his readings.

-JOHN PLUMMER

July/August 2005

Helena Blavatsky

Ed. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke
Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2004. Paperback, xii + 220 pages.

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's anthology Helena Blavatsky is one of a Western Esoteric Masters Series, which includes such other figures as Jacob Boehme, John Dee, Robert Fludd, Paracelsus, and Emanuel Swedenborg. The aim of the series is to present “concise biographies of key figures in the tradition [of Western esotericism] with anthologies of their writings." The book consists of extracts from H. P. Blavatsky's writings on a range of subjects, with introductory essays of a biographical and explanatory nature. Some ninety-five excerpts are arranged under eleven topics: From Spiritualism to Occultism, Ancient Wisdom Rediscovered, Secret Brotherhoods, Oriental Kabbalah, Mesmerism and Magic, Hermetic Philosophers and Rosicrucians, Buddhism and Brahmanism, Cosmogony, Macrocosm and Microcosm, Evolution, and Personal Growth and Devotion. A number of the extracts are illustrated by helpful diagrams taken from the original sources.

The selections gathered under the various topics were not randomly chosen but, especially in the first part of the book, illustrate a thesis implied by the series title. HPB and Theosophy are often thought of as based on Indic thought. This volume argues, both explicitly and by many of its selections, that HPB and her Theosophy were solidly in the Western esoteric tradition of Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Rosicrucianism, and so on. The selections, which range in length from a few lines to several pages each, are drawn from Isis Unveiled (39 selections), The Secret Doctrine (35), the ES Instructions (6), Spiritualist periodicals (5), Lucifer (3), The Key to Theosophy (3), The Voice of the Silence, HPB's scrapbook, The Canadian Theosophist, and a newspaper (l each). The book includes the usual sorts of minor errors, typographical and factual, but they will not distract most readers.

The selections, which are bookended and separated by the editor's essays on the topics they illustrate, vary considerably in their accessibility to a general reader. This is no "Blavatsky for Dummies" book; reading it will challenge the newcomer. But it gives a fair variety of HPB's thoughts on the topics listed above, and the editor's comments are frequently on the mark. Examples are the following:

Individual human destiny and moral problems of individual development are the ultimate focus of the work [The Secret Doctrine].

If Blavatsky had neither founded the Theosophical Society nor gone on to receive the Mahatmas' revelation in India and her only major work had been Isis Unveiled, her reputation would have been assured as the reviver and compiler of a prodigious number of sources bearing on religions, mythology and magic.

Although presented in Sanskrit, Tibetan and Buddhist terminology, Blavatsky's cosmology had deep roots in the Hermetic-kabbalistic world-view of "as above, so below," so fundamental to Western esotericism. Blavatsky's universal wisdom-tradition of Theosophy involving both Western and Eastern sources gave an important impetus to a new global esotericism.

Blavatsky restated the Western esoteric tradition in contemporary scientific terms by incorporating the concept of evolution into the celestial and spiritual hierarchies of being from the macrocosm of the whole universe down to the microcosm of man. Boehme, and later Oetinger, regarded human incarnation as the goal of God in becoming self-conscious. Their idea was also expressed in terms of each human being seeking to become the Christ in the course of their earthly life. This esoteric idea of spiritual growth mirrored in eternity was transformed by modern Theosophy's doctrine of reincarnation and the migration of the Monads over enormous cycles of time. But Theosophical evolution takes place in time and its notion of salvation is a historicist and Romantic modification to the ideas of Boehme and later Christian theosophers.

Such observations, especially the last, are exactly the sort: of Theosophical history that needs to be written. What passes as Theosophical history is all too often simply a Theosophical version of People magazine, with its focus on personalities, peccadilloes, and petty details. It is to be hoped that Goodrick-Clarke's emphasis on the history of ideas will inspire others-perhaps even him-to pursue the more intellectually respectable course he has shown in studying the history of modern Theosophy.

-JOHN ALGEO

July/August 2005

What the Bleep Do We Know!?

 DVD. Fox Home Entertainment, March 2005.

What the Bleep Do We Know!? Offers us a good time while explaining the illusion of our reality, the relationship between the observer and the observed, and the tug of war between the body and consciousness. All the questions, ideas, and theories are the positive qualities of the film. We normally assume reality to be solid matter separated by space. That the movie shows it to be all energy must give materialists a moment's pause. Where is the observer? This entity has not been found anywhere in the body, but it does have the ability to rewire the brain. Our habits and addictions suggest that although we identify with our bodies, we do not always control them.. The question of the nature of thought and its power to affect our lives and others brings responsibility, as well as freedom, back to the individual. We are the scientists studying our own lives.

A good portion of the discussion dwells on the energy and chemistry of our bodies and seems to reduce us to biological machines. This Cartesian attitude looks at all the parts and adds them lip to something less than what we are, which is greater than the sum of our biological parts. Some people have had the experience that emotions are more than just peptides and chemical reactions. The special effects illustrating the aspects of simple. cases are entertaining, but a bit over done, especially overemphasizing the baser aspects of human nature.

If only the commentaries of the scientists acknowledged that what has long been said in the perennial wisdom comes to light anew with their efforts. Instead, some offered opinions on what God is, based on some unanswered questions like where do the particles come from or go, or why we seem to be the observer.

All in all I highly recommend this film for its research, insights, wit, humor, and accompanying illustrative story.

-SUSAN OCKERSE

July/August 2005

Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas

By John Shirley
New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004, Paperback, 301 pages.

Time magazine once called G. I. Gurdjieff a "remarkable blend of P. T. Barnum, Rasputin, Freud, Groucho Marx, and everybody's grandfather," and, if I might add to the list, a take-no-prisoners twelve-step sponsor. Whether a huckster, a hierophant, or a redoubtable hybrid of both, Gurdjieff was certainly a genius whose demanding teachings continue to resonate.

Indeed, in Gurdjieff: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas, John Shirley notes the recent spate of films- The Matrix, American Beauty, Fight Club, Vanilla Sky, and others--that seem to reflect Gurdjieffian themes (intentionally or not), especially his central contention that human beings are essentially sleepwalking through life, out of touch with reality and themselves.

Shirley acknowledges that a book generally can convey only a faint impression of spiritual teachings. However he writes that it was his intention, "in this harried, media-saturated age," to create an accurate and accessible account of Gurdjieff's life and work "that might open a door, for some readers, to a deeper study, and even real hope."

Readers with little or no knowledge of the man and his ideas will finish this book with a solid introduction to both. Drawing on the accounts of biographers and students as well as Gurdjieff's own largely parabolic version of his early life, Shirley outlines Gurdjieff's childhood influences, (including his grandmother's profound and prophetic deathbed advice (“In life never do as others do. Either do nothing- -just go to school- -or do something nobody else does"), his spiritual expeditions with the "Seekers of Truth," his itinerant teaching career, and his often intense and troubled relationships with his students.

Gurdjieff the man is certainly a fascinating character, primarily due to his charisma and the mystery surrounding him, but it is of course his teachings and some of his methods (ego-strafing "verbal guerilla warfare" that may have alienated more people that it awakened) that make him such a towering-and outrageous-figure.

Noting that many people may be repelled by Gurdjieff's brutal view of humanity, Shirley asks how else we might explain our chronic inability to deal effectively with the problems of war, global hunger, environmental destruction, and rampant addiction, if we aren't a little more than directionless machines, trapped by our conditioning.

Moreover, regarding Gurdjieff's often searing techniques. Shirley declares that when we consider that life is a rigorous and unrelenting endeavor, "it makes sense that the real truth of spiritual evolution would be equally stark, equally demanding". Gurdjieff's austerity, his indifference to the comforting trappings of New Age spirituality or lace-edged religion, is reassuring: it means his teaching has the ring of truth."

PAUL WINE

May/June 2005