Ode to Blogging: Annual Report of the Laboratory of Evolution, 2011-2012

The Laboratory of Evolution in Auroville is part of a vaster internal organisation that regroups the many educational and cultural activities that are going on here, and raises funds especially for them. Every year each activity so funded has to write then a ‘Progress Report’ about what it has accomplished during the previous year. Here is down below what I have felt inspired to write yesterday night concerning my own part of the work for the ‘LOE’:

ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE LABORATORY OF EVOLUTION, 2011-2012

RESEARCH REPORT FROM BHAGA

-THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF THE LOE:
As founder and head of the LOE since 1984, I am particularly concerned with the scientific aspect of the Research work that was planned from the start to be done in the Centre, called for this very reason a ‘Laboratory’. Lack of the required appropriate space, equipment and experts  prevented us until now from doing that aspect of our work in the way I had envisaged at first. But some ‘laboratories’ at least were permanently available to us during all those years, and that was our own inner beings and physical bodies…!
- A RESEARCHER-CUM-VOLUNTARY GUINEA-PIG:
In Auroville, to be a Researcher in Conscious Evolution means that you will have to be at the same time the voluntary guinea-pig and the researcher watching, recording and analyzing the experiment while it is going on at every single moment of your daily life, conducted in mostly unexpected ways by the new Evolutive Force now at work upon Earth.
In the light of the explanations and advice given by those two first Pioneers of Conscious Evolution, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, I have been practicing their “Integral Yoga” to the best of my ability since 1971 when I first came across their writings. I deliberately came to Auroville the following year in order to experience also the additional challenge of Collective Evolution towards what has been until now only an elusive goal for Humankind: Human Unity.
- HOW TO DISSEMINATE THE RESULTS OF THE ONGOING RESEARCH:
The forty years spent in Auroville with that inner attitude of a Researcher-cum-Guinea-Pig have been eventful indeed, but then also quite fruitful in terms of the results of the Research done throughout it all.
The problem was, how to get the accumulated documents (mostly personal journals and diaries, but also many articles from various sources) to reach in the right way the people who might be interested in them for their own adventure of Conscious Evolution as well, wherever they might live on the planet?
A website was tried for several years, but proved to be too expensive and technically demanding. Only a year ago did I finally find the right ‘planetary communication’ means, and that was: a ‘blog’.
- WHAT IS ‘BLOGGING’:
More and more individuals everywhere are nowadays starting to ‘blog’, that is, to express themselves as unique individuals wanting simply to share whatever they have to say with other unique individuals elsewhere who also have something to share. Several big companies like Google or WordPress provide an ever-increasing range of attractive, very diverse templates that can be chosen and used for free by any would-be new blogger as the framework into which to post her or his texts and/or photos, and gradually build-up, at their own slow or quick pace, a whole ‘blog’ that other bloggers may chose to visit, and re-visit if they become interested. It is even possible, through a mere click on the appropriate button, to ‘follow’ someone’s blog: one will henceforth be informed automatically by email whenever that blogger puts up a new post on her/his blog.
- RESULTS AS PER MAY 2012:
After this first year of ‘blogging’, the results are quite encouraging for the complete neophyte I was: there are by now 150 ‘followers’ of my blog, although it is far from being an entertaining one, named as it is ‘Lab of Evolution’ – for it is naturally by me as a specific Researcher but in the context of our Research Center in Auroville that the documents and articles are being gradually published in ‘posts’ form. The newest posts are the ones you find first when you click on the blog’s address to open it, but all the older posts remain always accessible as well. Besides the regular visitors come also every day a number of new ones, and they too may come again or not, leave a comment or not, and each time you can edit it out, or answer it, starting what might become a whole conversation…
- WORLDWIDE CONTENTS AND WORLDWIDE OUTREACH:
Together with those texts by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that are central to the Integral Yoga, I include on my blog texts from several other persons who, I found out, were contemporaries of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and who on their own also received intuitively and then spread in their own way some notion of the new evolutive step about to start taking place on Earth: Edgar Cayce in the USA, J.R.R . Tolkien in England, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in France

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a philosopher who trained as a paleontologist and geologist (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

and some others later on,  all contributed something to the gradual understanding by more and more human beings that a new evolutive era is beginning. The most complete communication of this fact and the main work for its advent have been accomplished by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, but all those others too in various parts of the globe have found some inspiring way of telling that fact to the world, however incomplete may have been their own understanding of it and their personal capacity to realize it in their own life.
So the contents of my blog are appealing probably by their diversity: diversity of the sources used as well as of the aspects of the inner or outer work needing to be done, that are presented. Places in the world other than Auroville are in the same way presented in that blog because there too some important work for the conscious evolution of Humankind is happening. Special individuals exemplifying particularly well something specific that is characteristic of the ways this new evolutive step is taking place, are also presented. The ‘Lab of Evolution’, one realizes, is not limited to our Centre in Auroville, nor even to Auroville as a whole, but it is revealed as existing already a bit everywhere, and potentially in everybody. In that way no one feels excluded from the fantastic new Possible that is being introduced throughout the blog. In all this what concerns me finds its place, being understood that I myself represent only one sample of what is happening in Auroville. My own case might be especially relevant because I do my inner work in deliberate connection with whatever else is happening worldwide, that is also actually Conscious Evolution.
- AN ONGOING EXPERIMENT IN HUMAN UNITY:
This blog is of course, besides its own contents, an ongoing experiment exploring the incredibly important role on a planetary scale of this ‘blogging’ trend increasing every day more among the most disparate persons, whether men or women, old or young, rich or poor, straight or gay, of all skin colors, from the vast populations of our biggest countries to the lone individuals from the remotest corners of our planet. People have visited my blog from the most unexpected spots on Earth. It feels just wonderful. What a great way these blogs are to contact each other, to discover each other’s rich uniqueness, and through this mutual appreciation to find a sense of universality in that sheer number of bloggers that just grows exponentially! As a Researcher, I would advance the joyful hypothesis that the Evolutive Force itself has inspired some people here and there a few years ago to start communicating freely in that so rewarding  ‘one-to-one’ new way, different from Facebook and such, and now it’s an explosion of friendships sparkling irresistibly like fireworks all over the planet…
- CONCLUSION:
This extraordinary new phenomenon definitely deserves ongoing study and direct participation from a Research Center like the Laboratory of Evolution. Besides the usual courses (about Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the Spiritual Dimension of Auroville and other such topics) now and then asked for by individuals or small groups, this daily ‘blogging’ has been my main activity during this last year, so significant and effective that it is likely to remain an important part of my Research life in the future too.

Les Deux Expériences de 2002 reliées à Celle Maintenant de Gaia

C’est quand même bien utile, cette habitude que j’ai prise depuis très longtemps, d’écrire,  ne fût-ce que sous forme de brèves notes, ce que je vis intérieurement, genre rêve ou expérience ou autre fait important! C’est grâce à cette habitude que je viens de retrouver dans le carnet de 2002, où je me rappelais fort bien l’avoir notée, l’expérience super-puissante à Chartres… et puis en cherchant celle-là, quelques pages avant je suis tombée sur la description première de l’expérience qui lui est maintenant reliée, celle de moi-même en tant que vajra/dorje tibétain étincelant de lumière…!
C’était le jeudi 9 mai 2002, en fin de journée, j’ai noté:
“Séance de massage sacro-cranial chez I., avec sa géode améthyste d’abord aux pieds puis à la tête.
A la fin, image soudaine:
Au niveau du nombril, une sorte de joyau lumineux blanc lançant des sortes d’éclairs très blancs dans tous les sens, et le reste du corps, ou du moins sa forme extérieure ou énergétique, apparaissait tel un dorje tibétain.”
C’était donc il y a déjà dix ans!!! Je n’avais à l’époque aucune attirance spéciale pour le Tibet et ses objets rituels de culte, habituellement en cuivre ou autre matériau opaque, à l’aspect aussi obscur et peu bienveillant que la plupart des divinités qu’ils servaient à adorer; mais là, ce dorje totalement transparent et lumineux, c’était autre chose!…
C’est pendant l’été de la même année que j’ai pu enfin aller à Chartres. Voici ce que j’ai écrit plus tard à ce sujet, dans le même carnet:
“Il est temps maintenant de noter ce qui s’est passé le 12 Juillet, au cours de ma visite à Chartres grâce à la gentille invitation de ce cher F. dans sa petite Clio qui lui va comme un gant, savourant chaque kilomètre de cette Vallée de Chevreuse que nous avons choisi de traverser, délaissant l’autoroute…
Dans la Cathédrale (vitraux incroyables, même pour mon oeil de néophyte), j’ai tout de suite cherché à me rapprocher du fameux Labyrinthe dont j’espérais bien qu’il serait, comme supposément tous les vendredis, débarrassé des chaises qui les autres jours le recouvrent. Il était en effet découvert, ô joie!
Malgré le flot chaotique des gens et enfants le traversant dans tous les sens ou même y courant, visiblement sans se douter du tout de son sens ni de son potentiel initiatiques, j’ai fini par voir où était l’Entrée, et je m’y suis engagée avec un appel intérieur à Mère et Sri Aurobindo. J’avais déjà repéré la Grande Rosace où Notre-Dame et l’Enfant trônent, au centre… du Symbole de la Mère Divine!… On l’a dans son dos quand on se place à l’Entrée du Labyrinthe.
Très vite, une fois dessus, chacun de mes pas s’est accompagné spontanément, tout bas, du mot “Mère”, et ma concentration intérieure s’est approfondie de plus en plus, oubliant le chaos bruyant des gens autout de moi.
Quand je suis finalement arrivée au Centre, je n’attendais rien de spécial; mais dès que je me suis avancée là (après qu’on en ait retiré la poussette avec enfant qui y était, empêchant d’y accéder!…), immédiatement une Energie extraordinaire à commencé à descendre, m’immobilisant de plus en plus fortement, de la tête aux pieds, au fur et à mesure que le temps passait. Je ne pouvais plus bouger, ni ouvrir les yeux. Un grand sentiment de la Présence de la Mère Divine avait envahi mon coeur intérieur, et la gratitude en sortait à flots intenses.
J’étais absolument sidérée.
L’Energie passait surtout verticalement et par les chakras. Le chakra d’en haut n’était plus qu’un très large entonnoir, élargi à en être pratiquement plat, comme un lotus grand ouvert. Pas une pensée, pas une émotion, rien, seulement la sensation de cette Energie qui entrait, entrait, et se déversait dans mon être. Finalement je l’ai perçue, cette Energie, comme une Lumière Dorée qui formait comme un énorme Pilier occupant tout le Centre du Labyrinthe (y compris les huit pétales et les entre-pétales où je m’étais reculée d’un pas pour pouvoir rester aussi longtemps que nécessaire sans pour autant gêner l’accès des autres au Centre proprement dit).
Et ce Pilier continuait vers le bas – loin de s’arrêter au sol, il s’enfonçait aussi dans la Terre, m’y enracinant par la même occasion!…
Ce Pilier de Lumière Dorée reliait le Ciel et la Terre, et me passait à travers au passage. Fabuleux!..
Mon visage baigné de larmes de joie était en extase calme, souvent levé vers la Rosace de la Mère Divine (qui maintenant me faisait face), et vers ses deux occupants à qui mon être se donnait sans réserve – au moins centralement, car ce n’est que plus tard, quand j’ai pu m’asseoir, (non pas sur le Labyrinthe, bien sûr, mais sur le bord du socle d’un des piliers de pierre qui en sont proches), qu’enfin mon corps a pu avoir sa part de l’expérience. Là, mes cellules aussi ont reçu et éprouvé la charge, dans une certaine mesure.
Je n’étais finalement sortie du Centre du Labyrinthe qu’après un temps qui m’apparaissait comme une eternité intense. Mon immobilité pour ainsi dire pétrifiée par cette Descente, n’a été mûe que par le surprenant movement de rotation en vortex, que lui imprimait de temps en temps la Force. Au bout d’un certaine durée de ce temps pétrifié, il m’a été dit intérieurement que ça suffisait, qu’il fallait maintenant quitter le Centre… ce que je n’ai fait pourtant qu’à regret, un regret infini, poignant, d’avoir à me séparer à nouveau de cette Union indicible et de l’intensité presqu’écrasante de Présence que j’éprouvais.
Le parcours du Labyrinthe en sens inverse m’a été une grande aide pour peu à peu revenir au monde extérieur.
Une fois sortie complètement du Labyrinthe, je n’avais qu’une envie, c’était d’y retourner aussitôt, de retrourner vers ce Centre béni. Ce m’était douleur que de résister à cette envie, et de rester dans la vie extérieure suffisamment pour aller m’asseoir sur une chaise proche et, après un long moment, être capable de retrouver F., tout étonné de mon silence et état “bizarre”, et de lui adresser quelques mots anodins et rassurants.
Plus tard, pendant qu’il me ramenait dans la Clio chez ma mère, je me suis rendue compte que j’avais la fièvre. Le lendemain encore, cette fièvre a continué, et je n’ai pas été “dans mon assiette” de toute la journée… “
… mais je savais pourquoi, et ça en valait bien la peine!…
Tout cela était d’autant plus sidérant pour moi qu’ordinairement j’étais parfaitement incapable de sentir toutes ces “énergies” diverses, auras et autres, que tant d’autres personnes perçoivent communément et sans difficultés!… Je me considérais comme complètement bouchée!…

Quant à ma vision, tout à fait stupéfiante elle aussi, de moi-même sous la forme de ce dorje tibétain lumineux, le souvenir m’en est revenu un dimanche soir, 12 avril 2009, ayant entre-temps découvert les livres d’Olga Kharitidi dont j’ai parlé surtout au début de ce blog, mais qui restent facilement accessibles parce que je leur ai dédié une des Catégories sur lesquelles on peut directement cliquer. Voici mes notes  à propos de cette vision, et de ce qu’elle m’a évoqué ce soir-là:
“Mon passé “shamanique”?!?… Moi qui rejette tellement le Shamanisme!…
Il va falloir que je cherche dans ces cahiers: Quand ai-je rêvé une nuit d’un grand objet sacré tibétain, le Dorjé [et dans mes notes je l'ai dessiné remarquablement bien] tout fait de lumière, et qui était… Moi, mon Moi vrai à ce niveau-là. Le réveil  sur cette expérience m’a laissé un goût de splendeur dans la conscience, très intense.
Maintenant je découvre grâce à un jeune Belge (!) un shamane hongrois (!!!), Joska Soos de Sovar, du Clan de Baksa, à travers qui s’exprimait encore (mort 15.8.08) la filiation ouralo-altaïque du shamanisme hongrois – lien à nouveau avec le premier livre d’Olga Kharitidi, “Entering the Circle”, et les anciens shamanes de l’Altaî.
Tout semble converger vers cette origine pré-sibérienne, altaïque (plus la partie mongole maintenant de l’Altaï), du temps d’un autre climat, comme pour le Désert de Gobi (Mongolie aussi) autrefois fertile, comme l’affirme Edgar Cayce. Mon impression d’exhilaration, très lointaine dans le passé, chevauchant au galop “dans les plaines de l’Asie Centrale”… Mon amour pour les yourtes… LA yourte. Bien plus pratique en fait que la tente amériendienne toute pentue, qui a perdu sa “muraille” circulaire verticale, au-dessus de laquelle la tente était posée.
Bon. Au dodo!….
Vais-je rêver de Belovodia?…”

Edgar Cayce’s advice for Cataracts

Together with the inner treatment through my mantric use of ‘to look on all with large and tranquil eyes’ (see previous post), I have googled ‘Edgar Cayce on Cataract’ and obtained a list of results that, after checking, I have reduced to two presentations, copied down below, together with the links to them:

1/ From Edward Jamail:

Edgar Cayce recommended many procedures for the health of the eyes that would help prevent or clear up cataracts.  Cataracts occur when the clear lens of the eye becomes clouded.  The progression is painless and often not noticed until it has progressed quite a bit.  The process is begun by poor circulation that prevents the eye from ridding itself of “debris.” Cayce also considered spinal lesions that block nerve impulses as contributing to the condition.

The following procedures were recommended for maintaining eye health and reversing many conditions: spinal adjustments in the upper cervical and dorsal areas to aid circulation; include in the diet plenty of seafood, carrots and carrot juices, and B-vitamins; use the Violet Ray Device directly on the eyes while closed and on the back of the neck to “enliven the nerves”; use Glyco-Thymoline either as a poultice over the eyes or as eye drops (1 part Glyco to 2 parts distilled water); potato poultice (scrape the white part of the old Irish potato with the flat edge of a knife and collect onto a cloth) over the eyes to draw out accumulated toxins, and a general massage with peanut oil to aid elimination.

When Edgar Cayce was asked about illness, he would almost always approach the condition from the perspective of changing the underlying conditions.  Usually with any illness there are conditions of constriction causing poor circulation of blood and nerve energy resulting in an accumulation of toxic substances and inadequate nourishment of the affected areas.  In general we should pay closer attention to Circulation, Assimilation, Relaxation, and Elimination (C.A.R.E.).

Edward Jamail

http://www.edgarcaycehouston.org/Research.htm

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The second presentation I have selected includes some extracts of the readings themselves, which is always interesting:

2/ From the Edgar Cayce Health Database:

http://www.edgarcayce.org/are/holistic_health/data/prcata3.html

OVERVIEW OF CATARACTS

I.  Physiological Considerations

The major cause of cataracts, as seen in the Cayce readings, is impaired circulation and eliminations leading to accumulations in the sensory system. Other causes less frequently cited include: spinal lesions and sub-luxations, digestive disturbances, dietary insufficiency, mental attitudes, mechanical injury, and constitutional condition. In one or two instances, no specific cause was given. Even in most of these instances poor circulation and elimination were the final mechanisms that allowed cataracts to form.

For instance, in reading 2193-1 elemental dietary deficiency resulted in anemia, which in turn led to altered circulation and impaired elimination resulting in the formation of cataract deposits in the eyes. The mental strain produced by associated symptoms further led to depletion of the nervous system.

Another variation is seen in reading 3598-1. In this case the cause was digestive disturbance as a result of overactivity of the glandular forces (system) affecting the duodenum. This in turn was caused by pressure on the spine at the level of the fifth, sixth thoracic (dorsal) spinal segment, which affected the hypogastric and pneumogastric centers. The finding results were poor assimilations and eliminations.

Improper attitudes can work to bring about physical problems, including cataracts. In reading 3335-1, this was associated with disturbances in assimilation and elimination, resulting in other problems including cataracts. In reading 5451-2 the patient’s poor attitude included improper care for his body as reflected in poor dietary habits, which contributed to developing this illness.

In summary, it can be stated that in the great majority of people for whom Cayce gave readings on cataracts, disturbances in circulation and elimination were the final mechanisms through which the disease came about. In a few instances the basis of the problem was of a nonphysical nature which set into motion forces that brought about a physical condition.

II. Rationale of Therapy

This may be approached under two broad outlines:

Physical causes, the most common underlying problem being circulation/elimination disturbances; others include spinal lesions, digestive disturbances, etc. Appropriate therapy is selected on the basis of what is seen as the major underlying problem.
Non-physical causes such as attitudes and emotions. Physical problems nearly always overshadow the non-physical and thus the latter may be easily overlooked. In such instances only partial results are obtained when therapy is directed solely to physical causes. The following illustrations will serve to emphasize this point:
Mr. Cayce: So to relieve this condition we would, with the action of mental force, or expression, over the sensory system so control the circulation as to cause the proper elimination, or eliminating channels to be directed to the specific cause. See?
Mr. [3943]: Yes, sir.
Mr. Cayce: And with the assistance of mechanical forces so adjust all of the system as to make the direct action of both mental and spiritual being centered in the condition to be removed. That is by gentle manipulation along the centers that govern the nerves from the cerebrospinal nerve center itself, and the plexus governing the sympathetic or soul forces and their conjunction points with the sensory organism, and we would then direct as it were the energies of the mind and soul forces with the physical attributes in the body to this condition that we wish to remove from this body. Those centers we will find at the cervical region from the 2nd cervical to the 3rd and 4th dorsal. See? (3943-1)

What this passage is pointing out is that we must work on all levels-spiritual, mental and physical – for one is just as important as the others. If the physical body is unable to make use of the channeled spiritual and mental forces, little good is done by using physical applications exclusively. This passage also indicates that the higher forces are channeled through the nervous system.

Another example is to be found in reading 5451-2. This patient was already receiving treatments from other sources and was satisfied with what was being done. Cayce indicated in this instance that as long as he (the patient) felt this way, other treatments would not be advised, for they would be ineffective.

… if the body’s mind is not to be changed, then wouldn’t be best to change the body-for if the body is still convinced within self that that being done is proper, don’t change it! Let it have its way! For it must learn for itself. (5451-2)

III.  Suggested Therapeutic Regimen

The following is a summary of the most commonly prescribed treatments. They are aimed at improving the circulation and eliminations and in allowing for better attunement to spiritual forces to provide coordination of the physical, mental and spiritual:

1. Osteopathy. Adjustments in the upper cervical and dorsal segments (C1, 2, 3; DI, 2, 3); sometimes in the lower dorsal coordinating with the upper lumbar. Frequency: about twice weekly for five to six weeks with rest periods of two to three weeks. This was by far the most commonly prescribed treatment.

2. Massage. With peanut oil (sometimes a combination of oils). Frequency is variable. Again twice weekly would be reasonable, though in one instance it was recommended on a daily basis before retiring. Emphasis to spine, mastoid, temple and chin areas.

3. Violet ray treatment. Sometimes recommended only after the first osteopathic series. Would be applied along the spine, head and neck areas for three minutes, then with the double-eye applicator over closed eyes for another one-and-a-half minutes about three times per week.

A Glyco-Thymoline or Epsom salt pack may be used over same areas for 20-30 minutes prior to the violet ray treatments.

Discharge from the eyes may occur with these treatments. This should be wiped off with a non-irritating, antiseptic solution.
Potato poultice may also be used after the violet ray treatment. Wash off with weak eye solution that will remove inflammation drawn by the poultice.
4. Eliminations. At least once or twice daily using natural laxatives, e.g., Eno salts, Fletcher’s Castoria, bicarbonate of soda with cracker crumbs, etc.; colonics, if necessary.

5. Diet. A wholesome diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Seafoods are allowed but no meats or sweets. Raw carrots, lettuce, celery, watercress and the like are beneficial.

6. Vibratory treatment. Another way of stimulating blood flow is, first, rub the body with cold water to produce shock, followed by fast vibratory treatment (reading 3943-1). Frequency and duration not specified. Twice weekly treatment is suggested lasting 20-30 minutes.

7. Spiritual counseling, prayer, and meditation. These are other modalities available to ensure integration of the triune body, mind and spirit.

[Note: The preceding overview was written by Hezekiah Chinwah, M. D. and is excerpted from the Physician's Reference Notebook, Copyright © 1968 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation, Virginia Beach, VA.]

Note: The above information is not intended for self-diagnosis or self-treatment.  Please consult a qualified health care professional for assistance in applying the information contained in the Cayce Health Database.

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Still, what has been the most useful to me personally is what I found on the topic in the same dear old book of mine already quoted in a previous post I wrote here about Edgar Cayce. The title of that book by Lawrence M. Steinhart is ‘Edgar Cayce’s Secrets of Beauty through Health’, first published in 1971, in its fifth printing in 1976, and I hope still being re-printed, for it is such an excellent book – well, I just googled it too, and I am very happy to announce it seems to be all over the place, including on Amazon!… Even the old cover I still have on my own ancient and battered copy is still there too, just as I had tried to describe it in that previous post of mine: alleluiah! It is much better to actually see that cover!

Other covers in a different style are also available, but I always liked that one very much, and I guess the author (now deceased) may have cherished it as well while he was here physically to witness the totally deserved success of his work.

Now that I know people interested can still easily find that book, I will not need to copy here as much as I first thought I would have to. The one advice I could immediately put into practice as it didn’t need any expense or help from anyone else as a massage would, was the following:

‘In attempting to stop the wearing of glasses, 3549-1 was asking how to improve vision. She was told that “When we remove the pressures of the toxic forces we will improve the vision.”. Then followed a practice which was given over and over for many reasons:

“Also the head and neck exercise will be most helpful. Take this regularly, not taking sometimes and leaving off sometimes, but each morning and each evening take this exercise regularly for six months and we will see a gret difference. Sitting erect, bend the head forward three times, to the back three times, to the right side three times, to the left side three times, and then the head each way three times. Don’t hurry throught with it, but TAKE THE TIME to do it. We will get results.”

An electrically driven vibrator w&as included in 303-2′s instruction for gaining better vision. “The applications of the vibrations, especially in the first  cervical or at the base of the brain and over the head… wull stimulate for a better vision. Practice the circular motions of the head and neck, closing eyes AND SEEING SELF SEEING BETTER. This will create that reaction which brings practice to the nerve and muscular forces to that portion of the sensory system which has been disturbed.”

Here visualisation of the end result was added to the simple but effective exercise.’

Remember that all those readings were given before 1945, when visualization and such were not yet part of what is now advised and practiced by many in our more recent, ‘New Age’ times… Edgar Cayce has been a precursor in truly innumerable ways, also indicating often the important underlying connections between functions in our body which are not generally known to be connected. Regarding the eyes – our primary topic in this post – I have found in the cases quoted in this book several mentions particularly of a link between them and the kidneys, the proper functioning of which depended in turn upon the individual drinking enough water everyday, starting with a full glass first thing upon arising in the morning, and some also before and after meals.

When we are trying to cure one specific ailment we are suffering from, it is so easy to fall into the trap that modern allopathic medicine has fallen into, and to forget that it is the whole system that must looked into and re-balanced, as everything is interconnected…

From my own experience of the past six months, I can vouch for the ‘head and neck exercise’ and certify that, together with plenty of water taken internally as well, there is an instantaneous improvement of the vision every time during the day that I am doing that exercise while I am sitting at my desk and writing this blog!

The Berber Cravings in Me

For a long time, whenever I observed from which cultural, linguistic and racial background I had chosen to be born this time around, I could see easily the inner reasons for most of the various factors involved in the specific mixture that’s my current ‘me’, but not for why I had chosen to go be born, of all possible places, especially in Algiers, Algeria (then still part of France) My parents were sent there only for a short while – but that was nevertheless during that short while that I decided to make my new entrance back on Earth.
I never could identify inwardly any far roots of mine that would have justified such a choice of a North African country as my birth place.
Until I looked a little backwards in my life and realized I always absolutely craved couscous; and every time I have gone back to France since 1972 when I started living in India, the first thing I have done was to eat a good couscous. I am the only member of the family like that. The others like couscous, yes, but they don’t crave it as I do; they find me a bit queer for that, but they shrug their shoulders with an indulgent smile, and that’s it.
Another tell tale sign found in my memories is the complete fascination with which I read as a teenager a book by well-known French explorer and writer, Roger Frison-Roche, about a tribe of Touareg in the Sahara desert. I don’t know anymore the title or what the story was, but I went in a kind of trance reading that book, so deeply I identified with the young Targuia woman and her tribe in that book.

But it is only recently – more or less since the ‘Arab Spring’ started – that this aspect of my larger Me has been stirring my adult present life. For one thing, I was wondering if that other lifetime knew me as an Arab or a Berber. Suddenly, although all the Arab people who were out there claiming a freer, more normal life, without tyrants, had all my sympathy and support, still I felt clearly that Arab wasn’t the same thing as Berber, and that as far as I was concerned I was a Berber.
This brought back to my consciousness the research I have already done some time ago, that I put up on this very blog as one of my very first posts, where the Berbers were mentioned as apparently among the remnants of the Atlantis population, survivors of the final catastrophe or the previous smaller ones, who had emigrated to the various coastal regions all around the Atlantic Ocean where their big island/continent of origin had finally sunk. I remembered the salient points in the articles I had found in my research:
- Berber is not at all the same thing as Arab
- Origins different, language different, all very ancient, rare blood-type and genes
- ‘Atlas’ Mountains, a name reminiscent  of Atlantis, just like the ‘Altai’ Mountains of Siberia.

Moved by a renewed impulse, I again did just a few days ago another bit of research about the Berbers, and I found the following article:

DNA EVIDENCE FOR ATLANTIS (by Will Hart, 2006.05.21) http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/05may/atlantisDNA.html

In recent years, genetic research has produced unexpected results that have opened the doors to many historical mysteries. The surprising outcomes have also provoked unintended controversy. The reasons that these DNA investigations have sparked intense debates in the fields of anthropology, history and even cultural evolution will become clear as our story unfolds.

The genetic probes began innocently enough with geneticists wanting to see what secrets human genes might reveal about our complex, mysterious and often disputed history. Anthropologists and historians had long thought that the America’s had been populated by Asians crossing a land bridge that connected Asia and North America during the last Ice Age. This was referred to as the ‘Bering Strait Crossing’ theory and was believed to have occurred about 12,000 years ago.

Genetic analysis on Native American DNA samples began in the 1980s. However, the research effort greatly accelerated in the 1990s due to rapid technological progress in the field. In fact, the early results confirmed the generally accepted theory showing a clear link between Native Americans and DNA samples collected from native peoples in Siberian-Asia. Nevertheless, as the studies both deepened and broadened to include Asians across the continent, the increasing data revealed that the migration pattern had been more complex than anthropologist’s had envisioned.

The early results showed that Native American tribes were comprised of four distinct mtDNA haplogroups, A, B, C, and D. The haplogroup designations represent four different (maternal) lineages. These four lineages are found throughout North, Central and South America. However, only three of them A, C, and D were discovered in the Siberian-Asian populations. The B haplogroup was traced to aboriginal population groups in Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Melanesia, and Polynesia.

Before proceeding we should briefly clarify what mtDNA is. There are two types of genetic material used for analysis, cellular and mtDNA, the latter is found in human mitochondria outside the nucleus of cells and is only transferred down generations through females, hence mtDNA stands for maternal DNA. This type is simpler than the cellular DNA and it evolves faster,so it is used to distinguish human groups that evolved in separate geographic areas.

In historical terms, what the genetic evidence obtained from mtDNA samples translated into was a much more diverse and complex migration pattern that included people arriving to the America’s in boats. Thor Heyerdahl had hypothesized that this was the case by showing that it was possible during his Kon Tiki expeditions across the Pacific Ocean to Peru.

While orthodox anthropologists embraced the results of the earliest DNA findings, the later results caused consternation and controversy. They not only showed that the Americas were settled by many different racial groups coming from many different parts of Asia, the genetic findings also demonstrated that the migration events took place much earlier than previously thought.

Anthropologists, archaeologists and historians had postulated that the migrations had taken place less than 20,000 years ago. DNA analysis placed the initial wave of migration at between 38-50,000 years before present. This finding too raised eyebrows in the orthodox community. However, in recent years radiocarbon dated materials from South America, California and the Southwestern United States has come to light and the dates agree with the conclusions of the DNA research.

Clearly, the genetic investigations had produced a mixed bag of outcomes for orthodox anthropologists and historians. In general, their long held theories about a north Asian origin for Native American populations were proven correct. Nevertheless, their narrow focus on Siberia, the single land-bridge migration route and their chronology had been in error. Some of the Asian immigrants did come from Siberia along that route but other groups came from Japan, Polynesia, etc., in boats and their journeys began in remote antiquity.

Genetic researchers determined that 96% of Native Americans fell into one of the four A-D haplogroups and while these mtDNA types were also found in Asia they are not present in Europe or Africa. This too indicates that Asia was the ancestral region of most Native American tribes. Then in 1997 another lineage was discovered, which geneticists dubbed X. This discovery ignited a storm of controversy that has not died down to this day. The X haplogroup needs careful,thoughtful, and deep historical analysis because this group may well hold one of the most important keys to unlocking the secrets of our collective past.

Obviously about 4 percent of Native Americans, from Alaska to the tip of South America, do not fall into one of the four major haplogroups. Scientists assumed that these minority lineages came from interactions with European and African groups since the time of Columbus. This proved to be true for about 1.5% of Native Americans however 2.5% were found to belong to the X lineage. Once this small mtDNA group was identified as a distinct genetic type, the race was on to ascertain their place of origin.

This is where the mystery really gets complicated and interesting. In spite of the fact that the previous genetic data was forcing the orthodoxy to make some alterations in their migration scheme and chronology, as we saw their basic paradigm had been confirmed. But the discovery of the X haplogroup changed that situation dramatically. It was known to exist in Europe in about 5% of the population and unknown in Asia and Africa at the time. The X lineage was ascertained to have arrived in the Americas from about 38,000 to 10,000 years ago. What could this mean?

At first anthropologists argued that since Europeans had not traveled across the Atlantic at such a remote point in time the X group had to be the outcome of post Columbus contact and intermarriage. However when researchers analyzed ancient DNA samples, found in the Great Lakes (Mound Builder) region, which dated back long before Columbus they identified some of the samples as belonging to the X group. This proved they were not the outcome of any post-Columbus contact and were not of recent origin.

When investigators compiled the genetic data on the distribution of the X haplogroup in the America’s what they discovered sent shock waves through the conventional and alternative history camps. The X lineage was only found in a handful of tribes scattered across the country, the Yakima and Sioux in the northwest and the Navajo in the southwest, in about 5% of their populations. However, the greatest concentrations by far occurred in the Ojibway, Oneota and Nuu-Chah-Nulth tribes where almost 25% of the tribal members fell into the X lineage.

Moreover, the vast majority of tribes contained no X members. In fact, it was not found in any native tribes in Central or South America. Again, what did these patterns mean? Independent researchers associated with the Edgar Cayce Association (A.R.E.) quickly pointed out that the data supported some of the material found in the Atlantis readings that the ‘sleeping prophet’ had given in the 1930s. Cayce noted that some Atlantis refugees had immigrated to the northeastern region of the United States and later formed the Iroquois nation. It was in those tribes that the highest concentration of the X haplogroup was found.

The Cayce readings also claimed that some of these refugees went to the American southwest and others migrated to the Mound Builder region and formed that civilization. Odd that his psychic information would so closely parallel the distribution pattern of the X lineage. Cayce had also given the dates that these migrations had occurred and they too agreed with the DNA findings. The plot was surely thickening in a most fascinating way. If the story stopped here it would be enough to hold interest and provoke thought however it goes farther, much farther.

The apparent widespread presence of the X lineage across what is now known as the United States appears to show a wide initial dispersal. One could postulate a west-east migration of this haplogroup from Siberian Asia. But that scenario poses two serious obstacles:1) the greatest concentration of this group is found in the northeastern region of the United States and 2) X is virtually absent in Asia.

Like a good detective novel, all of the clues had not been uncovered in the late 1990s when the X group had been identified and was being hotly debated. Geneticists pressed forward and launched a probe into the Altai tribe located in the Gobi desert and found the X lineage in small numbers. This is the only population in Asia that exhibits this haplogroup and as such they comprise a tiny, isolated genetic island. Orthodox anthropologists were elated when the news reached their ears. They seized on this finding as smoking gun proof that the X group in North America had its ancestral roots in Siberian Asia, end of story.

To say that this was an unscientific rush to a final conclusion that just happened to agree with their long held beliefs is an understatement. Let us pause and use logic and commonsense and try to walk through what we are being asked to accept. The Gobi Desert is about 8,000 miles from the northeastern section of the United States. We are being told that this tribe trekked that distance and transferred their genes from their ancestral homeland to the Great Lakes without depositing the X group genes in any other part of Asia, Alaska, Canada, and the region between Washington and the Northeast America.

Everyone agrees that any such migration would have taken place during the harshest of conditions since the Ice Age still held this entire region in its frigid grip. Furthermore, we are being asked to suspend our disbelief raised by the notion that a tiny tribe trekked these vast distances across a frozen landscape for unknown reasons. Why would any small tribe risk everything and wander half way around the globe during an ice age when they did not know what lay beyond the next horizon? In fact, anthropologists and historians know that this is not the way human tribes have operated since the dawn of time.

On February 16, 1932 Cayce related some information during a reading that is extraordinarily cogent to this unfolding genetic mystery story. When asked about the position of the continent of Atlantis he replied:

“The position the continent Atlantis occupied, is that as between the Gulf of Mexico on the one hand – and the Mediterranean upon the other. Evidences of this lost civilization are to be found in the Pyrenees and Morocco on the one hand, British Honduras, Yucatan and America upon the other.”

Now, we must pick up the trail of clues on the other side of the Atlantic. Let us keep in mind that when Cayce gave this reading DNA had not yet been discovered and there was no such thing as mtDNA analysis. Nevertheless, he mentioned “evidences” in two specific locales, the Pyrenees, a mountain range sandwiched in between France and Spain where the Basques live, and Morocco where another ancient group, the Berbers resides. Astonishingly, these two populations contain the highest frequencies of the X lineage found in Europe and North Africa.

The Basques have long puzzled anthropologists, linguists and historians because, although they are Caucasian they do not fit in with the rest of the European populations. Their language is not related to any other tongue in the world. Prior to the advent of genetic research tools investigators used the ABO blood groups to study the relationships between human populations as well as their migration patterns. The Basques turned out to be unique in terms of blood types as well. As a population they contain the highest levels of Rh- ‘O’ negative blood in the world and among the lowest type B.

Now, what Cayce was suggesting is that some of the people that fled the sinking continent went west and settled and became the Iroquois. Others went east to the Iberian Peninsula then the Pyrenees (Basques), and the West Coast of North Africa then the Atlas Mountains (Berbers). Turning to the Berbers we find yet another group that contains the highest frequency of haplogroup X in the world. Is it a coincidence that these disparate peoples share a very rare mtDNA lineage?

It is unfortunate that the Berbers have never received much attention from science over the years. Here we have a Caucasian race living in North Africa of all places. Anthropologists dismissed them because they did not fit well into the ‘Out of Africa’ scenario and it was assumed that they had back immigrated southward from somewhere in Europe. However, that theory has been abandoned and scientists now accept the fact that they are an indigenous people, which they believe go back to the Stone Age. But how can this be we must ask since the rest of the continent below the Sahara is black African?

The research work is done by my mind with great interest; but, still stronger and urgent and real in me at the moment is that craving for couscous… about which then I couldn’t help but do some research as well in the last few days.

My findings?… Gloriously confirming my intuitive feelings:

Yes, although it has spread now to most other populations of the Maghreb too, and although nowadays most people think couscous is a dish from the Arabs, actually it is not: it is in fact originally a Berber dish. I was so happy when I found that out!… My so specific, strange cravings were vindicated!!! They indeed linked me back to this Berber person in my larger Me who was starting to make herself so vividly felt in my present life.

So, as I am not these days traveling at all any more, I have decided to honor that Berber in me right here where my present personality lives, and to find some place right here, in nearby Pondy perhaps, where I can eat something like couscous.

As soon as I took that decision I discovered there was such a place in Auroville itself: every Tuesday for lunch in that little restaurant they are serving couscous!… It happened to be precisely a Tuesday when I phoned them to inquire, so I went there the very same day, and had at last my first couscous in years. Aaaaah!… It was not fully satisfying, as the real couscous semolina is expensive here, so they put ordinary semolina instead, and they do it vegetarian, and if the chick peas are there the raisins are missing, but still, it was very close to real couscous, and I rejoiced greatly eating it. It felt somehow like coming back to life!… Unbelievable.

Now is Monday night; all this was happening last week; I am eagerly waiting for tomorrow lunch again, for it will be Tuesday again and I can go there again and have couscous again!… I’ll bring the raisins.

I’m so grateful to the Divine Grace that even such a trivial need is being somewhat fulfilled right where I am; and I think some even better solutions are going to appear out of the blue to enable me to eat a better and better couscous as time passes…

TMI: Expansion of Consciousness, Outside the Body

When I discovered, along with the books of Robert Monroe, the existence of the whole set-up he and his collaborators created in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia, to offer the possibility to others of sharing the kind of inner explorations they had themselves become such great specialists of, I sighed with contentment and awe: the Monroe Institute, or ‘TMI’ as it has come to be called, was obviously one of those very important places for humankind nowadays, where Conscious Evolution is happening in a deliberate, organized and collective manner, proposing now an ever vaster choice of specific training programs for those having gone through the indispensable first one that has become so well-known and popular: the Gateway Voyage.
I knew already of the Edgar Cayce Center, the ‘A.R.E.’ (‘Association for Research & Enlightenment’), in Virginia Beach, and I noticed both places were located in Virginia, so presumably not too far from each other.

A stray thought came through my mind: how nice it would be to some day go there and visit those two places! I found myself smiling happily contemplating that thought. For a second, I did wish this could come true, and I imagined myself there; then I came back to reason, and to the financial reality I was living in: no income, as I was a ‘Voluntary  Honorary Worker’ in Auroville since many years, getting from Auroville enough for living here, but certainly not for traveling around the world all the way to the USA, let alone for paying the high cost of that initial ‘Gateway Program’ I longed to experience!…

And yet that stray thought and the brief but intense wish that it gave birth to had their effect:
I did go to the USA… twice even! The first time in 1991, with a ticket suddenly and unexpectedly offered to me so that I could go and give a needed talk on the Psychic Being for a gathering of spiritual seekers in Seattle, Washington; and a second time in 2001, as part of a kind of world tour I happened to have to make that summer, invited to give workshops about Conscious Evolution and Integral Yoga in various parts of France, Europe, Russia and South America. As a Researcher without any income I had just obtained from the TMI itself the exceptional gift of a scholarship: a free participation in their Gateway Program!… All my other travels were paid for, the only thing missing was the money for my plane ticket from Paris to New York and back; in view of this rare TMI opportunity I shouldn’t miss, the ticket was kindly paid by one of the Auroville commercial units, ‘Maroma’, bless them.

So one fine day during that rather hectic summer of 2001, I found myself arriving at the Nancy Penn Center, my heart beating with expectation and excitement at being finally on the premisses of that Monroe Institute my beloved Bob Monroe himself had put together!!! What a moment!…

Standing there outside and looking around, I felt everything in this place was helpful for the expansion of consciousness, even the physical surroundings: from the gentle green slopes upon which the ‘Nancy Penn Center’ was built, with its octogonal glass tower dominating the whole compound, to the far successive horizon lines of the mountains, ever more distant, yet ever more beautiful… Seeing the tower too gave me at once a joyful shock, of recognition this time: it has such a very special story, as told by Bob in his third and last book, ‘The Ultimate Journey’ (that will be for another post!…) I sent a sweet ‘Hello!’ to the tower as if it were a dear friend, and in a sense it was, after all these years reading again and again the passage about it.

Then I stepped into the building as such, and the first moments of my Gateway week.
Other participants were also there; after being officially identified and registered, we were shown  our respective quarters.
The booth that would also serve as bed for night sleep was immediately reminiscent to me of the cabin berths in some of the big ships I had traveled on during my childhood – happy memories. The restaurant and the food it served were great, everything on the physical level was superbly organized, but what impressed me most of all was, during the first meeting all together as a group, the inner quality of the TMI persons who would accompany us in our ‘Gateway Voyage’. The whole atmosphere, far from being being one of technical know-how as I was afraid it would be, was one of simplicity and, yes, spirituality.

The week went too fast, I was just starting to really settle down and get used to the equipment and the sound/music in the headphones. There was also the recorded voice of Robert Monroe gently guiding us, but alas in my case the language was a problem, I wasn’t able to really follow what was being said, or I understood too late. On top of it my own habitual way of going within was conflicting with the new way proposed, it was difficult for me to relinquish totally my thirty years of a certain approach to inner dimensions, for adapting to an approach completely different because the goal itself was completely different. Probably someone new to everything wouldn’t have had that difficulty, but I had it. Still, I had very special and nice inner experiences there in my booth.

What about an OBE?… I didn’t have one – that I know of. In the end I was actually relieved not to have had any, for I had been secretly very scared of having one and of being so terrified that I would be unable to re-enter my body!… With such a fear within me, it is probably better that I didn’t get an OBE, for the fear itself might have produced the result it was afraid of. I kept remembering Mother’s warning that one should not try to have an OBE if one was afraid. One had to be fearless – or at least brave enough to be able to face whatever situation might arise, without panicking. I certainly couldn’t say I was that brave…!

So I came to think it was actually by divine protection that during that week at TMI I staid put in my body, or at least didn’t have any conscious OBE in which I would have seen my body down there while I would be floating above somewhere near the ceiling.
As for tunnels and light at their ends, I have had that several times before in very significant ways (although in a different context than in an OBE or an NDE), so I didn’t really need that either, to me it wouldn’t have been something new.

I ended up asking inwardly the Divine if then the money spent for my coming to TMI had been wasted; the answer was no, it hadn’t been wasted, because it was necessary that I, as an ‘official’ researcher from Auroville,

Looking up from the 'foxden'

had the direct experience of the place, of the program, of the people doing it, the participants as well as the assistants, the overall atmosphere, the whole thing, so that I could later speak about it from more than just hearsay. Also, it was important that one Aurovilian had been physically there, so that a concrete link be established between that place and Auroville, two Laboratories of Conscious Evolution doing their work, each one in their respective way.

Last, but not least, I was told that while both were places for expansion of consciousness, it was  through two complementary approaches: TMI was about expansion of consciousness outside of the body, Auroville was adding expansion of consciousness inside the body, something absolutely necessary for enabling the body too to participate in the evolutive thrust of the whole being towards a ‘Life Divine’ right here on Earth. Both approaches are necessary for that new step in terrestrial evolution: our consciousness must learn both its independence and freedom from the body, and yet learn also that the body too is but a form of the Divine, the material form that now can awaken as well to its own divinity.

The consciousness of my body-cells has indeed been quite happy with our week stay in TMI. That says a lot as praise to the place!

Health… through FUN…!

A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

gesundheit 

PRONUNCIATION:
(guh-ZOONT-hyt)

MEANING:
interjection: Used to wish good health to someone who has sneezed.

ETYMOLOGY:
From German Gesundheit (health), from gesund (healthy) + -heit (-hood). Earliest documented use: 1914.

USAGE:
“‘A friend was on an Aeroflot flight crossing Russia when the woman next to him sneezed. He said ‘Gesundheit!’ She said: ‘Thank goodness, someone who speaks English.’”
Peter Spencer; Column 8; The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia); Jul 23, 2011.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

——————————————–

Dear visitor to this blog, I hope you have dutifully read all of the above… and that, line after line, all of it has set you already in the right mood for this post, looking at your screen with a big grin on your face, or perhaps even chuckling with glee, if not altogether ‘LOL’ (Laughing Out Loud) yet!!!

By the way, did you ever notice how much younger everyone immediately looks when they are smiling or laughing?! Everything lifts up on their face, the eyes spark up, one feels at once more alive, and more pleasantly so!…

I enjoyed so much this whole little article from A.Word.A.Day, usually quite serious, but on that day happily indulging into plain fun, that I decided I would make it the beginning of the overdue post I always wanted to write on those two things people would normally not put together:  Health and Fun.

The young lady sitting on the little mound of snow must have a good sense of humor, for still saying ‘Gesundheit!’ (but adding ‘Dummy!’…) to the painter who just sneezed and covered her body and the snow with colored dots from all the paint he had on his brush and palette!!!

And this young lady is a living illustration of the power of fun to keep you in good health: there she is, sitting there right on the snow, naked as models are supposed to be, aren’t they, while the artist, with all his warm clothing and hat on, is the one with the drippy and sneezy nose, and with the cold!!!

I’m ever so grateful to all the human beings gifted with a solid capacity for  seeing the funny side of practically any situation and for making jokes about it. I myself don’t have the funny bone at all (although I find I seem to be improving of late!), so I depend almost entirely on the jokes and farcical talents of others to get to really laugh. I am basically a gentle person with a tendency to smile, yes, but to go all the way to belly laughter usually requires some help from outside. Let’s face it: I am generally too serious. And, worse: I tend to be a ‘worrier’, apt to worry about everything and nothing, in spite of all the faith I otherwise do have in the Divine, God, or whatever you would call That. A Message through a post by Pat Cegan on her blog ‘Source of Inspiration’ reminded me recently that this was totally superfluous:

I know, all researchers  – especially the ‘spiritual’ ones like me – are supposed to be serious, otherwise no one would take them seriously.  But in spite of all my natural seriousness I had noticed even as a child how happy I felt when I laughed. And that seemed to be the case with everyone else too – except those most horrible persons who would make horrible jokes, what is called, I learned, black humor. Even simply sarcastic jokes I didn’t like so much either, because I noticed they were apt to hurt those who were laughed at, and who didn’t find it funny.

But surprisingly some other people, on the contrary, didn’t mind at all being made fun of, they were anyway pretty much making fun of themselves all the time as well, being the clowns in parties who kept everyone laughing and in good spirits, to the great satisfaction of the hostess. When much later I studied Astrology, I discovered that these natural clowns generally were born during the month when the Sun is in the Zodiacal Sign called ‘Sagittarius’; or such people had to have their Moon, or at least some planet important in their astrological map/chart, in ‘Sagittarius’; or ‘Sagittarius’ had to be the ‘Ascendant’, the Sign that was rising on the horizon at the time of their birth; or else Jupiter, the planet corresponding to the Sign Sagittarius, had to be in some important position in their chart, sitting right next to their Sun, for example, or  to the Moon, or to the line of the horizon.

The first time I read something more than the hints in Edgar Cayce about Fun being good for Health was in ‘Anatomy of an Illness’, a marvelous little book (followed by another one, ‘The Healing Heart’) written from his own direct experience by a funny and very courageous American man: Norman Cousins.

Here is an excellent summary of Norman’s story, as told by Joe Guse, which I found on his just discovered site, ‘The Healing Power of Laughter‘ (http://www.joeyguse.com), which  seems to be a veritable gold mine on this so important topic:

Friday, July 20, 2007

How the Marx Brothers brought Norman Cousins back to life.

Of all the research I’ve done on the healing power of laughter; none has failed to top the amazing story of Norman Cousins, as his life truly speaks to the incredible power of laughter. Having read several varying legends about Cousin’s actual story, I decided to read his book Anatomy of an Illness and get to the source of the legend of the man who claimed to have literally laughed his way back to health. 

His story began in 1964, where doctors found that the connective tissue in his spine was deteriorating, which a condition is known as Ankylosing Spondylitis. The doctors, one of whom was a close friend of Cousins, speculated that his chance of survival was approximately 1 in 500.

Faced with the real prospect of his impending death, Cousins thought long and hard about what role, if any he could play in his own recovery, and eventually did three things utterly contrary to medical opinion.

First he began his own research on all of the various drugs he was on. He discovered that his condition was depleting his body of Vitamin C and, based primarily on Cousins’ personal research, doctors agreed to take him off several of the drugs he was on and inject him with extremely large doses of this supplement, as Cousins felt this may be his last hope.

Secondly, Cousins made a decision to check himself out the hospital and into a hotel room. Cousin’s had concluded that hospitals, with their haphazard hygiene practices, culture of overmedication, general feelings of negativity, and routines that disrupted basic sleep patterns, all contributed to his feeling that, in his words a hospital was “no place for a person who is seriously ill.”

The third thing Cousin’s did was procure a movie projector and a large supply of funny films, including numerous Candid Camera tapes and several old prints of Marx Brother’s movies. On his first night in the hotel Cousins found that he laughed so hard at the films that he was able to stimulate chemicals in his body that allowed him several hours of pain free sleep. When the pain would return he would simply turn the projector back on and the laughter would reinduce sleep, and he was able to measure the changes in his body by measuring his blood sedimentation rate, a key measurement of inflammation and infection in the blood, and found that this rate dropped by at least 5 points each time he watched one of these videos,

Now off every drug excepting Vitamin C and laughter, Cousins described being in a state of euphoria over the next week as he continued to laugh himself back to health. Within a few weeks the beloved editor was back to work at the Saturday Review, and, although he still had some minor physical difficulties, his body continued to recover as he continued with his self- directed wellness program.

How in the world did this happen? In exploring this question it is interesting to consider Cousin’s own state of mind, and how much his personal will to live as well as his personal attitudes contributed to his miraculous recovery. While in the hospital Cousins hypothesized that if negative emotions such as anger and frustration could contribute to poor health, why couldn’t positive emotions such as joy and laughter have the opposite effect? Cousins soon embraced this idea, and this contributed to an optimistic attitude that may very well have saved his life.

So could Cousin’s recovery be considered a mechanism of the placebo effect? In answering this question Cousins himself spoke to famous endocrinologist Ana Aslan who posited that creativity was the central trigger of the placebo effect, as it sets up a chain of events in the body’s systems that eventually restores homeostasis and feelings of wellness, The implications of this assertion are potentially enormous, and certainly deserves further study.

In analyzing the potential placebo affect in his own case, Cousins attributed much of his own success to the close personal friendship and relationship he had with his doctor who fully supported his contributions to his own recovery and encouraged his highly experimental approach despite it not fitting with his preconceived medical model. This idea once again speaks to the power of the relationship between doctor and patient, which is now nearly universally accepted and statistically verified as the single most important predictor of positive outcomes in talk therapy. But could this also be true for physicians and patients in the world of medicine? A great deal of research seems to suggest that it is, and Cousin’s case certainly speaks to this idea.

Most fascinating about Cousin’s story though is the laughter. Despite intense pain and discomfort, Cousin’s made a point of laughing so hard his stomach hurt during the early stages of his Marx brother’s intervention, and this “unquenchable” laughter never failed to produce a strong reduction in his feelings of pain. Cousins goes on to mention many prominent thinkers throughout the ages who knew about the healing power of laughter, and this list includes Sir Frances Bacon, Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, as well as the great Albert Schweitzer. This list could be much longer, and Cousins own story has given rise to many knew ways of thinking that helped contribute to the rise of phenomena such as the laughter club. Ultimately laughter may represent the rapture of the human spirit, and in finding this rapture we also find our way back to health. Norman Cousins certainly thought so, and his journey back to life through laughter is an inspiration to us all.

(Posted by Joe Guse)

I remember how Norman Cousins’ telling of his story in ‘Anatomy of an Illness’ sparked in the US medical establishment a whole new awareness of the importance of laughter for our health. Ultimately, it is how not only nice pastel colors were gradually introduced into hospitals, but even clowns, doing live presentations at first only for the kids, but nowadays often also for the adult patients – and it is spreading to more and more countries too. Even here on WordPress, there is  support expressed for an Organisation called ‘Mediclowns’ which I was very happy to learn existed, and am very happy too to mention in this blog as well.

Besides Norman’s books and personal influence, one film did much also later on (1998) to make this new way of healing known and practiced: the hilarious and so moving film about the life and work of ‘Patch Adams’, with Robin Williams in the role of the bold medical student… now a well-known doctor who has a big, very interesting project (www.patchadams.org/) for his ‘Gesundheit’ Institute!…

… And here we are, having come full round back to where we started from: ‘Gesundheit’!
In French, we do have an identical way of blessing those who have just sneezed: we say ‘Santé!’
While working on this post, a funny title for it came to me, but in French, so I kept it for this ending of it:
 ”Guérir?… Gai Rire!!!” (Healing?… Merry Laughing!!!)

What did Jesus look like?…

One of the rare friends to whom I told my re-living a very special moment of my life at the time of Jesus of Nazareth, asked me immediately afterwards:
‘So, you saw him!… What did he look like?’
I was taken aback. I realised all of a sudden that I had not really seen what he was looking like. I had seen the tremendous Love emanating from him as Light, but I had not paid attention to his outer appearance.
So I had to tell my friend that I couldn’t answer her.
But then I kept thinking about it, and soon started doing my own research, to find out what Jesus-Christ looked like.
After some time I did gather quite a few very surprizing documents, all agreeing with each other, although coming from widely different sources and periods. Here is my harvest:

1/ It first came back to my memory that long ago I had read in some Edgar Cayce book a description of Jesus, that had remained in my consciousness as something quite special. I patiently traced back that book, ‘Hidden History of Jesus’ by Kirk Nelson, and that text, p. 36 sqq:

‘A physical description of Jesus’

‘Few people are aware that in the archives of Rome there is a physical description of Jesus. It is contained in a report written during Jesus’ lifetime by a Roman, Publius Lentulus, to the Emperor Tiberias. It reads as follows:

‘There has appeared in Palestine a man who is still living and whose power is extraordinary. He has the title given him of Great Prophet; his disciples call him the Son of God. He raises the dead and heals all sorts of diseases.
He is a tall, well-proportioned man, and there is an air of severity in his countenance which at once attracts the love and reverence of those who see him. His hair is the color of new wine from the roots to the ears, and thence to the shoulders it is curled and falls down to the lowest part of them. Upon the forehead, it parts in two after the manner of Nazarenes.
His forehead is flat and fair, his face without blemish or defect, and adorned with a graceful expression. His nose and mouth are very well proportioned, his beard is thick and the color of his hair. His eyes are grey and extremely lively.
In his reproofs, he is terrible, but in his exhortations and instructions, amiable and courteous. There is something wonderfully charming in this face with a mixture of gravity. He is never seen to laugh, but has been observed to weep [Cayce tells us Jesus did laugh and quite often]. He is very straight in stature, his hands large and spreading, his arms are very beautiful. He taks little, but with a great quality, and is the handsomest man in the world.’

The above description agrees with the one contained in the Cayce Readings:

‘… a [picture of Jesus] as might be put on canvas [would] be entirely different from all these which have been depicted of the face, the body, the eyes, the cut of the chin and the lack entirely of the Jewish or Aryan profile. For these were clear, clean, ruddy, hair almost like that of David, a golden-brown, yellow-red…’  (5354-1)’

2/ Jess Stearn, the journalist and researcher who had investigated Edgar Cayce, suspiciously at first, and then had written two very positive best-sellers about him, published in 1973 a book about the past lives of celebrated author Janet Taylor Caldwell, who had accepted that what she would say under hypnosis be recorded. Fascinating memories surfaced at every session, showing how the writer known as Taylor Caldwell in that lifetime knew in such amazing detail the daily life prevalent in so many other historical periods, and could describe with such vivid precision the medical procedures and instruments used for example by Saint Luke in his time.
Towards the end of the book, in the transcription of the last lifetime evoked and recorded, it was the time of Jesus-Christ that came out through the very moving memories of the hypnotized Taylor Caldwell, from her life as Hannah, the mother of Mary-Magdalen/Miriam of Magdala. All of what is said is absolutely captivating, but quite long (from p. 226 to 241), so here I will keep only what is pertinent to our present question: what Jesus-Christ looked like.
Under hypnosis, ‘Hanna’, in her Magdala home, was speaking to her (unmarried yet) younger sister Halla, about her own baby-daughter, Miriam, her darling, so beautiful with her blue eyes and her golden hair:
‘Her voice suddenly lowered. “Halla, lean close. I must tell you of a strange dream. No one will listen to me but you. I dreamt the Messiah was born five years ago in the city of David, the House of Bread [Bethlehem]. Just as it was prophesized long ago. (…)”
Her voice grew tender again: “Oh, yes, I dreamt, too, that my darling, my beautiful baby, my Miriam, that no one will ever forget her name because she will look on the Messiah, and I will too in my dream. Only once I dreamed this, but I dreamt that my darling Miriam would be very close to him. I see her kneeling at his feet and he raises her up”. She sighed, happily. “But she is a woman then, a beautiful girl, and he raises her up and puts his arms around her. Like all of us Nazarenes, his hair is golden red, blue eyes, and in my dream he was born in the House of Bread, which is in our language the House of Bethlehem (…). He was born five years ago, but my dream did not tell me where he is now. His mother and father are from Nazareth.”
    Asked by the hypnotist to go to fifteen years later, ‘Hannah’ actually saw at last the special being she had dreamed of; he was by then a young man of 20, but she didn’t realize it was him for he was not yet recognized as the announced Messiah, that some thought was not even born yet, so poor Hannah had lost all faith in her old dreams. She was profoundly sad anyway: her cherished daughter Miriam, now 15, rather than being married by her father to someone she didn’t love, had escaped to Jerusalem, and Hannah too had gone there in the hope of finding her. It is there, in the synagogue, from upstairs and behind a curtain as was a must for the women of that time, that she beheld one day that young man reading aloud from the holy books for the other men present at the ceremony:
‘There was a woman standing next to her whom she knew by name only: Miriam bat Joachim, daughter of Joachim, and her husband was Joseph ben David, son of one David and of the House of David. “I whispered, ‘What a beautiful voice he has’ to the woman, and she said, ‘He is my son.’ (…) “She is so young to be the mother of a man in the prime of his manhood, at twenty. What a beautiful face she has. She is a Nazarene like all of us. She is very fair. Her hair is almost white, like gold over which silver flows. Her eyes are blue like the sky, bluer even than ours are, bluer than the eyes of my Miriam.” She drew a deep breath. “They have the same name.”
    Ten years later yet, her daughter was still missing, but like the rest of the city Hannah had heard of the young man who was challenging the greed and authority of the religious establishment – without connecting him yet to the man of her dream:
“Ah, yes, Yeshua ben Joseph (…) He is a Nazarene. I have not seen him since the synagogue. He was fair of hair, and blue eyes. His hair was red-gold like all the Nazarenes.” (…)
The hypnotist persisted: “Was he slender? Was he big?”
“You mean fat? No, he was not fat. How could a Nazarene be fat? The Romans take all our money and all our bread and food. No, he is thin.”

I have kept all the references to ‘from Nazareth’ on the one hand, and on the other hand ‘Nazarene(s)’, for obviously it is not the same thing, and the physical appearance of both Jesus and his mother (his father also probably) is explained precisely by the fact that they were part of those known as ‘Nazarenes’, who all had that same aspect.
It is to be noted that in the first document quoted above, Publius Lentulus too mentions those ‘Nazarenes’: in reference to Jesus’ hair, ‘parted in two’ on the forehead, ‘after the manner of the Nazarenes’. He doesn’t explain who they are, which shows that everybody knew at that time, even Emperor Tiberias.
From all the research I have done, nowadays nothing clear is said or known, it seems, about who exactly were those ‘Nazarenes’, but the document just quoted above indicates quite clearly that it meant something other than being from Nazareth as such. It certainly alludes to a common origin that gave those specific  characteristics, but which common origin was it, I have not found any answer to that… until precisely yesterday night when finishing to type this. Here is the additional information I found (http://www.essene.org/Ancient_Essenes.htm):
‘In the book, Edgar Cayce’s Story of Jesus, edited by Jeffrey Furst, we read:
“… the Essenes… dedicated their lives, their minds, their bodies to a purpose, to a seeking for that which had been to them a promise of old…. Hence, there was the continued preparation and dedication of those who might be the channels through which this chosen vessel might enter — through choice — into this material realm. Thus in Carmel — where there were the chief priests and leaders of this faith — there were the maidens chosen who were dedicated to this purpose…. Among them was Mary, the beloved, the chosen one.”
Again from Cayce:
“The Essenes were dedicated to their purpose and made holy Mount Carmel their headquarters. This was the original place where the school of prophets was established during Elijah’s time….
“Here, the Essenes prepared themselves for several generations to open as it were a door into this realm for the Messiah…. And he became known as Jesus the Nazarene, for he was of the Essenian sect of Nazarenes in the region of Carmel.”
In regard to the above references to the Essene headquarters at Mount Carmel and Jesus being affiliated with the Essenian sect of Nazarenes in the region of Carmel, there is much supporting evidence. Indeed, it is quite clear that the headquarters of the entire Essene movement was Mount Carmel in Northern Israel, not Qumran in Southern Israel, and that Jesus was primarily associated with Carmel. Equally clear is the fact that the Northern Essenes in the region of Mount Carmel were called “Nazarenes”.’

So, here we are!… There was indeed a special group of Essenes originating from Northern Israel, in the area where the village of Nazareth too was, and who were known as the ‘Nazarenes’.

In her book ‘Beyond the Light’, NDE experiencer-cum-researcher PMH Atwater tells us about one of the three NDEs she had in 1977:

‘In my second near-death experience I was greeted by Jesus. He was tall, swarthy complexioned, had red-gold hair, and the softest blue eyes I had ever seen. This surprised me, as I didn’t think Jesus would look like that. The discrepancy in appearance didn’t matter at the time, for he was filled with compassion and love and so was I, just being near him. Later on the incident bothered me enough that I decided my time with him must have been “wish filfillment” rather than any type of reality. After six years passed, however, I decided to do some research on tje historical Jesus. One of the books I picked up was ‘Portrait of Jesus?’ by Frank C. Tribbe. Towards the book’s end three communications of Jesus’era are quoted: a letter written by Publius Lentulus, Governor of Judea, to the Roman Senate and to Tiberius Caesar; a report by Gamaliel, teacher of Saul of Tarsus, addressed to the Sanhedrin and quoting the philosopher Massalian; and a report by Pilate to the Emperor. All three stated that Jesus was quite tall and had a swarthy complexion, hair the color of new wine or sunburned gold, and soft blue or gray eyes. I was stunned!’

Last but not least,  in ‘Soul Search’, a subject named Dolly made some unsolicited comments about the life of Christ during one regression, and in her next regression the psychiatrist pursued that line of enquiry; the material (several pages reduced here to only our topic) comes from Dolly’s Greater Self:

‘He was fair skinned. His hair was light brown – almost a gold – and his beard was darker. He was fairly tall, thin, lean.His eyes were a light sahade, not blue, not green, not grey – a combination of all of them.’

Obviously, this type of appearance was generally known at that time in Palestine, so it didn’t single out Jesus, people were used to it although it wasn’t like the common types one would meet usually there – except precisely in the area of Mount Carmel, with those Essenes practicing actually another religion than the Jews, and in this case, having another origin too: those called ‘the Nazarenes’… 

Yesterday night I also found the document from Pontius Pilate. It is worth ending with it, for it is really amazing (http://ensignmessage.com/archives/letter.html):

This is a reprinting of a letter from Pontius Pilate to Tiberius Caesar describing the physical appearance of Jesus. Copies are in the Congressional Library in Washington, D.C.
TO TIBERIUS CAESAR:
A young man appeared in Galilee preaching with humble unction, a new law in the Name of the God that had sent Him. At first I was apprehensive that His design was to stir up the people against the Romans, but my fears were soon dispelled. Jesus of Nazareth spoke rather as a friend of the Romans than of the Jews. One day I observed in the midst of a group of people a young man who was leaning against a tree, calmly addressing the multitude. I was told it was Jesus. This I could easily have suspected so great was the difference between Him and those who were listening to Him. His golden colored hair and beard gave to his appearance a celestial aspect. He appeared to be about 30 years of age. Never have I seen a sweeter or more serene countenance. What a contrast between Him and His bearers with their black beards and tawny complexions! Unwilling to interrupt Him by my presence, I continued my walk but signified to my secretary to join the group and listen. Later, my secretary reported that never had he seen in the works of all the philosophers anything that compared to the teachings of Jesus. He told me that Jesus was neither seditious nor rebellious, so we extended to Him our protection. He was at liberty to act, to speak, to assemble and to address the people. This unlimited freedom provoked the Jews — not the poor but the rich and powerful.
Later, I wrote to Jesus requesting an interview with Him at the Praetorium. He came. When the Nazarene made His appearance I was having my morning walk and as I faced Him my feet seemed fastened with an iron hand to the marble pavement and I trembled in every limb as a guilty culprit, though he was calm. For some time I stood admiring this extraordinary Man. There was nothing in Him that was repelling, nor in His character, yet I felt awed in His presence. I told Him that there was a magnetic simplicity about Him and His personality that elevated Him far above the philosophers and teachers of His day.
Now, Noble Sovereign, these are the facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth and I have taken the time to write you in detail concerning these matters. I say that such a man who could convert water into wine, change death into life, disease into health; calm the stormy seas, is not guilty of any criminal offense and as others have said, we must agree — truly this is the Son of God.
Your most obedient servant,

Pontius Pilate

‘

‘Being His Beloved’… as Experienced by our Cells

A few days ago, on June 25th 2011, I visited for the first time the blog of Pat Cegan (I have since put it on my blogroll): ‘Source of Inspiration’.

On that day, her new post was this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE

In silence is sound.
Tears wash away sorrow.
Laughter fills hearts with joy.
I kneel in awe at the mystery of life.
There is no name complete enough
for our Creator,
and yet, He knows my name;
He calls me His Beloved.

Reading this instantly gave me the usual utterly sweet, ‘melting’ feeling in the center of the chest, as the normal answer from my soul; but also came, to my total surprise, a new and powerful experience in my body, which after a few moments I tried to express in the ‘comment’ to the poem that could be added by visitors like myself:  

‘I centrally have the experience you describe (of ‘being the Beloved’), as a way of life so to say. But all of a sudden my body too responded to your poem and what it said. My cells are typing this now, not for me as most of the time, but for themselves:
‘Thank you to have helped us suddenly feel and realize that we, too, each of us, are the Beloved of our Lord, our Love’.

I noticed that my cells were expressing themselves in English, which is unusual for them.
I am not sure whether Pat simply never saw that ‘comment’ of mine, or, not knowing me yet at all, found it so strange she preferred not to reply anything. But from my side I have obviously to mention on my own blog, which is precisely meant for that kind of topic too, this new cellular experience, which seems to have been indeed a very important one, triggering this morning another momentous experience as a clear follow-up of the one quoted above:

Since that remarkable – and in a way even astonishing – message written directly by them, my body-cells hadn’t given me any sign of anything special going on; except that these last few days somehow I was not feeling well, as if caught in some confusion affecting me in my entire being, but I didn’t know what. I thought it was perhaps the heat? But it wasn’t really so hot at all, so this wasn’t a very convincing reason for that unpleasant, very tiring uneasiness I was feeling all over me.

This morning upon awakening, after coming down a first time and starting to check just as usual my email and my blog, I soon found myself unexpectedly going up again, back to my room, and straight onto my bed. But I wasn’t sleepy at all; apparently I just needed to go within myself at the body level, which I had not taken the time to do for a while.

Immediately after I closed my eyes, the attention of my whole body-consciousness shifted to the inside of both the eyeballs, focusing on the lenses. In my central consciousness I suddenly remembered they were affected by a beginning of cataract, I had been told that some months ago. I realized that yesterday a friend of mine, my age, had visited me, who had told me about what personal inner and outer action she was doing to try and get rid of the cataract she had in one eye; while she was speaking I could feel my body (but not my eyes themselves) listening very attentively, but I didn’t mention my own similar problem, nor the advice by Edgar Cayce that I myself was following as often as possible to also get rid of this so common aging problem.

Now lying on my bed, I could feel my body-consciousness was entirely concentrating on the root-cause of the cataract: the hardening of the lens. I had been drinking water just before lying down, it was that water that the body was now directing towards the eyes and more exactly the lens, trying to increase the proportion of water in the very substance of the lens, so as to modify its composition and give back to it the needed suppleness for the proper functioning of the lens.

But it was not all: there was in the whole body a tremendous urge for perfection, for action towards an improvement of all its functions. Expressing itself this time in French, its natural communication language, the body was gradually putting into words what it felt the absolute necessity to do, now that its cells had realized that the Divine loved them and wanted them to be well, to be at the top of their potential for perfect functioning as a body.
So this is how this completely new urge expressed itself, in the original French, with a strength and intensity in the intent, that I attempt to convey by putting it all in capitals:

“RÉTABLIR ET GARDER LES CONDITIONS QUI PERMETTENT LE FONCTIONNEMENT PARFAIT, L’IMMORTALITÉ ET LA JEUNESSE ÉTERNELLE.”

My translation in English:

TO RE-ESTABLISH AND TO KEEP UP THE CONDITIONS NECESSARY FOR PERFECT FUNCTIONING, IMMORTALITY AND ETERNAL YOUTH.’

The ‘CONDITIONS” became present in my central consciousness too at  the same time as they came up in my body-consciousness; they were essentially:

- Relaxation as the first step,

- the Delight that comes with total Relaxation, and

- the Awareness/Remembrance in all the cells, of the latent Perfection of the Body, already accomplished in Eternity, for Eternity.

As it gradually formulated itself, this inner message was broadcast loud and clear in the entire body again and again, non stop, as the supremely important Declaration of Intention now emanating from all the cells, and addressed to themselves, so as to fulfill the expectation about them that now they knew their beloved Lord had for them, his Beloved.

My collaboration was asked for, certainly, as it would definitely help; but whether I agreed or not, anyway my cells had spoken their choice, and it would be what they would do anyway, entirely on their own if necessary. Such was their total dedication to the Vision of Perfection their Lord had for them, his Beloved.

Wow. I am still shaken to my very depths by this stunning experience that took place only a few hours ago, noted down here to the best of my ability. Our body-cells may indeed do strange and wonderful things nowadays, when they open themselves to the influence of the new Evolutive Force now at work on our whole planet!… If they happen to read, along with you (as my cells love to do), some simple but beautiful words truly evocative of something deeply significant for them, an entirely new direction for their own existence may suddenly emerge, that may have the power to take our evolution an incredible step further!… Their ever repeated Message is still resonating everywhere in my body… What will it lead to?… The Future will tell.

Edgar Cayce’s Motto: “Mind Is the Builder”

This post too, like the previous one on ‘What Psychoanalysts and Shamans Must Not Miss’, has been prompted by the current events in my life, in this case again something I have read just a few days ago, but on another blog: I did put a brief comment there itself, but as I intended to take up this subject again (two posts already on it) anyway soon, I decided to write immediately at least on how Edgar Cayce spoke on this topic, because the person on the other blog happens precisely to be studying about Edgar Cayce at the moment – and to need perhaps more awareness of ‘Thought Power’.
‘THOUGHT POWER’ is one of the main ‘Categories’ on my own blog, and a topic I feel it is particularly urgent for every human being to see the importance of in their own day to day ‘conscious evolution’ self-training. It is only over the years that I myself have started realizing the potentially huge and entirely positive impact that more attention given to our thoughts could have in our existences.
And yet I have been reading about it since quite a long while: the book I am going to quote from was published in 1974, and is probably out of print by now!… I bought it about ten years later and I am very glad it has stayed with me that long, for it is one of the nicest and most readible books on Edgar Cayce’s ‘Readings’ I have ever found. It’s inviting title is ‘Edgar Cayce’s Secrets of BEAUTY THROUGH HEALTH’, and its pastel cover shows a small sized Venus statue as the body of a beautiful butterfly with its wings wide open on both sides of that lovely Venus body… quite a promise for all the young ladies, like me at the time, who purchased that book!… 
An amazing characteristic of ‘the Cayce Material’ (my pun, inspired by Jane Roberts’ first ‘Seth’ book: ‘The Seth Material’), all given before 1945 when Edgar finally died of exhaustion, is how holistic it all was before that word even existed. It was never just the symptoms that Cayce in trance addressed through his ‘Readings’. His approach was always that of the whole person, and even more: the whole being with all its inner dimensions – including specific personalities from other lifetimes whenever necessary.

Here is how Lawrence Steinhart, who calls himself simply the editor of the book, introduces the immense scope of the ‘Readings’:
‘From the Readings emerged answers to riddles which have puzzled mankind for countless years. There emerged a new understanding of the human body and its intricate workings. Cayce seldom puts a name on the trouble, saying that names merely gave the trouble metes and bounds. As he stressed the individuality of each entity, he treated the patient as a whole person and not as a collection of categorized ailments. Sometimes he would ignore the symptoms completely, knowing that when the cause was eliminated, the symptoms would disappear of their own accord. Most important of all perhaps was the emergence of a complete philosophy regarding the question olf man’s existence.’ (…)
Cayce speaks of ‘entities’. What is an ‘entity’?
“The entity is that combination of the physical body throughout all its experiences in or through the earth, in or through the universe, and the reactions that have been builded by those various experiences or the spiritual body of an individual. That which is individual. That which his THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL EXPERIENCE.” (262-10)
Directly quoted from the trance-spoken ‘Readings’, what Edgar Cayce was saying often was difficult to follow word by word, but easier to grasp as an overall meaning, like in the above instance.
One has to realize that the importance of our mental attitude starts with the most physical aspects of our life, as the editor of the book points out for those concerned by the beauty of their skin:
‘The health of the skin is a chain reaction stemming from not only the health and cleanliness of the body, but also from the mind.
Cleanliness is more than just an external wash, it is a multi-level affair, for are we not multi-level beings? It could be described as a spiral of habit patterns which affect our being. For instance, our mind and attitude as we sit down to eat affects our choice of food, as well as the action the food will have on our bodies. The elimination of this food – or lack of elimination and its consequences – results from the mind’s action upon the body as well as the physical actions which govern our daily habits. (…) A propos of our concern for the mental attitude, Cayce cautioned 1928:
“There is nothing outside of self that is half so fearful as that that may be builded or brewed within self’s own mental and physical being.”
And to 348:
“Be constructive mentally, don’t build poisons as fast as you eliminate them.” (…)’.
To sum it all up as Edgar Cayce used to put it: “MIND IS THE BUILDER.”
Here is the amusing but revealing little story through which Lawrence Steinhart introduces then the very notion of ‘Thought Power’ in the words of Edgar Cayce:
‘Though castor oil wasn’t mentioned in the Readings for cosmetic use, it did appear as a remedy for just about everything else. It is widely accepted as a softening and smoothing agent for the skin.
One top-priced New-York dermatologist was in the habit of prescribing a small bottle of castor oil for her patients, to be applied to the under-eye area before retiring. The charge for filling this prescription was usually about five dollars, although the cost of the oil was only nineteen cents. One patient had her son, a pharmacist, fill the prescription and the cat was out of the bag. When confronted by the patient, the dermatologist simply stated that if it were known that the ingredient was pure castor oil, her patients would not be consistent with their use of it, and how many would expect results?
“Expect much you will obtain much! Expect little, you will obtain little! Expect nothing, you will expect nothing!” (5325-1) “For he that expects much – if he lives and uses that in hand day by day – shall be full to running over.” (557-3)’

We have to realize the actually enormous responsibility this means: we complain sometimes that we are helpless victims of Fate, or that God keeps us in a powerless condition; this is far from being true: we have in fact to some extent the very same Creative Power as ‘God’ has, only we usually aren’t aware of it.  It is not yet something which is widely told, for example, already to children when they are young: our thoughts have creative power, for good or bad, it is up to us to choose, but we better learn to harbor in our mind only the thoughts that we really want to have, for thoughts held repeatedly or for a long time, whether with strong desire or on the contrary with fear, will definitely bring about their own realization… So let’s beware of negative thoughts, and if some do come, let’s consciously acknowledge them, and then replace them by the intense thoughts of what we really want to see happen.  

This applies to all of our life, including our health, of course, as is explained in another chapter:    
‘One of the major laws of the Universe and one which can work for ‘weal or woes’ is the law of expectancy. (…) A beautiful example of this law in action was displayed when 3564-1 asked if there was likelihood of bad health in March? Cayce told her:
“If you are looking for it you can have it in February! If you want to skip March, skip it – you’ll have it in June! If you want to skip June, don’t have it at all this year.”
This truly makes one stop and think about one’s expectations. Do you stock up with aspirin and extra oranges and tea bags when you hear that a flu epidemic is raging? When asked if you have had a cold this year, do you answer “Not yet”?
The big secret is not in the expectancy alone, but in the expecting and BELIEVING:
“Each individual is, in reality, that manifestation of the individual’s conception of the impelling force from within, whether it be termed or called God, Nature, Universal Forces, nature powers or what not.”
We are living and projecting what our conception of God is.
“If an individual doesn’t expect great things of God, he has a very poor God, hasn’t he?” (…)
The mind is the blue print for the whole structure of our being. Make sure you have a plan which can be relied upon; what is your ideal? Can you construct from your blueprint as it now stands a worthy edifice? Or would it be a hovel?
Realizing your part in the true scheme of things and your true worth, don’t settle for less than a palace – you deserve it. It is your legacy.’

The ever recurring, forceful advice from Cayce was:
“Keep and attitude of helpfulness, cheerfulness, hopefulness. Be optimistic! At least make three people each day laugh heartily by something the body says! It’ll not only help the body – it’ll help others.”

Laughing together...

So, as we can see, Edgar Cayce too was even advocating what I call ‘The Way of Fun’!

Why ‘The Way of Fun’?…

Two of my friends having fun...

Another email conversation with my friend ‘X’ happened to be about a usually unmentioned, but actually most central aspect of the nature of the Spirit -that is, also of ourselves then – so I’ll use it here (with his permission as always) as the explanatory post that many other people may also by now feel the need of, to figure out why in my all very serious ‘Categories’ there is also such a surprising item as ‘The Way of Fun’. Here we go:

—————————————-

Le 14 mai 11 à 23:51, X a écrit :

What do you think of this?

‘Everything exists for joy. There is not one other reason for life than joy. We’ve got nothing to prove to anyone, because nobody other than All-That-Is is watching. In other words, we’re not trying to get brownie points from some other galaxy. We’re not trying to get someplace else; we’re not trying to get it done, because there is no ending—we cannot get it done. Everything exists for the purpose of joy in the moment.’

— Abraham Hicks is a channeled entity from Texas Not worth googling in my opinion.
——————————-
(My answer;)

Well, judging just from that one quote you give me, it is also exactly what Seth says, and Sri Aurobindo as well (he has written tons of wonderful things about that) – because our divine nature is essentially Delight of Being, one should never forget that.
In this Great Game of progressive remembrance and manifestation of what we really are (that’s what Evolution is all about), divine Joy is indeed secretly our real, eternal motivation and purpose – translated as Love when ‘others’ are involved. Love is simply the outgoing flow of that inalienable Delight of Being each of us can learn to feel again if he/she takes the trouble of going within deep enough, re-positioning their consciousness/self-awareness from the habitual surface to the Centre of our being, deep within: in the blissful inner space of our Soul, which is a portion of the Divine, expressing a specific way of being possible among the infinite possible ways of being contained in the Divine and manifested constantly in All That Is.
Just one quote from Sri Aurobindo to give you an idea (but there are plenty, as this Divine Delight is at the very center of all that he has explained):

‘Not result is the purpose of action, but God’s eternal delight in becoming, seeing and doing.’

That’s actually what my name, ‘Bhaga’, means, by the way, and that’s why I have chosen it when it was indicated inwardly to me by an intense inner recognition that THIS  was what I most needed to experience and live permanently, the only thing that could not only reconcile myself with being alive on this terrestrial physical plane, but would help me to appreciate that more and more… and to end up enjoying it thoroughly, just as the conscious Divine within me already does all the time…

Cheers
Bhaga

—————————-
(My friend’s answer:)

‘Not result is the purpose of action, but God’s eternal delight in becoming, seeing and doing.’
Is it ‘Not result’ or ‘No result’? – (X)

That’s (That what?- X) actually what my name, ‘Bhaga’, means,

Below is my thought on this quote,

Everything exists because it exists, not for anything. It’s all an expression of Love as seen from the Big picture. It exist because it is, and not for “the purpose of”. It’s partly true, sort of, but is misleading. This whole thing implies that one shouldn’t be other than joyful or happy etc. Humans are more complex than that. This quote is collapsing the distinction between the infinite and the finite while we are still living in the finite. If we were always happy, which is what almost everyone wants, we would be singing with the angels and not human beings.

—————————-
(My answer)

Answers just down below, under each of your own questions.

‘Not result is the purpose of action, but God’s eternal delight in becoming, seeing and doing.’
Is it ‘Not result’ or ‘No result’? – (X)
= the purpose of action is not result, but God’s eternal delight in becoming, seeing and doing.

That’s (That what?- X) actually what my name, ‘Bhaga’, means,
My name, Bhaga, is in the Veda precisely the name of one of the solar Powers of the Divine, in this case: God’s eternal power of delight in becoming, seeing and doing.

Below is my thought on this quote,

Everything exists because it exists, not for anything.
Quite true, but not absolutely so.
It’s all an expression of Love as seen from the Big picture.
???
It exist because it is, and not for “the purpose of”. It’s partly true, sort of, but is misleading. This whole thing implies that one shouldn’t be other than joyful or happy etc.
That’s the overall idea, yes indeed!… That’s the whole point of meditation etc, or one could say of all the paths of Yoga. This is what you like so much yourself about the Dalai Lama, don’t you? (This is just an example).
Humans are more complex than that.
Humans are what they are now, only as the expression of the level of consciousness considered ‘normal’ for the time being among ordinary Humans. But we are not condemned to remain for ever at that level of consciousness only, which is meant to be just a passing phase. We are meant to evolve further, even while we still live in a physical body and on Earth.
This quote is collapsing the distinction between the infinite and the finite while we are still living in the finite.
Don’t contrast the infinite and the finite as if they were two opposite absolutes. They are not. The finite is not static, not stagnating: there is what we call the process of Evolution, which means everything is on its way to becoming ever more consciously divine again.
If we were always happy, which is what almost everyone wants,
Of course it is what they want!!! Isn’t it what you want as well?… I mean, true happiness?… Don’t forget we all are actually the Divine!… We purposely accepted to forget what we truly are, including that Delight of Being which is so much part of our secret divine nature; but that doesn’t mean we do not miss and long for what we have voluntarily put aside for a while in order to play the Game!… Our very longing for our true, divine way of being is in fact precisely what gradually brings us all back sooner or later on some ‘spiritual path’… to become again consciously what we never actually ceased to be: the Divine!!!
we would be singing with the angels and not human beings.
We would be neither ethereal angels, nor ordinary humans, but simply further evolved humans – and that possibility is open to anyone interested. Later on, when the Supramental Consciousness-Force (that has been only recently activated in terrestrial Matter, and that is now leading the process of Evolution here) will come really into its own and manifest more fully its own characteristic level of consciousness in a stabilized and harmonized world, there will probably be the apparition of a new, directly supramental body, which will be even better than the transformed, supramentalized human bodies that will be the first step. By that time, all this will seem just as normal and natural as it is now to have a human body instead of an animal body, if one has the corresponding consciousness. 
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(My friend’s answer:)
Bhaga,
I’m working on being fully human in the best possibility of the word, I’m very curious about the ‘big picture’ and have had some non-linear events to keep me asking questions and help me to have faith. But really I know little more then AM. I’m fine with the big picture staying a Mystery, and I will continue to study peoples reports. Yet my biggest concern is to stay open and accepting our humanness. ‘Humanness’, loosely speaking as our imperfection and frailty. This, staying open and accepting, is quite a challenge for me. I’m grateful beyond reckoning for the glimpses of the Mystery that I’ve had, I don’t think I’d be managing otherwise. I’m in ‘debt’ beyond repayment to all the many who have guided me, such as yourself.

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As I finish typing this in, I’ll add another, last answer:

The pleasure is mine too: it’s actually in my own interest as well, that as many other human beings as possible finally grasp the meaning and purpose of it all… which is indeed, I would say, to at last awaken to our true being and enjoy ourselves divinely here, just as we do in those non-physical dimensions where it is normal to be conscious of one’s eternal divinity, while on the terrestrial plane and in a physical body we are usually  plunged in the overall mass amnesia and aren’t conscious any more of being the Divine… The more we are to awaken, the more really pleasant the Game at last becomes!… And what a conscious collective Victory it all gloriously blooms into then… As Sri Aurobindo puts it so beautifully, “The bliss of the myriad myriads who are One”…