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In the excellent book by Jess Stearn on Edgar Cayce, The Sleeping Prophet, there is a quote from
Cayce himself which says; 'Each and every individual follows out that line of development in the
present earth plane as it has received from the preceding conditions, and each grain of thought or
condition, is a consequence of other conditions created by self.'
The law of karma is both positive and negative, depending upon which of these two possibilities you
concentrate on. If you make the effort of training yourself to think only positive thoughts about
yourself, your tasks, and about others, and carrying out positive actions, then you will certainly set up
a very positive karma for yourself. If you give out love, you will surely receive love. Your future will
start to reflect that love, and positiveness, and one can then progress.
If, on the other hand, we are constantly negative in our approaches to life, then that negativeness will
start to be reflected in everything that we touch or are associated with. We all know and recognise the
sort of person who is always saying things like 'Nothing ever goes right for me.' Or reaffirming bad
luck by saying constantly, 'Oh I was born unlucky.' They are reinforcing the negative state, and keep
on attracting to themselves conditions that they seem to hate most of all. Like attracts like.
The idea of karma, if accepted and taken seriously by everyone, would surely bring about a greatly
improved world. We would all be stopping and considering every thought and action. Even to criticise
and despise someone because that person is of a different skin colour, or has a different belief from
our own, could mean that in another life we may find ourselves in the same position as that person, so
that we would know what it is like to be the butt of criticism or racial prejudice. If you kill by the
sword, then sometime in the future, you will have to die by the sword.
It is quite possible that in some previous life, we have been a different skin colour, and belonged to a
completely different race. With this realisation, there are no barriers between human beings. If we
accept the idea that the body is a vehicle for the soul, and that the soul has inhabited many different
bodies, then it is as ridiculous to despise another, as it would to despise an actor for the character that
he is playing at present, or for the costume he is wearing.
Many questions are asked about reincarnation, and some of the most common are questions like, 'Can
we come back as an animal?' The answer to this is that the human being is quite different to a member
of the animal kingdom. We have reasoning ability. The human personality, the human mind, are
different to those of the animal kingdom.
It is said that animals have a group soul, whereas a human being has an individual soul. It is thought
that even if a human soul has an extremely bad karma, it is not likely to go back to an animal form.
Transmigration in which the human soul goes from human to animal at the time of death, is really a
misunderstanding of the nature of reincarnation. Another understandably common question is our lack
of memory of our past lives. I think one only has to look around at all the mental disturbances that are
so common in the world today, to understand that most of us have enough trouble coping with our
memories of the present life let alone trying to adjust to memories of a past one. A third area that is
often opened up for discussion when the subject of reincarnation comes up is how much free will can
be exercised with regard to our lives. There is no doubt that we have free will, and this is only
interfered with, if we have in the past used that free will to be selfish, greedy, or to harm another.
Then we must be made to pay for what we have done.
There seems to be a general consensus of opinion among reincarnationists all over the world, that the
soul only joins up with a physical body at the time of actual birth, and not at the time of conception.
Also a talent developed in the present life, will be carried into the next one. Human life has a distinct
purpose, and is continuous, reaching out towards an eventual perfection. A person's own will creates
his destiny. The answer to all our problems lies within ourselves and our past memories. What we do,
and the way that we behave towards others in this life, will set the scene for our next life, and for
others yet to come.
6 - Meet Me in Dreamland
The very nature of dreams and their substance has been niggling at the imagination of so many people
since time immemorial. The 'mystery land of dreams' is slightly less of a mystery than it was twenty-
five years ago thanks to the valuable research that has been taking place in those years in sleep
laboratories all over the world, particularly at the Maimonides Sleep Laboratory, Brooklyn, and the
Sleep Laboratories at Chicago University. The Oxford dictionary at least gives us a valuable clue as to
the nature of dreams. As they so succinctly put it, '... a series of pictures or events in mind of sleeping
persons; to have visions etc. as in sleep ....' How often have we been puzzled over the meaning of a
particularly vivid dream whilst struggling to recall its precise details?
They seem to fade away so quickly into complete oblivion. Are those dreams really lost forever? Does
the subconscious mind ever forget anything, either from dreams, from the impressions we are
continuously receiving from our world around us, or of anything that we have ever learned? There is
every reason to suspect that our subconscious mind is like a computerised memory bank - nothing is
ever really forgotten. Perhaps our dreams are just buried there waiting to be resurrected at the
appropriate moment. Edgar Cayce said; 'In dreams man is in communication with his very own soul,
with his higher self whence all knowledge comes.'
So far Cayce has never been proved wrong. If he is right this time around, then it's about time we took
our dreams a little more seriously. I am sure that with time the rather common attitude of scoffing at
dreams will cease. How often were you told by your parents that a dream you had reported in all your
childish honesty was, after all, 'only' a dream, particularly if it was a bad one. Often in our early days
we are encouraged to disregard our dreams. It's very common for many people to say that they don't
dream. However, each one of us has at least three or four dreams every single night in a normal sleep
cycle.
It has become a truism to say that just because you don't remember your dreams doesn't mean that you
don't have them. I once heard of an enthusiastic young psychiatrist at the Sleep Laboratory of Chicago [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]