and applied, then a pad put over same, and then the electric pad or dry heat put over same to keep it warm or as hot as the body can stand it, see? Do this every other evening for at least ten such applications, making a period of twenty days, see?
Also, each evening, for at least twenty to thirty days, we would massage the spine—downward; beginning at the base of the brain; one day using olive oil, the next day using cocoa butter. Massage all the body will absorb. Let this extend on either side of the spinal column, from the base of the brain to the end of the spine; gently, in a rotary motion, massaged into the body, see? Rub away from the head, always. Take about twenty to thirty minutes each evening to give this massage, see?
After the massage, as also after the castor oil packs, the body may be sponged off—the areas of the massage and the packs—with lukewarm soda water if desired.
In the diet—keep away from fried foods and from any hog meat of any kind—especially sausage or the like. (1836-1)
Cayce went on to assure the man that if he were to follow the directions, he would find assistance in eliminating the disturbance in his body.
Chapter Four
Healing as an Awakening in Consciousness
Edgar Cayce, in the years prior to his death in 1945, seemed to have an affinity for castor oil. In most quarters, though, it has been held with disdain, since its action on the intestinal tract, when taken in large doses by mouth, is sometimes explosive. Nevertheless, Cayce advocated it hundreds of times in his readings, offering the oil as an aid in bringing the body back to a state of normalcy. Most often, however, it was to be applied on the body, not in it.
One inquirer, seeking help for himself from the sleeping Cayce, asked if he should take the oil by mouth. The reply was that if you have a castor oil consciousness, take castor oil. This was a revelation to me. I was just beginning to understand that Cayce, from his unconscious mind, was dealing with illnesses from a perspective that I had not yet encountered. And it began to make sense. Cayce was approaching things from the standpoint of consciousness and need. What does that mean in a practical sense?
When I first started reading the Cayce material, a patient came to see me who was very definitive in his approach to remedies. He had a sore throat and he told me that penicillin always took care of his sore throats and that’s what he wanted. Before reading Cayce’s statement about consciousness and castor oil, I would have been a bit dismayed by the man’s wanting penicillin. However, the idea of consciousness gave me new insights. Perhaps this man had a penicillin consciousness! If so, he would respond to it. And he did.
What does penicillin consciousness mean? Perhaps it is better understood as a manifestation of faith. Why, for instance, am I a Presbyterian? I was born into the faith (by choice, of course, if we truly have that power before being born), and I believed the tenets I learned in the church. So I naturally would respond, in my spiritual development, to the ideas in that church more readily than in the Baptist, for instance, or Greek Orthodox, or whatever. I had a Presbyterian consciousness.
The incident with the penicillin, along with Cayce’s statement, made it a lot easier for me to understand that everyone has a different approach, a different road to travel as he or she moves through an incarnation. And I needed to be sensitive about what would help patients most—as nearly as I could tell—in their search for healing. If they have a castor oil consciousness, they get castor oil. If they have a surgical consciousness, they undoubtedly need surgery. Or manipulation or radiation or chemotherapy. People need what they truly need until they change their own consciousness in a manner that manifests a different need.
As this bit of information sank into my awareness sufficiently to put it into action, I also became aware of another pertinent factor in the healing process: there is an awakening of consciousness—a psychic event—within the tissues of the body whenever true healing comes about. And the therapy that is used carries within it an essence, a power that enables that awakening to come about. Perhaps it is the faith mentioned earlier that is the pathway, but the power is the creative element that stimulates the atoms and cells into a new awareness. Cayce described it like this:
For, all healing comes from the one source. And whether there is the application of foods, exercise, medicine, or even the knife—it is to bring [to] the consciousness of the forces within the body that aid in reproducing themselves—the awareness of creative or God forces. (2696-1)
It has been vitally interesting for me to probe into the unconscious images Cayce presented about what we are as human beings. The “forces,” for instance. All tissue is composed of atoms, and it was Cayce’s point of view that all atoms have consciousness. Consciousness is a “force” when applied in any situation. Thus Cayce termed those aggregations of atoms and cells as “forces.” And they, knowing their origin after having been awakened by the Divine, respond by attaining their normal status. Some people call this healing, or a cure.
Castor oil packs became the first Cayce therapy I applied in my practice of medicine. It had been described so often in the readings and seemed so simple to use and so innocuous. The results seemed remarkable to me and to the patient. How could an oil pack, applied with a heating pad, bring about the resolution of an intestinal problem or an abscess of the axilla? Or a gallbladder attack? Or a phlebitis of the leg? But these things did happen, and I was compelled to look deeper.
Chapter Five
Castor Oil as a Healing Force
I have always believed that we can tell more about the truth of what is happening inside the human body by studying the individual who is ill rather than consulting a set of data and getting lost in statistics. Dr. Richard Lee wrote about this concept.7 He pointed out that observations of single events in medicine, published or unpublished, are today “condescendingly called anecdotes; stories concocted by well-meaning but scientifically naive clinicians.”
Dr. Lee suggests that numbers and statistics have taken the place of the careful attention to the individual case and the commonplace, previously in the field of medicine recognized as the hallmark of the excellent clinician. He asks, “How many important and interesting biologic events go unnoticed by blinkered academicians working single-mindedly at collecting series of patients or diseases being enough to publish?”
In his paper, Lee reminds us that modern medicine, along with the culture that has shaped it, has noted a steady decline in appreciation and respect for the individual and the unique. “One test, one patient, one problem cannot begin to satisfy the voracious appetite statistically significant doctors have for multitudes of numbers and crowds of patients . . . For the best possible outcome, each patient needs, and has a right to expect, his/her doctor’s undivided attention and effort. To judge the patient, the illness, and the medical effort only by averages and percentages demeans both patient and doctor and diminishes the importance of illness . . . ”
Some of the most important discoveries in medicine have been through observation of only one patient. And Dr. Lee’s message is to keep on seeing the value in single observations. I would add that we need to keep on discovering the mysteries that lie within that human being who has unfortunately fallen ill.
Illness has a purpose and I’m sure it is one associated with learning at the deepest level of the human being. The soul undergoing the experience knows this fact. There is an eternal need for greater understanding of oneself that can come about only from the learning experiences given each person and met in a constructive, helpful manner. These awarenesses always move one forward toward fulfillment of the greater purpose in
