Edgar Cayce

Channelling is a process whereby a person allows themselves to become a channel of communication for spiritual entities from beyond the physical realm.  In principle it is similar to mediumship, the main difference being that mediums tend to focus on the communication with those recently departed from the physical realm, usually with the purpose of comforting relatives and friends of the deceased. Channelling however is usually communication with entities believed to be more highly spiritually evolved, with the purpose of gaining information for education and spiritual advancement. 

Although mediumship has been widely practised throughout recorded history, channelling is a relatively new phenomenon in the Western World.  The first widely recognised channeller was Edgar Cayce (pronounced ‘Casey’), sometimes referred to as the ’sleeping prophet’. Born in Kentucky in 1877, he exhibited psychic traits as a child, but was a devout Christian with a desire to become a preacher. However at the age of 23 he developed laryngitis and was unable to speak above a whisper for several months, such that for a time he gave up hope of ever speaking normally again as doctors and specialists were unable to cure him.  He gave up his job as a salesman and began a career in photography.  

A travelling stage hypnotist called ‘Hart, the Laugh King’ heard about Cayce’s condition and offered to hypnotise him in an attempt to effect a cure.  This was done publicly and to the amazement of all Cayce was able to speak normally while hypnotized.  Hart several times tried post-hypnotic suggestion that the voice would continue to function after the trance, but the laryngitis returned each time he awoke.  

Al Layne, a local self-taught hypnotist and osteopath, offered to help. He suggested that Cayce describe the nature of his condition and cure while in a hypnotic trance.  Cayce described his problem as a “psychological condition producing a physical effect.”  He stated that the condition could be removed by suggesting to him while in the unconscious state that the blood circulation increase to the affected areas. After Layne made the suggestion, the upper part of Cayce’s chest and his throat turned bright red and the skin became warm. Twenty minutes later Edgar spoke again, stating that before Layne awakened him the suggestion should be made that the blood circulation return to normal. Layne followed the instructions. When Cayce came out of the trance, despite being completely unaware of what he had said, he was able to speak normally for the first time in almost a year. 

Layne himself suffered from a chronic stomach condition, and asked if Cayce would do a reading for his condition.  Cayce felt obliged to help, and in the trance state accurately described Layne’s condition and prescribed a cure combining natural medicines, dietary changes and exercise.  Within a week Layne felt so much better that he implored Cayce to continue doing readings, arguing that he had a moral obligation to help people.  Cayce was wary, having no prior knowledge of medicine and a suspicion of the psychic process due to his religious beliefs.  Layne was insistent and after much prayer, Bible reading and consultation with his family, Cayce finally agreed.

Word spread and Cayce began to do readings on a regular basis, asking only for donations from those who could afford it.  It was discovered that he only needed the name and location of a patient to prescribe a cure, and he began to receive mail requests.  He had much success and his fame spread, and he continued to give readings on a regular basis.  Even though he was reluctant for a while, his success began to convince him that he had a gift from God. One of his readings stated that whilst in the trance state the conscious mind becomes subjugated to the subconscious, superconscious or soul mind; and communicates with like minds, and the subconscious or soul force becomes universal. From any subconscious mind information may then be obtained.  

At one point he was persuaded by oil prospectors to give readings on possible oil sites, but these were unsuccessful.  The readings stated that the readings were never to be used for financial gain, and he came to the conclusion that he would use his gift only to help the distressed and sick.  

After over 20 years of giving mainly health related readings, he was asked by Alfred Lammers, a wealthy printer and student of metaphysics, to give a philosophical reading.  In the reading he mentioned a past life of Lammers, and upon waking was shocked to hear this, as it conflicted with his religious beliefs.  This led him to much soul searching, and in a reading he was advised to read the whole Bible whilst keeping the idea of reincarnation in mind.  He came to believe that the idea of reincarnation was not incompatible with Christianity and actually gave him a deeper appreciation of the purpose of life.

In 1925 Cayce realised a long held dream, moving to Virginia and setting up a hospital where trained medical staff would treat those he gave readings for. He also began to do ‘life readings’, looking at peoples’ past lives and how that affected them in their present lives.  These readings expanded to include mental and spiritual counsel, philosophy, spirituality, meditation, dream interpretation, intuition, history and ancient civilizations, prophecies and relationship advice.

In 1931, the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.), was formed as a research body whose goal was to investigate and disseminate the information contained in Cayce’s readings.   As his fame as a psychic grew, many skeptics came to Virginia Beach to expose him as a fraud, but in time all were convinced of the legitimacy of what he was doing.   Thomas Sugrue, a staunch Catholic, investigated what he thought had to be trickery and ended up writing ‘There is a River’, Cayce’s first biography, published in 1943.

Cayce pushed himself to do more and more readings to keep up with the demand, and this began to take a toll on his health.  He died in 1945 at the age of 67.  It is estimated that he gave over 20,000 readings, although only 14,000 of these remain today.  Although he died long before the emergence of the New Age movement he remains a major influence on many of its teachings.  These days it is probably his prophecies that get the most attention.  Many – though not all – have come true.  His readings stated that prophecy is only given as a warning, that the future is not fixed and that human free will makes virtually everything possible.  Therefore a successful prophecy is one that has been averted, and is definitely not a sign of a fake, as some skeptics have claimed.

For more information on Edgar Cayce, visit:

Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) - Edgar Cayce biography

So what exactly is a belief?  Amongst the many available dictionary definitions, the most encompassing yet brief definition I found was in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary.  It defines belief as:

Assent to a proposition or affirmation, or the acceptance of a fact, opinion, or assertion as real or true, without immediate personal knowledge; reliance upon word or testimony; partial or full assurance without positive knowledge or absolute certainty; persuasion; conviction; confidence; as, belief of a witness; the belief of our senses.

This is a very broad definition. The first phrase could mean just having a vague idea of something.  So even an agnostic – who professes no religious beliefs –  could say something like ‘I lean towards the idea that the human experience ends completely at death’ and it is still considered a belief.  If this is the case, then it certainly might be possible that the numbers of our belief systems run into the millions.  Consider how many everyday expressions – such as the following – are actually statements of belief: 

That’s just the way it is
You can’t always get what you want
God only knows
There’s 2 certainties in life – death and taxes
Life wasn’t meant to be easy
Cleanliness is next to Godliness

Each of us could come up with similar – and longer – lists.  We absorb so many of these kinds of beliefs in childhood, many of them we barely understand at the time, but together they form the filters through which we view and interpret the world around us.  They are the framework around which we build our habits, personality and identity. Our personal belief systems are our major influence on how we perceive our individual reality. And even more so, our collective belief systems shape the world that we live in, creating much of our concensus reality.  Only in times of crisis do many of us question just a few of these beliefs.

We are now in a period where many beliefs are being called into question. With the current economic, political and environmental upheavals, our beliefs about many of the instutions – such as governments, corporations and banks – that many of us have taken for granted, are being sorely tested at the moment.  It is a wake up call for all of us, even if we are relatively unaffected by the financial crisis.  

Behind a lot of these beliefs are some of our deeper core beliefs, which will also need to be re-examined in the growing wave of higher consciousness. Much is happening in the spiritual realms for which the secondhand and outdated belief systems of world religions have no satisfactory answers.  It is time for each of us to dig deep into ourselves to discover our true deep feelings about who we are and why we are here.  Because that is where our strongest belief systems come from.   Despite the efforts of organised religion to encourage belief in the ‘facts’ of their sacred texts, our major belief systems are born from our deepest feelings.  They have much more to do with what is in our hearts than what is in our minds.

Many of us may not be aware of what we believe.  One of the better tools to help us examine our beliefs is meditation.  By allowing ourselves to step out of ordinary life and concensus reality for even just a few minutes, and to take a step back within ourselves just to listen to and observe the myriad of beliefs that our mind begins to regurgitate, we begin to get an idea of the substance of our beliefs.  It is amazing how much of these beliefs we have simply absorbed and accepted from our parents, teachers, friends and other role models.  With increased awareness of our belief systems we can then begin to decide which beliefs serve us, and which belief systems require us to serve them.

Many believers believe that their beliefs should be unshakeable, they should be strong enough to withstand doubt.  But as a strong tree is one that sways in the wind, I prefer to believe that a strong belief is one that bends and changes with each new experience.  A rigid belief system will collapse in the strong winds of change that are currently buffeting us.  Especially when it comes to those beliefs for which we have no absolute certainty.  I rather prefer to think of my beliefs as ideas, because ideas can be more easily adapted.

A belief’s a dangerous thing … People die for it. People kill for it … I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life is malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can’t generate. Life becomes stagnant.’

- Rufus, the black 13th apostle from the movie ‘Dogma‘ – screenplay by Kevin Smith

I have a strong memory at around the age of five or six of asking my father why he spent so much time reading and studying, and not out playing football as I liked to do.  Up until that moment I had thought that grown-ups knew everything, so it puzzled me that he would spend so much time with his head stuck in books.   His answer was that he was searching for the truth.  At the time I was very impressed, and thought that that must have meant that he was someone really important, as if he had been charged with the responsibility as a seeker of ‘The Ultimate Truth’ by the rest of humanity.  I was surprised though that he didn’t already know it, as he seemed to be able to give an answer to almost every question that I had asked him up until that point.  But it must have struck a chord with me, because since then I have had a drive to know the higher truths, especially the big picture questions of what exists beyond this physical world and what happens to us when we die. Over time I was also impressed by his persistence, because I soon realised that most believers learn enough to have a simple understanding of what they believe, without further questioning.

Despite having to go to Church and Sunday School every Sunday with my parents, they were not particularly pushy with their religious beliefs, and we were given space and time to form our own belief systems.  When I was around the age of 11 or 12 I asked Jesus Christ into my heart.  I had been doing a Bible correspondence course for children, and one particular lesson was written in such a way that it led the reader to a point where the invitation was made to seem the most logical thing to do.  And so without really understanding the full significance, I got down on my knees beside my bed and prayed, and asked God to forgive my sins and Jesus to come into my heart. This made me a Christian, according to the lesson.  At the time I think I felt a little nervous buzz, but apart from that not too different from before – a little cleaner perhaps, though that feeling probably only persisted until the next time I was told off for doing something wrong…

Some time a bit later, a few weeks perhaps, I was sitting one Saturday afternoon in the backyard of the family home in a small country town in New South Wales, Australia. As a child I would daydream a lot.  My father would often chide me for ‘living in cloud-cuckoo land’.  He had just erected an old wagon wheel (as pictured) in the garden, in order to grow plants up it.  I can remember staring at the wheel for quite a while, getting lost in a daydream, trying to work out what I really felt about this Christianity thing and what God was really like.  The wheel must have had a bit of a mandala effect on me, and I heard what seemed like a voice in my head.  However it was nothing like the voices that are usually there chattering away, expressing my thoughts and usually sounding like me or someone else with whom I might be having a mental conversation.  As I can’t remember specific words I would probably now describe it more as a deep resonating sound that seemed to come from all directions inside my head, as if I was wearing a set of headphones.  This sound seemed lift me into an altered state, to almost instantly transmit knowledge to me, rather than speak actual words. Somehow I knew that this was the ‘voice of God’ – or someone very close to Him at the very least!

As if in answer to my questioning, the voice ’said’ that life is like the wagon wheel, that I then seemed to be merging with. God is the hub of the wheel, the centre of all life.  Humanity is the rim of the wheel, and all the religions and philosophies are like the spokes of the wheel.   Each of us are born at a particular place on the rim, close to a particular religion or belief system, that points toward God at the centre.  As we look down the spoke towards the hub, the religion gives us a glimpse of the divine.  But each religion only gives a small facet of the whole picture.  In order to gain a truer picture of God one would have to travel around the wheel and see God from every angle, looking down each spoke.  

The voice finished and I returned from that trance-like state to a normal state of awareness.  At the time there was little doubt in my mind that this knowledge was somehow greater than anything I had learned up until that point.  But although I was aware of the existence of other religions, my experience at that early age had only been of Christianity.    And so I did not have a big enough frame of reference in which this knowledge was able to sit comfortably.  I tried for a time to assimilate it, but the weight of the Christian teachings that surrounded me made it impossible.  For the rest of my teenage years I committed myself to Christianity, and resolved to at least try and understand it well before exploring other spokes.  I remember slight feelings of guilt towards ‘the voice’ as over the next few years – when the memory occasionally came back to me – I would somehow distort the wheel to make Christianity the only essential spoke in the wheel, or some similar vain rationalisation.

From my late teens into my early twenties I felt more and more the constricting and often conflicting limitations of Christianity, and began to explore other belief systems.  I was particularly inspired after seeing the movie ‘Ghandi’, by his politically effective and compassionate non-violent approach that encompassed all religions, and started to read about the Hindu and Buddhist religions.  But ultimately I found that their texts just seemed like other versions of Christianity.  There were some seemingly deep truths, but it was mostly cultural histories and largely irrelevant and incomprehensible rules. I was usually left feeling that it might have made more sense if I had actually been there at the time.  So for a lot of my twenties I put the big questions on the backburner as anyway I was having too much fun to get serious. There was plenty of time for that later…

Once I left Christianity at the age of 22 however, the memory of that first experience came back more clearly and probably more often.  I no longer had a reason to distort it.  And fuller significance of the experience has only come in more recent years.  I see now for example how that as the spokes get closer to the hub, they get closer to each other, as higher truths of many belief systems share many similarities.  Also that even if one travelled all around the rim the picture would be still be incomplete, because it is impossible to see all of the hub from the two-dimensional perspective of the rim.  To see the centre of the hub where the axle sits, for example, one would have to leave the rim, perhaps by stepping out of the confines of physical existence… And ultimately these days I would say that if one were to use the word ‘God’ – something that I try to do as little as possible as it is loaded with many different meanings for each person – it would more accurately describe the whole wheel.

First public public performance, age 11

Paul Vedant has had a unique and varied musical heritage. Growing up in a devout Christian household in an Australian country town, he began playing guitar and piano at age 11. At 15 he was playing guitar in a folk/country/gospel group in the local church. It was the tail-end of the 70’s singer/songwriter period, and he was also known to play covers of songs from Chuck Berry and the Beatles to Don McLean and Neil Young – on guitar at bush campfires and on pianos in town – with anyone who would listen or join in.

On moving to the city to begin an ill-fated arts degree, he played what are still some of his best-paying gigs on the streets of Melbourne, in an illustrious busking career performing Simon & Garfunkel covers with a hometown friend. He played ambient and gospel piano in the church of the God Squad Motorcycle Club. It was there that he began to play electric guitar, and then after a Robert Johnson experience he sold a portion of his soul to the devil of rock´n´roll.

He then played guitar with several bands in the Melbourne 80’s post Nick Cave underground scene, including The Movers, The Crucifixation and The Bird Dissolves. He also occasionally guested with The Fish John West Reject, playing piano on a couple of tracks on their Swim album (1989) and the single The Orchard (1990).

Box the Jesuit, 1993. Paul Vedant (as Paul Wonderlick) at left

In 1990 he moved to Sydney to join the legendary glam art metalheads Box the Jesuit, performing and co-writing songs on their last album Guide Dogs for the Spiritually Impaired (1993) and video Kosmic Ganda – a tribute to Goose (1994). He also guested on keyboards with You Am I at the Box the Jesuit Stark Raving Elvis Tribute show in 1991.  In January 1992 Box the Jesuit supported Nirvana at the inauguaral Big Day Out. Later that night Vedant attended his first dance rave, and there had another crossroads experience… Fortunately his soul had only benefited from the earlier sale, and so he was able to sell another substantial portion, this time to the devil of digital dance music.

He continued to play with Box the Jesuit until they broke up in 1995, then took a break from performing music, and backpacked around the world with an acoustic guitar for a while before settling in Spain. He was encouraged out of his performance retirement when he met dj loopez, and played solo at the Funky Finca festivals in Andalucia (2000). He then began working with dj loopez at the Funky Finca recording studio, creating music digitally and laying the foundations for what was to become nu-funk, with the addition of Manu El Santero in 2002.  In 2006 he released his first solo song The Love Frequency, which came 2nd in the Crimson Circle worldwide song competition in November 2006.

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