Rebirth and the Western Buddhist - Khamkoo

30 Rebirth and the Western Buddhist
learn quickly of one's past lives "is almost always a
disaster", and "to tear at the curtains which divide us
from the past is always evil," 62 is also puzzling when the
sources described above show that recalling past lives is
often strikingly beneficial. As suggested above, some
readers may find the bizarre adventures Guirdham reports
in this book a little hard to believe; they will not
necessarily be reassured by his summary of his other
works in The Middle Way, 63 disingenuously titled "Clinical
Evidence of Reincarnation."
2. Universal Insight into others' previous lives
This seems to be a much rarer and more advanced
accomplishment than insight into one's own. It is associated
particularly with that remarkable being, Edgar
Cayce, born in Kentucky in 1877. The following extremely
condensed outline of his work is based on the standard
account by Cerminara, 64 , 65 which anyone interested in
rebirth should read.
Cayce's astonishing clairvoyant insight into illnesses
came to light when he sought the aid of a hypnotist for
his own throat ailment. It was soon found that while
under hypnosis he could diagnose and prescribe cures
for not oruy his own illness, but also those of others,
using medical language unknown to him when awake,
and that these cures were frequently successful even
when the patient was someone hundreds of miles away
whom Cayce had never met and of whom he was told no
more than the name and address. Before long, Cayce was
devoting his entire life to this work for the relief of
suffering. The interest for us lies in that while many
illnesses had physical causes, for some Cayce said that
the cause lay in the actions of a past life, and· that the
person must work to extinguish that karma, often by way
of spiritual practice. The first such mention of reincama-