The Seven Churches of the Revelation – As the Seven Spiritual Centers in the Body Pt I
The following is written as an interpretative rendering of the first chapters of the Revelation. It is based on a belief that the disciple John was not only seeing a message for the whole of humanity, but a message for each individual human. Each character, place, or action in the Revelation is considered to be an emblem of a part of each soul’s personal spirit, mind, and body. The “Spirit’s” descriptions, criticisms, instructions, and activities are considered to be insights into the functioning, health, and destiny of each of these aspects of our being. Under each title is the spiritual center’s number, endocrine gland, and chakra correlate.
THE CHURCH OF EPHESUS
First Center Gonads (ovaries & testes) Root Chakra
The portion of our spiritual selves represented by the Spirit that holds the seven stars and walks among the seven golden lampstands says that this first center’s virtue is that it has toiled and persevered and cannot stand evil or false spirituality. Nevertheless, its weakness is that it has left its first love and must therefore remember from where it has fallen, repent, and do the first deeds.
Despite all appearances to the contrary, we are celestial, spiritual beings first. We descended from heaven into matter and into this world. These outer influences have taken hold on us. They possess us. We feel completely terrestrial and physical subjects of this world. This chakra reflects that loss. It must reverse its focus on worldly realities to include spiritual realities, remembering that it originally loved the spiritual things and God, who is a spirit.
In many of the ancient texts, reversing the flow of energy in the body is a major technique for spiritualizing the body. Included in the diagram section of this booklet is a Taoist diagram of a breathing technique in which the mind visualizes energy rising up the back of the body with every inhalation of the breath, uniting with the Great Spirit’s breath, and then descending down the front of the body with every exhalation, bathing the body in raised, spiritualized energy. The sexual glands or chakras have the life force of the body “coiled” within them. This needs to be awakened and drawn upward through the body. It needs to be united with our spiritual ideal or our image, concept, or consciousness of God and our godly nature. Then, with this first love restored, the body is bathed in the resurrected spirit and vibration. The body gradually becomes enlivened and spiritualized.
In its final comment to this center, the Spirit promises that if this center spiritualizes itself, then it will be allowed to eat from the Tree of Life again in the Paradise of God. In other words, it will regain its immortality and its companionship with God in Paradise, which was first lost in the Garden in Genesis.
The old teaching that this life is lived to prepare for the next life holds true despite all of the physical world’s attempts to confuse, distract, and repudiate it. Physical is important. Our soul has incarnated for a purpose. That purpose is to resolve karma, embrace grace, and resurrect our true self and its companionship with our Creator. As Cayce’s readings teach, the goal is to know yourself to be yourself (your true self) and yet one with the Whole (Cayce capitalized this word, indicating its connection with the Divine).
THE CHURCH OF SMYRNA
Second Center Cells of Leydig Naval Chakra
As the Spirit turns its attention to the church of Smyrna, it identifies itself as being the first self and the last self, which was dead and is now alive again. It acknowledges that this center, the navel or lower abdomen chakra, has suffered much tribulation, poverty, and slander from those who say they are true spiritual seekers but are of “the synagogue of Satan.”
Cayce identifies the second spiritual center and its connection to the sixth center as the “seat of the soul.” The soul’s companion is the subconscious mind, according to Cayce. These two abide in the autonomic nervous system of the body and directly affect the endocrine glands and their hormones. Their primary points of contact are the second and sixth chakras. The spirit is aware of the soul’s and subconscious mind’s poverty and tribulation in a purely physical world and a physically-dominated body, with little or no spiritual nourishment. When we are predominantly in our outer egos and conscious minds, our soul and deeper mind suffer and starve. Despite this, the Spirit says that the soul is rich and it should not fear its trials and imprisonment in the body because at the death of the body the Spirit will give it “the crown of life.”
The Spirit warns that this center allows fear to take hold of it, but it must let go of fear. The Spirit promises that if this center stops being afraid and doubting the truth, it will not suffer the “second death.” Cayce says that the second death is when those who have gained understanding again fall away into self-exaltation, accentuating the ego rather than the soul-self, and suffer the death of truth a second time. If this spiritual center lets go of fear, it will never fall away again, and thereby never again suffer death of the truth. Cayce explains it this way: “For there is set before thee good and evil, life and death; choose thou. For the spirit of truth maketh alive. Fear, doubt, condemnation, bringeth doubt, illness, fear, and then dissolution (disillusion?); and the hill to be climbed again.” In other readings Cayce says that doing what we know is right, despite the challenges, will remove fear. We certainly don’t want to climb the hill again or experience the death of the truth a second time.
THE CHURCH OF PERGAMOS
Third Center Adrenal Glands Solar Plexus Chakra
As the Spirit approaches this third center, it describes itself as the one with a two-edged sword, revealing this center’s power to wield a weapon that can cut for good or evil. The Spirit acknowledges that this center held fast to “my name” and did not deny “my witness, my faithful one”; even though this center is “where Satan’s throne is” and “where Satan dwells.” Over and over in the Cayce volumes we find the concept that within each of us is both the Holy One and the Evil One, wrestling for power and control over us. Thus this center is a most dangerous and potentially powerful chakra. Given the energy of the powerful solar plexus and the adrenal glands’ “fight or flight” hormones, this is understandable. In many yoga texts, its power is often identified as second only to the crown chakra. According to Cayce, during physical growth and even during meditation, if the balance is maintained, the energy of the life-force, the kundalini, crosses the solar plexus each time it passes to another center.
But this center is also the place of anger, impulsive reactions, and spirit-killing urges. The Spirit identifies its weaknesses and vices as eating things “sacrificed to idols” and committing “acts of immorality.” Uncontrolled, the Spirit says that this center throws “stumbling blocks” in the way of our spiritual efforts. It must stop this. If it does, then the Spirit promises that it will “eat of the hidden manna” and “receive a new name.”
Cayce says that “my name” in verse 13 refers to our eternal name that uniquely identifies each of us from among the rest of creation. Somehow deep within each of us, the Spirit says that we have not fully denied this aspect of ourselves. We have not killed the witness to our spiritual nature - a witness that whispers within our own conscience. If we spiritualize this center, then a new name will be given to us, a name that only we who receive it will know. The disciple John receives his name written upon a white stone, indicating that it will endure, or as we would say, “it’s written in stone.”
The manna refers to this center’s desires for physical gratification, often symbolized as bread; yet, as Jesus so wonderfully put it, we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. These words from God’s mouth, Cayce says, are the hidden manna. As the Spirit warned, it will come upon this center “quickly with the sword of my mouth” if it doesn’t overcome its negative influences.
This center is extremely important in our overall soul growth. To subdue the powerful urges and anger that this center can produce and to awaken and nourish its power for grace, forgiveness, and kindness is critical. Each of us wields a sword of great destructive or constructive power. Mastering our control over it physically and mentally is a spiritual achievement.
THE CHURCH OF THYATIRA
Fourth Center Thymus Gland Heart Chakra
Now the Spirit moves to the fourth center, identifying itself as the Son of God with eyes like fire and feet like fine brass. In other words, it has the vision of the spirit and the understanding that only comes from being tested in the furnace of daily life. It acknowledges that the heart chakra has charity, faith, patience, service, and good works; the most recent works being greater than the first works. But it also has one major issue with this center: it lives life without love and spirit, seeking only gratification and pleasure. This is represented by the false prophet Jezebel, whose motto is to get all you want no matter how you obtain it and by acts of fornication, which is sex without love, here representative of living physically without spiritual ideals. Then the Spirit warns that unless the heart center changes its ways and holds fast to the good that remains, it will suffer “great tribulation” in the bed it has made for itself. When Cayce was asked about the great tribulation, he answered:
The great tribulation and periods of tribulation … are the experiences of every soul, every entity. They arise from influences created by man…. Man may become, with the people of the universe, ruler of any of the various spheres through which the soul passes in its experiences. Hence, as the cycles pass, as the cycles are passing, when there IS come a time, a period of readjusting in the spheres, (as well as in the little earth, the little soul) – seek, then, as known, to present self spotless before that throne; even as ALL are commanded to be circumspect, in thought, in act, to that which is held by self as that necessary for the closer walk with Him. In that manner only may each atom (as man is an atom, or corpuscle, in the body of the Father) become a helpmeet with Him in bringing that to pass that all may be one with Him.
The Spirit goes on to promise that if this center changes, then he “will give him the morning star.” The morning star is a bright planet seen in the eastern horizon before sunrise. Venus is the most brilliant planet in our solar system and for half of the year appears as the morning star. In astrological traditions, Venus represents love, harmony, and beauty. Cayce identifies the planet Venus with the heart chakra.
Saint Paul says that love is “the greatest.” Jesus identifies it as the top commandment, summing up the works and teachings of all the laws and prophets. More songs are written about it than any other aspect of human experience. Throughout the Bible, love is most important and powerful. But when we think of power, even spiritual power, we rarely think of love. Yet, from Genesis to the Revelation, the Bible indicates that love evokes the highest, most godly of powers and actually is the nature of God. Love brings us closest to our true, divine nature our angelic nature. Many biblical passages teach that of all the things a person can learn and do in this world, nothing reflects Godliness more than love.
The two greatest commandments are found in the Old and New Testaments. The first is found in Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:37:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
The second commandment is found in Leviticus 19:18 and Matthew 22:39:
“You shall love your neighbor [plesion, meaning a ‘close-by person’] as yourself.”
The disciple Paul’s famous love statement is found in 1 Corinthians 13:13: “Now abide faith, hope, and love [agape], these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
Paul describes love beautifully: “Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
Peter’s love advice is in 1 Peter 4:8: “Above all things, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins.”
John wrote in 1 John 4:7-12: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love …. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.”
Edgar Cayce gave over two thousand readings teaching spiritual seekers to live, think, speak, and abide in love. Here are his comments to four different people:
“Let the beauty of your joy, in manifesting the light and love as shown in the Christ-Spirit, that makes for the new song in your heart, keep you in your daily walks of life.”
“Let others do as they may, but as for you and your house, you will love the living God. Know His love is sufficient to keep you. No matter what may be the trial, His love abides, and He is not unmindful of your prayers.”
“The beauty of your life rises as a sweet incense before the altar of mercy. Yet it is not sacrifice but peace, grace, and mercy that we would manifest among the children of men. For God is love.”
“Keep your paths straight. Know in whom you have believed, as well as in what you believe. For the love as passes understanding can, does, and will make your pathway brighter. Keep in that way.”
Jesus presented love on different levels, identifying the highest love in this often quoted passage: “No greater love has a person, than to give up his or her life for another” not literal death, but giving up self’s desires for another’s. It is thinking more of what another may need than what self may want. Cayce said that Jesus had a secret prayer that he repeated to himself, “Others, Lord, others.” This kept the Father’s power that flowed through Jesus on the right track not glorifying himself but revealing the light and Love that flowed through him God’s love, our Father’s and Mother’s love. Jesus used this to do good and glorify the Father rather than himself. Selfless loving is the ideal giving and caring without expectation of getting something in return. Yet this must not be self-destructive. No one could accuse Jesus of being a doormat of self-deprecating love. He often radiated a tough love. Those around Him often needed truth, justice, and a clear position on God’s ways, not pampering. Jesus cared so much for others that he would not let them remain in their darkness or misunderstandings. Yet he never condemned them. Rather, He called their mistakes to their attention. He also showed a remarkable sense of their inability to handle the full truth, choosing to be patient: “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now,” John 16:12.
Achieving ideal love in the heart center is important to soul growth.
THE CHURCH OF SARDIS
Fifth Center Thyroid Gland Throat Chakra
The speech delivered by the Spirit identifies this center with the throat the channel of speech. The Spirit explains that the speech comes from “the seven spirits of God and the seven stars,” which are the sum total of all seven centers acting in unison with God’s will. The Spirit acknowledges that this center has good deeds, a name, is alive, and only a few aspects of its activities are “defiled.” Nevertheless, it is dead to the real truth and is imperfect. The Spirit encourages this center to strengthen itself because it is closer to death than it realizes. If it strengthens itself spiritually, then it will be clothed in white raiment, its name will not be blotted out of the Book of Life, and the Spirit will confess its name “before my Father and his angels.”
Notice how much of this center is identified with will and speech. Cayce says that one of the major steps to full spiritual consciousness is letting our will become subordinate to God’s will. He often recommended an affirmation such as this one from the Search for God Study Group readings (it was recorded in capital letters): “THY WILL, O GOD, BE DONE IN ME, THROUGH ME, AS THOU SEEST; FOR THE DESIRE OF MY HEART IS THAT I MAY BE THE CHANNEL OF BLESSINGS TO OTHERS IN THE WAYS AND MANNERS THOU SEEST; NOT MY WAY, O LORD, BUT THY WAY.” This is reminiscent of Jesus’ intimate prayer sessions with the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, in which he prays three separate times for the Father to remove the cup of crucifixion from him, but only if it is the Father’s will, not just his will. At the end of the third prayer, Jesus knows it is the Father’s will that he drink from this cup, because despite its physical outcome, spiritual glory will be realized and the flesh will be raised up again to life spiritualized and everlasting.
The words of our mouths, the thoughts of our minds, and the feelings of our hearts need to be purified of self-aggrandizement, self-glorification, and self-exaltation. They must be channels of God’s words, thoughts, and feelings flowing through us. The throat center is the projector of words, and words can heal or harm. It is also the center for will. According to Cayce, no other gift from God is more influential than our will not the stars in heaven nor the tricks of the devil can take away free will.
This center, acting in unison with God’s will, can bring all the centers to a higher vibration, a higher consciousness.
THE CHURCH OF PHILADELPHIA
Sixth Center Pineal Gland Crown Chakra
As the spiritual self approaches the sixth center, located deep within the brain, it refers to that part of itself that is “holy, true, has the key of David, opens and no one can shut, shuts and no one can open.” Which is to say that only the spiritual part of our being can allow the spiritual process to proceed. This is considered to be one of the most holy centers in the human body. It is the place of “the mount of God,” according to Cayce. If we enliven this center with the Spirit and spiritual intentions, then we draw all the lower centers up to this high place and unite them with God’s Spirit.
The Spirit acknowledges the works of this center, saying that it is has kept his word and not denied his name. This center knows the truth of its spiritual nature and despite how weak it has become from the material struggles, it retains the truth of its real nature and purpose for life. This is the only center that the Spirit finds no fault with. There is nothing this center has to do except continue to hold onto its truth. Therefore, the Spirit promises to draw all the cells of the body before it and make them bow to its truth. It also promises to keep this center from the temptation that has and is coming to the rest of the body: to test the body’s true desires, whether they are spiritual or strictly material and self-centered.
In Patanjali’s arrangement, the crown chakra is the highest center in the body, the kundalini having risen up the spine, moved through the brain to the brow, and culminated at the opening of the crown. In Revelation 3:11, the Spirit actually mentions the “crown” in reference to this center. In Cayce’s arrangement, the energy flows up the spine to the base of the brain, then to the center of the brain, where the pineal gland is located. Stimulating the pineal opens this crown chakra.
If we fully awaken this center, then the Self promises to make us “a pillar in the temple of My God” and we will “never go out from it again.” The Spirit will also write the name of God, God’s city, and the Spirit’s new name upon us.
Opening of the crown chakra is also associated with experiencing the Holy Spirit. How did the Holy Spirit appear among the disciples? In the form of tongues of fire on the tops of their heads, above the soft spot. The event is described in Acts 2:2-4: “Suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent, rushing wind, and it filled the whole house. There appeared tongues as of fire and it sat above each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit.” Prior to this experience, at the Last Supper, Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit upon the disciples and explained, “The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send … he will teach you all things.”
In the early times of the Hopi, legend says that some of the people strayed and stopped cooperating with the Creator. Others remained loyal and at-one with the Creator. To these the “Great Nephew” appeared, telling those that were still seeking to cooperate and that they were to be a Chosen People to inhabit a new world that he was about to create. He told them that the center on the tops of their heads would guide them to this new world. This inner wisdom would give them the sight to see a certain cloud which they would follow by day and a certain star which they would follow by night. It is fascinating how similar this part of the Hopi legend is to that of the Israelites. Recall how the Lord told the Israelites that they were to be a Chosen People, and led them out from among the others to a promised land, instructing them that His presence would be with them in a cloud by day and a column of fire by night.
When the great Nephew had finished instructing the Hopi Chosen People, all over the First World the Chosen People disappeared. Their villages were empty. The houses, temples, and fields all empty. Many of those left behind called out to them, “Where are you going?” To which the Chosen Ones replied, “We are following the cloud and the star.” The others laughed and said, “We see no cloud or star.” The Chosen People explained to them, “This is because you have lost your inner vision that came from the tops of your heads.”
The top of the head is the crown chakra, a most important spiritual center. Cayce identifies it with “the mount,” and states that only those who have experienced “the rejuvenation in the mount” may know the truth and enter fully into the Creator’s presence to receive the resulting guidance. He goes on to say that as this center is awakened and our soul’s memories return to consciousness, stating that this event is what is referred to when Jesus said “The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things….” -John 14:25.
Let’s ignite again our crown chakra. Let’s ascend to the mount of higher consciousness. Let’s open the soft spot, through which our soul first entered this body, and receive the inner vision, the inner guidance. The Hopi prophecy says that soon a new stage of life will begin, a stage in which only those who are open at the tops of their heads will be able to hear and see and know the way.
THE CHURCH OF LAODICEA
Seventh Center Pituitary Gland Third-Eye Chakra
Finally, the Spirit arrives at the highest center in the body. The aspect of our spiritual self that is in this center is “the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the Beginning of the creation of God.” This is the master gland of the body. But the Spirit is upset with this center because it is “neither cold nor hot.” Because it is lukewarm about the spiritualization process, the Spirit is ready to “spit you out of my mouth.” This center says that it is rich and needs nothing, but the spiritual self challenges that it is actually “wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked” (harkening back to the original sin in the Garden, where Adam and Eve hid from God because they were naked). Amazingly, this center has no redeeming qualities and no virtue to acknowledge. The Spirit gives none. This center is stagnant and lukewarm, contributing nothing to the overall spiritualization of the body. The Spirit therefore warns it to get truth forged in the fires of the Spirit, white garments of purity that its nakedness will be clothed, and eye salve to anoint its eyes to see the real truth. However, in a backhanded way, the Spirit acknowledges its love for this center, saying: “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.” If this center will rise up and conquer, then “I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.”
Cayce’s readings identify this center as the third eye, on the forehead. Almost all yoga books identify the third eye as the sixth chakra and the crown as the seventh. When Cayce was asked about this during a reading, his reply was that he did not care what others were saying, but he was giving the correct arrangement. In some of the illustrations in this booklet, you’ll see how the classical imagery supports his perspective.
But the real importance of this center is that it is lukewarm in most people and needs to be enlivened with a higher ideal with the energy of the life force combined with the Holy Spirit. The Egyptians considered the eye, the single all-seeing eye, to be one of the highest images of God. To awaken this center’s true nature and bring illumination to the whole of the body and mind, this center must again find enthusiasm for the quest. It is like a dying ember and needs the breath of the Holy Spirit upon it to re-ignite its fire.
To be continued.
garden centre
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