"It is thought and feeling which guides the universe, not deeds"
About this Quote
Cayce’s line is a neat reversal of the self-help mantra that your life is the sum of your actions. He’s selling the opposite: reality as an inside job. “Thought and feeling” aren’t just personal attitudes here; they’re treated like steering wheels for the cosmos, the hidden levers behind events. That’s classic Cayce, the early-20th-century “sleeping prophet” whose celebrity came from trance readings that stitched together Christianity, New Thought, and metaphysical healing. In that world, deeds are downstream. The real causality is invisible, emotional, vibrational.
The phrasing does sly work. “It is thought and feeling” sounds almost scientific, like a corrective to a mistaken assumption, then “guides the universe” spikes the claim from self-management to total metaphysics. Cayce isn’t arguing that actions don’t matter; he’s demoting them. Deeds become symptoms, not sources. That move flatters the audience: if your interior life is the motor of the universe, you don’t need institutional power to matter. You need alignment.
The subtext is moral, too. If feelings help “guide” reality, then inner states carry ethical weight. Resentment isn’t just ugly; it’s dangerous. Compassion isn’t just nice; it’s structural. That’s an appealing framework in a modernizing America where traditional authority was fraying and people were hungry for agency. It also conveniently shields the belief system from falsification: when outcomes disappoint, the failure can be relocated to insufficiently pure thought or feeling. The universe stays innocent; the psyche takes the blame.
The phrasing does sly work. “It is thought and feeling” sounds almost scientific, like a corrective to a mistaken assumption, then “guides the universe” spikes the claim from self-management to total metaphysics. Cayce isn’t arguing that actions don’t matter; he’s demoting them. Deeds become symptoms, not sources. That move flatters the audience: if your interior life is the motor of the universe, you don’t need institutional power to matter. You need alignment.
The subtext is moral, too. If feelings help “guide” reality, then inner states carry ethical weight. Resentment isn’t just ugly; it’s dangerous. Compassion isn’t just nice; it’s structural. That’s an appealing framework in a modernizing America where traditional authority was fraying and people were hungry for agency. It also conveniently shields the belief system from falsification: when outcomes disappoint, the failure can be relocated to insufficiently pure thought or feeling. The universe stays innocent; the psyche takes the blame.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|
More Quotes by Edgar
Add to List
