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What Is the Soul?
Reading 487-17 begins with several important questions: What is a soul? What does it look like? Where does it live, and how can we recognise it? The reading explains that the soul cannot normally be separated from the physical body during earthly life. We do not see the soul as a separate physical object. Instead, the soul expresses itself through the body. It looks through the eyes, experiences the world through the senses, responds through emotions, and reveals itself through a person’s choices and actions.
The physical body grows through food, rest, movement, and other material influences. In a similar way, the soul grows through experience. Every thought, decision, relationship, temptation, act of kindness, and response to suffering becomes a form of “food” for the soul. The body is therefore more than a physical machine. It is a temporary home and instrument through which the soul learns, chooses, serves, and develops.
The Body Changes, but the Person Remains
The reading refers to a seven-year cycle in which the physical body is said to be altered or renewed. This should not necessarily be treated as a precise modern scientific statement that every cell is replaced within seven years. Different cells have very different lifespans. Spiritually, however, the reading uses this idea to make a deeper point: although the body changes throughout life, something within the person continues.
A person’s appearance, health, circumstances, and physical condition may change, but family and friends still recognise the same individual. According to the reading, this continuing identity is revealed through the activities of the soul. The soul is shown through character, values, love, selfishness, mercy, ambition, and the use of personal gifts. What makes someone truly the same person is not merely the physical body, but the deeper spiritual identity being expressed through it.
The Difference Between the “Soul-Entity” and the “Entity”
The reading makes a difficult distinction between the “soul-entity” and the complete “entity.” The soul-entity refers particularly to the spiritual self and its development beyond the limits of one physical lifetime. The entity is more complete: it includes the soul together with its mind, personality, experiences, relationships, and expression in the material world.
In simpler terms, the soul is the spiritual centre of the person, while the entity is the whole individual as that soul expresses itself through different levels of existence. The reading admits that ordinary human language cannot perfectly describe spiritual realities because words belong to a world limited by physical time and space.
Planetary Influences and Free Will
The references to Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn represent nonphysical environments or influences associated with the soul’s experiences. In Cayce’s spiritual framework, these planets are not merely physical places. They represent different patterns of consciousness and development. In this particular reading, Uranus appears connected with unusual abilities, extremes, independence, and powerful personal influence.
However, the reading does not teach that planetary influences control a person’s destiny. These influences may create certain tendencies, opportunities, strengths, or dangers, but the individual must decide how to use them. The same power can lead either to “soul development” or “soul retardment.” Free will remains central. Spiritual growth depends upon how a person applies universal spiritual laws, especially love, truth, mercy, humility, and service.
Most importantly, the reading places every planetary influence under the law of Christ Consciousness. This means that no astrological or spiritual influence is greater than the divine pattern revealed through Christ. The planets may describe tendencies, but Christ provides the standard by which those tendencies must be directed.
A Person With Great Power
The individual receiving this reading appears to possess a strong and unusual influence over other people. The statement that “many have blessed the coming and many have been glad when the entity has passed” suggests a person who produces strong reactions. Some people may welcome this individual, while others may feel relieved when the person leaves. This can happen when someone has a forceful personality, great intelligence, unusual abilities, authority, or emotional intensity.
The reading warns that this influence may be used in two very different ways. Joined with love and the Creative Forces expressed through Christ, it may produce something beautiful and helpful. Used selfishly, it may harm both the individual and many others. Power itself is not presented as evil. Its spiritual value depends upon the purpose, attitude, and actions of the person using it.
Gaining the World but Losing the Soul
The warning about gaining the whole world while losing one’s soul comes from the teaching of Christ:
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” — Mark 8:36
This is one of the central biblical ideas in the reading. A person may gain wealth, influence, recognition, knowledge, or authority and still become spiritually poor. External success cannot compensate for the loss of love, truth, mercy, or fellowship with God.
The reading says this individual has reached a point where a personal choice must be made. The decision cannot be made by circumstances, planetary influences, family members, or spiritual advisers. The individual must choose whether personal power will serve selfish ambition or the purposes of God.
The Golden Rule
The reading advises the individual to ground body, mind, and soul in the teaching of Christ:
“As ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”
This comes from Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31. It is commonly called the Golden Rule. The reading presents it as more than polite behaviour. It is a spiritual law. How we treat another person affects what we are becoming within ourselves.
The passage then reflects Christ’s teaching in Luke 6:32–33: if we love only those who love us and help only those who help us, our love has not yet risen above ordinary self-interest. True spiritual growth appears when we act with patience, kindness, and mercy toward people who cannot repay us—and even toward those who have treated us badly.
Forgiveness and the Spiritual Record
The reading teaches that people are continually “writing their own record.” Every judgment, cruel word, loving act, and selfish decision leaves an effect upon the soul. This resembles the biblical principle:
“For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” — Galatians 6:7
The reading does not simply describe God as externally punishing people. Instead, it suggests that our thoughts, words, and actions create something within our own character. A person who constantly finds fault with others gradually strengthens criticism and bitterness within himself. Eventually, he must face the spiritual condition he has created.
Forgiving those who mistreat us interrupts this destructive pattern. The reading echoes Christ’s command to “pray for them which despitefully use you” in Luke 6:28. Forgiveness does not mean pretending that wrongdoing is acceptable. It means refusing to allow another person’s wrongdoing to turn our own soul toward hatred, revenge, or spiritual darkness.
The Image of God in Every Person
The final statement gives the deepest reason for treating others with kindness: every person bears the image of the Creator. This reflects Genesis 1:27, which says that humanity was created in the image of God. It also resembles Christ’s teaching in Matthew 25:40:
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Therefore, speaking cruelly to another person is not merely a social mistake. It is an offence against the divine image within that person. Loving another person honours God; harming or humiliating another person dishonours Him.
Central Message
Reading 487-17 teaches that the soul is revealed through the way a person lives. Physical appearance, intelligence, social position, wealth, and personal power are temporary. What remains spiritually important is how these things are used.
This individual appears to possess exceptional influence and therefore carries exceptional responsibility. The reading warns that great ability without love may become destructive, while the same ability directed by the spirit of Christ may become a blessing to many. Its central message is simple: the soul grows when power is guided by love, when selfishness gives way to service, when criticism becomes understanding, and when injury is answered with forgiveness.
The true measure of a life is therefore not how much a person possesses or controls, but how closely that person’s thoughts, purposes, and actions reflect the love of Christ.
Meaning of the Image
The image represents the soul’s journey and the central teaching of Reading 487-17: personal power can lead either toward selfishness and darkness or toward love and service.
The glowing person in the centre represents the complete individual—body, mind, and soul. The physical form is visible, but the strongest light comes from within. The light in the heart shows that the soul’s true life comes from God. The glowing eyes and hands show that the soul expresses itself through how we see others, how we respond emotionally, and what we do.
The figures at different ages behind the central person represent the changing physical body. A person passes through childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age, yet the same spiritual identity continues through every stage. This illustrates the reading’s distinction between the temporary body and the continuing soul.
The two paths represent free will. The dark side shows pride, selfish ambition, conflict, material power, and the desire to control others. The crown, money, city, and arguing figures represent worldly success that may become spiritually destructive. They recall Christ’s warning: “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
The bright side represents compassion, forgiveness, and service. The woman helping the seated man shows the Golden Rule: treating others as we would wish to be treated. Her assistance is gentle and respectful, representing power used to lift another person rather than dominate them.
The white-gold cross of light does not portray Christ physically. It represents the light, love, and consciousness of Christ guiding the soul. It shows that planetary influences and personal abilities remain beneath God’s higher spiritual law.
The planets represent the different influences and experiences mentioned in the reading. However, they remain in the background because they do not control the person’s final choice. The soul must decide how it will respond to those influences.
The central figure stands between both paths because every person must choose. Its attention is turned toward the light, suggesting an awakening recognition that true greatness is not found in wealth or control, but in love, forgiveness, humility, and service to others.
EDGAR CAYCE READING 487-17
What then, the entity asks, IS a soul? What does it look like? What is its plane of experience or activity? How may ye find one? It may not be separated in a material world from its own place of abode in the body-physical, yet the soul looks through the eyes of the body - it handles with the emotions of the sense of touch - it may be aware through the factors in every sense, and thus add to its body as much as the food of the material world has made for a growing physical body in which the soul may and does indeed dwell in its passage or activity in any individual phase of an experience in the earth.
What, then, are the experiences or appearances or activities of the body in the material world that have influenced, and are to influence, this entity in the coming age or cycle?
A cycle is seven years, known or called in the earth, and information may be given or records read as to the varying appearances or activities that may change in that period.
How has the scientist or the biologist arrived at the conclusions, that are glibly given, that a body is altered or renewed in such a space of time? By comparing the activities!
But what has still remained that makes those about the body aware that the same ENTITY (not body, but ENTITY) is manifesting or inhabiting - if you please - such an altered or changed body? That which shows through the activities of the soul of the body! The application that soul has made respecting that which is creative or constructive, or respecting the gifts of the Creator into the hearts and souls of individuals - or men.
In the inception of this body in the present there were those surroundings that made for different or altering conditions which brought to the physical an exceptional or unusual (in words of the earth) activity in the soul-entity. (Get the difference between the wording entity and soul-entity, for words are often very poor in describing infinity in finite space and time.) The soul-entity is a development outside of body in material form. The entity is all-inclusive of soul and that activity in its relationships to the material things known in earth.
(This aside, please:) Not that developments in environs about the earth are all soul development; yet when there are activities in Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn or the like, that are within the same realm of the earth's activity about its own sun, all these are - yea - subject to that law known as the Christ Consciousness, but not physical activity nor physical concern.
But this entity, entering under such auspices or conditions, brought with same - as we have indicated from the sojourn in the Uranian influences - that which might make for soul development or soul retardment, by its activity or by its application of the laws that are universal - or from the God-Consciousness in the realm of activity. For, as given, oft would it be said - oft HAS it been seen in the activity of the entity thus far, even in the material things and material associations - MANY have blessed the coming and many have been glad when the entity has passed from, or body has passed from, that environ or that experience.
Hence the entity or soul here wields in the earth in the present a place of POWER - yea, more than power. One that may be made into those things that may be beautiful, if they are enjoined with the love that is seen in the Creative Forces activated by the Christ Consciousness, or made in such measures that there may be warnings to many that though they gain the whole world and lose their own soul what has been gained?
From an experience, then, in the present there are the activities mentally that must be weighed in the balance; and if they are found wanting in the associations of the entity in the material things, in the mental things, woe be to many! Yet the entity has arrived at that place in this experience in the earth when it must choose for itself.
Let self, body, mind and soul, then, be grounded in that as was given by Him who is the life and the light of the world; "As ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." For, if ye do good alone to those who do good to you, what reward has thy soul? What recompense is in thine own heart of hearts? For, even do those that would make for the aggrandizements of selfish interests, or that they may be well spoken of by many. For, if the purposes, the desires, the aims, do not take hold upon something far beyond those things that partake of the earth-earthy, then indeed does the soul become impoverished and the time and space grow weary - and those things that make for turmoils and strife, that make the heart and soul weary, come into the experience of all. But if the heart and mind forgive those who despitefully use them, those that speak evil in divers places, those that find fault with others will find fault in themselves; for they are writing their own record - they must meet, every one, that which they have said about another; for so is the image, the soul of the Creator in each body, and when ye speak evil of or unkindly to thy brother, thou hast done it unto thy God.
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