It's a great misfortune to have a disability or an incurable disease. While seeing that others are healthy and full of energy, these people can only endure excruciating pain brought about by their illness. People often complain to the heavens for the injustice they seem to suffer. They ask: "Why do I have to suffer misfortune?"
Regarding these "injustices," Dafa cultivators think they are the result of evil deeds committed in previous lives. In other words, people live many lives and their karma is connected with afflictions and illnesses in this life. In the West, many doctors and scholars have been able to find out about patients' previous lives and thus determine the true cause of their pains and sicknesses in this life.
In her book Many Mansions: The Edgar Cayce Story on Reincarnation, Dr. Gina Cerminara lists examples of treating patients through readings of their previous lives by Edgar Cayce (1877 -- 1945), a famous American psychic. Edgar Cayce had the ability to give "readings" on patients who were thousands of miles away after he entered into a self-induced sleep state.
Among the many cases "read" by Edgar Cayce, some were traced back to the ancient Roman Empire. Some of the patients in these cases participated in the persecution of Christians, directly or indirectly.
One of them was a 45-year-old woman. She was paralyzed by polio at the age of 36 and had to rely on a wheelchair to get around. After unsuccessfully trying many treatments, she found Cayce and asked him to give her a reading of her previous lives. She learned that the reason for her paralysis in this life was what she had done in ancient Rome. Between 37-68 AD, she was a member of the royal court when Emperor Nero persecuted Christians. She not only had no sympathy for the Christians who were mutilated in the coliseum, but she also sneered at them. The price for her cold sneers was to be paralyzed in this life.
Another patient was a girl. She was an aristocrat in her previous life during Nero's rule, and she enjoyed watching Christians being tortured in the coliseum. She even laughed loudly when she saw a young girl's body torn apart by a lion. This aristocrat who took pleasure in the martyrs' sufferings was paying back her sins with tuberculosis.
Another case involved a movie producer who suffered from polio at the age of 17. He had a slight limp from his bad foot. During the reading of his previous lives, Cayce found that this person had also participated in persecution against Christians. He was a soldier at the time and was ordered to persecute Christians, who did not fight back. His sin was not the result of obeying his orders as a soldier, but of sneering at people who persisted in their faith. His disability in this life was meant to awaken him.
The last patient was a boy. His back was injured in a car accident when he was 16, and he lost all feeling from the below the fifth vertebra. He could not move and had to rely on a wheelchair. Seven and a half years later, when he was 23 years old, his mother asked Cayce to do a reading for him, and two of his previous lives were read. One of them showed him as a soldier in the ancient Roman Empire during the early period of the persecution of Christianity. He was very conceited and took pleasure in the Christians' sufferings. He also directly participated in the persecution, and so he had to endure pain in this life.
The readings on these people indicated the true cause of their pain and suffering--they used to laugh at and persecute people who persisted in their faith. At the same time, the readings show that behind the superficial illness-causing elements, an invisible force that exists on an unknown and deeper level is controlling people's fates. It also supports the old Chinese proverb, "Good is rewarded with good; evil is met with evil." That is not merely a saying. Although the patients in the first two cases did not directly participate in the persecution, they did not support the righteous. So they had to pay with suffering for their ignorance and callousness in previous lives. As for those who were directly involved in the persecution, exemplified by the fourth patient, they had to endure excruciating pain even at a young age. Retribution never misses by even a hair.
