The American public was first widely exposed to reincarnationist thought through the work of Edger Cayce and the many books that were spawned by his extraordinary psychic gift. The first such book, There Is A River, by Thomas Sugrue, was developed during Sugrue's intimate association with Cayce and was first published by Henry Holt and Company in 1942, still regarded as the most definitive study of Cayce's life.
Below is an excerpt from my book, Whispers From the Soul: The Divine Dance of Consciousness by Don and Linda Pendleton.
Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1877, Edger Cayce was but twelve years old when the first awakening of his mystical nature became manifest. A Biblical scholar with an innate religious sense, he had very early on resolved to read the Holy Bible from cover to cover at least once for every year of his life. By the age of twelve, he had read the entire Bible twelve times. His favorite reading spot was in a playhouse which he had built for himself beside a creek in the woods where he went every afternoon to study the Bible.
While so engrossed one day, reading the story of Manoah in the Book of Judges, in which the conception of Samson by his barren mother was revealed to her and her husband, Manoah, by an angel who later ascended into heaven, the young Cayce looked up to see a woman standing before him. "I thought it was my mother, come to fetch me home for the chores. Then I saw that she was not my mother, and that she had wings on her back. She said to me, 'Your prayers have been answered, little boy. Tell me what it is you want most of all, so that I may give it to you.' I was very frightened, but after a minute I managed to say, 'Most of all I would like to be helpful to other people, especially children.' Then she disappeared...the next day in school I couldn't spell a word, and was kept after school...that night I slept on my spelling book and knew everything in the book when I woke up."
Cayce had a rather routine and uneventful life during his early adulthood but the event that was to profoundly change his life occurred when he was twenty-three. He became ill and lost his voice, unable to speak for nearly a year except in a whisper, and sought the help of a hypnotist after all medical remedies had failed.
While under hypnosis, he spoke without difficulty in a clear and natural voice. But then something incredible was also going on. As his speech began, his first words were, "Yes, we can see the body." This was soon to become recognized as a standard "opening statement" from his deep hypnotic trance state, the signal that he was in contact with another reality–and this first "reading" was to provide the diagnosis, treatment and cure of his own affliction.
The message through Cayce's voice continued, "In the normal state, this body is unable to speak, due to a partial paralysis of the inferior muscles of the vocal chords, produced by nerve strain. This is a psychological condition producing a physical effect. This may be removed by increasing the circulation to the affected parts by suggestion while in this unconscious condition."
This was but the beginning of the most astounding Odyssey of psychic experiences ever documented during modern times. While in deep trance, Cayce was able to diagnose illness and prescribe treatment for others even at long distance and with no physical contact between Cayce and his patients.
One of Cayce's earliest consultations was for a five year old girl who had been ill for three years and was suspected of some degree of mental retardation, suffering from convulsive seizures following an attack of grippe [influenza] at age two. She had been seen by many medical specialist without relief and the seizure episodes were intensifying, then experiencing up to twenty per day at the time Cayce was asked to help her. Through his trance state, it was determined that the child had suffered an injury to her lower spine as a result of a fall from her carriage days before the onset of flu symptoms. Cayce's diagnosis showed that the grippe germs had settled in the injured spine area which produced the convulsions and subsequent lack of mental development. He recommended specific, gentle osteopathic adjustments of the spine. The first adjustment was not dramatically effective and a subsequent reading told the doctor that the adjustment was not quite right. The following adjustment was properly done according to a "check-reading" and instructions were given to continue the spinal adjustments every day for the next three weeks. Within a week, the child was responding dramatically. At the end of the third week, Cayce, in trance, reported that the condition had been corrected and that the child was developing normally and would continue to do so without further treatments. By the time three months had passed, the child was normal in all respects and regaining the mental growth lost during those three years.
His medical readings assisted thousands of men, women and children around the world for the next twenty-two years before he entered a new phase in 1923, the "life readings" for the mind and soul, which produced the first reincarnation/past-lives and prophetic studies, the centerpiece of Cayce's work from that point forward until shortly before his death twenty-one years later.
Cayce, a devout Christian, was deeply concerned by the past-life readings, plunging him into a concerted study of the scriptures before he was able to reconcile these apparent conflicts with his Christian beliefs.
The A.R.E., Association for Research and Enlightenment, was founded by Cayce and supporters in 1931 at Virginia Beach, Virginia. Cayce died in 1945 at the age of sixty-seven but the A.R.E. foundation remains highly active to this day. More than thirty thousand stenographic records of his diagnoses, life readings and case studies, containing affidavits and reports by physicians and patients, are still being categorized, researched and published by the foundation.
Cayce was characterized as a clairvoyant and, indeed, he seemed more comfortable with that idea and preferred to think that he was merely somehow able to tap into the "Akashic Record," which is the concept that every thought, every movement, every sound since the beginning of creation is indelibly impressed into the fundamental etheric substance of the universe. One might say, impressed into the memory of God. Carl Jung's collective unconscious would seem to suggest something of this nature.
However, by Cayce's own records, it did seem that from time to time he was communicating directly with the consciousness of individual souls on the other side and sometimes engaged in dialogues with them. He did not appear to be "taken over" in any physical sense by another entity during his trance state though on occasion an entity would speak through him. It could be noted that Cayce consciously had no memory whatever of the sessions until he read them from the transcripts.
Apparently, also, Cayce was able to see auras and to diagnose medical conditions while in a complete waking state, thus it is obvious that he did possess a superior psychic sense in or out of trance.
From our own personal direct association with other trance-mediums, the entities who come through these mediums exhibit definite and memorable personality traits which could not be ascribed to some impersonal source such as the "Akashic Record." These spirits are usually highly personal, even engaging in quite detailed discussions with their clients, are often very humorous, displaying strongly identifiable mannerisms and figures of speech.
Whatever the source of Edgar Cayce's spectacular gifts, they have provided new windows through which ordinary people may perceive reality and often transform their lives.
We all are richer because of Edgar Cayce.
© Copyright 2003 by Linda Pendleton. All Rights Reserved.
Below is an excerpt from my book, Whispers From the Soul: The Divine Dance of Consciousness by Don and Linda Pendleton.
Born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1877, Edger Cayce was but twelve years old when the first awakening of his mystical nature became manifest. A Biblical scholar with an innate religious sense, he had very early on resolved to read the Holy Bible from cover to cover at least once for every year of his life. By the age of twelve, he had read the entire Bible twelve times. His favorite reading spot was in a playhouse which he had built for himself beside a creek in the woods where he went every afternoon to study the Bible.
While so engrossed one day, reading the story of Manoah in the Book of Judges, in which the conception of Samson by his barren mother was revealed to her and her husband, Manoah, by an angel who later ascended into heaven, the young Cayce looked up to see a woman standing before him. "I thought it was my mother, come to fetch me home for the chores. Then I saw that she was not my mother, and that she had wings on her back. She said to me, 'Your prayers have been answered, little boy. Tell me what it is you want most of all, so that I may give it to you.' I was very frightened, but after a minute I managed to say, 'Most of all I would like to be helpful to other people, especially children.' Then she disappeared...the next day in school I couldn't spell a word, and was kept after school...that night I slept on my spelling book and knew everything in the book when I woke up."
Cayce had a rather routine and uneventful life during his early adulthood but the event that was to profoundly change his life occurred when he was twenty-three. He became ill and lost his voice, unable to speak for nearly a year except in a whisper, and sought the help of a hypnotist after all medical remedies had failed.
While under hypnosis, he spoke without difficulty in a clear and natural voice. But then something incredible was also going on. As his speech began, his first words were, "Yes, we can see the body." This was soon to become recognized as a standard "opening statement" from his deep hypnotic trance state, the signal that he was in contact with another reality–and this first "reading" was to provide the diagnosis, treatment and cure of his own affliction.
The message through Cayce's voice continued, "In the normal state, this body is unable to speak, due to a partial paralysis of the inferior muscles of the vocal chords, produced by nerve strain. This is a psychological condition producing a physical effect. This may be removed by increasing the circulation to the affected parts by suggestion while in this unconscious condition."
This was but the beginning of the most astounding Odyssey of psychic experiences ever documented during modern times. While in deep trance, Cayce was able to diagnose illness and prescribe treatment for others even at long distance and with no physical contact between Cayce and his patients.
One of Cayce's earliest consultations was for a five year old girl who had been ill for three years and was suspected of some degree of mental retardation, suffering from convulsive seizures following an attack of grippe [influenza] at age two. She had been seen by many medical specialist without relief and the seizure episodes were intensifying, then experiencing up to twenty per day at the time Cayce was asked to help her. Through his trance state, it was determined that the child had suffered an injury to her lower spine as a result of a fall from her carriage days before the onset of flu symptoms. Cayce's diagnosis showed that the grippe germs had settled in the injured spine area which produced the convulsions and subsequent lack of mental development. He recommended specific, gentle osteopathic adjustments of the spine. The first adjustment was not dramatically effective and a subsequent reading told the doctor that the adjustment was not quite right. The following adjustment was properly done according to a "check-reading" and instructions were given to continue the spinal adjustments every day for the next three weeks. Within a week, the child was responding dramatically. At the end of the third week, Cayce, in trance, reported that the condition had been corrected and that the child was developing normally and would continue to do so without further treatments. By the time three months had passed, the child was normal in all respects and regaining the mental growth lost during those three years.
His medical readings assisted thousands of men, women and children around the world for the next twenty-two years before he entered a new phase in 1923, the "life readings" for the mind and soul, which produced the first reincarnation/past-lives and prophetic studies, the centerpiece of Cayce's work from that point forward until shortly before his death twenty-one years later.
Cayce, a devout Christian, was deeply concerned by the past-life readings, plunging him into a concerted study of the scriptures before he was able to reconcile these apparent conflicts with his Christian beliefs.
The A.R.E., Association for Research and Enlightenment, was founded by Cayce and supporters in 1931 at Virginia Beach, Virginia. Cayce died in 1945 at the age of sixty-seven but the A.R.E. foundation remains highly active to this day. More than thirty thousand stenographic records of his diagnoses, life readings and case studies, containing affidavits and reports by physicians and patients, are still being categorized, researched and published by the foundation.
Cayce was characterized as a clairvoyant and, indeed, he seemed more comfortable with that idea and preferred to think that he was merely somehow able to tap into the "Akashic Record," which is the concept that every thought, every movement, every sound since the beginning of creation is indelibly impressed into the fundamental etheric substance of the universe. One might say, impressed into the memory of God. Carl Jung's collective unconscious would seem to suggest something of this nature.
However, by Cayce's own records, it did seem that from time to time he was communicating directly with the consciousness of individual souls on the other side and sometimes engaged in dialogues with them. He did not appear to be "taken over" in any physical sense by another entity during his trance state though on occasion an entity would speak through him. It could be noted that Cayce consciously had no memory whatever of the sessions until he read them from the transcripts.
Apparently, also, Cayce was able to see auras and to diagnose medical conditions while in a complete waking state, thus it is obvious that he did possess a superior psychic sense in or out of trance.
From our own personal direct association with other trance-mediums, the entities who come through these mediums exhibit definite and memorable personality traits which could not be ascribed to some impersonal source such as the "Akashic Record." These spirits are usually highly personal, even engaging in quite detailed discussions with their clients, are often very humorous, displaying strongly identifiable mannerisms and figures of speech.
Whatever the source of Edgar Cayce's spectacular gifts, they have provided new windows through which ordinary people may perceive reality and often transform their lives.
We all are richer because of Edgar Cayce.
© Copyright 2003 by Linda Pendleton. All Rights Reserved.
Read Part One: There is a River: Edger Cayce, A Life Changing Book
~Linda
3 comments:
My favorite part of the book, There is a River, is the following excerpt:
Man demands a beginning and a boundary,
so in the beginning there was
a sea of spirit and it filled all space.
It was static - content - aware of itself -
a giant resting on the bosom of its thought -
contemplating that which was.
Then it moved.
It withdrew into itself until all space was empty.
That which had filled the empty was shining
from its center, a restless, seething mind.
This was the Individual of the Spirit.
This was what it discovered itself
to be when it awakened.
This was God.
I have my own interpretation of this paragraph. All that exists is a particle of a creator that split itself into an infinite number of separate entities. Though each particle considers itself a totally separate entity, the final destination of it's experiences and awareness would still render itself to its original creator. God, or the brain, would be the final receptor of these experiences just like our brains receive all the signals from every cell of our body. We feel the pain or pleasure of all that touches us.
This is definitely an out of the box idea, but it puts more meaning to the words "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". In others words what you do to others, you do to yourself.
If there is more than one creator or God, the only word you would have to remove from the above equation is infinite. There could be an infinite number of Gods out there who did the exact same thing and divided themselves into billions upon billions of particles. These particles could be material and spiritual. Science has moved strong in the direction of many dimensions and existences that we do not see. They are even tending towards the idea that there are many universes. They call a group of universes a multiverse. I call it a universopolis.
Stepping a bit further out of the box. If the final destination of our memories and self awareness is the one mind, God of our universe, ultimately your desire to be that famous singer, actor, scientist or admired figure could come true. We are all one.
These are just ideas and I don't ever limit myself to one ultimate philosophy. Through life, I have changed by perceptions of life and the universe many times and I am sure I will again. If I ever got to the point that I felt I had the ultimate truth, it would not be a blessing to me. Life without wonder would be extremely boring.
I only wish Edger Cayce would have lived longer and poured more catalist into this formula of wonder. He was truly a modern day prophet.
Thank you for this, Linda. I have not read the book but intend to look for it now.
Edgar Cayce reminds human beings they each change the world through their own thoughts, feeligns and edeavours. His life is an uplifting story that encourages people to open their hearts ,minds and souls to possibilities.
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