but behind that formal façade he genuinely cared about people and reached out to meet their needs. Two of his letters, written over 50 years ago, are still in my files. The first one referred to a theological matter we had discussed but not resolved; the second alluded to his intervention on behalf of our infant son when he was seriously ill. Edgar Cayce set the precedent for reaching out to uplift others, but Hugh Lynn incorporated that philosophy into the A.R.E. standards of operation where it continues to this day.
How we think and act in our relationships with one another determines our own destiny and contributes to the universal destiny of mankind. Therefore we may drift aimlessly through life or choose consciously to awaken spiritually and return to a state of oneness with God. In this difficult undertaking, the Edgar Cayce Life Readings—revealing strengths, weaknesses and inclinations—are invaluable because they emphasize human conditions common to all of us.
Because we seldom review a life reading in entirety, one will be included at the end of this book, followed by a personal evaluation, “The Impact of a Life Reading,” written by the recipient many years later. That person is Lytle W. Robinson.
Tucson, Arizona
July, 2007
Foreword
Every once in awhile a man comes along who completely upsets the accepted scheme of things. What he says or does challenges our entire concept of the natural and the normal; a new path is cut through the jungle of the unknown.
Sigmund Freud once said that there are three steps in the history of a great discovery. First, its opponents say that the discoverer is crazy; later, that he is insane and that his discovery is of no real importance; and last, that the discovery is important but everybody has known it right along.
Edgar Cayce did not discover anything in that sense of the word, but his diagnoses, treatments, analyses, and predictions have done much to bring attention to a new concept of the power of the human mind. He has been called “The Sleeping Prophet,” “America’s Greatest Psychic,” “The Mystery Man of Virginia Beach,” “The Man Who Saw Today, Tomorrow, and Yesterday.”
Although Cayce died in 1945, his over 14,000 readings, given while in a state of deep sleep or self-hypnosis, are very much alive and gaining new respect. His principle biography, There Is a River, by Thomas Sugrue, is now widely available, and it first appeared in 1942. Many books on his life and works have been translated into German, French, Japanese, and even Sinhalese. His contributions to modern thinking in the fields of medicine, theology, philosophy, and parapsychology are considerable. Gradually, the Cayce records are becoming recognized as an intriguing, provocative, valid source of information. The historical references dealt with in this volume, controversial to be sure, are nevertheless enlightening. Predictions in national and international affairs, many of which are even now transpiring, are perceptive indeed. They are discussed in Part Three.
Cayce (pronounced Casey) had the uncanny ability of putting himself to sleep at will and speaking in an authoritative voice on subjects far beyond the range of his normal knowledge. He was not even an avid reader of books. All he needed was the subject to be discussed, or the inquiring person’s name, address, and whereabouts, a conductor to make suggestions and ask the questions, and a stenographer to take it all down. Almost every day for forty-two years, he went to sleep and answered questions covering an immense range of subject matter. He could do this at any time, any place. There were no darkened rooms, turbans, incense, crystal balls, or paying audiences.
Cayce’s mind was apparently able to transcend time and space. A man in Texas wanted to know where he could find an Ellicott machine and was told there were two in Austin. A man in Wyoming was admonished at the beginning of a reading to “Come back here and sit down!” A man in his New York apartment was given a rare compliment: “Not bad looking pajamas.” Such side remarks were easy to confirm, and they almost invariably proved to be accurate.
A skeptical businessman challenged Cayce to trace his steps on the way to his office. The man stopped at a tobacco store and bought two cigars, instead of one as was his habit. He decided to walk up to his office rather than wait for the elevator. Inside, he proceeded to open his morning’s mail as usual.
Cayce, asleep in Virginia Beach, gave his reading. The unbelieving executive was flabbergasted when he received the report. The clairvoyant not only had described his every move in detail but had even read his letters!
Cayce’s mind apparently could “see” past events as well as the present and future. An unsolved theft of bonds had been committed, and a private detective, stymied without any clues, obtained a reading. Cayce went to sleep and described the thief, saying he had been helped by a woman on the inside; they were staying in a hotel in western Pennsylvania and had the bonds with them. The woman was identified as having a red birthmark on her thigh and two toes grown together on her left foot, the result of a childhood burn.
Excitedly, the detective phoned long-distance to the owner of the bonds, whose response could be heard across the room: “I don’t recognize the man, but the woman couldn’t be anybody but my wife! She told me she was going to Chicago to visit her sister!”
By the time police reached the hotel, the man and woman had checked out, but subsequent readings traced them to Columbus, Ohio, where they were trapped in another hotel. Later, Cayce was to say, “I don’t like hounding people that way—even if they are guilty.”
The one thing he wanted most was for the readings to become respectable, although persons from all walks of life came to him for help or advice. Among them were a movie producer, an actress, a top steel magnate, a U.S. senator, a vice-president of the United States, parents, the sick, the lame, the disturbed. Scientific investigation, which he so desired, drew scant attention. The few qualified scholars who did sit in on readings were as nonplussed as the most unscholarly layperson.
The history of Cayce’s life and works is indeed one of the most puzzling of our age. His life story sounds like a mixture of the Old Testament and a science-fiction novel. A summary appears in the Appendix. His strange gift of clairvoyance has never been duplicated in modern times, although a few other psychics have proved a measure of ability beyond any doubt. For a period of forty-two years, he devoted himself to extrasensory perception in many fields of thought, and verbatim reports of what he had to say are still on file in the custody of the Edgar Cayce Foundation at Virginia Beach. His readings, some 50,000 single-spaced, typewritten pages, constitute perhaps the largest collection of psychic data in the world.
Quartered in the same building is the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Inc., which disseminates the information contained in the readings. It is a busy place. Besides the library and offices, there is an auditorium, a therapy department, publications room, press, and a broad, tiled veranda overlooking the ocean. With the steadily growing interest and membership, an ever-increasing staff of workers handles volumes of inquiries, special requests, announcements, and literature. Visitors are welcomed and shown about the plant and grounds; everyone, of course, wants to see the readings. To the skeptic there is an appropriate answer; in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”
The Cayce records are unique. Twenty million words from an unconscious mind is not a commonplace. If they can be believed, new frontiers wait to be explored. Clairvoyance, clairaudience, dreams, hypnotism point the way to a better understanding of the history and depth of the human mind and soul. A challenging field lies before man in his search for truth and the meaning of human existence in the earth.
The thesis of this chronicle, based on the Edgar Cayce records, is that man is a spiritual being, that the great continent of Atlantis was a fact, that fleeting Atlanteans settled in many areas of nearby lands,
