For the psychic sojourner author Jess Stearns called “the sleeping prophet” answers to questions dealing with life’s unexplained mysteries welled up from the depths of his super-conscious mind (his terminology) while he lay motionless in a self-induced trance. At his side, a stenographer dutifully took detailed notes on the thousands of personal readings Edgar Cayce delivered for clients over a 40-year period that ended with his death in 1945.
Cayce was born on a farm in rural Hopkinsville, Ky., in 1877, and displayed unique psychic abilities early on. For example, the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E), the organization founded to preserve and archive records of his life’s work in Virginia Beach, Va., reports that as a boy Cayce displayed an uncanny ability to memorize the page of a book simply by sleeping on it. His adult talents were even more impressive.
A devout Christian who taught Sunday school and read the Bible from cover to cover every year, Cayce was strongly motivated to help others. He quit school in the ninth grade to help on the family farm and began reading for clients in his early twenties. Many of the 14,306 sessions recorded by his stenographer focused on holistic health and other life issues. But the “sleeping prophet” also fielded questions related to secrets of the universe – and the purpose of existence. His ability to peer into the past with uncanny psychic accuracy was demonstrated repeatedly, A.R.E. argues with conviction.
Lying on a couch with his arms folded over his stomach, Cayce would enter a deep, semi-conscious meditative state. The client might be in the room or miles away; it made little difference. Cayce was able to use the client’s written correspondence to make a psychic connection. He did every reading in an altered state and remembered nothing when the reading was over.
Cayce’s retrocognitive readings support the controversial idea that, in the past, reincarnated humans lived many lives in many different places on a physically changing and evolving earth. A past-life reading by Cayce charted the progress of a soul through the repetitive wringer of human experience; for him, life was a school room where souls learned valuable lessons fundamentally related to the exercise of free will and spiritual growth. Showcased in his readings were past-life happenings and events that were relevant to the client’s current set of circumstances in some way.
During his readings Cayce produced a wealth of insights into the ancient world. Incredibly, he claimed the history of mankind went back some 10 million years and frequently commented on hidden architectural sites and forgotten civilizations. While in his trance-like state he described a number of geological changes that have occurred over time; for example, several readings dealt with the fact that the Nile River once emptied into the Atlantic Ocean but changed its course over eons of time. When the river ran through it, what is now the Sahara desert was a very fertile and inhabited land.
Cayce wasn’t the only one telling this story. Years later, in 1986, an article in Science magazine reported that the Shuttle Imaging Radar from the Space Shuttle had discovered previously unknown river valleys beneath the driest parts of the Sahara.
Years before discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls Cayce did 171 different readings involving the Essenes, a little known Jewish sect that lived in Qumran on the Dead Sea near the caves where the religious scrolls were found. Scholars initially believed the Essenes were a monastic sect but Cayce’s readings described a close-knit society comprised of men, women and children. Subsequent archaeological evidence confirmed he was right about this.
Not all of his readings focused on the distant past. In a reading for a doctor Cayce warned of a looming stock market crash coming in 1929. And events leading up to World War II were clearly foreshadowed as well.
In other readings Cayce described the earth’s shifting magnetic poles long before the subject caught on with geoscientists. He was right-on when he reported that drops of blood would one day be used by medical doctors to diagnose illness. And in still another reading he made the connection between deep ocean currents and weather patterns on earth (La Nina and El Nino), which meteorologists didn’t begin to fully understand until the closing decades of the last century.
Remarkably, Cayce was well ahead of NASA in predicting that exoplanets were orbiting other stars in the Milky Way galaxy – and elsewhere in the universe. But this is only part of the story. He explained that our ageless souls have been in existence since the dawn of time and are sensitive to planetary vibrations in our solar system. The soul elects the time, place, situation and human condition it chooses to be born into with the timing influenced by planetary placements and alignments. Immediately prior to reincarnating in a human vessel the soul spends time sojourning in the vicinity of the planet or planets that will exert the greater influence on the reincarnated individual’s lifetime development.
According to Cayce, astrology is the earthly science that analyzes how these planetary energies interact with each other and evolve over time as the soul moves along the own path of personal growth. Between lifetimes, the individual soul is free to travel anywhere in the solar system it chooses but also among the more distant stars. Cayce reported that similar journeys are underway for souls that are advancing in other solar systems elsewhere in the universe, which is especially difficult to conceptualize given everything we now know about our expanding universe. There are an unknowable number of stars and companion exoplanets residing in billions of galaxies strung over unimaginable distances in space.
Cayce implied that the proper – or perhaps the more appropriate – study for mankind is the family of rock and gas planets that orbit our own ordinary sun. But it’s not the planets themselves but what they symbolically represent that matters most; existence is all about using available props to advance the soul’s purpose.
He offered this advice to astrologers and those who seek out astrological advice:
“Astrological aspects are but signs, symbols. No influence is of greater value or of greater help than the will of an individual…Do not attempt to be guided by, but use the astrological influences as the means to meet or to overcome the faults and failures, or to magnify the virtues in self.”
More than a hundred books have been written on various aspects of Cayce’s work and a dozen or so titles have featured his life itself. More information can be found at the edgarcayce.org website.
‘Astrology as a tool for personal growth’ is an interesting perspective that warrants further investigation within psychological frameworks.
‘Astrological influences’ can be seen as metaphors for our life’s challenges, but it remains essential to maintain a critical approach.
While Cayce’s insights are fascinating, one must consider the potential for confirmation bias in his readings.
Cayce’s ability to tap into past lives raises intriguing questions about the nature of consciousness and memory.
‘The sleeping prophet’ concept resonates with ancient traditions where altered states of consciousness provide insights beyond ordinary perception.
‘Altered states’ have been explored in various cultures; it’s compelling to compare these methodologies across different traditions.
The historical accuracy of Cayce’s predictions is remarkable, especially concerning the Essenes and the geological changes he described.
Indeed, it prompts an examination of how psychic phenomena can sometimes align with scientific discoveries.
The intersection of spirituality and science in Cayce’s readings invites a deeper exploration of how we understand human existence.