The Essential Edgar Cayce Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  CHAPTER ONE - THE NATURE OF REALITY

  CHAPTER TWO - THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND SPIRIT

  CHAPTER THREE - HEALTHY LIVING

  CHAPTER FOUR - HOLISTIC HEALING

  CHAPTER FIVE - THE SOUL’S JOURNEY: REINCARNATION AND LIFE PURPOSE

  CHAPTER SIX - SOUL DEVELOPMENT AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH

  CHAPTER SEVEN - ESOTERIC CHRISTIANITY

  CHAPTER EIGHT - SOCIAL VISION

  EPILOGUE

  APPENDIX 1 - HOW TO READ AND STUDY A CAYCE READING

  APPENDIX 2 - EDGAR CAYCE AND ASTROLOGY

  APPENDIX 3 - EDGAR CAYCE ON SEXUALITY

  APPENDIX 4 - RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  ABOUT THE EDITOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY MARK THURSTON ✜

  Twelve Positive Habits of Spiritually Centered People

  (COAUTHOR)

  Edgar Cayce’s Guide to Spirituality for Busy People

  Synchronicity as Spiritual Guidance

  Millennium Prophecies

  The Edgar Cayce Handbook for Creating

  Your Future (COAUTHOR)

  Soul-Purpose: Discovering and Fulfilling Your Destiny

  Dreams: Tonight’s Answers for Tomorrow’s Questions

  Paradox of Free Will

  The Inner Power of Silence

  Discovering Your Soul’s Purpose

  How to Interpret Your Dreams

  Face to Face

  (COAUTHOR)

  Understand and Develop Your ESP

  Experiments in Practical Spirituality

  Experiments in a Search for God

  Meditation and the Mind of Man

  (COAUTHOR)

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  Copyright © 2004 by Mark Thurston, Ph.D.

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  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cayce, Edgar, 1877-1945.

  [Selections. 2004]

  The essential Edgar Cayce / edited and introduced by Mark Thurston.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-61887-1

  1. Parapsychology. 2. Occultism. I. Thurston, Mark A. II. Title.

  BF1027.C3A

  133.8’092—dc22

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to Hugh Lynn Cayce,

  eldest son of Edgar and Gertrude Cayce.

  From 1968 until his passing in 1982, Hugh Lynn

  was a treasured teacher, mentor, friend,

  and professional colleague who was

  the most valuable person in my

  life for understanding the

  principles in his father’s

  remarkable teachings.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to thank several individuals who have been instrumental in helping to shape the ideas in this book. In addition to Hugh Lynn Cayce, I am grateful to Gladys Davis Turner, Edgar Evans Cayce, Mae St. Clair, Mary Elizabeth Lynch, Harmon Bro, Herbert Puryear, Richard Drummond, Richard Otto, Linda Quest, Scott Sparrow, Henry Reed, Christopher Fazel, Charles Thomas Cayce, Paul Johnson, Kevin Todeschi, and Stuart Dean.

  My thanks also go to Mitch Horowitz, executive editor at Tarcher/Penguin, for his support, enthusiasm, creative insight, and professionalism in helping bring this project to fruition; thanks also to Tarcher/ Penguin publisher Joel Fotinos for his support of the project; and to Tony Davis for his excellent copy-editing.

  INTRODUCTION

  THE LIFE AND THOUGHT OF EDGAR CAYCE

  Edgar Cayce was one of the most remarkable and mysterious men of the twentieth century. Sometimes called “the Sleeping Prophet” or “the Miracle Man of Virginia Beach,” he was stuck with taglines that more often than not reflected the sensationalistic side of his work rather than its real depth and meaning. At the core, Cayce was a Christian mystic philosopher and an intuitive healer. For the forty-three years of his adult life, he taught by delivering discourses, or by giving “readings” while in a prayer-induced trance, which were transcribed by a secretary or family member because he could recall nothing once the twenty- to forty-five-minute sessions were over.

  The sheer volume of Edgar Cayce’s output is immense. There are some 14,306 transcripts in existence today, both in print and, since the early 1990s, electronic format. Two-thirds of his readings offer holistic recommendations for treating specific physical ailments and diseases, due to the fact that he began his career as a medical intuitive and throughout his life most of those who sought him out requested readings of a medical nature; all of his biographers, in fact, provide fascinating anecdotal evidence of the success of these prescriptive readings (see appendix 4, “Recommended Resources,” page 276). The remaining third of Cayce’s work focused on spiritual growth, dream interpretation, ancient civilizations, reincarnation, life purpose, and the many pragmatic issues of trying to integrate body, mind, and spirit into daily life, including such everyday issues as parenting and even business practices.

  Although The Essential Edgar Cayce is fundamentally about his teachings and philosophy, it is important to know something about the man as well. Cayce’s ideas were often shaped by thing about the man as well. Cayce’s ideas were often shaped by his personal beliefs and by the difficult times in which he lived, including the Great Depression and two world wars. As editor and commentator for this book, I should begin by noting that I never met Edgar Cayce; he died in 1945, five years before I was born. But for more than thirty years I have worked professionally for the two organizations he cofounded, and I have spent countless hours with dozens of individuals who knew him and worked with him directly, including his two sons, Hugh Lynn and Edgar Evans, and his secretary, Gladys Davis Turner. Thanks to their memories of him, I feel I have garnered at least my own personal understanding of what this man was like and the bedrock from which his extraordinary teachings sprang. I personally have applied many of the readings to my everyday life, including his recommendations for maintaining health through nutrition, massage, and various home remedies. I have also been helped greatly by Cayce’s suggestions for practical spiritual disciplines—meditation, dream interpretation, developing intuition, to name just a few.

  Before looking into the details of Edgar Cayce’s life, let’s consider briefly how the man and his work are viewed in the early twenty-first century, which differs according to the audience. Here are three groups that have been intrigued by his work.

  For those interested in holistic health, Cayce is generally revered as a pioneer of the body-mind-spirit approach to healing. Yet many people today view his understanding of the human body and his recommendations a
s antiquated. He was doing the best with what he had, they might argue, but surely we know so much more now that it hardly seems worthwhile studying him closely. Others see things differently; they assert that we are only just beginning to understand Cayce and his natural approach to healing.

  Another audience is in the field of parapsychology—the scientific study of psychic ability. They have long been puzzled about what to do with Cayce, even while he was still alive. While the anecdotal evidence for his gift was almost overwhelming, there were no carefully controlled double-blind experiments conducted to test his skills. And so he remains an awkward figure for parapsychologists, someone who has caused millions to look at the possibilities of the psychic yet who has no scientifically proven ability.

  A still larger audience is made up of those in the so-called New Age movement. They are seeking meaning, purpose, and direction in life in ways that have taken them outside of mainstream religion. How is Cayce seen and understood by these nontraditional seekers? Unfortunately, many have an image of him as prognosticator. Their seeking is largely a matter of trying to find out what will make them feel safer in this troubled world. And so what catches their eye is the ubiquitous newsstand tabloid with Cayce’s picture on the front announcing some heretofore unknown prophecy about the year ahead. For them, he is another Nostradamus. Unseen by them are his teachings about health, spirituality, and responsible living.

  But there is another audience of seekers who have seen past this superficial take on Edgar Cayce. For them, his teachings become a stimulus to look at their lives in a whole new way, to see their own religious traditions in a new light, to recognize new pathways to spirituality open to them, to generally rethink what life is all about. It’s a worldview that recognizes the capacity of each individual to make an intuitive connection with the spiritual world, even exploring such concepts as reincarnation. In fact, Cayce was a significant pioneer in the many disciplines that have gained widespread acceptance in the decades since his death. Among these approaches:

  • The value of dreams as a tool for self-understanding and guidance. Cayce foresaw dreams as a safe and reliable way to explore one’s own soul and to gain insight about practical life decisions. What’s more, he was among the first to advocate dream interpretation as best done by the dreamer himself.

  • The importance of meditation as a spiritual discipline. Although meditation is an ancient practice best known to Eastern religions, Cayce evolved an approach that was easy to learn and easy to apply to the Judeo-Christian world in which he lived.

  • A perspective on reincarnation, karma, and grace that is potentially acceptable to the Judeo-Christian world. Cayce presents reincarnation as an inescapable reality of how the universe operates; but, according to his theories, the harsh, retributive flavor of karma is softened by insistence that the healing and reconciling influences of grace are also available to every soul.

  • An approach to astrology that recognizes past lives and the influence of the planets, especially with regard to helping people find a sense of purpose in life. Cayce’s approach to astrology was not the familiar, benign sun signs of today, nor the deterministic brand that believes that the stars control our fate. Instead, he used the influence of the planets as a way of describing innate temperament and its impact upon the personality and aptitude.

  The many ways in which Edgar Cayce is viewed today is testimony to the breadth of his work. People are able to relate to him in different ways not only because of their own “filters” but also because of the scope of the material itself. It is very easy to get lost, in fact, in its sheer variety, and very hard to grasp all that he has to offer.

  And it is just this problem that this book addresses. What is the “essence” of Cayce’s material? What are the most basic theories, principles, and teachings illuminated in the thousands of discourses he presented between 1901 and 1944?

  There are no simple answers. But if we’re willing to put aside preconceived notions about clairvoyantly derived knowledge or Cayce’s qualifications as a spiritual philosopher (or lack thereof), then we really can find the heart of his material. Indeed, there really is an “essential” Edgar Cayce, and it may reveal some real surprises.

  THE LIFE OF AN INTUITIVE HEALER

  One of the most significant books written in recent years about Edgar Cayce is K. Paul Johnson’s 1998 Edgar Cayce in Context. Johnson’s theme is that Cayce can be understood only by viewing the man in the context of his own life story, and, more important, in the context of his own time. Adhering to this premise, let’s consider the prominent events of Cayce’s life, as well as some of the social and cultural factors that went into shaping it and his teachings.

  Born in 1877, in rural Kentucky, Edgar Cayce was largely the product of a conservative Southern Protestant upbringing. It was just a dozen years since the end of the Civil War, and even though his home state had not joined the Confederacy—Kentucky was one of the so-called border states—it was surely a place where the tensions between North and South were still acutely felt.

  The farm Cayce grew up on was in the southwestern part of the state, just outside the small town of Hopkinsville; the nearest big city was Nashville, Tennessee, nearly two hundred miles to the southeast. Hopkinsville is right in the heart of Christian County, and in Cayce’s youth it was a God-fearing agricultural community with tobacco as its primary crop.

  Like all of us, Cayce’s developing personality was profoundly influenced by his parents. His mother, Carrie, was, by all accounts, a powerful influence. Warm and nurturing, she was a deeply religious woman, and surely a major factor in fostering the young Edgar’s profound dedication to the Bible and religious life. While still a boy, he made a deep commitment to read the Bible daily. Photographs of Carrie show a pleasant-looking, rather round-faced woman with kind eyes.

  But the young Cayce’s relationship with the men in the family was seemingly more complex. By some accounts, his paternal grandfather, Thomas Cayce, was a strong influence on him, better modeling the masculine aspects of strength and accomplishment coupled with sensitivity than did Edgar’s own father, Leslie. Sadly, however, Thomas drowned when the horse he was riding threw him into a lake, which the four-year-old witnessed and no doubt was traumatized by. Years later, as an adult, Edgar wrote of this trying experience in his diary, which was not published until 1997 in Edgar Cayce: My Life as a Seer, edited by A. Robert Smith. About the death of his grandfather Cayce wrote, “I often wonder just what effect these associations of thought have had on my mental being or my activities in this life.”

  Thomas Cayce, a rather handsome man with a full beard but no mustache, was considered a clairvoyant in his own right, although he was confused about his gift and therefore cautious about it. Edgar recalled riding with Thomas and being able to hear disembodied voices speaking to him. “I also saw him move tables and other articles, apparently without any contact with these objects themselves.” But when the younger Cayce asked about these strange phenomena, the elder Cayce said, simply, “I don’t know what the power is, but don’t fool with it.” Although Edgar was so young when Thomas died, modern psychology has it that his childhood experiences shaped his adult personality profoundly, and from his grandfather Edgar learned that psychic ability was a real force deserving of his greatest respect.

  Edgar Cayce’s relationship with his father is glossed over by many biographers. Often referred to affectionately as “the Squire,” Leslie in photographs is dashingly good-looking, sporting a prominent handlebar mustache. But he was not a particularly successful man, moving from one job to another and never really settling into a career. And although pretty much a family secret, some report that he had a problem with alcohol for much of his adult life. When Edgar began to demonstrate clairvoyance as a young man, it was Leslie who was eager to explore this mental power, including its commercial potential. Since exploitation dogged Cayce for most of his adult life, it is difficult to say whether he considered his father’s involvement as a supportiv
e, protective influence, or as a potentially threatening one.

  Family stories about Edgar Cayce’s early years reveal that from a very early age he possessed uncanny powers that would surface spontaneously. At the age of six or seven, he told his parents he sometimes saw visions, and even occasionally spoke with relatives who had recently died. His parents, for the most part, attributed these experiences to an overactive imagination and paid them little attention.

  Perhaps the most celebrated psychic experience of Edgar’s childhood happened when he was thirteen years old, an event his first biographer, Thomas Sugrue, made the centerpiece of his highly influential There Is a River of 1943. Edgar had become an avid Bible reader when he was ten, no doubt inspired by his mother and her attendance at Christian revival meetings so very popular in America during the Reconstruction era. He had vowed to read the Bible in its entirety every year for the rest of his life, a promise he apparently kept—an expression of true dedication and a remarkable achievement in its own right. One day, he had a vision, which he describes in his own memoirs:

  One evening I had my first vision. I had read through the Book [i.e., the Bible] several times by then. I had been reading the vision of Manoah, for I loved the story of Samson. I prayed very earnestly that afternoon as I sat in the woods by my favorite tree that had so often seemed to speak to me. . . .