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Introduction

Edgar Cayce (pronounced KAY-see) was born on a farm near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, on March 18, 1877. As a child, he displayed unusual powers of perception. At the age of six, he told his parents that he could see and talk with “visions,” sometimes of relatives who had recently died, and even angels. He could also sleep with his head on his schoolbooks and awake with a photographic recall of their contents, even citing the page upon which the answer appeared. However, after completing seventh grade, he left school, which was not unusual for boys at that time.

When he was twenty-one, he developed a paralysis of the throat muscles, which caused him to lose his voice. When doctors were unable to find a physical cause for this condition, Edgar Cayce asked a friend to help him re-enter the same kind of hypnotic sleep that had enabled him to memorize his schoolbooks as a child. The friend gave him the necessary suggestions, and, once he was in this trance state, Cayce spoke clearly and directly without any difficulty. He instructed the “hypnotist” to give him a suggestion to increase the blood flow to his throat; when the suggestion was given, Cayce's throat turned blood red. Then, while still under hypnosis, Cayce recommended some specific medication and manipulative therapy that would aid in restoring his voice completely.

On subsequent occasions, Cayce would go into the hypnotic state to diagnose and prescribe healing for others, with much success. Doctors around Hopkinsville and Bowling Green, Kentucky, took advantage of Cayce's unique talent to diagnose their patients. They soon discovered that all Cayce needed were the name and address of a patient to “tune in” telepathically to that individual's mind and body. The patient didn't have to be near Cayce; he could tune in to the person wherever he or she was.

When one of the young MDs working with Cayce submitted a report on his strange abilities to a clinical research society in Boston, the reactions were amazing. On October 9, 1910, The New York Times carried two pages of headlines and pictures. From then on, people from all over the country sought “The Sleeping Prophet,” as he was to be known.

The routine he used for conducting a trance diagnosis was to recline on a couch, hands folded across his solar-plexus, and breathe deeply. Eventually, his eyelids would begin fluttering, and his breathing would become deep and rhythmical. This was the signal to the conductor (usually his wife, Gertrude) to make verbal contact with Cayce's subconscious by giving a suggestion. Unless this procedure was timed to synchronize with his fluttering eyelids and the change in his breathing, Cayce would proceed beyond his trance state and simply fall fast asleep. However, once the suggestion was made, Cayce would proceed to describe the patient as though he or she were sitting right next to him, his mind functioning much as an x-ray scanner, seeing into every organ of the person's body. When he was finished, he would say, “Ready for questions.” However, in many cases his mind would have already anticipated the patient's questions, answering them during the main session. Eventually, he would say, “We are through for the present,” whereupon the conductor would give the suggestion to return to normal consciousness.

If this procedure were in any way violated, Cayce would be in serious personal danger. On one occasion, he remained in a trance state for three days and had actually been given up for dead by the attending doctors.

At each session, or reading, a stenographer (usually Gladys Davis Turner, his personal secretary) would record everything Cayce said. Sometimes, during a trance session, Cayce would even correct the stenographer's spelling. It was as though his mind were in touch with everything around him and beyond.

Each client was identified with a number to keep his or her name private.

It was August 10, 1923, before anyone thought to ask the “sleeping” Cayce for insights beyond physical health – questions about life, death, and human destiny. In a small hotel room in Dayton, Ohio, Arthur Lammers asked the first set of philosophical questions that were to lead to an entirely new way of using Cayce's strange abilities. It was during this line of questioning that Cayce first began to talk about reincarnation as though it were as real and natural as the functionings of a physical body. This shocked and challenged Cayce and his family. They were deeply religious people, doing this work to help others because that's what their Christian faith taught. As a child, Cayce began to read the Bible from front to back and did so for every year of his life. Reincarnation was not part of the Cayce family's reality. Yet the healings and help continued to come. So the Cayce family continued with the physical material but cautiously reflected on the strange philosophical material. Ultimately, the Cayces began to accept the ideas, though not as reincarnation, per se. Edgar Cayce preferred to call it “the continuity of life.” He felt that the Bible did contain much evidence that life, the true life in the Spirit, is continual.

Eventually, Edgar Cayce, following advice from his own readings, moved to Virginia Beach, Virginia, and set up a hospital where he continued to conduct his physical readings for the health of others. But he also continued this new line of readings called life readings. From 1925 through 1944, he conducted some 2,500 of these life readings, casually describing the past lives of individuals as though everyone believed reincarnation to be a reality. Such subjects as deep-seated fears, mental blocks, vocational talents, innate urges and abilities, marriage difficulties, child training, etc., were examined in the light of what the readings called the “karmic patterns” resulting from previous lives experienced by the individual's soul on the Earth plane.

When he died on January 3, 1945, in Virginia Beach, he left 14,256 documented stenographic records of the telepathic-clairvoyant readings he had given for more than 6,000 different people over a period of 43 years, consisting of 49,135 pages.

The readings constitute one of the largest and most impressive records of psychic perception. Together with their relevant records, correspondence, and reports, they have been cross-indexed under thousands of subject headings and placed at the disposal of doctors, psychologists, students, writers, and investigators who still come to examine them. Of course, they are also available to the general public in books as well as on DVD ROM for Windows and Macintosh computers.

The Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) was founded in 1931 to preserve these readings. As an open-membership research society, it continues to index and catalog the information, initiate investigation and experiments, and conduct conferences, seminars, and lectures. The A.R.E. also has the second largest and finest library of parapsychological and metaphysical books in the world, second only to the Vatican Library.