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The Edgar Cayce information on meditation, prayer and affirmations has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals around the world. To be sure, Cayce was one of the first sources in the Western Hemisphere to consistently recommend meditation to individuals from every religious background. The Cayce readings on prayer advance the ecumenical nature of prayer and discuss the workings and vibrations of this integral tool for personal attunement and spiritual healing. In terms of affirmations, the Cayce material frequently extols the extraordinary power of the “mind as the builder” and the premise that personal co-creation is empowered by that which the mind dwells upon. In other words, what one continues to think, one eventually becomes. With all of this in mind, it is perhaps ironic that this extremely invaluable wealth of information grew out of personal failure on the part of Edgar Cayce.

As brief background information, approximately two-thirds of the Cayce readings deal with health and the treatment of physical illness and disease. Edgar Cayce’s lifelong dream was to have a hospital where individuals could come and receive psychic readings from him and where physicians and health care professionals from every discipline and background could carry out the recommended treatments. The readings are a strong proponent of people in every school of medicine learning how to cooperate and coexist for the ultimate benefit of the patient.

For decades, Edgar Cayce sought funding for his hospital before finally receive support from two New York businessmen brothers who financed the Edgar Cayce Hospital in Virginia Beach, Virginia (the location recommended by the readings). The hospital opened in 1928, and Cayce’s dream became a reality. The dream was short-lived, however, and the hospital was lost in 1931 during the Depression. Edgar Cayce was devastated. He was 54 years old, and it appeared that his purpose for living was over.

In response to the hospital’s failure and in an effort to find another focus for Cayce’s amazing psychic talent, a group of Cayce’s friends rallied around him looking for a way to work with the readings as a group. Some of the individuals were interested in obtaining readings on how they could become more psychic themselves. Others hoped to learn how to become more spiritual, helping their families and the world at large in the process. Edgar Cayce’s readings to the group presented the unique idea that psychic development was actually a natural by-product of spiritual growth and attunement. It was for this reason that the group began receiving a series of readings that promised “light to a waiting world.”

None of the original group members could have imagined the impact their meetings would have upon the rest of their lives nor upon the lives of countless others even decades later. The group called themselves a study group, and group members worked for years to compile two books on lessons in spiritual growth that would eventually be published as A Search for God, Books I & II.¹

The group activity gave birth to much more than material on soul growth and personal transformation. After the first meeting, Edgar Cayce had a dream that led to the formation of a prayer group made up of some of the original study group members. This group called itself the Glad Helpers Prayer Group², and it was specifically interested in the possibility of group members raising personal vibration and consciousness as a means of becoming healing channels to others through prayer and spiritual healing. Essentially, the premise of the readings on meditation, prayer, and attunement is that as an individual raises his or her personal consciousness, spiritual healing can be directed to others “on the wings of thought.” In addition to having ongoing meetings, the group would receive sixty-five readings on topics including meditation, prayer, the use of affirmations, consciousness development, vibrations, and even a series of readings on interpreting the Book of Revelation.

Although we may think of prayer as telling God what we need or want, Cayce believed that true prayer was not so much a petition for things as it was an expression of one’s desire to gain an awareness of the Creator’s will in our lives. In other words, prayer invites God to work through us. Meditation, on the other hand, is clearing aside all random thoughts so that we might become more attuned to the Divine. In the language of the readings, both are explained as follows: