Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) was an American psychic who possessed the ability to answer questions on a variety of subjects. He is perhaps the most famous and most carefully documented psychic of the 20th century. His psychic abilities surfaced in his childhood and he began to use his unusual abilities starting as a young man for over forty years.
He would, usually twice a day, lie on a couch, go into a sleeplike state, and respond to questions. Over fourteen thousand of these discourses were carefully transcribed by his secretary and preserved by the Edgar Cayce Foundation in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Cayce founded a nonprofit organization, the Association for Research and Enlightenment. Though Cayce himself was a member of the Disciples of Christ and lived before the emergence of the New Age Movement, some consider him the true founder of the movement and a principal source of its most characteristic beliefs.
Edgar Cayce was a deeply religious man who taught Sunday school all of his adult live and read the entire Bible once for every year that he lived.
This book, Reincarnation & Karma, is a collection of discourses that address the concept of reincarnation and karma.
This book has two parts, one about reincarnation and one about karma. In the chapters about reincarnation we learn how Edgar Cayce answered in a sleep-like state questions about reincarnation, past-lives, the soul’s life between incarnations and on how to break free of the wheel of karma and reincarnation. In the chapters about karma we find out Edgar Casey’s discourse about karma including examples of karma and his tips for meeting karma.
He explained that every action and thought of every individual makes an impression upon the Universal Consciousness, an impression that can be psychically read. He correlated that with the Hindu concept of an Akashic Record. He stated that every soul remembers all of its experiences.
He said, that every form of life that man sees in a material world is an essence or manifestation of the Creator; in other words, that Life is a manifestation of the first cause – God. The first influences in the earth that brought selfishness was the desire to be as gods, in that rebellion became the order of the mental forces in the soul; and sin entered. Heaven and hell is built by the soul. [tooltip title=”” content=”Compare with The Gnostic Gospels under Religion” type=”classic” ]The gift of God is being conscious of being one with Him[/tooltip], yet apart from Him – or one with, yet apart from the Whole.
He addresses issues such as solar cycles, free will, and parent’s karma, the average fulfillment of the soul’s expectations, man’s development in the relativity of all forces and if Jesus should be described as the soul who first went through the cycle of earthly lives to attain perfection, including perfection in the planetary lives.
He advises us to use Him as the Ideal and understand that there is duty to oneself, to family, to society, to work and work relations and that all these duties must be weighed and made into oneness of purpose. At the end of the chapter about reincarnation he points out that an experience will convince a person of reincarnation and that the gospels of John in the New Testament teach reincarnation.
In the second chapter about reincarnation we are exposed to insightful past-life readings and Cayce explains in some cases the astrological influences these “entities” (clients) were exposed to in their lives. He mentions more than once, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap”; this rule of cause and effect he addresses again later in the book when he talks about karma.
One of the clients asks him about his associations with particular people from this live in past lives implying that we reincarnate at least sometimes with the same people we have lived in past lives. In some of the readings he explains what the client has learned in a particular past life.
In the last part of the chapter we find out more about Edgar Cayce’s own past lives. One of the most important messages in this part is, that we have to understand that God is God, and that the Divine demands of us that we know ourselves, so that we may better serve our fellow human beings.
In the chapter about the soul’s life between incarnations we learn that after our death our consciousness understands that there have been failures and that there are needs for help. Then help is consciously sought because “[tooltip title=”” content=”Compare with Theosophy under Philosophy” type=”classic” ]Only they that seek shall find[/tooltip]!”. That’s where we decide in what body to reincarnate based on the plane of our consciousness. In this chapter he also explains the planetary influences on our lives, that each planetary influence vibrates at a different rate of vibration and that based on the universal law we can change our rate of vibration. He emphasizes that individuals have to magnify what is good and minimize what is false. But he does point out, that no influence surpasses the will of an individual.
I found one reading particularly helpful in which he tells the client that he had become discouraged in past lives when he was exposed to accusations of unkind things or lost confidence in friends and reminded him to stay committed to himself in this life. In another reading he shows how to subdue negative planetary influences.
In the last chapter about reincarnation we encounter readings where he reveals to clients (entities) information about former lives and reasons why people would not have to reincarnate anymore if they so choose. In the editor’s notes we find out that apparently the people who made changes within themselves, in their hearts and minds have a chance to stop the wheel of karma and reincarnation, unless they want to come back to “lead the way to those that are still in darkness”. Those readings revealed a lot of information about different aspects of spiritually developed lives. For me personally the most important messages in this chapter were the readings who advised “to be patient and to speak gently and kindly to those who falter and not to judge the activities of others but rather pray that the light may shine even in their lives as it has in thine”; “it is not what a mind knows but what the mind applies or does about that it knows, that makes for soul, mental or material advancements”; “for as you do it unto the least of these; thy brethren, ye do it unto thy Maker”; “to be true to the duties set by self”; and that “God looks upon the purposes, the ideals of the heart, and not upon that which men call convention”.
In the first chapter of the second part of the book Edgar Cayce explains that Karma can be considered as philosophy, as religion or as science in the manner of cause and effect and that we must consider that “karma may mean the development for self “. Hence, Destiny is: “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.”
In the last two chapters he provides examples of cause and effect and tips for meeting one’s karma, and how to get from karma to grace.