The Essential Edgar Cayce Read Free

followed his instructions—virtually, his first medical reading—and following a night’s sleep he was normal once again. Little did anyone realize then how this medical clairvoyance would foreshadow the work he would pursue later as an adult.

    In 1901, when he was twenty-four years old, Edgar happened serendipitously upon his talent for tapping in to the wisdom of the unconscious mind. It was at this time that he met and fell in love with Gertrude Evans, his future wife and mother of their three sons (one of whom died as an infant), and an ardent supporter of his life’s work. But in this first year of the new century, he was stricken with an ailment that threatened to undermine his current career as a traveling salesman—and, even more alarmingly, his long-term hopes of becoming a minister in the church someday.

    A severe case of laryngitis plagued Cayce for months and baffled doctors. In the end, it proved responsive only to hypnosis. When hypnotized, Edgar could not only talk again but was able to diagnose the cause and prescribe a treatment to effect a lasting cure.

    Some months later, Cayce tried out his diagnostic and prescriptive skills on other people to remarkable effect. And so began his work—albeit, for many years only occasional—as an intuitive healer.

    Edgar Cayce quickly found that a hypnotist wasn’t needed to access his unconscious wisdom. Following an interlude of prayer, he could move into this state on his own. It was a fragile, vulnerable condition because his unconscious was wide open, he said; hence, his insistence that a family member be present to direct the experience, to act as what came to be called the conductor of the reading, because on more than one occasion people tried to take advantage of his gift. Usually, Gertrude or his elder son, Hugh Lynn, served in this role.

    Typically, when giving a reading, Cayce first lead the others with him—the conductor, the stenographer, and sometimes the person(s) for whom the reading was being given—in prayer. Then he would lie down on a couch on his back, close his eyes, and place his hands on his forehead. The conductor would then read aloud a hypnotic-like suggestion tailored to the type of reading desired. For example, for a physical health reading the suggestions might be: “You will go over this body carefully, examine it thoroughly, and tell me the conditions you find at the present time; giving the cause of the existing conditions, also suggestions for help and relief of this body; answering the questions, as I ask them.” On the other hand, for a reading addressing reincarnation and the purposes of life currently, the suggestion might be:

    “You will give the relation of this entity and the universe, and the universal forces; giving the conditions which are as personalities, latent and exhibited in the present life; also the former appearances in the earth plane, giving time, place and the name, and that in each life which built or retarded the development for the entity; giving the abilities of the entity in the present, that to which it may attain, and how. You will answer the questions, as I ask them.”

    Listening to the suggestion, Cayce would allow himself to move into a trancelike, meditative state, and he would move his hands down from his forehead to cover his solar plexus. To observers in the room, it appeared that he had fallen asleep. But he was not asleep, and he would begin to address the request posed in the suggestion. After an opening discourse that may or may not be brief—sometimes only a minute in length, other times as long as twenty minutes or more—Edgar then would invite questions for further elaboration. The reading would end when he would announce “We are through for the present,” at which point the conductor read aloud a suggestion that Cayce regain normal consciousness and he would slowly awake, much like a person awakening from a nap.

    Because Cayce was unable to remember what he had said,