new line of readings called “Life Readings.” From 1925 through 1944, he conducted some 2,500 Life Readings, describing the past lives of individuals as casually as if everyone understood that reincarnation was a fact. 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.
When he died on January 3, 1945, in Virginia Beach, he left 14,306 documented stenographic records of the telepathic-clairvoyant readings he had given for more than 6,000 different people over a period of forty-three years, consisting of 49,135 pages. Of the 14,306 readings, 9,603 were health readings.
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 into 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 or the complete volume of the readings on DVD-Rom, as well as in an online database (see EdgarCayce.org/membership).
The nonprofit known as the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) was founded in 1931 to preserve, research, and share these readings. As an open-membership organization, it continues to index and catalog the information, publish books, initiate investigation and experiments, and conduct conferences, seminars, and lectures, and operate online courses and study groups. The association also conducts tours each year to various sacred sites around the world. The Virginia Beach headquarters is host to thousands of visitors each year from all around the world who come to tour the campus, attend conferences, visit the bookstore, or explore the library—one of the largest metaphysical libraries in the world with more than 65,000 volumes.
The Cayce work has grown to include the Edgar Cayce Foundation (the readings preservation and archiving arm of the organization), Atlantic University (a graduate-level, online university), and the Cayce/Reilly® School of Massage. There is also an A.R.E. summer camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The A.R.E. has a large web site with an enormous amount of free information at EdgarCayce.org. The address of the headquarters is Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E., 215 67th Street, Virginia Beach, VA 23451 USA, and they can be reached via telephone at 757-428-3588 or 800-333-4499 (toll-free in the U.S. and Canada).
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1
Outer Life, Visible Life
Throughout the Edgar Cayce volumes, the term spirit is equated with “the life forces” or the “motivating forces of life.” With this in mind, let’s begin with a look at what we know about life and how we identify something as being alive. Surprisingly, the question as to what constitutes life does not have an easy answer. Here are some of the complexities to consider:
In general, from a biological perspective, something is considered to be alive if it demonstrates: 1. animation, 2. self-sustaining processes for existence, 3. metabolism and growth, 4. responses to stimuli, 5. reproduction of itself, and 6. adaptation to a changing environment. As you can see, plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi demonstrate these properties, as do we humans.
On Earth there is also a cellular component to life in that a cell is the basic structural, functional, and biological unit of all known living organisms. Simply put, physical life requires a cell with genetic material (DNA) and the ability to reproduce—it must also be able to turn food into energy and to evolve through natural selection. All living organisms have to have a mechanism to utilize or somehow convert something into energy; for example, plants use sunlight directly for energy.
Human bodies are a complex organism of carbon and water in a cellular structure with inheritable genetic information. There are other “things” that appear to be life forms but are actually on the fringe of biological life; viruses, for example. Viruses possess genes, evolve by natural selection, and replicate themselves by rapidly creating copies of themselves—but they do not metabolize, and they must have a host cell in order to replicate, because they do not have a cellular structure of their own.
We might think that all life forms come from the forces of nature, but humans are now creating life forms. Some scientists are using chemical compounds to create single-cell organisms, and some are creating new life forms by hollowing out existing cells and inserting genes. “It’s alive, it’s alive!” shouted Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, but now we are approaching that very possibility.
Despite these clearly physical aspects, there still remains a mysterious magic to life. For example, researchers have wondered how cells containing the same genes build different parts of a complex organism. How do the cells know to change what they are making and begin building a different part? Eye cells contain the same genes as liver cells—so if they contain the same identical message, how do they develop so differently? Some propose that a field of unseen energy—possibly an electro-magnetic (EM) field—contains a blueprint or pattern, and dividing cells follow the blueprint as they divide and specialize. The blueprint causes the gene message to change when making a liver rather than an eye. This is a morphogenetic process with the added power of an EM field—an EM field that contains the person’s essential composition. However, there is mounting evidence that this specialization process is more about chemistry and proteins that cause some genes to “turn on” while others “turn off,” and in this way eye and liver cells are made. But there still seems to be an invisible pattern or blueprint that guides these on-and-off changes. Some believe that nature contains the blueprints for every creature in the form of some kind of “mental pattern.” Most scientists cannot deal with this idea, because it is not measurable. Curiously, a mental pattern would be an electromagnetic field of thought. Thus nature contains the pattern for a daisy as well as a human. The mystery continues.
What about alien life? Life beyond Earth may not be structured using carbon, water, and cells. We might need to be prepared to broaden our parameters for classifying other life forms. Would non-biological life be classified as “alive” if that life possessed consciousness and the indications of having feelings?
And what if machines, such as robots, advance to a level at which they can reproduce themselves and improve themselves through a learning process using artificial intelligence? Are they then considered silicone-based life forms? Like carbon, silicon can create molecules that are sufficiently large enough to carry biological information.
And consider the significance of human near-death experiences (NDEs) in which the patient’s biological organism, his or her body, is dead on the operating room table and yet the consciousness belonging to that body is somewhere in the room observing and is later able to recount the events that led to the body’s resuscitation? Is that discarnate consciousness a life form?
There are no simple answers to our questions as to what qualifies as life.
The Universe
Let’s review what we know about the forces of life in the universe. When I look up into the starry night sky, I am in awe of its beauty—but I am also moved within myself, as if there is some personal connection that I have with that heavenly vista. Ancient cultures taught that we were once part of that wondrous unending realm, and we will eventually return to it. Scientists tell us that a part of the vast starry scene is in our bodies for we are composed of stardust! Physicist Lawrence Krauss explains it this way, “Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than the atoms in your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about the universe: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars had not exploded, because the elements—the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, all the things that matter for evolution—weren’t created at the beginning of time, they were created in stars. So forget Jesus. Stars died so