enjoined itself in active service. These attitudes make for hardships at times in the material experience in the present. But in those activities in which there may be the outlet for the greater home building, and the expression of same, may the entity find the greater field of service, the greater harmony, the greater outlook for peace and joy in the experience of this entity.
In other words, she would find her greatest fulfillment at home and in the life she would share with others. In terms of previous lives, the reading would further reveal that she and Edgar had been together as recently as Edgar’s present incarnation in a rural farming community in Kentucky through which flowed the Little River. And yet, in the correspondence Edgar sent to Beatrice with her Life Reading, he remained unusually circumspect about sharing with her how they had known one another, only that they had.
It was not until he met Beatrice in person that Edgar let the “secret slip out.” He had to “see the truth” for himself before he could, as he later said, “be absolutely certain.” That day, when Beatrice and her fiancé arrived in front of the Cayce’s Virginia Beach home, Edgar stood on the porch, unable to move. He couldn’t even speak to her as she had exited the car and raised her hand to greet him. Tears began to pour down his cheeks. He could barely put together more than two words. “Little Anna . . . Little Anna,” he repeated. “It’s true.”
Before coming to Virginia Beach, Beatrice had read everything she could about Edgar, and though she believed him to be a “kindred spirit,” she was not prepared for the curious way he addressed her. Who was Little Anna? Why the tears? Edgar’s wife Gertrude and secretary Gladys Davis were equally mystified. They, too, had never heard of Little Anna nor could guess why Edgar was moved to tears.
When Edgar and Beatrice sat down in his study and talked together, she began to understand what seeing her meant to him. She also gained a startling insight into the greater message that came through in the readings. She had not only known Edgar in her previous incarnation as Little Anna, but she had also known her fiancé, Richmond Seay, whom she had cared for during his years-long ordeal with cataracts. He was none other than Anna’s father, Barnett Seay, who had cared for her when she contracted pneumonia. Little Anna and her father Barnett Seay, who had both died of pneumonia in Kentucky in 1887, were now in 1941 Beatrice and Richmond Seay, soon to be husband and wife.
Beatrice cared for Richmond in his hour of need as he had once cared for her. That’s how karma, which is so fundamental to the process of reincarnation, often worked out in the cycles of reincarnation described in the Cayce readings. Mothers in a previous incarnation often became daughters or sisters in the next. And invariably there was at least one family member who returned within the same family, as Edgar’s grandfather, Tom Cayce, eventually returned as Edgar’s grandson, Charles Thomas Cayce.
What was begun in one lifetime was continued in the next, bringing forth lessons and learning experiences crucial to what the readings described as the essence of human evolution—the development or growth of a soul preparing to meet or return to its maker. Family members could be construed as team members working together in this life and the next.
Once Beatrice and Edgar began to compare notes about their present lives, they realized how much they had in common. Both loved gardening and frequently spoke to their plants. Like Edgar’s childhood in Beverly, she had spent her formative years in Attica, Indiana, playing alone in the woods and conversing with “imaginary” playmates. Their respective spiritual paths, though very different, had also brought them to the same deeply rooted belief in Christianity.
Edgar and Beatrice would become fast and devoted friends. She and Richmond, who soon became her husband, would move to Blackstone, Virginia, and became active leaders in the fledgling A.R.E.—the association that would carry the Cayce work to future generations. They never referred to one another as Edgar and Beatrice, but simply as Eddy and Anna.
Edgar with son Hugh Lynn, Beatrice and Richmond Seay, and secretary Gladys Davis in Virginia Beach.
Beatrice frequently poured out her affection to Edgar in letters:
I have a great many things to be thankful for, Eddy, but I think you are one of the greatest and deepest of those things that I am thankful for, so I’m always so very grateful to you for giving us some of your time and blessedness,” she wrote. “I’ve just finished reading through and pondering all of your letters since first you addressed me . . . Although at that time I had no idea that “Little Anna” or “Little Eddy” ever existed—something flickered even then. And what a wonderful revelation and what beautiful things have come out of finding a certain Mr. Edgar Cayce.
Later, Beatrice would write: “The beauty and wonder of it! I could not understand what pulled and tugged at my heart and soul from the moment I heard of you and your work, until little by little you have told me of experiences that have helped me to understand . . . It seemed as though you were part of my heart and soul.”
Edgar felt likewise.
[For me] you stand between the living and the dead, and the plague of doubt in my own mind is stayed . . . when [I] am with you . . . All doubt slips away, and when I allow myself to slip back to days long since gone, a part of the whole business of living, [I] am just transported into another world. A world that one cannot help but see, feel, hear the goodness and the love of God. I now am never able to put into words what I feel, but it is there, and [I] know I am better able to at least try and serve others better when I have been with you.
Three years after meeting Beatrice, Edgar suffered a stroke which resulted in complete paralysis of the entire left side of his body. He was sent to Roanoke, Virginia, to recover. Knowing the end was approaching and wishing to die in the company of friends and family, he asked to be driven home. But on the drive back to Virginia Beach he requested the ambulance take a detour to Blackstone. He wished to see Little Anna one last time.
Beatrice and Richmond Seay were not home when Edgar’s ambulance arrived in their driveway. They, too, had sensed that the end was near and had driven to Virginia Beach in hopes of seeing him for one last time. They had left for Virginia Beach while the ambulance was driving to Blackstone.
Beatrice never got to say goodbye to her beloved Edgar, just as, some forty-years earlier, Eddy had been too late to say goodbye to Little Anna.
DWIGHT MOODY:
A PASTOR IN THIS LIFE AND THE NEXT
The Union Tabernacle was the place to be on weekend nights in Hopkinsville, the county seat. With stadium seating for two-thousand, the block-long civic auditorium played host to vice-presidential candidate Theodore Roosevelt, African-American educator Booker T. Washington, temperance leader Carrie Nation, orator William Jennings Bryan, and bandleader John Phillip Sousa.
Eighteen-year-old Edgar Cayce, a frequent visitor, came to hear the evangelists. There was the “soul saving” and “eternal optimist” former baseball star Billy Sunday; the advocate of Christian education George Stuart, the feisty and always humorous Sam Jones, and Mordecai Ham, the preacher who later converted Billy Graham at a revival meeting in North Carolina. Edgar eagerly awaited the arrival of the immensely popular and charismatic Dwight L. Moody, known simply as “D.L.,” who sometimes drew ten and twelve thousand people to hear his sermons.
Edgar Cayce, c. 1890s.
Dwight Moody, c. 1890.
On the