happening, are prompted to give THEIR version according to the reaction upon their ideal—and upon those promptings of the purpose of the individual so viewing same.
1448-2
The same person was told that every experience encountered in an individual’s life could leave a good or a bad impression upon these Akashic Records. Apparently each occurrence in life has the capacity to be a constructive or a destructive influence, based upon what an individual does with that experience. Different choices will leave very different impressions upon the records.
Since these records are so complete, so accurate, and so individualized, a logical question might be: Just what is the purpose of the Akashic Records in the first place? Simply put, the answer is to keep track of and assist with each soul’s personal growth and transformation. However, in order to adequately discuss and understand Edgar Cayce’s perception of the records, one needs to possess an adequate background in what might be termed “the Cayce Cosmology.” Essentially, that cosmology can be summed up in the statement: God is essentially love and the Universe is completely orderly. Beyond that concept is the premise that each individual was purposefully created, as a soul, to become a companion with the Creator.
Confirming Scripture, according to the Cayce readings, we were created in “God’s image” (Genesis 1:26) and therefore our natural state is spirit. Life did not begin at the moment of physical birth, rather there was an existence in spirit prior to physicality. God gave to each soul complete freedom of choice and the opportunity to find expression—to find themselves, so to speak. Because souls are created in God’s image, it would only be through a process of personal experiences—one choice leading to another, and then another, and then another—that God’s companions could gain their own individuality, truly being a part of Him and yet individuals in their own right. Once they have discovered their individuality they would once again return in consciousness to be His companions and cocreators.
From Cayce’s perspective, although we are currently having a physical experience, our bodies are simply a temporal home. Just as an automobile is discarded when the owner no longer finds it useful, so too are our bodies set aside when they have completed their function. We are not physical bodies with souls, but are spiritual beings who happen to be having a physical existence. If this is true and we are fundamentally spirituals beings, then we might ask: So, just what are we doing here? The answer proposed by the Cayce information is that we are essentially gathering experiences.
According to the readings, the soul, basically creative in nature, longs to find self-expression. In fact, the essential question repeatedly posed by the soul might be: Who am I? This question is addressed in infinite ways as each soul chooses specific experiences to meet itself. The soul gains firsthand knowledge not only about its own identity but also learns how choices lead to certain experiences. In time, soul experiences and acquired knowledge will lead to wisdom. Inevitably, wisdom will lead to compassion and eventually love will be the end result. At this point, the soul will know its individual identity as well as its true relationship with God. The soul will have come to understand that its primary essence and God’s are one and the same, LOVE:
Thus innately the entity is ever desiring to try something new. This is well, provided the basis of such is builded upon truth. For truth in any clime is ever the same—it is law. And love is law, law is love. Love is God, God is Love. It is the universal consciousness, the desire for harmonious expressions for the good of all, that is the heritage in man, if there is the acceptance of the way and manner such may be applied, first in the spiritual purpose and then in the mental application, and the material success will be pleasing to any.
3350-1
The soul’s education in self-awareness is undertaken through a process of cause and effect. This cause-and-effect growth pattern was examined in nearly two thousand Cayce readings which explored the topic of reincarnation. Rather than being a fatalistic process, the influence from one’s past merely provides a framework of potentials and probabilities. These possibilities are all inscribed upon the Akashic Records. An individual’s choices, actions, and free will in the present actually determine the experience lived this time around. For Cayce, it wasn’t nearly so important as to who an individual had once been (or even what they had been doing), as it was paramount that the individual focus on the present and the opportunities and the challenges that faced the person in this time, in this place, right now. In the language of the readings:
In the studies, then, know WHERE ye are going . . . to find that ye only lived, died and were buried under the cherry tree in Grandmother’s garden does not make thee one whit [a] better neighbor, citizen, mother or father!
But to know that ye spoke unkindly and suffered for it, and in the present may correct it by being righteous—THAT is worth while!
5753-2
One young woman was told that from the past she had an innate gift for music (275-33), and that through meditation and attunement she could reawaken those talents in the present: “For, as an individual attunes itself to that which it has attained, even at a MOMENT of time, there is aroused the abilities to KNOW even that which WAS known through the [past] experience.” In another instance, a forty-six-year-old woman who received a reading about her past lives was told which lifetimes were having the greatest effect upon the present (757-8). Her reading detailed incarnations in Colonial America, England during the Crusades, ancient Persia, and ancient Egypt. From each of these experiences, certain inclinations had been developed and still remained a part of the woman’s personality and individuality. In America, she had acquired the ability to assist individuals in cooperating and communicating with one another so that people of various backgrounds and motives could learn to work together. From long periods of isolation in England, she retained an inner longing to always make time in her life for personal reflection and contemplation. From an incarnation as Persian nobility, she had acquired the desire to be surrounded by finery and beauty. Her interest in religious thought was traced to a similar work she had begun in ancient Egypt. Each of these traits simply acted as influences in the woman’s current life. Nothing was fixed; instead, the woman could use, abuse, or even ignore these inclinations in her life right now.
For example, the woman’s impulse to be alone could be used in the present as times for personal rejuvenation in order to better assist those around her; however, it might just as easily be directed into a sense of aloofness or the selfish desire to always put her own needs first. In Cayce’s understanding, influences from the past are always molded and shaped by an individual’s will, desires, and purposes in the present.
In addition to the past-life material, interesting insights presented themselves in this woman’s case. During the course of the reading, Cayce described what manner of information was written upon the Akashic Records, how that information made its impression, as well as the influence this type of material could have upon an individual in the present. After putting himself into the trance state and journeying in consciousness to the Akashic Records, Cayce began his discourse. The woman’s reading states in part:
Yes, we have the entity and those relations with the universe and universal forces, that are latent and manifested in the personalities of the entity now known as—or called—[757], as recorded by the experiences in the soul’s activity and journey through the environs that make for those impressions—or those that become manifested influences or forces in the experience of an entity in its present sojourn in the earth.
Questions naturally arise in this particular experience of this entity as to how or in what manner the records are made of an entity’s sojourn or activity in a sphere or space, so that there are the abilities of one to read or interpret same. Are they as letters written? Are they as pictures of the experiences of an entity? Are they in forms as of omens or characters that represent certain influences or activities about the earth? Yea, all of these, my friend, and more; for they are as but the skein of life itself, the expression of a divine force from the God-Father itself, making manifestations in forms that become manifestations in a material experience. For truly to be absent from the body is to be present with those infinite influences and forces that may act upon and be acted upon, from the emanations of divine influences that may be either visions as picturized, written as thought in