Atlantis Arisen

                                        T H E   S L E E P I N G   P R O P H E T




My last memories of my father, Edgar Cayce, are of a slender man, slightly over
six feet tall.  his piercing, gray eyes still sparkled through the rimless glasses he
wore.  His hair was gray and thinning and he had developed a paunch from too
much of Mother's good cooking and not enough time for exercise.  An eager fisher-                                       man, an avid gardener, a proficient carpenter - my father was all of these.  
But he had less and less time for these things he liked to do as more and more
people learned of his unique psychic abilities and sought him out for "readings".

The readings were strange and wonderful to those who got them, but I grew up
with, and accepted them as common, every day occurrences.  I had both physical
and life readings from Dad, and now and then I listened to the ones he gave for
strangers.  Nonetheless, I looked forward more to the times we could spend toge-
ther fishing or working on a carpentry project.

Neither I nor my brother Hugh Lynn ever shared Dad's enthusiasm for gardening.
Our lack of interest never deterred him, though, and he was continually hoeing
around some new tree or shrub he had planted, or weeding his garden.  He would
rather spend money on a load of topsoil than on food for the table - and frequently
did, much to the consternation of Mother.  We lived in several homes in Virginia
Beach, Virginia, leaving a trail of fruit trees, rose bushes and grapevines behind us.
Everything seemed to grow well for Edgar Cayce.  I suspected that some of his
psychic powers seeped over into his workday world, because I never knew him to
return empty handed from a fishing trip or with empty arms from his garden.

Money, however, was another matter.  He always seemed broke and could never
accumulate any.  It slipped through his fingers, like sand from a beach.

Before we came to Virginia Beach, we had moved from Selma, Alabama, to Dayton,
Ohio.  I remember a particularly cold day in Dayton, when Dad stuffed newspapers
in my shirt and pants to keep out the cold wind  because I didn't have a coat.  My
thin clothes were not designed for northern winters.  I nearly froze that winter in
Dayton, and was overjoyed when we moved south to Virginia.

In spite of our somewhat less than affluent living conditions, the early years at
Virginia Beach were filled with fun for the whole family.  In the winter, we hauled
pound poles (long pine poles that had broken away from staked-out fishing nets)
off the beach and sawed them into firewood.  We would sit around the fire while
the northeast wind howled outside.  Dad would tell stories or all the family would
play Parcheesi.  Through these family conversations, I learned how Dad had deve-
loped his psychic talents and why he would never use them to make money.

Edgar Cayce was born near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in 1877.  He had had some
strange experiences as a child, and his first "reading" was for himself.  While
working as a clerk in a bookstore, the young Cayce had lost his voice.  None of the
local doctors had been able to help him.  In desperation, he turned to a man who
had been experimenting with the new fad of hypnotism.  With the aid of the
hypnotist, Cayce was able - of his own volition - to put himself into a sleep-like
state.  The hypnotist encouraged him to describe his condition and suggest a
remedy, and Cayce began to speak from his autohypnotic state.  He described a
remedy for his condition that did indeed restore his voice.

A young doctor who observed Cayce's performance became intereted.  He thought it was only  a step from diagnosing himself to diagnosing the ailment of others.
These experiments proved successful and the doctor's success and Cayce's fame
spread as a result of Cayce's accurate diagnosing or "reading" of his patients.
The word "reading" stuck, and Cayce's discourses from his sleep-like state became
known as readings.

At first Cayce was wary of his own ability, afraid he would somehow be wrong, and
that someone might suffer as a result of a wrong diagnosis.  His worst fears never
materialized and instead of suffering, more and more people found relief by follow-
ing the suggestions in his physical readings.

Cayce never remembered anything he said in his trance-like sleeps.  His words were taken down in shorthand and later typed.  Therefore Cayce never knew the
questions he was asked at the conclusion of a reading before he was given the
suggestion to awaken.  Occasionally, the person conducting the reading sought
personal gain and would inquire about the future outcome of a horse race or seek
investment advice concerning the stock or commodity markets.  Cayce would an-
swer the questions to the inquirer's profit, but he would awaken nervous and
tired, ususlly withpainful headaches.

When Cayce learned how he was being used, he gave up "psychic readings" and
devoted himself entirely to working as a photographer, a job in which he literally
had his trials by fire.  A fire burned him out of business, leaving him deeply in debt.
On another occasion, an exploding can of photographer's flash powder burned
Hugh Lynn.  The reading outlined a treatment that not only saved both of Hugh
Lynn's eyes, but restored his vision.

Encouraged by this remarkable success, Cayce began again to give readings. 
However, in order to avoid the problems he had encountered before, he insisted
that his wife always conduct the reading.  From that time on my mother, Gertrude,
was the one who gave him the suggestion for the reading; she was the one who
asked the questions and she was the one who gave him the suggestion to wake up.

For the next twenty-seven years, thousands of people found relief from pain and suffering by following the suggestions of Edgar Cayce's readings.  The records on
file in the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) library in Virginia
Beach testify to his accuracy.  Doctors' reports and patients' case histories are there for all to see.  As the many books and articles about him conclude, Edgar Cayce was undoubtedly an amazingly precise psychic diagnostician. 

The physical readings make up about 60% of Edgar Cayce's fourteen thousand or
so readings.  There are a number of minor categories, such as business advice and
dream interpretation, but by far the next largest category, approximately 20% of the total, are life readings.  These readings dealt with psychological rather than
physical problems.  They attempted to answer questions people might have about
vocational problems, their purpose in life and marriage and human relations.  The
first life reading came about in this manner:

In the early 1920s, a man with an insatiable inquisitiveness about Metaphysics
opened a new dimension for Cayce and his psychic readings.  In an attempt to obtain an astrological horoscope from Cayce, Arthur Lammers was told that the
effect of the stars and planets on a person's life was not nearly as influential as
the effect of that person's past life upon his present one.  Cayce then proceeded
to give Lammers an account of his previous lives.

When Cayce awoke and heard what he had said, he was dumbfounded.  Awake, he
knew as little about reincarnation and the occult as he knew about medicine.  Was
it possible that reincarnation could be true?  How did it fit in with his Bible teachings
and Christian roots?  Cayce wasn't sure.  Abstract questions of philosophic systems
had never concerned him.  He was well versed in Christianity and the Bible, but he had never studied other world religions.  He was ignorant of the fact that reincarna-
tion was a cardinal belief in the teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism. 

Between 1923 and 1924, when Cayce was awash in waves of doubt about this new in-
formation from his unconscious, I was  only five and six years old.  I missed all the lively
arguments between Lammers and Cayce and the long philosophical family discussions.
I did accompany the family to Dayton, to satisfy his thirst for knowledge.  What convinced Dad that these new "life readings" were factual?  Was it the philosophic discussions with
the knowledgeable Lammers?  Was it the concurrence of information, given to complete
strangers, with verifiable facts?  Or was it the manner in which the readings integrated Christian ideals into the framework of reincarnation?  Each argument probably carried
weight, but I suspect that the latter had the greatest influence.

Whatever the reason, Edgar Cayce became convinced that the life readings were
as helpful as the physical diagnoses.  They seemed to harm no one, so he continued to give them on request.  He came to feel that the life readings were
given to help an individual understand and answer questions and problems about his or her present life and that to obtain a life reading for frivolous reasons was a waste of time.  His readings expressed this view as follows:

"Do not gain knowledge only to thine own undoing.  Remember Adam.  Do not
obtain that which ye cannot make constructive in thine own experience and in the experience of those whom ye contact day by day.  Do not attempt to force, impel
or even try to impress knowledge upon another - in the studies, then know where
ye are going.  To gain knowledge merely for thine own satisfaction is a thing, a
condition, an experience to be commended, if it does not produce in thine experien-
ce a feeling or a manner of expression that ye are better than another on account
of thy knowledge.  This becomes self-evident that it would become then a stumb-
ling block, unless ye know what ye will do with thy knowledge.

...........For to find only that ye 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 worthwhile.  What is right-
eousness?  Just being kind, just being noble, just being self-sacrificing, just being willing to be the hands for the blind, the feet for the lame - these are constructive
experiences.  Ye may gain knowledge of same, for incarnations are a fact.  How may
ye prove it?  In thy daily living.  (no. 5753-2, June 29, 1937)*


*Each of the Edgar Cayce readings has been assigned a two-part number to provide easy reference.  Each person who received a reading was given an anonymous number; this is the first half of the two part number.  Since many indi-
viduals obtained more than one reading, the second number designates the
number of that reading in the series.  Reading no. 5752-2 was given for a person
who was assigned case number 5753.  This particular reading was the second
one that person obtained from Cayce.

Cayce's story of Atlantis is derived from the set of life readings.  It is difficult for
me, an Engineer, to present the story.  I can scarcely swallow the tale myself,
even though I was a member of the family, had both physical and life readings,
and listened to many of those for others.  I can only tell you that the evidence for
the accuracy of the phycical readings is incontrovertible.  Too many reports exist
from patients and doctors who followed the suggested treatments and got good
results.  This evidence is on file in the A.R.E. library in Virginia Beach and open to
scrutiny.  I know many of the life readings also proved helpful in the lives of those
who requested them.  It seems reasonable to suppose that there was some de-
gree of accuracy in them also.

This doesn't prove that the Atlantean life readings are true. But evidence uncovered
in recent years regarding past earth changes, climatic changes, pole reversals and
the migration of people in prehistoric times points to the accuracy of the readings
rather than their falsehood.  Edgar Cayce's fascinating story of Atlantis is at least
worthy of serious consideration.

"Today I spit a mile."

This slightly irreverent statement is attributed to a small boy who once stood at
Bright Angel Point on the south rim of the Grand Canyon and gazed down at the
Colorado River a mile below.  For a look into the past, one can scarcely do better than visit Grand Canyon National Park.   This immense gorge, cut by the Colorado
River in the high plateau of northern Arizona, is truly a window in time.  The scale
of the canyon is enormous.  It varies in width from 4 to 18 miles.  From Bright
Angel Point, one has a magnificent view of the Colorado River, a mile below.  Within the canyon itself are a multitude of peaks, buttes, plateaus, ravines, gulches and
smaller canyons.  Several different type of climate prevail at its different levels.

In the walls and rocks of the canyon, we can read a record of the past that extends
back millions of years.  Here are the windblown sands of a desert; here are shells,
corals and traces of marine life from long-forgotten shallow seas; here are rem-
nants of plants and aquatic life from a former freshwater lake.  The record of eons
past goes back from the surface to the black basalt, exposed at the river.  A trip down the canyon trail will convince the most skeptical that geologists' views of
earth's long history are based more on hard evidence than on mere speculation.

Edgar Cayce traveled deep into the past as well.  Rather than reading the story of the earth in the rocks, he read the Akashic Records, described in his readings as a
psychic record of every event that has ever taken place, "woven upon the skeins of
time and space."  Geologists can only look at layers of rock and the fossil skeletons of ancient animals; but Cayce's journey into the Akashic Records revealed a vast
wealth of information, including the past lives of many individuals.

Scattered through those hundreds of life readings is the tale of a once-great conti-
nent that attained a level of culture and technology unmatched in history.  The
readings also relate how this great society - in the struggle between people devoted to God and those devoted to material desires - destroyed all that they had, as a result of their moral struggle and misuse of technology.

Cayce's readings agree with geologists that the surface of the earth was much different in the past.  Many lands have disappeared, reappeared and disappeared again.  But the readings go beyond accepted geological theory and geology can
tell us nothing about the people themselves, how they lived, how they died and what meaning their lives might have for us today.


FROM



MYSTERIES OF ATLANTIS


Edgar Evans Cayce (Son of E.C.)

Virginia Beach, Virginia