The Past Lives of Jesus According
to Edgar Cayce
Edgar Cayce (pronounced
"Kay-see") was a simple Sunday School teacher who, over the span of
his lifetime (1877-1945), had more
near-death experiences than anyone ever documented. Cayce
learned at a young age that when he
was hypnotized, he could leave his body and journey into
the afterlife realms. His
self-induced out-of-body experiences were identical to near-death
experiences. Cayce made over 14,000
otherworldly journeys in his life and the information he
gained from these journeys has
astounded people all over the world.
The system of metaphysical thought
which emerges from the Cayce material can be described as
a "Christianized" version
of the mystery religions of ancient Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, India, and
Greece. It fits Christ into the
mystical tradition of one God for all people, and places Christ in his
proper place, at the apex of the
philosophical structure - the capstone of the pyramid.
Cayce was a fundamentalist
Christian who was raised in strict nineteenth century Bible tradition.
When he discovered that his
subconscious information declared the ancient mystic religions to be
true and acclaimed Jesus as their
crowning glory, he suffered the greatest mental and emotional
shock of his life. Cayce had only a
seventh grade education and consciously knew nothing of
what he said while in a deep
trance-like state. He was only versed in the Bible and had no high
school or college background of any
kind. Up until his revelations, Cayce had never heard of the
mystery religions. Yet the Cayce
material agrees with everything about them that is known to be
authentic. He spoke at length on
Christian Gnosticism well before the Gnostic writings were
discovered after his death. Cayce
affirmed that Christian Gnosticism is the type of Christianity
that was taught by Jesus. Much of
the information from Cayce has solved some of the greatest
mysteries of humanity, some of
which were later validated after the discoveries of the Dead Sea
Scrolls and the early Christian
writings discovered in Egypt.
Cayce's descriptions of the Essenes
of Mount Carmel reveal the religious sect to be an ideal for
others who would prepare the way
for the Second Coming of Christ. Cayce's revelations of Jesus'
so-called "lost years" as
a youth studying in Egypt, Persia, and India suggest an important
compatibility of between the
eastern and western religions. Cayce's Christology also makes the
Christ soul not only an ideal and
pattern toward which everyone should aspire, but a living
presence to guide people toward
"at-one-ment" with God - the perfect divine-human unity which
Jesus attained.
According to the Cayce material,
Jesus and Adam were different incarnations of the same Christ
soul. Eve and the Virgin Mary
(Jesus' twin soul) were also different incarnations of the same soul.
This karmic connection between Adam
and Jesus explains why Jesus was able to pay the
"karmic debt" by atoning
for the "sin of Adam." This Adam-Jesus connection can be seen in the
following excerpt from the Cayce
readings:
Question: "When did the
knowledge come to Jesus that he was to be the Savior
of the world?"
Cayce: "When he fell in
Eden." [2067-7]
According to Cayce, many other
personalities from the Old Testament and history were also
incarnations of Jesus. The Cayce
material describes the entire Christian Bible as part of the story
of Jesus' long struggle to attain
"Christhood" and provide humanity a pattern to do the same.
Here is a list of the incarnations
of Jesus according to Cayce:
The Incarnations of Jesus Christ
According to Edgar Cayce:
I . Amilius - Amilius was the first
expression of Divine Mind (the logos); the
Christ soul before his incarnation
into a physical body
(corresponding to Genesis 1); the
entity that Cayce described
living in the lost civilization of
Atlantis who redirected the process
of human evolution by creating a
more appropriate physical form
for the influx of souls to
incarnate into rather than incarnating into
the ape-like human form which souls
had entangled themselves in.
II. Adam - Adam was the first "son
of man" and "son of God"; the Christ soul
after his incarnation into a
physical body (corresponding to
Genesis 2).
III. Enoch - Enoch was the antideluvian
patriarch who journeyed to heaven to
receive mysteries.
IV - Hermes - Hermes, also known as Thoth,
was the architect of the Great
Pyramid and the sage who began the
Hermetic tradition.
V -Melchizedek - Melchizedek was the
mystical high priest and king of Salem
(ancient Jerusalem).
VI. Joseph - Joseph was the son of Jacob
who became the Prince of Egypt.
VII Joshua - Joshua was the warrior who
led the Israelites into the Promised
Land.
VIII- Asaph - Asaph was the music director
and seer who served under David
and Solomon.
IX -Jeshua Jeshua was the high priest
who helped organize the return from
exile and the rebuilding of the
temple (as recounted in the books
of Ezra and Nehemiah) and who is
claimed by Cayce to have
compiled and translated the books
of the Bible
X - Zend - Zend, also spelled
"Zen", "Zan", "Sen", or "San," was the
father of
Zoroaster who wrote the Zend Avesta
and founded the religion
Zoroastrianism
XII -Jesus - Jesus was the man who
attained complete "at-one-ment" as the
divine-human unity known as
"the Christ"
XII - ???? - The Christ soul will
reincarnate again to be the Messiah foretold
by the Hebrew prophets in order to
usher in the so-called "Throne
of David" (i.e., the kingdom
of heaven) on Earth.
According to Cayce, the "fall
of man" was an event recorded symbolically in Genesis where souls
from heaven first descended to the
earth plane to began incarnating as humans. The first wave of
souls to incarnate (known in the
Bible as "the sons of men") became entrapped in the earth plane
accidentally, through their misuse
of free will. These events gave rise to legends of the "fall of the
angels" and to mythical beasts
of the kind described in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings."
The second wave of incarnations
(known in the Bible as "the sons of God") consisted of those
souls led by Amilius - the Christ
soul - who voluntarily became entrapped in order to assist the
first wave of trapped souls. They
accomplished this by steering the process of physical evolution
in a way that created more
appropriate physical forms for these souls. Cayce places Amilius on
Atlantis, but says that he did not
physically incarnate until the human physical form had been
created, at which time the Genesis
accounts of Adam and Eve begin. Cayce sometimes used the
word "Adam" to also refer
to the entire group of souls which had accompanied the Christ soul into
incarnating into the earth plane
and who incarnated as the five races of humanity on five separate
continents.
Adam (as the Christ soul) joined
his twin soul Eve in allowing himself to be seduced by materiality
himself. This is symbolized by his
acceptance of "the forbidden fruit." The other sons of God
followed his lead and incarnated,
and as a result were moved to express their materiality by
interbreeding with the
"daughters of men" (Genesis 6:1-2) who were the homo sapiens that
evolved from ape-men according to
Darwin's theory of evolution. According to the Cayce material
and Christian Gnosticism, their
banishment from the Garden of Eden was actually a great
blessing because death and
reincarnation are designed to draw our attention away from
materiality and the flesh, and
toward our true spiritual nature.
Cayce also identified Melchizedek
as an incarnation of the Jesus-entity. Melchizedek was the
"king of Salem" and
"priest of the most high God" who shares bread and wine with Abraham
in
Genesis 14:18-20. Melchizedek is
also mentioned both in the Dead Sea Scrolls (I I Q Melch) and
the Nag Hammadi codices (NEC IX 1),
where he appears as a cosmic angelic figure similar to the
risen Christ. Hebrews 5:10 refers
to Jesus "a high priest after the order of Melchizedek."
According to Cayce, Melchizedek
wrote the Book of Job which contains many unusual verses
that Cayce would often quote from
while in trance. For example, Cayce stated, "For, as the sons
of God came together to reason, as
recorded by Job, "WHO recorded same? The Son of Man!
Melchizedek wrote Job!"
Cayce also identified the Biblical
personality named Enoch to be a Jesus-entity incarnate. Enoch
is described in several
pseudepigraphal writings as well as some Kabbalistic writings. The
modern Bible has a brief mention of
Enoch:
"And Enoch walked with God:
and he was not, for God took him." (Gen. 5:18-24)
The Books of Enoch describe the
fall of the angels into materiality - the beginning of the
incarnation of souls from heaven.
It also describes Enoch's several heavenly journeys where it is
revealed to him the future up until
the time of the Messiah. Enoch is also taught traditional topics
as angelology and the divine
throne-chariot. The Ethiopic Enoch introduces Enoch to a messianic
figure referred to as "the Son
of Man." The Hebrew scripture known as "Apocalypse of Enoch"
describes Enoch transfigured into
an angel named Metatron. In the New Testament, Enoch is
mentioned in Hebrews 11:5 and Jude
14-15, with the latter passage apparently quoting from the
pseudepigaphal Enochian literature.
The fact that the Bible itself quotes from the Book of Enoch
is evidence that Cayce was correct
about the book being a valid source for higher spiritual
knowledge.
Cayce also identified the Biblical
personality named Joseph (son of Jacob) as an incarnation of
the Jesus-entity soul. Accordingly,
Joseph's escape from the pit was not only a literal event, but a
symbolic anticipation of Jesus'
resurrection. Cayce's identification of Joshua, the notorious
genocidal leader of Israel in the
Old Testament, as an incarnation of the Jesus-entity is a little
more difficult to believe. But
Cayce viewed Joshua's claim to fame as being the scribe for Moses
who "psychically"
dictated much of what is attributed to Moses. This interesting bit of
information
explains how "Moses"
wrote about his own death. Another Biblical personality named by Cayce to
be a Jesus-entity incarnate is the
high priest named Jeshua who helped organize the return from
exile and the rebuilding of the
temple (see Ezra and Nehemiah). According to Cayce, this Jeshua
is the one who compiled and
translated the books of the Bible. In essence, Cayce identifies all
these Biblical personalities to be
psychic revelators.
An interesting fact is that
"Joshua", "Jeshua", and "Jesus" are really the
same name. The name
"Jesus" is a Latin
version of the Aramaic name Jeshua or "Yeshua." And Yeshua is Hebrew
for
Joshua or "Yehoshua."
Thus, Cayce has assigned the soul-entity Jesus to be incarnations of the
three Biblical characters having
the same name. Cayce also mentions that Jesus was an Essene
who was registered by his Essene
school under the name of "Jeshua".
Concerning the so-called
"Second Coming" of Christ (which is really not the second, but many)
Cayce sometimes interpreted it to
be an internal spiritual and psychic event within the individual
(see Cayce on the Book of
Revelation). On other occasions, Cayce interpreted it to be an actual
return of Jesus Christ in physical
form. When Cayce gave his prophecies about the massive
geological changes predicted to
being around 2000 and beyond AD, he stated that:
"These will begin in those
periods from '58 to '98 when these will be proclaimed as
the periods when His light will be
seen in the clouds" (3976-15).
This reading from Cayce suggests
that Jesus will appear in the sky and return to earth in bodily
form. Cayce stated that Jesus will
walk the earth again:
"As given, for a thousand
years he will walk and talk with men of every clime. Then
in groups, in masses, and then they
shall reign of the first resurrection for a
thousand years; for this will be
when the changes materially come." (364-8)
Cayce gave the year of the
"entrance of the Messiah into this period -1998." (5748-5) He also
mentions that no one knows the
exact day of event because it cannot occur "until His enemies -
and the earth - are wholly in
subjection to His will, His powers." (57491). So this suggests that
Jesus return will not be a future
incarnation in the flesh since Jesus has already transcended the
need to reincarnate.
The Incarnation as Jesus
Two years after Cayce's death in
1945, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in Qumran. This
remarkable archeological discovery
revealed a large amount of information about a religious sect
around the time of Jesus referred
to as the Essenes and affirmed information provided by Cayce.
The word "Essene" is
never used in the Dead Sea Scrolls but most scholars accept that the
Qumran sect was either identical or
closely related to the Essenes of the classical authors such
as Josephus and Pliny. According to
Cayce, Jesus was an Essene along with Mary and Joseph
who was affiliated with an Essene
community based on Mount Carmel which was a continuation
of a "school of the
prophets" begun by Elijah, Elisha, Samuel, and Melchizedek. Cayce
described
the Essenes as an pious religious
community of men and women whose purpose was to prepare
the way for the coming of the
Messiah. Archeology does not reveal the meaning behind the word
"Essene" but Cayce
mentioned that it means "expectancy." According to Josephus, the
Essenes
were known for divination
(foretelling the future) which agrees with Cayce's descriptions of them
spending their time recording
experiences of "the supernatural or out of the ordinary experiences;
whether in dreams, visions, voices,
or what not" (1472-1). Cayce also mentioned that the
Essenes were students of astrology,
numerology, and reincarnation.
The Dead Sea Scrolls describe the
Essenes as an authoritarian, highly disciplined community
that controlled every facet of
member's lives. They had to give all their money and property over
to the community after a year's
probation. Their theology stressed a good versus evil duality. It
also describes a conflict between a
"Teacher of Righteousness," a "Wicked Priest," and
"the
Liar." They separated
themselves from the outside world in an anticipated final war between the
sons of light and the sons of
darkness. As for the Jesus connection to the Essenes, scholars
believe the idea of Jesus being an
Essene does not fit the personality and teachings of Jesus
despite the many interesting
similarities between Jesus and the Qumran community. For
example, scholars believe the
Essenes wouldn't have approved of Jesus' bending of the moral
standards such as associating
himself with prostitutes and tax collectors. It is also believed that
John the Baptist was an Essene
because of the similarities between himself and the Essene
community.
According to Cayce, Jesus' mother
Mary was chosen by the Essenes at the age of four to begin
intensive spiritual training
lasting three years in preparation for the conception of the Messiah.
Her election as the mother of the
Messiah occurs during a special ceremony in the temple at
Mount Carmel in which an angel
leads her by the hand to the altar. Remarkably, this Cayce
reading agrees with an apocryphal
book entitled the Infancy Gospel of James where Mary is
presented to the Lord at the age of
three when her father Joachim "set her on the third step of the
altar, and the Lord God gave grace
to her ... and she received food from the hand of an angel."
(325) Cayce and the Infancy Gospel
of James agree that Joseph was chosen to be Mary's
husband by lot. They also agree
that Joseph was much older than Mary. Cayce gives their ages
at the time of their marriage as
thirty-six and sixteen, respectively. Cayce and the Infancy Gospel
of James agree that Jesus was born
in a cave.
Jesus and Eastern Mysticism
According to Cayce, Jesus was
sixteen years old when his education about the ways of the
ancient teachers began. First, he
traveled to Egypt where, as an infant, Jesus was taken after his
birth by his parents to flee Herod
as the Gospel of Matthew states. After spending time learning in
Egypt, Jesus spent three years in
India and finally a year in Persia.
The idea that Jesus had spent his
"lost years" wandering Asia did not originate with Cayce. Its
first proponent seems to have been
the Russian war correspondent Nicholas Notovitch (1858 -
1916), who described his travels in
British India in a book entitled "The Unknown Life of Jesus
Christ" published in 1894.
According to his book, Notovitch was told by the "chief lama" of a
monastery that their library
contained records of a visit by Jesus in ancient times. The chief lama
finally relented to Notovitch's
requests to examine the records. From two large bound volumes
written in Tibetan, Notovitch
translated them through his interpreter as "The Life of Saint Issa:
Best of the Sons of Men."
The text begins by summarizing the
exodus of the Jews from Egypt, Israel's lapse into sin during
the prophetic period, and the
subsequent Roman occupation. But God has mercy on one poor
couple (Mary and Joseph), whom he
rewards by giving them a son, Issa (which is the Qu’anic
name for Jesus). All is well until
the boy turns thirteen and the parents arrange a marriage for
him. Issa "... left the
parental house in secret, departed from Jerusalem, and with the merchants
set out towards Sind, with the
object of perfecting himself in the divine word and of studying the
laws of the great Buddhas. [IV. 12-
13]
At fourteen, he encountered the
"erring worshippers of Jaine" a reference to Jainism. Then he
spent six years studying the Vedas
and learned the art of exorcism and intercessory prayer. Issa
rebuked Brahmin priests for
upholding the caste system. Issa also would violate their customs by
giving teachings to the lower
castes. He is seen rejecting the authority of the Vedas and Puranas,
denying the Trimurti and the
incarnation of Brahma as Vishnu, Shiva, and other gods. It is written
that Issa belittled idolatry and
barely escaped India with his life. In Nepal, he grew proficient in
Pali and spent six years studying
Buddhist sutras. He condemned human and animal sacrifices,
sun-worship, the dualism of good
and evil, and the Zoroastrian priesthood. The Zoroastrian
priests seized him and abandoned
him to the wilderness to be devoured by wild beasts but he
escapes anyway.
Jesus the Christ
Cayce made a distinction between
Jesus and "the Christ." He said that "Christhood" is the
goal
which every human should strive
for. Jesus was simply the first evolved human to attain it. Cayce
referred to Jesus as our
"elder brother" and "the pattern" for our own spiritual
growth. The Bible
states that Christ fulfilled the
law and, according to Cayce, so can we. That is the entire purpose
of Jesus' teaching. Cayce wrote:
"The law of God made manifest
[that] He becomes the law by manifesting same
before man; and thus - as man, even
as you becomes one with the Father" (1158- 12).
Because of Jesus' triumph over
"flesh and temptation", Jesus "became the first of those that
overcame death in the body,
enabling Him to so illuminate, to so revivify that body as to take it up
again, even when those fluids of
the body had been drained away by the nail holes in His hands
and by the spear piercing His
side." (1152-1)
In essence, Cayce described the
Christ soul as the impelling force and core of truth behind all
religions that teach that "God
is One."
"I and my Father are one. Then
they took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shown you
from my Father; for which of these do you stone me? They
answered him, saying, For a good
work we stone you not; but for blasphemy; and because that you, being a man, make yourself
God. Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your law: I said
'you are gods?" - John
10:30-34, Jesus quoting Psalm 82:6 to defend his teaching that God dwells within all human beings."
Source: Except from" Edgar Cayce on the book of revelation"
