Theresa Cheung - The Element Encyclopedia of the Psychic World - The Ultimate A–Z of Spirits, Mysteries and the Paranormal

Cayce was a remarkably gifted psychic with an incredible intellect. It is said that he could sleep on any book, paper or document and remember its contents when he awoke. He was able to use his psychic abilities in four ways: precognition, retrocog-nition, clairvoyanceand telepathy. That is, he could see into the future and predict events to come; he could look into a person’s past to find the origins of an existing health problem; he could see inside the human body and see through objects; and he was able to enter another person’s mind to discover what they were thinking.

Called the ‘Sleeping Prophet’, Cayce practised absent healingfor several years, helping to cure people all over the world, even though he had no formal education and never went to medical school. Receiving a name and address, Cayce would enter a trance state and then read the person’s condition and prescribe cures and treatments, which were, reportedly, 90 per cent accurate. His success was so great that thousands sought his help. Cayce’s ability to diagnose accurately and name body parts astonished some medical experts, although others dismissed his readings on account of his lack of formal training.

In August 1944, with three to four years’ backlog of mail, Cayce collapsed with exhaustion. He was aware that doing more than two readings a day was too much for his body and mind, but over the years he had been so moved by the suffering of others that he was doing far in excess of this number. He retired to the mountains to recuperate, returning home in November 1944. On 1 January he told his friends he would find healing on the 5th, and they prepared for the worst. On 5 January, Cayce died peacefully at the age of 67.

Cayce spent much of his life trying to understand what he did when he entered a trance. He spoke about unknown civilizations where the soul could travel without the restriction of gravity and communicate through thought. He attributed poor health to harmful deeds in a past life, and many of his readings concerned karmaand reincarnation. The chief difference between Cayce’s suggested treatments and conventional medicine was that Cayce sought to heal the whole body by treating the causes rather than the symptoms of a patient’s problem. The patient, however, needed to have faith and hope in the reading for it to work. Mind is the builder, Cayce would always say, and he firmly believed that the body responded to commands from the mind.

Cayce maintained that we all have psychic ability and that experiences such as dreams and intuitionare proof of that. He also believed that if a person had good intentions and love in their heart they would always have a steady supply of psychic power to tap into.

Known within the New Agemovement as ‘the pure white light of the universe’, the celestial light is believed to be energy transmitted from a more spiritually advanced realm to protect and heal those who invoke it.

The concept that every single cell in our body contains a blueprint of our personalities and every experience we have had in our lives because all matter, including cellular, is held together by energy. Whatever is stored in one cell - love, hate, happiness, unhappiness - is passed on by psychicosmosis to the next cell.

The concept of cellular memory has gained popularity from accounts of organ donor recipients who take on the persona of the original donor. It can also explain why universal shared archetypesof the collective unconsciouspass down through the generations.

The medical term for a lack of oxygen flowing to the brain, which sometimes triggers sensory distortions and hallucinations. Some believe it to be the physical means by which phenomena such as near-death experiencesand out-of-bodyepisodes might be rationally explained.

A form of divinationin which wax is heated in a brass bowl until it is liquid. The melted wax is then slowly poured into a container of cold water in order to read the discs or patterns and shapes of wax that form.

An unusual case in which a father who had died appeared to one of his sons to tell him about an unknown will. Many believe that this case provides proof of survival after death, but others believe it can be explained by clairvoyance.

James L Chaffin was a farmer from Davie County, North Carolina, who had four sons. In 1905 he made a will, formally witnessed and signed, in which he left his farm to his third son, Marshall. No provision was made for the other members of his family. In 1921 he suffered a fatal fall.

In June 1925 Chaffin’s second son, James P Chaffin, started to have vivid dreams. In these he saw his father standing at his bedside. What he saw is best described in his own words, as given in a sworn statement that was taken down by a Mr Johnson, a lawyer and a member of the American Society for Psychical Research, who visited the family in 1927 to interview them about their unusual experience.

In all my life I never heard my father mention having made a later will than the one dated in 1905. I think it was in June of 1925 that I began to have very vivid dreams that my father appeared to me at my bedside but made no verbal communication. Some time later, I think it was the latter part of June 1925, he appeared at my bedside again, dressed as I had often seen him dressed in life, wearing a black overcoat which I knew to be his own coat. This time my father’s spirit spoke to me, he took hold of his overcoat this way and pulled it back and said, ‘You will find my will in my overcoat pocket’, and then disappeared.

The next morning I arose fully convinced that my father’s spirit had visited me for the purpose of explaining some mistake. I went to mother’s and sought for the overcoat but found that it was gone. Mother stated that she had given the overcoat to my brother John who lives in Yadkin County about twenty miles northwest of my home. I think it was on the 6th of July, which was on Monday following the events stated in the last paragraph, I went to my brother’s home in Yadkin County and found the coat. On examination of the inside pocket I found that the lining had been sewed together. I immediately cut the stitches and found a little roll of paper tied with a string which was in my father’s handwriting and contained only the following words: ‘Read the 27th chapter of Genesis in my daddie’s old Bible.’

At this point I was so convinced that the mystery was to be cleared up I was unwilling to go to mother’s home to examine the old Bible without the presence of a witness and I induced a neighbor, Mr Thos. Blackwelder, to accompany me, also my daughter and Mr Black-welder’s daughter were present. Arriving at mother’s home we had a considerable search before we found the old Bible. At last we did find it in the top drawer in an upstairs room. The book was so dilapidated that when we took it out it fell into three pieces. Mr Black-welder picked up the portion containing the Book of Genesis and turned the leaves until he came to the 27th chapter of Genesis and there we found two leaves folded together, the left hand page folded to the right and the right hand page folded to the left forming a pocket and in this pocket Mr Blackwelder found the will.

The 27th chapter of Genesis tells how Jacob, the younger brother, supplanted Esau in winning his birthright. The paper that they found was in the father’s handwriting and it read as follows: