Edgar Cayce's Two Astonishing Claims about Dreams

In my last post, I said that in the next post, I would provide examples of the numerous benefits I received from dreams during my lifetime. Instead, I am first providing some additional background about my introduction to dreams. This background gives you my reasons for studying my dreams and why I followed the path I did. It provides the powerful motivation that drove my dream work.

As a young man, I was searching for meaning in my life. I was not happy with my job and began to flounder. I quickly reached a point where I was dissatisfied with life in general. Then I was given a copy of There is a River, the story of Edgar Cayce by Thomas Sugrue. Edgar Cayce was a famous twentieth-century American clairvoyant who helped thousands of people through his clairvoyant readings.

The story made a big impression on me and led me to join an Edgar Cayce study group that met weekly to work through two small volumes called The Search for God books. As part of the weekly program, we spent time discussing the members’ dreams. I learned that Edgar Cayce had made two astonishing claims about dreams. He said that we could do anything he did through our dreams if we were willing to pay the price. And he said that our dreams “foreshadowed” every significant event in our lives.

Both claims fascinated me, but the one I focused on was the claim that our dreams foreshadowed the future. I felt that this claim gave me something I could study and measure. If what Cayce said was true, I should be able to see this correspondence in my dreams. So, I began to record and analyze my dreams.

Now, spend a few minutes thinking about these claims. If true, they change the entire view most people have about the meaning of life and how the universe works. They claim that we have powers and potential that few demonstrate and are not yet accepted by science. And they depict a future already known before it becomes physical reality in our daily lives. You can see the truth or falseness of the claims for yourself by studying your dreams. If true, you can develop your intuitive powers to do many of the things Cayce did while in trance. You can see the future you are building before it becomes corporeal reality. And if you don’t like that future, you can change it before it becomes your life.

Now, the claim that dreams foreshadow every significant event in our lives raises many questions. One is whether we can really change the future. And if we can, is it really the future? I am not going to discuss this and other questions in this post; here, I simply want to focus on the claims and what led me to make dream study an important part of my life. In my books, I consider the various questions and comment on them in detail.

In the early days of the study group, I set about recording and trying to interpret my dreams. After several months, I was getting discouraged and began to think that Cayce’s claim about dreams foreshadowing our future was nonsense. Then one overcast Sunday I decided to review all my recordings to see if I was missing something. That is when a revelation occurred, and I realized I had overlooked what now seemed like an obvious message. Once I understood the message, my dreams changed and began to foreshadow all the main events in my life. I could literally see the next day from my dreams of the night before, including unplanned occurrences. I believe that the earlier messages were critically important and had to first be understood before the future was revealed.

If my day at work consisted of three of four significant events, I would see them in my dreams in the order in which they occurred. I could tell if something was likely to happen in the morning, around midday, or later in the day. If I received an unexpected call from someone, I would both see the call and the overall tone of the call in my dream from the previous night. Now some would say it is just a coincidence. But when this happened every day, several times a day, and included outbursts in meetings or what appeared to be random encounters, coincidence could not explain it. And sometimes I would see conditions or events weeks, months, and even years in the future.

I saw automobile accidents before they occurred, plane crashes, sudden stock market moves, and actions I was going to take in the future before the situation requiring action occurred or was known to me. My memoir, The Man Who Sees Tomorrow in His Dreams, recounts many of them. My whole view of life was unalterably changed.

In a future post, I will describe some of the dreams and how I benefited from my precognition. My objective is to show you the great power you possess to control your life. You are not a helpless victim of chance; you create the life you live. You can see where you are going from your dreams; if you don’t like what you see, you can change it.

As I have said in earlier posts, disease does not just suddenly happen. You may suddenly become aware of a heart problem, cancer, or some other disease, but your subconscious has known about it as the condition was developing, sometimes years before a diagnosis. That is why through your dreams it is possible to put your life on a different path so the physical disease does not occur.

As a final comment, Cayce claimed we can do what he did through our dreams. But there was a caveat; we must be willing to pay the price. You must examine your purpose. With power comes responsibility. If you misuse some new ability, you may seriously affect your spiritual life and regress during this lifetime. Edgar Cayce’s life was not an easy one; he did not experience great wealth or power. Instead, he chose to help thousands of people who were suffering from physical or mental problems. His life was one of service to others.