The short answer: the Akashic records are understood to be a complete account of every soul’s journey. Every life, every choice, every lesson, held somewhere beyond ordinary memory. A reading is the practice of drawing information from that account about one particular soul, usually the person asking.
That is the idea. What follows is where it came from, what it looks like in practice, and what it is not.
Where the word comes from
Akasha is a Sanskrit word for the space, or ether, that everything else exists within. The phrase Akashic Records came into English in the late 1800s through writers who borrowed the Sanskrit term to describe a kind of universal memory. Different traditions have called the same thing by different names. The Bible speaks of the Book of Life. Carl Young called it the collective unconscious. Edgar Cayce sometimes called it God’s book of remembrance.
What Edgar Cayce actually did
If you want to understand the Akashic records, Edgar Cayce is the clearest example there is, and he is the example we hold ourselves to.
Cayce lived from 1877 to 1945, in Kentucky and later in Virginia Beach. Over about forty years he gave more than fourteen thousand readings. He would enter a sleep like state, and answer questions put to him by another person, usually his wife Gertrude, while a stenographer wrote down every word. When he woke, he had no memory of anything he had seen or what he had said.
Most of the early readings were about health. But beginning in 1923, people started asking about the soul itself, and Cayce began giving what he called life readings. In those, he described past lives, the patterns a person carried from one life into the next, and why they had been born into the circumstances they were in. He said he was reading from the records.
Two things about Cayce matter for anyone thinking about a reading today. First, the information was received, not composed. He did not sit and think about the person and reason his way to an answer. It came through him. Second, it took two people. One to go and get it, one to ask the questions and hold the space in the room. That second point is easy to overlook, and it is central to how we work.
What a reading is, and what it is not
A reading is not a past life regression. In regression, a hypnotist guides you into a relaxed state and you try to remember a former life yourself. Some people do, many do not, and what surfaces can be shaped by what you hope to find. In a reading, you do nothing but ask. Someone else retrieves the information, so your own conscious mind does not get in the way.
A reading is not a psychic prediction. It is not about what will happen next month. It is about who you have been, what your soul is working on, and why your life has the shape it has.
And it is not a religion. People from every background, including no background at all, have readings. Nothing in the records asks you to believe anything. It simply describes.
What people actually ask
Over the years, the questions have been remarkably consistent.
Why was I born into this family?
Why does the same pattern keep showing up in my relationships, my work, my health?
What am I, or my soul, here to do?
Have I known this person before?
Why is this particular struggle mine?
Those are the questions the records answer well, because they are questions about the long story rather than the short one. A reading tends to show you the story you have been living inside without realizing it was a story. Once you can see the window you have been looking through, the view changes.
How we work
My wife Devon and I have given readings for years, in the tradition Cayce established. We both trained at the School of Metaphysics.
I stay awake. I lead my wife to sleep; meaning she doesn’t remember anything she sees or says after she wakes up. It usually takes her about 10 minutes to reach deep sleep. Then, I ask the questions, and because I have been speaking to her deeper Self the whole time, she responds from her deeper Self. All of this is recorded on audio and later transcribed for exploration and assimilation with the one asking for the reading.
Three ways to begin
If this is new to you, the easiest first step is free. Every Tuesday at noon Central we host an online meditation group called You Are That Which You Seek. No cost, no commitment, camera on or off. It is a good way to get a feel for us before anything else.
If you have a specific question about your own life, one-on-one counseling/coaching sessions are available online or in person, on a sliding scale.
And a few times a year we host a four day retreat in Branson, Missouri, where each participant receives their own reading over the course of the weekend.
Common questions
Is this real?
We can only tell you what people report: that the readings describe things about their lives they had never told us, and that it changes how they see their situation.
Do I have to believe in past lives?
No. Curiosity is enough.
When do I receive my reading?
Reports are received before your session or retreat, so what you get on the day is complete.
Are you connected to Edgar Cayce’s organization?
No. We work in his tradition, but we are not affiliated with the A.R.E.