John Van Auken - Edgar Cayce on the Mysterious Essenes: Lessons from Our Sacred Past

Ruben Miller

The idea for this book began when I was reflecting on the Norfolk, Virginia study group and how all of these people back in 1930-31 got together with Hugh Lynn, Edgar Cayces eldest son, and how they formed the new Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.). And I got to thinking about something that Eula Allen (the author of Cayce books: Before the Beginning, The River of Time, and You Are Forever) once said to Hannah Miller and me, We are the same people that were back in those days, and we are here again. We are those Essenes who have come back in a group at the A.R.E. This is what made me keep thinking about the Essenes. The more I thought about it, the more I felt it would be wonderful to have a book to give the background of why they started. We are the Essenes, and we are doing those same things we did back then. It may be in a different way, but we are doing the same things. And we still have the soul of Edgar Cayce to help us with his readings. He was one of those who was also incarnate during the time of the Essenes as Lucius.

In 2014 I was at the A.R.E. headquarters for the annual Congress of Members in Virginia Beach, Virginia and shared my idea with writer John Van Auken. He immediately liked my premise and agreed to join me in writing this fascinating topic: the reincarnation of the Essenes.

John flew down to my home in south Florida, turned on his recorder, and listened as I began to share my many years of working with these people whose souls Edgar Cayce had identified as reincarnated Essenes. Some of whom were my dearest friends. I had never heard of the Essenes before Cayce. And the more I heard about the Essenes and knew them personally, the more I felt this book had to be written.

The stories are truly amazing. For example, Judy Chandler was alive when I came to help the Association. She worked for the government in Washington, DC at that time. She came down to headquarters a couple of times, and thats when I met her. She was an elderly lady then and was very ill. Hugh Lynn asked us to pray for her because she was suffering. I learned that she had been an Essene teacher and that she had actually taught the boy Jesus in the Essene school on Mount Carmel! And here I was praying for her well-being in this lifetime! Oh yes, I told John, We can have a whole chapter on her!

I thought this book would be a wonderful way of explaining to most people about their souls lives, where their souls have been, and how they return to complete what their souls started.

I was a newcomer in the Norfolk study group. We mostly talked about the Bible. Noah Miller could bring the Bible alive. We studied Genesis for about seven years. He made that book come alive! And you know, I used to tell Mom and Pop about these things and they would say, You have your God and we have ours. So I brought Papa a New Testament written in Yiddish. He would read that every night at dinner and he couldnt believe what he was reading. Well, Jesus was a Jew. Yes, he was. But Papa also came from Russia, so he wasnt accustomed to this. And his mother lived with us, so we were very Orthodox. To this day, I dont eat meat and milk together, or butter and meat together, or a hamburger with cheese on itno dairy and meat. I dont mix the two, never have in my entire life. So Im still Orthodoxa little bit.

Ruth Denney had been told by Cayce that her soul was the reincarnation of Josie. Josie was a nurse and she had a grandson. When Ruth was in the hospital dying, she told me that I was that grandson of hers in the time of the Essenes. She died about two years after I knew her. She said the reason why she came to me is that she recognized me as her grandson from Bethlehem when she was Josie. Thats what brought me into the A.R.E. I never thought about that. I just put it out of my mind as it never meant that much. It was the same as when Hugh Lynn and I were in Israel in front of the Billy Rose Museum, sitting on those stone stoops, and Hugh Lynn said, You know, Ruben, you were the Jew my father spoke about. That Jew was supposed to be the necessary ingredient in the new Association succeeding. Me. I didnt believe it. But now, these many years later, maybe its true. I do love the Edgar Cayce readings and many of the people Ive met through this organization. It has meant so much to my life.

I hope you will find this material as interesting and helpful as I have.

This is a book about reincarnation, specifically the reincarnation of a group of souls who were once known as the Essenes. It is also about souls associated with the Essenes, their origin, eventual establishment, and their legacy. And it is also about souls today who carry in their hearts and minds the principles and mission of the Essenes.

In some respects souls are like riverson the surface they are all shiny and clear, shimmering with freshness and life, but deep beneath the surface run powerful unseen currents which influence the outer incarnate self and its relationships with other souls. These influences make for attractions and repulsions. And since souls are immortal, their physical bodies age and die but they, their souls, do not. They carry on, both in this physical world and beyond. Our soul is of God, made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), and only the outer persona is temporarily living as a terrestrial physical being for as long as the physical body remains animated with the life forces. The deep currents of the unseen nonphysical self bring influences into this life and personality from cumulative ages of soul-life which consist of both incarnate lives in earth and discarnate sojourns beyond earth. These deeper influences are the cause for our easy love and patience with one person while having impatience and dislike for another. These undercurrents cause us to feel wonderful vibrations with a particular individual in one aspect of our lives only to feel awkward and uncomfortable with that same person in another aspect of our lives. For example, we would naturally have a warm comfort and attraction to a soul with whom we had been a sibling in a previous incarnation but quite uncomfortable with him or her in a sexual setting. Dynamics of relating with one another on a soul level have been formed deep within our inner consciousness, and they shape the way we innately interact with one another and situations in this present incarnation. Most everyone in our present life was very likely in one or more of our past lives. Souls that are very close to us in this life were likely involved in