This is from the Edgar Cayce website;


Just what is reincarnation? It is the belief that each of us goes through a series of lifetimes for the purpose of spiritual growth and soul development. Cayce’s approach does not include the concept of transmigration, which states that it is possible for human beings to be born again as animals. From the standpoint of the Cayce material, souls only occupy human bodies through their spiritual growth and developmental process.

In essence, the Cayce approach to reincarnation provides a philosophical setting to the past focusing on practical ways of dealing with this life: living, growing, and being of service to one another in the present. For him it wasn’t nearly as important to who individuals had once been, or even what they had been doing, as it was paramount that they focus on the present and the opportunities and challenges that faced them in this time, in this place, right now.

In terms of remembering your own past lives, the Edgar Cayce information provides a variety of approaches. In fact, oftentimes individuals who received readings would ask about such things as memorable dreams that were on their mind, personal traits and talents that they had always been drawn to, and even intense positive or negative relationships with other people in their lives – Cayce described how each of these things could be tied to past-life memories. With these things in mind, in order to remember your own past lives the Cayce readings recommend such things as personal inventories of your talents, abilities, likes, and dislikes; working with meditation and dreams; taking part in imaginative past-life reveries or self-hypnosis, and so forth.

From Cayce’s perspective, the reason for believing in reincarnation is not so that we can dwell upon the past or brag about the possibility of once having been someone famous, instead it is to enable a soul to understand the consequences of previous choices and to know that each individual is ultimately responsible for shaping and creating his or her life in the present. From the Cayce readings’ perspective, the past merely provided a framework of potentials and probabilities. An individual’s choices, actions, and free will in the present would determine the actual experience lived this time around. Rather than being a fatalistic approach to life, it is much more one of nearly limitless opportunities.