The excerpts below are from the book
Edgar Cayce's Story of the Origin and Destiny of Man,
by Lytle Robinson, published in 1972. I have contacted
the Penguin Group for permission to use this material.
..."To Amilius was given the keeping of the earth-sphere. The mineral, plant
and animal kingdoms were thriving long before man entered this plane. They
were governed by immutable laws already set in motion. Souls still in the spirit
were attracted by matter and came to the new outer realms in large numbers.
The earth was only one of many spheres that came into their paths and to which
they were drawn.
"Those souls, still in the spirit, who were attracted to the earth plane observed
the forms of animal life and the fleshy ties. They hovered about it, viewing the
abundance of growing things in the slowly cooling and tropical earth. They saw
the fruit of the land and wanted to taste it; they observed the sex life of the animals
and wanted to experience it. Since desire impelled them to seek expression in matter, they partook more
and more of the material, becoming eaters of, feeders upon their physical surroundings.
"Since souls were also self-conscious viewpoints possessed of God and capable of being that which
God is, they played at creation--imitating the Creator. Thus they became absorbed with their own creative
powers, with which they had been endowed from the beginning, and they mimicked the beasts
of the fields and the fowls of the air, dreaming up ideas of bodies it would be pleasant to inhabit.
"Thoughts are deeds, and these desires eventually materialized; for from the beginning the resources
of all creation have been available to man. The forms so conceived were at first merely in the nature
of thought-forms or visualizations, made by pushing themselves out of themselves in whatever manner desired--
much in the way of the atom which, when split, eventually forms two more complete atoms; or as the growth of the
amoebae in the waters of a stagnant pool, which multiply themselves again and again. As the gratification of their
carnal and material desires took shape, however, the forms hardened or congealed into matter itself and took on the
colour of the environment, much as a chameleon adapts itself or takes on the color of its surroundings.
"The mentality of the soul was its predominant activity, or direction of growth. The fact that the mental was
constantly seeking expression in and becoming attached to the material necessitated a division of the mind-force.
This resulted in the phases of thought-process; the Conscious mind which gives direction to the building-up, use
and control of matter; the subconscious or unconscious which is the storehouse of memory, the inter-between;
and the superconscious which is devoted entirely to the soul-mind.
"These are not three distinct minds but rather are the functions of one mind at three different levels...
"The first female was called Lilith, the forerunner of Eve, and a comglomeration of monstrosities emerged. The Cyclops,
the satyr, centaur, unicorn and various forms mentioned in mythology, having animal bodies and human heads, came
into existence. Thus the souls who had been hovering about, influencing and directing, inhabited bodies which were
projections of their own mental creations--and propagated a race of monstrosities.
"Their bodies were their own creations, not God's. These were the daughters of men, the giants in the earth, of the
Old Testament. So a weird, corrupt state of existnece came into being, but it was the beginning of a new period of
evolution for the soul--the long struggle for spirit's conquest over matter.
"The monstrosities roamed the earth and mixed with the animals. Sex was the determining factor, as symbolized
by the serpent. Through their offspring souls were being born again and again into a prison of matter from which they
could not extricate themselves. Trapped in these grotesque bodies, man as such was drifting further away from
his Source, the harmonious existence in peace and love which had been his. This he had willfully discarded for
the selfish gratification of the carnal; and he had accomplished it by the spiritually destructive use of creative
powers for self. This was the Original Sin of man.
"Only in the earth did souls take on matter and become physical. In other planes and realms--other states of
consciousness--the plan for evolution of the spirit varied. Only in the physical, three-dimensional plane does
the transition from one plane to another necessitate the process call birth and death. The soul, the spirit of God
in man, has been immortal from the beginning. It is not born and does not die, for souls are as corpuscles in
the body of God, the Whole."