Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment reported the following information from their headquarters in Virginia Beach, Virginia on August 25th 2009:  Explorer and author Andrew Collins, funded by Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. Archeological Research Fund, has found and begun exploration of a subterranean network of previously unrecorded chambers and passageways beneath the Giza plateau, home to the Great Pyramid and Sphinx. Collins hopes that his discovery will eventually lead to finding a secret chamber alluded to by the ancient Egyptians as the “Tomb of God,” a structure known more popularly today as the “Hall of Records.”

The trail began in 2002 when the British Museum needed to relocate its library and archives of the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan. During the move, the memoirs of Henry Salt, British Consul General in Egypt from 1815 until his death in 1827, were found again. Although previously catalogued, the contents had not been studied in depth. Some extracts were published in the nineteenth century, but it was only when the British Museum reproduced the complete work in The Sphinx Revealed, A Forgotten Record of Pioneering Excavations that full details of Salt’s amazing exploration of “catacombs” under the Giza plateau came to light. Salt, in the company of Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia, conducted these explorations in 1817, exploring underground tunnels for a distance of “several hundred yards” before entering a spacious chamber that communicated with three others, from which went several “labyrinthick” passages, one of which was investigated by Caviglia for a distance of 300 feet. Although these passages are of natural origin (meaning caves), there are hints that some parts of this subterranean network of chambers and tunnels are man-made, and stretch beneath the plateau on which the Pyramids are located.

When Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, was initially informed of Collins’ discovery, he thought it was the same passageways that Dr. Abbas Mohamed Abbas had located using ground penetration radar (GPR) equipment in 2006. During an extensive survey conducted with an all Egyptian team, Dr. Abbas came across evidence suggestive of previously unknown chambers and tunnels up to 80 feet (25 meters) below the Giza bedrock, close to the Great Pyramid, Second Pyramid and Sphinx. Yet in a subsequent meeting, Dr. Hawass was shown photos of the caves discovered by Collins and his team and said that he was not sure that they had ever been explored by modern archaeologists.

Explorer and author Andrew Collins, working with Egyptology researcher Nigel Skinner-Simpson, found the entrance and managed to enter the massive caves and – despite the presence of colonies of bats, venomous spiders and fallen rock debris – they journeyed for some distance before breathing became difficult. After procuring the proper equipment, his team, which included his wife Sue Collins, re-entered the caves. Collins tells the story of his discovery in a new book due out this fall titled Beneath the Pyramids and published by 4th Dimension Press (an imprint of A.R.E. Press). It reveals a personal journey of exploration and discovery that is breathtaking to read from start to finish, lavishly illustrated with full color photos, and available for pre-order at ARECatalog.com.

According to Collins, since the caves are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years old, they may have influenced the development not only of the famous pyramid field but also ancient Egyptian beliefs in an underworld where the soul achieves resurrection before ascending to the stars. “Ancient funerary texts clearly alluded to the existence of a subterranean world in the vicinity of the Giza pyramids, calling it variously the Underworld of the Soul and the Shetayet, quite literally the Tomb of God,” said Collins. “Hopefully, the existence of the caves will help us understand the earliest human activity on the plateau.”

Numerous Edgar Cayce readings reference identical records of ancient civilizations hidden underground in Bimini, in Egypt, and in the Yucatan and contend that the “Hall of Records” will one day be discovered. It is possible that Collins’s cave discoveries will open the way to confirming the existence of the Hall of Records, which Cayce prophesized would be entered via an entrance close to the Sphinx in Egypt.

Edgar Cayce founded the non-profit Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) in 1931, to explore spirituality, holistic health, intuition, dream interpretation, psychic development, reincarnation, and ancient mysteries—all subjects that frequently came up in the more than 14,000 documented psychic readings given by Cayce, who died in 1945. Through its many programs, services, publications, and membership outreach, Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E. provides individuals from all walks of life and a variety of religious backgrounds with tools for personal transformation and healing at all levels—body, mind, and spirit. A.R.E. Press has been publishing books since 1931 as well, with the mission of furthering the work of the A.R.E. by publishing books, DVDs, and CDs to support the organization’s goal of helping people change their lives for the better. In 2009, A.R.E. Press launched its second imprint, 4th Dimension Press. While A.R.E. Press features topics related to the work of Edgar Cayce in the fields of spirituality, intuition, psychic abilities, ancient mysteries, philosophy, comparative religious studies, personal and spiritual development, and holistic health, 4th Dimension Press allows us to take our publishing efforts further with like-minded and expansive explorations into the mysteries and spirituality of our existence. For more information about Edgar Cayce’s A.R.E., please visit EdgarCayce.org and ARECatalog.com.