not the finer condition of water,
from which ice is detached by refrigeration. For such a being, water would
be non-existent, and could become visible only when parts of it had been
transformed into ice. In the same way, the spiritual element behind
earthly processes remains hidden from one who only admits the existence of
what is perceptible to his physical senses. And if, from the physical
facts which he now perceives, he draws correct conclusions about earlier
conditions of the earth-planet, he can penetrate only as far as that point
in evolution at which the previous spiritual element was partially
condensed into material substance. Such a method of observation no more
discovers the spirit previously existing, than it perceives the spirit
which even now rules unseen behind the world of matter.

Not until we come to the last chapters of this work can we deal with those
methods by which man acquires the faculty of looking back, by means of
occult perception, upon those earlier conditions of the earth which are
now under discussion. For the present we shall merely intimate that the
facts concerning the primeval past have not passed beyond the reach of
occult research. If a being comes into corporeal existence his material
part perishes after physical death. But the spiritual forces, which from
out their own depth gave existence to the body, do not "disappear in this
way." They leave their traces, their exact images behind them impressed
upon the spiritual ground-work of the world. Any one who is able to raise
his perceptive faculty through the visible to the invisible world, attains
at length a level on which he may see before him what may be compared to a
vast spiritual panorama, in which are recorded all the past events of the
world's history. These imperishable traces of everything immaterial are
called in occult science the "Akashic Records."

Here it must once more be repeated that investigations of the
supersensible realms of existence can be carried on only with the aid of
spiritual perception, and consequently can be instituted in the sphere now
under consideration, only by reading the Akashic Records above-mentioned.
Nevertheless, what was said earlier in this book in a similar instance
holds good here. Supersensible facts are only to be investigated by
supersensible perceptions; but once investigated and communicated by
occult science, they may be grasped by the ordinary powers of thought, if
these are honest