Light is really
a complete scene of a certain place on earth, at a certain period in the
history of the earth. It resembles one of the small views in a series of
moving pictures--a single view of a roll-film. It is fixed, and not in
motion, and yet we can move forward along the fourth dimension, and thus
obtain a moving picture of the history of any point on the surface of the
earth, or even combine the various points into a large moving picture, in
the same way. Let us prove this by actual experiment. Close your eyes for
a moment, while we travel back in time (so to speak) along the series of
these astral records--for, indeed, they travel back to the beginning of
the history of the earth. Now open your eyes! Looking around you, you
perceive the pictured representation of strange scenes filled with persons
wearing a peculiar garb--but all is still, no life, no motion.

"Now, let us move forward in time, at much higher rate than that in which
the astral views were registered. You now see flying before you the great
movement of life on a certain point of space, in a far distant age. From
birth to death you see the life of these strange people, all in the space
of a few moments. Great battles are fought, and cities rise before your
eyes, all in a great moving picture flying at a tremendous speed. Now
stop, and then let us move backward in time, still gazing at the moving
pictures. You see a strange sight, like that of 'reversing the film' in a
moving picture. You see everything moving backward--cities crumbling into
nothingness, men arising from their graves, and growing younger each
second until they are finally born as babes--everything moving backward in
time, instead of forward. You can thus witness any great historical event,
or follow the career of any great personage from birth to death--or
backward. You will notice, moreover, that everything is semi-transparent,
and that accordingly you can see the picture of what is going on inside of
buildings as well as outside of them. Nothing escapes the Astral Light
Records. Nothing can be concealed from it. By traveling to any point in
time, on the fourth dimension, you may begin at that point, and see a
moving picture of the history of any part of the earth from that time to
the present--or you may reverse the sequence by travelling backward, as we
have seen. You may also travel in the Astral, on ordinary space
dimensions, and thus see what happened simultaneously all over th