ation that
which pierces the veil of the future. In each case it will be well for
us to try to understand what we can of the _modus operandi_, even
though our success can at best be only a very modified one, owing
first to the imperfect information on some parts of the subject at
present possessed by our investigators, and secondly to the
ever-recurring failure of physical words to express a hundredth part
even of the little we do know about higher planes and faculties.

In the case then of a detailed vision of the remote past, how is it
obtained, and to what plane of nature does it really belong? The
answer to both these questions is contained in the reply that it is
read from the akashic records; but that statement in return will
require a certain amount of explanation for many readers. The word is
in truth somewhat of a misnomer, for though the records are
undoubtedly read from the akasha, or matter of the mental plane, yet
it is not to it that they really belong. Still worse is the
alternative title, "records of the astral light," which has sometimes
been employed, for these records lie far beyond the astral plane, and
all that can be obtained on it are only broken glimpses of a kind of
double reflection of them, as will presently be explained.

Like so many others of our Theosophical terms, the word akasha has
been very loosely used. In some of our earlier books it was considered
as synonymous with astral light, and in others it was employed to
signify any kind of invisible matter, from mulaprakriti down to the
physical ether. In later books its use has been restricted to the
matter of the mental plane, and it is in that sense that the records
may be spoken of as akashic, for although they are not originally made
on that plane any more than on the astral, yet it is there that we
first come definitely into contact with them and find it possible to
do reliable work with them.

This subject of the records is by no means an easy one to deal with,
for it is one of that numerous class which requires for its perfect
comprehension faculties of a far higher order than any which humanity
has yet evolved. The real solution of its problems lies on planes far
beyond any that we can possibly know at present, and any view that we
take of it must necessarily be of the most imperfect character, since
we cannot but look at it from below instead of from above. The idea
which we form of it must therefore be only partial, yet it nee