2. Living Spiritual History

Suppose the seer gazes back in time—say, to the time of Caesar. Caesar did certain deeds, and in so far as they occurred on the physical plane his contemporaries witnessed them. But they all left their traces in the akashic record; and when the seer looks back he sees them as spiritual shadow-pictures or prototypes.—Call to mind again the movement of the hand: as a seer you do not perceive the picture this presents to the eye, but you will always see the intention to move the hand, the invisible forces that move it. In the same way is to be seen everything that went on in Caesar's thoughts, be it certain steps he intended to take or some battle he planned. Everything seen by his contemporaries originated in the impulses of his will and was executed by the invisible forces underlying the sense images. But the latter really appear in the akashic record as the Caesar who moved and had his being, as the spiritual image of Caesar.