Phenomena which are inexplicable by any known physical laws are occurring all over the world, and revealing the action of a free and intelligent will as their cause.

Reason tells us that an intelligent effect must have an intelligent force for its cause; and facts have proved that this force is able to enter into communication with men by the employment of material signs.

This force, interrogated as to its nature, has declared itself to belong to the world of spiritual beings who have thrown off the corporeal envelope of men. It is thus that the existence of spirits has been revealed to the Hindu Adepts.

Communication between the spirit world and the corporeal world is in the nature of things, and has in it nothing supernatural. Traces of its existence are to be found among all nations and in every age; they are now becoming general and evident to all. Spirits assure us that the time appointed by Providence for a universal manifestation of their existence has now come; and that their mission, as the ministers of God and the instruments of His will, is to inaugurate, through the instructions they are charged to convey to us, a new era of regeneration for the human race.

This "Book of Death" is a compilation of their teachings. It has been written by the order and under the dictation of disembodied spirits of high degree, for the purpose of establishing the bases of a rational philosophy, free from the influence of prejudices and of preconceived opinions. It contains nothing that is not the expression of their thought; nothing that has not been submitted to their approbation. The method adopted in the arrangement of its contents, the comments upon these, and the form given to certain portions of the work, are all that has been contributed by Dr. L. W. de Laurence, to whom the duty of giving it to the world has been entrusted.

Many of the spirits who have taken part in the accomplishment of this task declare themselves to have been persons whom we know to have lived at different epochs upon the earth, preaching and practising virtue and wisdom. Of the names of others, history has preserved no trace; but their elevation is attested by the purity of their doctrine and their union with those who bear venerated names.

We transcribe the words in which, by writing, through the intermediary of various Hindu mediums, the mission of preparing this book was confided to the writer: -