How do you determine spirit-lives of a high order?

The other day, I asked my Teacher to show me the archives in which those who had lived out here had recorded their observations—if such existed. 

He said—

You were a great reader of books when you were on the earth. Come.

We entered a vast building like a library and I caught my breath in wonder. 

It was not the architecture of the building, which struck me, but the quantities of books and records.

There must have been millions of them.

I asked the Teacher if all the books were here. 

He smiled, and said—

Are there not enough? You can make your choice.

I asked if the volumes were arranged by subjects.

There is an arrangement, he answered.

What do you want?

I said that I should like to see the books in which were written the accounts of explorations, which other men had made in this (to me) still slightly known country.

He smiled again, and took from a shelf a thick volume. It was printed in large black type.

Who wrote this book? I asked.

There is a signature, he replied.

I looked at the end and saw the signature—

It was that used by Paracelsus.

When did he write this?

Soon after he came out. It was written between his Paracelsus life and his next one on earth.

The book, which I had opened, was a treatise on spirits, human, angelic and elemental. 

It began with the definition of a human spirit, as a spirit which had had the experience of life in human form, and it defined an elemental spirit, as a spirit of more or less developed self-consciousness, which had not yet had that experience.

Then the author defined an angel, as a spirit of a high order, which had not had, and probably would not have in future, such experience in matter.

He went on to advise his readers that there was one way to determine whether a being of the subtler world was an angel or merely a human or an elemental spirit, and that was by the greater brilliancy of the light, which surrounded an angel.