Akasha and The Akashic Records

Generally speaking, Theosophy does not use the term “Akashic Records.”

Whilst terms relating to concepts from Eastern philosophy such as “Akasha” and “Akashic” were indeed introduced to the Western mind and vocabulary via the teachings of Theosophy, “Akashic Records” was not. Neither H. P. Blavatsky, William Q. Judge, or the Masters, ever used it in their writings. The term was invented later, by others, and is now most frequently used in the New Age Movement, where the whole concept and reality behind it is distorted, misunderstood, and trivialised, the same thing happening to almost anything the New Agers get their hands on.

Akasha is something far greater and infinitely more important than is realised by most people who casually use the word. “The Secret Doctrine” teaches that “Akasha can be defined in a few words: it is the universal Soul, the Matrix of the Universe, the “Mysterium Magnum” from which all that exists is born by separation or differentiation. It is the cause of existence; it fills all the infinite Space; is Space itself, in one sense, in both its Sixth and Seventh principles.” (Vol. 2, p. 511)

It goes on to explain (p. 512) that Akasha “is the universal Cause in its unmanifested unity and infinity.” This seems clear enough.

In “Isis Unveiled,” the very first book by HPB, the Akasha is defined as the source of all life, the reservoir of all energy, and the motion behind every change of matter. She later maintains in “Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge” (p. 96) that the Akasha “is the eternal divine consciousness” and that it is unconditioned, undifferentiated, and infinite. In the entry for “Akasha” in “The Theosophical Glossary” she writes that the First Logos, which is also known as the Unmanifested Logos, radiates from Akasha. Elsewhere, however, we can find it being taught that the First Logos radiates from Parabrahm.

There is in fact no contradiction. If we compare the entries in “The Theosophical Glossary” for Parabrahm, Brahman, Mulaprakriti, Akasha, Svabhavat, and Pradhana, they are found to be identical in the definition and explanation given and often virtually identical in the choice of words and phrasing used.

They are all synonymous terms for the One Divine Absolute Reality, the Supreme Ultimate Principle which is the Causeless Cause and the Rootless Root of all and which is both Absolute Divine Spirit and Absolute Divine Substance, pure eternal Consciousness and pure eternal Matter. See “The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 337. The “two” in their ultimate Essence are one and the same, “the One Eternal Thing” as HPB puts it.

“Look around you and see the myriad manifestations of life, so infinitely multiform; of life, of motion, of change. What caused these? From what inexhaustible source came they, by what agency? Out of the invisible and subjective they have entered our little area of the visible and objective. Children of Akasha, concrete evolutions from the ether, it was force which brought them into perceptibility and Force will in time remove them from the sight of man.” (from a Master’s letter)

The Akasha is described as being the Infinite. There can only ever be one Infinite, one Absolute. “There can be neither two INFINITES nor two ABSOLUTES in a Universe supposed to be Boundless.” (“The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 1, p. 7)

The Sanskrit word “Akasha” literally means “Space.” This doesn’t mean the manifested Space we see when we look up in the sky but refers rather to Absolute Abstract Space. Absolute Abstract Space is perfectly and literally ONE with Absolute Abstract Matter, Absolute Abstract Motion, and Absolute Abstract Duration. Students of “The Secret Doctrine” will be aware that these are the four terms under which the Eastern Esoteric Science speaks of the One Supreme Reality.

Whilst Theosophy does not speak of “Akashic Records,” “Records of Akasha,” or “Akashic Libraries,” it has however introduced to the West the great truth that everything that has ever been done, said, or thought, on Earth, has become instantaneously and indelibly imprinted upon and within the psychic atmosphere which closely surrounds the physical plane and that this is a constantly ongoing process.

But it calls this the Astral Light and while Theosophists may speak of “the records in the astral light” or “the images engraved on the unseen astral tablets,” they are careful not to call them “the Akashic Records,” since they are aware that this subtle and subjective form of matter or substance known for several centuries, if not longer, as the “astral light,” is really only the lowest and most illusory manifestation of Akasha, which (Akasha) is ITSELF the Source, the Cause, and the Life of all. The Seven Planes of existence are sometimes described in the Theosophical teachings as the Seven Principles of Akasha. It is pure eternal Matter which is inseparable from pure eternal Spirit, for in their absoluteness the two are forever One.

To the superficial, lazy, unphilosophical, or average Western mind, very little of this will be properly comprehensible. To the mind and consciousness that has been elevated and spiritualised through the disciplined meditative study of Theosophy, however, it is recognised and understood to be the glorious golden key to so many mysteries of the Universe.