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The Akashic Records refer to the hologram (matrix) of consciousness grids that create our reality. One could look upon it as a library of light wherein one can access all information.
The Akashic records (Akasha is a Sanskrit word meaning "sky", "space" or "aether") are collectively understood to be a collection of mystical knowledge that is encoded in the aether; i.e. on a non-physical plane of existence. The concept is prevalent in New Age discourse and is considered pseudoscience.
The Akashic Records are understood to have existed since the beginning of The Creation and even before. Just as we have various specialty libraries (e.g., medical, law), there are said to exist various Akashic Records (e.g., human, animal, plant, mineral, etc) encoding Universal lore. Most writings refer to the Akashic Records in the area of human experience but it is understood that all phenomenal experience as well as transcendental knowledge is encoded therein.
History of Akashic Records
Those who champion the truth of the Akashic Records assert that they were accessed by ancient people of various cultures, including the Indians, Moors, Tibetans, Bonpo and other peoples of the Himalaya, Egyptians, Persians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Chinese, Hebrews, Christians, Druids and Mayans. It is held that the ancient Indian sages of the Himalayas knew that each soul, jiva, atma, or entity recorded every moment of its existence in a "book", and that if one attuned oneself properly then one could access that book (refer mindstream for example).
Nostradamus claimed to have gained access to the Akasha, using methods derived from the Greek oracles, Christian and Sufi mysticism, and the Kabbalah. Other individuals who claim to have consciously used the Akashic Records include: Charles Webster Leadbeater, Annie Besant, Alice Bailey, Samael Aun Weor, William Lilly, Manly P. Hall, Lilian Treemont, Dion Fortune, George Hunt Williamson, Rudolf Steiner, Max Heindel and Edgar Cayce amongst others.
A Chinese man named Sujujin was reported to need only the first name of anyone to access the Akasha and describe their life history. Another Chinese seer, named Tajao, explored a variety of topics in the Records which span over two thousand years.
In Surat Shabda Yoga cosmology, the Akashic Records would be located within the causal plane of Trikuti.
Description and Explanation of the Akashic Records
The Akasha is said to be the library of all events and responses concerning consciousness in all realities. Every lifeform therefore contributes and has access to the Akashic Records. It is asserted that to gain access into the Akashic Records, every individual human can become the physical medium, and various techniques and spiritual disciplines (e.g., yogic, pranayama, meditation, prayer, visualization) can be employed to quiet the mind, become a "witness", and achieve the focused, preconscious state necessary to access the Records.
While accessing the Akashic Records, both the events and responses are said to be perceived. This is analogous to having a meta-enhanced cinematic experience. When accessing the future, the events are known, but the responses are only probable. Based on an individual's responses in the past, the Akashic seer/reader can investigate probable future responses and give the highest future probability. A simple illustration of this might be witnessing several alternate endings to the main characters in a movie (e.g., Run, Lola, Run). At some point in the evolution of the Akashic reader, however, a state of unification and awareness can be achieved whereby even the future responses are known with absolute clarity instead of only as a probability.
Claims and Skepticism
Believers in the Akasha make many claims about how widely the Akasha was used, including:
The claim that the Vedas of Hindus and the language of Sanskrit itself were extracted from Akasha.
The claim that in Egypt, those who could read the Akasha were held in high standing and would advise the Pharaohs on daily activities and dream interpretation.
The claim that the Druid cultures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England demonstrated the ability to access the Akasha.
The claim that the Bible refers to the Akasha records as the Book of Life in both the Old Testament (Psalm 69:28) and the New Testament (Philippians 4:3, Revelation 3:5, 13:8, 17:8, 20:12, 20:15 and Revelation 21:27 "Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.")
Despite claims that the Akashic Records have been used by mystics throughout history, there are not any direct references to the Akasha to be found in any of the historical documentation of the aforementioned groups. The term Akasha itself, along with the concept of an etheric library, originated with the 19th century movement of Theosophy. Skeptics say that the concept of Akashic Records has been attributed indiscriminately and inappropriately to a wide range of historical religious figures and movements.
Traditionally the theory has also been rejected by the scientific community, due to a lack of any independently verifiable evidence. Interestingly, Ervin Laszlo (2004) explores science and the Akashic Records in the spirit of Occam's razor, and champions the theory of the Records as resolving many anomalies within history, science and experience with simplicity.
Specific Accounts of the Akashic Records
In Theosophy and New Age discourse the Akashic Records are records of all knowledge, including all human experience, held in the Universe. The Akashic Records are metaphorically described as a library and are also likened to a universal computer or the 'Mind of God'.
The Akashic Records are referred to by Edgar Cayce, who stated that each person is held to account after life and 'confronted' with their personal Akashic record of what they have or have not done in life in a karmic sense. The idea is comparable to the biblical Book of Life which is consulted to see whether or not the dead are admitted to heaven.
Jane Roberts in the Seth books describes a different version of a similar idea when Seth asserts that the fundamental stuff of the universe is ideas and consciousness, and that an idea once conceived exists forever. Seth argued that all ideas and knowledge are in principle accessible by "direct cognition". Direct cognition shares semantic congruency with intuition and allows for the possibility of direct knowing without time elapsing and without knowledge needing to be transferred e.g. in speech or text. This is similar to what Robert Monroe refers to as rotes in his out-of-body book trilogy.
Some writers believe that, free from and independent of all religions and faiths, there exist many libraries or record repositories such as the Akashic library throughout the universe, albeit on various planes of existence.
According to Max Heindel's Rosicrucian writings, the Memory of Nature (Akashic Records) may be read in three different inner worlds. In the reflecting ether of the Etheric region there are pictures of all that has happened in the world - at least several hundred years back, or much more in some cases - and they appear almost as the pictures on a screen, with the difference that the scene shifts backward.
The Memory of Nature may be read, in an entirely different manner covering the essence of a whole life or event, in a higher world, in the highest subdivision of the Region of Concrete Thought of the World of Thought, and, last, it may be read in the World of Life Spirit, covering events from the earliest dawn of our present manifestation, but only spiritual adepts, spiritual entities and through grace is access to the Records granted.
In Michel Desmarquet's book Thiaoouba Prophecy, the author claims to have been abducted by supreme alien beings, that in one part of the book guides him through something that is most likely the Akashic records. The term they are using is Psychosphere. The author's understanding is that the Psychosphere is like a "vibratory cocoon, which turns at a speed seven times that of light. This cocoon acts as a blotter, as it were, absorbing (and remembering) absolutely every event occurring on the planet. The contents of this cocoon are inaccessible to us on Earth - we have no way of Ôreading the storyÕ"
Urantia Book
The Urantia Book confirms the validity and reality of these Living Records in several accounts. In Paper 25 is found the statement: "The recording angels of the inhabited planets are the source of all individual records. Throughout the universes other recorders function regarding both formal records and living records. From Urantia to Paradise, both recordings are encountered: in a local universe, more of the written records and less of the living; on Paradise, more of the living and less of the formal; on Uversa, both are equally available.
Again in Paper 28 in The Urantia book we find reference: "The Memory of Mercy is a living trial balance, a current statement of your account with the supernatural forces of the realms. These are the living records of mercy ministration which are read into the testimony of the courts of Uversa when each individual's right to unending life comes up for adjudication, when "thrones are cast up and the Ancients of Days are seated. The broadcasts of Uversa issue and come forth from before them; thousands upon thousands minister to them, and ten thousand times ten thousand stand before them. The judgment is set, and the books are opened." And the books which are opened on such a momentous occasion are the living records of the tertiary seconaphim of the superuniverses. The formal records are on file to corroborate the testimony of the Memories of Mercy if they are required."
Mention in "The Law of One"
In The Law of One, Book I, a book purported to contain conversations with a channeled "social memory complex" known to humans as "Ra," when the questioner asks where Edgar Cayce received his information, the answer received is, "We have explained before that the intelligent infinity is brought into intelligent energy from eighth density or octave. The one sound vibratory complex called Edgar used this gateway to view the present, which is not the continuum you experience but the potential social memory complex of this planetary sphere. The term people have used for this is the "Akashic Record" or the Hall of Records.