Akashic Records

In occult and theosophical teaching, the Akashic Records are a record, held as pictures or "memories", of everything that has ever happened: every event and action, and every thought and feeling, since time began. The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology describes the term as theosophical. It compares the records to a central filing office that a person in certain states of consciousness may consult. The idea comes from Theosophy rather than from Spiritualism, although the two movements share part of their early history.

Description

Akasha

The records are said to be imprinted on akasha, which spiritualists have described as an "astral light" or fluid ether that the human senses cannot reach. On this account akasha also carries the vibrations of human will, thought, feeling and imagination, and forms a reservoir of occult power that links everyone; it is what makes prophecy and clairvoyance possible.

The word has an older meaning in Hindu mysticism, where akasha names the first of five elementary principles of nature (tattvas), from which the other four arise. These principles are linked with the five senses and with the elements of earth, water, fire and air.

Reading the records

Only certain people are said to have access to them; Britannica gives the example of a Spiritualist medium at a séance. Events are believed to leave an impression on the akasha that mystics can bring back to life, and the records hold each individual's thoughts and actions, which certain gifted seers are said to be able to read. The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology treats the records within its entry on psychometry (sensing the history of an object by holding it), as one of the theosophical attempts to explain how the past might be perceived.

Scope

What it includes

• Consulting the records in particular states of consciousness, such as trance
• Readings about an individual's thoughts and actions

What it is not

• Reading the records was never claimed to be free of error, even by those who described it most fully. Rudolf Steiner wrote that spiritual perception can be wrong, inexact or distorted, and that no one working in this field is safe from mistakes. C. W. Leadbeater held that, at humanity's present stage of evolution, our faculties cannot fully understand the records.
• It is not an established finding of psychical research. The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology calls these ideas highly speculative and outside the scope of psychical research, and says there is no generally validated method of reaching such records.

Traditions and lineage

Theosophy

"Akashic Records" is a theosophical term. According to the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, the first book drawn from the records was W. Scott-Elliot's The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria (1904). In its introduction the theosophist A. P. Sinnett described the records as memory pictures fixed by nature in a non-physical medium. He held that they are accessible in principle but that ordinary people's inner faculties are not yet developed enough to reach them, and he pointed to thought-transference as a small everyday hint of the faculty involved.

The English theosophist C. W. Leadbeater gave an account of the records in his book Clairvoyance. He wrote that a detailed vision of the remote past is read from the akashic records, but that the name is something of a misnomer: the records are first met, and can be reliably worked with, on what theosophists call the mental plane, although they do not belong to it. He added that theosophical writers had used the word akasha loosely, at first treating it as the same as the "astral light" and later limiting it to the matter of the mental plane.

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) rose to lead the German section of the Theosophical Society, then broke away in 1913 and reorganised most of its German branches as the Anthroposophical Society. From July 1904 to May 1908 he published twenty articles in the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis, later collected as Aus der Akasha-Chronik. An English version of about the first half appeared in 1911 as The Submerged Continents of Atlantis and Lemuria, and a translation of the whole work in 1959 as Cosmic Memory. According to the Rudolf Steiner Archive, the work uses the Akasha record to reconstruct the period from the earth's origin up to the beginning of recorded history, taking in what Steiner called the Atlantean and Lemurian civilisations.

Steiner's preface to the essays argues that written records, archaeology and geology show us only a fraction of the human past. People, he wrote, have hidden faculties that can be developed to see past events directly in an enduring record, which gnosis and theosophy name the "Akasha Chronicle". Someone who learns to read it, he said, sees the past as living scenes, not as historical evidence.

Edgar Cayce

The idea of the Akashic Records was central to the work of the American seer Edgar Cayce, who was believed to reach the records when he went into trance.

Cayce (1877–1945) was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. His trances began around 1901, when he was hypnotised during treatment for a throat condition, and he went on to give trance "readings" diagnosing illness. In 1923 he met Arthur Lammers of Dayton, Ohio, a student of theosophy. Soon afterwards his readings began to include reincarnation, Atlantis and other theosophical and occult themes, and he began giving "life readings" that related clients' problems to their past lives. He settled in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in 1925. The Association for Research and Enlightenment, incorporated in 1932, keeps about fifteen thousand transcripts of his readings in its library there. The Encyclopedia of Religion sees Cayce as a bridge from the trance mediumship of Spiritualism in the 1800s to the New Age era at the end of the twentieth century.

Context

Within Spiritualism

The Akashic Records are a theosophical idea rather than a Spiritualist one; the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology calls the term theosophical. Britannica's entry links them with Spiritualism only in passing, giving a Spiritualist medium at a séance as an example of someone said to be able to reach them.

The two movements are related by history. The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875, and it grew out of the interest in the occult that mesmerism and especially Spiritualism had stirred up; both Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott had taken part in Spiritualism. The Ellwoods describe its founders chiefly as two former Spiritualists. The Spiritualist lecturer Emma Hardinge Britten also worked with Blavatsky in founding the society, until rivalry ended their partnership.

The movements then went different ways, and a student should understand why. Blavatsky criticised the Spiritualist practice of communicating with the dead, suggesting that mediums were often deceived by elemental spirits, and she preferred contact with Masters. Today the National Spiritualist Association of Churches in the United States says its teachings are "not at all" allied to Theosophy. It grants that such teachings hold some elemental truths, as all religions do, but says they apply them differently.

In Australian Spiritualism

Spiritfold has found no published source linking Akashic Records with Spiritualism in Australia.

The two movements did overlap in Australia. William Henry Terry, a leading Melbourne Spiritualist, was among the first fellows of the Theosophical Society in Australia, and one of its councillors, when it began in March 1880. In a recent study of the Canberra Spiritualist Association, Matt Tomlinson names Theosophy as a major influence on Spiritualists' ideas about angels and elementals and on their acceptance of reincarnation, a belief on which Spiritualists differ (see Past life regression).

A Spiritualist perspective

The Akashic Records come from Theosophy rather than Spiritualism. The two movements share early history and some early members, but they developed different teachings: Spiritualism centred on contact with people who have died, Theosophy on hidden wisdom and the Masters. A Spiritualist would therefore treat the records as a theosophical idea, to be understood on its own terms rather than adopted as Spiritualist doctrine. Some Spiritualists may find the idea meaningful in their own lives, and there is no harm in that so long as it is called by its own name.

Where a reader claims to consult the records for someone else, the usual good practice applies. Even the writers who described the records most fully admitted that such perception can be mistaken or distorted, and their humility is a good model. A reader should be honest that what they offer is impression and interpretation, avoid alarming people with talk of fate or past wrongs, and never let a reading stand in for practical, professional or medical advice.

Akashic Records in Australia

C. W. Leadbeater, whose account of the records is described above, moved to Australia in 1914. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, he presided over a religious community at The Manor, a mansion in the Sydney suburb of Mosman, and his presence, with that of the theosophist George Arundale, made Sydney a major theosophical centre in the 1920s. He left for the Theosophical Society's headquarters at Adyar, India, in 1929, made later visits to Sydney, and died in Perth in 1934.

Related modalities

• Channelling
• Clairvoyance
• Psychic reading
• Psychometry

Further reading

• Britannica Editors. "Akashic record". Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• Ellwood, Robert S. "Cayce, Edgar". Encyclopedia of Religion, 2005.
• Leadbeater, C. W. Clairvoyance. 2nd edition. Theosophical Publishing Society, 1903. A theosophist's own account, not a history.
• McMinn, W. G. "Leadbeater, Charles Webster (1854–1934)". Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1986.
• Steiner, Rudolf. Cosmic Memory (Aus der Akasha-Chronik), GA 11. Rudolf Steiner Archive. Steiner's own account, not a history.
• "Akashic Records". Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Gale, via Encyclopedia.com.