In theosophy and anthroposophy, the Akashic records (a term coined in the late 1800s from akasha or ākāśa, the Sanskrit word for "sky", "space", "luminous", or "æther") are a compendium of thoughts, events, and emotions believed by Theosophists to be encoded in a non-physical plane of existence known as the astral plane. There is no scientific evidence for existence of the Akashic records
Akasha is a Sanskrit word meaning "sky", "space", "luminous", or "æther", and it entered the language of theosophy through H. P. Blavatsky (1831-1891), who characterized it as a sort of life force; she also referred to "indestructible tablets of the astral light" recording both the past and future of human thought and action, but she did not use the term "akashic".[4] The notion of an akashic record is attributed to Alfred Percy Sinnett, who, in his book Esoteric Buddhism (1884), wrote of a Buddhist belief in "a permanency of records in the Akasa" and "the potential capacity of man to read the same."[5][4] By C. W. Leadbeater's Clairvoyance (1899) the association of the term with the idea was complete, and he identified the akashic records by name as something a clairvoyant could read.[4] According to Marshal McKusick, former professor of Anthropology at the University of Iowa, the term Akashic record was created by Rudolf Steiner.[6]
Accounts of purported akashic access
Readings of the akashic record were central to theosophist writings, but also appear in writings of other related figures. Among the former, Leadbeater's book Man: How, Whence, and Whither? claims to record the history of Atlantis and other civilizations as well as the future society of Earth in the 28th century.[4][7] Rudolf Steiner referred to the Akashic Records and reported about Atlantis, Lemuria, the evolution of man and earth, et cetera.[8][9]
Alice A. Bailey wrote in her book Light of the Soul on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book 3 - Union achieved and its Results:
The akashic record is like an immense photographic film, registering all the desires and earth experiences of our planet. Those who perceive it will see pictured thereon: The life experiences of every human being since time began, the reactions to experience of the entire animal kingdom, the aggregation of the thought-forms of a karmic nature (based on desire) of every human unit throughout time. Herein lies the great deception of the records. Only a trained occultist can distinguish between actual experience and those astral pictures created by imagination and keen desire.
Levi H. Dowling's Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ offers a version of the youth of Jesus Christ ostensibly based upon akashic record material.
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 your peoples have used for this is the "Akashic Record" or the "Hall of Records".
See also
Glossary of Buddhism
Esoteric cosmology
Noosphere