Akashic Records: Origins outlines a brief history.
The origins of the Akashic Records is a topic that is both vast and interconnected, both ancient and modern.
Here is a short summary to give you an idea of the major motions within our written history.
Where I Began with the Akashic Records
I began my journey knowing very little about the Akashic Records. There’s no history book which explains, no holy manuscript to turn to, no philosophical treatise revealing secrets or techniques. Nonetheless, I spent several years researching all I could find about the Akashic Records, anything resembling them, the Akasha, the Book of Life, and every heavenly library and book reference I came across. I pieced together a timeline and assembled information on the pioneers—those who in some way figured in the history of what the Akashic Records are today. This research led me to many world religions, quantum physics, and the origins of the universe.
My study took me along a broad path of self-exploration, a path examining how people have understood themselves as human beings capable of both physical and spiritual experiences. Like the Oracle at Delphi, people everywhere across history have contemplated the message of Know Thyself. Everything associated with the Akashic Records is directly or indirectly related to this journey of self-understanding.
To create your practice within the Akashic Records, you need to know the history, the antecedents, the gifts which support your practice and provide a critical part of your foundation. Let’s cover the high points to orient you within the time and space of what the Akashic Records have been and can become.
The First Obstacle to Understanding the Origins of the Akashic Records
The first obstacle in exploring the history of the Akashic Records is that there is no definitive source with clear definitions or specific precepts explaining the hows or whys. Much of what is known today about the Akashic Records is limited by old beliefs and outdated understandings which come from association with other similar, better-documented concepts.
In a quick Internet search, the typical description is: the Akashic Records are a heavenly library containing all information past, present, and future.
While this description of a library isn’t false, it is not complete.
Because there is much about divine knowing that is beyond intellectual sense and scientific proof, comparing the Akashic Records to a library is a great beginning to help understand the unknown.
However, reduced to a material object such as a library, the energetic and spiritual process of the Akashic Records is hidden, limiting both understanding and experience of the Akashic Records.
Ancient Roots of the Akashic Records
Personal knowledge is cumulative, built over time upon what is learned day after day. Yesterday’s understanding combines with today’s learning to create the foundation for tomorrow. Building on this foundation, what is learned today could not have been learned yesterday.
Before the printed word, knowing, the process of how we become aware, was consciously embedded in the nonlinear awareness of humanity. Our ancestors were intimately connected with the transcendent, often engaging in their lives with knowing as a spiritual practice. They lived in constant, ascended awareness of divine motion and experienced no difference between the worldly and the sacred. What remains with us today of this practice is intuition, gut feeling, and heightened awareness.
The current foundation of the Akashic Records begins in ancient, written history when the Mesopotamian ideas of divine knowing and human awareness were intimately connected with sacred, divine motion.
What is received today through the Akashic Records is both a reaching back to what was for our ancestors and motion forward into a new experience for us and future generations. It is a step beyond yesterday, a step into tomorrow.
Today’s understanding brings a new focus to an ancient set of ideas. Today’s learning is based on a progression of ideas. Old perceptions transform into fresh ideas and new understanding, interjected by the emergence of completely fresh awareness. Looking to yesterday’s experience and allowing it to unfold in this moment offers a connection between ancient spiritual practice and the possibilities for expanding spiritual practice today and into tomorrow.
This new practice of the Akashic Records is not limited by either a specific religion or the latest self-help fad. Instead, opening to the Akashic Records today is a process allowing life to be experienced within the transcendent awareness and knowing much like our ancient ancestors.
From this transcendent view point, we can look with new eyes and find a new perspective on ancient spiritual ideas. Doing so offers a new vista to understand and experience the Akashic Records today in a future-forward perspective.
As spiritual practice, the Akashic Records connect soul journey with spiritual practice to empower individual growth and understanding. As the soul’s spiritual practice, the Akashic Records function both as bridge and transcendent connection.
Ancient Ideas Join with Modern Thought
The modern origins of the Akashic Records can be traced to the mid-1800s.
During the 1800s and 1900s, Europe and the United States were introduced to Asian philosophy and religion. Many people began to learn about Hindusim and Buddhism due to the transmission of ideas which began during the British colonization of India in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Many new concepts and words were introduced, and translators struggled to find English word equivalents for these new philosophical and religious terms.
At the same time, there was a growing interest in spiritual matters outside the direct influence of traditional religions both in the US and Europe. Wide in scope, these interests included many esoteric areas such as paranormal activities and abilities, western magic, Hermeticism, alchemy, and Kabbalah, to name a few. This interest opened many to new possibilities for spiritual experience and understanding outside of mainstream religion.
In the mid-1850s, along with increased interest in Hinduism and Buddhism from India and other parts of Asia, a novel word moved into the English language: Akasha. From the Sanskrit, an ancient holy language used in both Hinduism and Buddhism, the word Akasha literally means to shine or radiate like the sun or stars of the sky. Defined differently within Hinduism and Buddhism, Akasha is generally seen as both source and container of all spiritual and physical form. The question: how to translate Akasha into English?
At the time, a very popular topic of both scientific research and religious discussion was the nature of Ether. As the scientific and spiritual explanation for all physical movement, including electricity, Ether was also believed to be the container of all physical and spiritual form. Viewed as similar in capacity and contents, in translation Ether was the primary chosen equivalent for Akasha, and the spiritual characteristics of the Ether fused with the Akasha.
The phrase Akashic Records, as a conduit of divine knowing, comes into the English language a little after the Sanskrit word Akasha, in the mid to late 1800s. Looking for an equivalency in English to further definition and understanding, the Akashic Records were also associated with the Book of Life.
The Book of Life emerged in written history from the ancient Mesopotamian concept of the Tablets of Destiny. The Mesopotamians believed that at the beginning of each year the gods gathered and determined the destiny of all creation for the coming year, recording their decisions on the Tablets of Destiny. Over the course of history, the concept of the Tablets of Destiny has been included in the Jewish Torah, Christian Bible, and Islamic Quran. In each of these sacred manuscripts the Tablets of Destiny are called the Book of Life.
In the 1800s, the recording capacity of the Book of Life was believed to happen in the Ether. Thus, the Ether as the container for the Book of Life made way for the Akasha to become the location of the Akashic Records and for the Akashic Records to be similar in purpose to the Book of Life.
Like the Tablets of Destiny, the Book of Life incorporates the idea that the divine knows and remembers humanity, recording lifetime deeds in a book. This aspect of divine memory is held within most world religions. Additionally, the Book of Life expressed the following thoughts about the relationship between divine source and humanity:
- God knows and remembers us.
- God has a plan for each of us.
- God values our lives.
- Evidence of God’s remembrance and of God’s plan is found in the Book of Life.
- Deeds in this life are recorded in the Book of Life.
- The Book of Life is used after death on Judgment Day to determine the value of life and destination in the afterlife: heaven or hell.
- The Book of Life is stored in a heavenly library.
- The recordings in the Book of Life are written by God or by a divinely designated recorder or scribe.
In associating the Akashic Records with the Book of Life, these beliefs about the Book of Life were then attributed to the Akashic Records and provide the basis for using a book in a heavenly library as the primary description for the Akashic Records. Additionally, within this association with the Book of Life, the ideas emerged about the capacity and purpose of the Akashic Records.
Though these original attributions still exist in modern thought, experience and understanding of the Akashic Records has progressed in the last 150 years. More importantly, the Akashic Records have more capacity than the Book of Life and by clinging to these now dated associations, deeper understanding of the Akashic Records is limited.
The good news is that there is a new perspective concerning the energy of the Akashic Records which I have already introduced to you and will elaborate further upon in the next section of this book.
As you are experiencing and learning to open your Akashic Records through exercises in this book, the experience and understanding of the Akashic Records continues to progress. While the original attributions still exist in modern thought, there are incredible opportunities to move forward, to move deeper, and to move beyond. Combining historical understanding with the understanding of soul energetic dynamics (as explained in the last section) offers a path of powerful personal exploration and experience which will literally re-write history and move the Akashic Records into acceptance as an amazing source of knowing, healing, and spiritual practice.
Akashic Records: Origins is an excerpt from my book, Open Your Akashic Records.
For more information about the Akashic Records, check out this section of my blog: Understand the Akashic Records.
