THEOSOPHY – THE WORD

AKASA

He [the Pantheist] also regards the Adi-Sakti – the direct emanation of Mulaprakriti, the eternal Root of THAT, and the female aspect of the Creative Cause Brahmâ, in her Akasic form of the Universal soul – as philosophically a Maya, and cause of Human Maya. But this view does not prevent him from believing in its existence so long as it lasts, to wit, for One Mahamanvantara; nor from applying Akasa, the radiation of Mulaprakriti, to practical purposes, connected as the World-Soul is with all natural phenomena, known or unknown to science.

Fn. Mulaprakriti ... the unmanifested primordial matter ... undifferentiated and eternal ... is a sort of veil thrown over it [Parabrahman].

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p10]

Whatever the views of physical Science upon the subject, Occult Science has been teaching for ages that Akasa – of which Ether is the grossest form – the fifth universal Cosmic Principle (to which corresponds and from which proceeds human Manas) is, cosmically, a radiant, cool, diathermanous plastic matter, creative in its physical nature, correlative in its grossest aspects and portions, immutable in its higher principles. In the former condition it is called the Sub-Root; and in conjunction with radiant heat, it recalls “dead worlds to life.” In its higher aspect it is the Soul of the World; in its lower – the DESTROYER.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p13fn]

In its absoluteness, the One Principle under its two aspects (of Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti) is sexless, unconditioned and eternal. Its periodical (manvantaric) emanation – or primal radiation – is also One, androgynous and phenomenally finite. When the radiation radiates in its turn, all its radiations are also androgynous, to become male and female principles in their lower aspects. After Pralaya, whether the great or the minor Pralaya (the latter leaving the worlds in statu quo), the first that re-awakes to active life is the plastic Akasa, Father-Mother, the Spirit and Soul of Ether, or the plane on the surface of the Circle. Space is called the “Mother” before its Cosmic activity, and Father-Mother at the first stage of re-awakening.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p18]

LIFE PRECEDES FORM, AND LIFE SURVIVES THE LAST ATOM OF FORM.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p34]

Mulaprakriti ... is the source from which Akasa radiates.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p35]

Svabhavat, the “Plastic Essence” that fills the Universe, is the root of all things. Svabhavat is, so to say, the Buddhistic concrete aspect of the abstraction called in Hindu philosophy Mulaprakriti. It is the body of the Soul, and that which Ether would be to Akasa, the latter being the informing principle of the former.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p61]

All the Kabalists and Occultists, Eastern and Western, recognise (a) the identity of “Father-Mother” with primordial Aether or Akasa, (Astral Light); and (b) its homogeneity before the evolution of the “Son,” cosmically Fohat, for it is Cosmic Electricity. “Fohat hardens and scatters the seven brothers” (Book III, Dzyan); which means that the primordial Electric Entity – for the Eastern Occultists insist that Electricity is an Entity – electrifies into life, and separates primordial stuff or pregenetic matter into atoms, themselves the source of all life and consciousness.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p75-76]

The Worlds, including our own, were of course, as germs, primarily evolved from the ONE Element in its second stage (“Father-Mother,” the differentiated World’s Soul, not what is termed the “Over-Soul” by Emerson), whether we call it, with modern Science, cosmic dust and Fire-Mist, or with Occultism – Akasa, Jivatma, divine Astral Light, or the “Soul of the World.” But this first stage of Evolution was in due course of time followed by the next.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p140]

... while Sophia Akhamoth personified the lower Astral Light or Ether.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p197]

The astral light stands in the same relation to Akasa and Anima Mundi, as Satan stands to the Deity. They are one and the same thing seen from two aspects: the spiritual and the psychic – the super-ethereal or connecting link between matter and pure spirit, and the physical.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p197fn]

Pradhana (primeval matter) and sound, as a property, have been misunderstood [by Lévi]; the former term (Pradhana) being certainly synonymous with Mulaprakriti and Akasa, and the latter (sound) with the Verbum, the Word or the Logos...

“Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa,”... It is almost abstract Nature...

Akasa, then, is Pradhana in another form, and as such cannot be Ether, the ever-invisible agent, courted even by physical Science. Nor is it Astral Light . It is, as said, the noumenon of the seven-fold differentiated Prakriti – the ever immaculate “Mother” of the fatherless Son, who becomes “Father” on the lower manifested plane. For MAHAT is the first product of Pradhana, or Akasa, and Mahat – Universal intelligence “whose characteristic property is Buddhi” – is no other than the Logos, for he is called “Isvara” Brahmâ, Bhâva, etc. He is, in short, the “Creator” or the divine mind in creative operation, “the cause of all things.”

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p256]

... both ETHER and the Primordial Substance are a reality. To put it plainly, ETHER is the Astral Light, and the Primordial Substance is AKASA, the Upadhi of DIVINE THOUGHT.

In modern language, the latter would be better named COSMIC IDEATION – Spirit; the former, COSMIC SUBSTANCE, Matter. These, the Alpha and the Omega of Being, are but the two facets of the one Absolute Existence.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p326]

What, then, is the “primordial Substance,” that mysterious object of which Alchemy was ever talking, and which became the subject of philosophical speculation in every age? What can it be finally, even in its phenomenal pre-differentiation? Even that is ALL in manifested Nature and – nothing to our senses . It is mentioned under various names in every Cosmogony, referred to in every philosophy, and shown to be, to this day, the ever grasp-eluding PROTEUS in Nature . We touch and do not feel it; we look at it without seeing it; we breathe it and do not perceive it; we hear and smell it without the smallest cognition that it is there; for it is in every molecule of that which in our illusion and ignorance we regard as Matter in any of its states, or conceive as a feeling, a thought, an emotion. . . . In short, it is the “upadhi,” or vehicle, of every possible phenomenon, whether physical, mental, or psychic. In the opening sentences of Genesis, as in the Chaldean Cosmogony; in the Purânas of India, and in the Book of the Dead of Egypt, it opens everywhere the cycle of manifestation. It is termed “Chaos,” and the face of the waters, incubated by the Spirit proceeding from the Unknown, under whatever name.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p330]

b ) The Ether, whatever its nature is, is from the sun and from the suns§ the suns are the generators of it, the store-houses of it, the diffusers of it.

Fn. Let us remember that this Aether, whether Akasa is meant by the term, or its lower principle, Ether – is septenary. Akasa is Aditi in the allegory, and the mother of Martanda (the sun), the Deva-matri – “Mother of the gods.” In the solar system, the sun is her Buddhi and Vahana, the Vehicle, hence the 6th principle; in Kosmos all the suns are the Kama-rupa of Akasa and so is ours. It is only when regarded as an individual Entity in his own Kingdom that Surya (the sun) is the 7th principle of the great body of matter.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p527]

Now Space, [Akasa, or the noumenon of Ether] has one quality, and that is stated to be sound only ...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p534]

The whole range of physical phenomena proceeds from the Primary of Ether – Akasa, as dual-natured Akasa paroceeds from undifferentiated Chaos, so called, the latter being the primary aspect of Mulaprakriti, the root-matter and the first abstract Idea one can form of Parabrahman.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p536]

Akasa has just been shown in the ancient Hindu system as the “first-born” of the One, having but one quality, SOUND (which is septenary). In esoteric language this “One” is the “Father” -Deity, and “Sound” is synonymous with Logos (Verbum, or the Son). Whether consciously or otheRwise, it must be the latter;...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p537]

For instance, the mystical signification, alchemical and transcendental, of the many imponderable substances that fill interplanetary space, and which, interpenetrating each, are the direct cause, at the lower end, of the production of natural phenomena manifesting through vibration (so-called). The knowledge of the real (not the hypothetical) nature of Ether, or rather of the Akasa, and other mysteries, in short, can alone lead to the knowledge of Forces.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p587]

... only two things are [objectively] eternal, namely Akasa and Nirvana;...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.I, p635]

Akasa – the astral light – 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, or both its Sixth and Seventh principles.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p511-512]

Akasa is not the Ether of science, as some Orientalists translate it.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p511fn]

As the “pairs of opposites”, male and female, are all derived from Akasa (undeveloped and developed, differentiated and undifferentiated, or SELF or Prajapati), so are the Valentinian “pairs” of male and female Aeons shown to emanate from Bythos, the pre-existing eternal Depth,...

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p569fn]

Aditi, we say, or Akasa in her highest form, is the Egyptian sevenfold heaven. Every true Occultist will understand what this means. Diti, we repeat, is the sixth principle of metaphysical nature, the Buddhi of Akasa.

[The Secret Doctrine Vol.II, p613-614]

The cycle of intelligent existences commences at the highest worlds or planets -- the term “highest” meaning here the most spiritually perfect. Evolving from cosmic matter – which is akasa, the primeval not the secondary plastic medium, or Ether of Science instinctively suspected, unproven as the rest – man first evolutes from this matter in its most sublimated state, appearing at the threshold of Eternity as a perfectly Etherial – not Spiritual Entity, say – a Planetary Spirit. He is but one remove from the universal and Spiritual World Essence – the Anima Mundi of the Greeks, or that which humanity in its spiritual decadence has degraded into a mythical personal God. Hence, at that stage, the Spirit-man is at best an active Power, an immutable, therefore an unthinking Principle (the term “immutable” being again used here but to denote that state for the time being, the immutability applying here but to the inner principle which will vanish and disappear as soon as the spark of the material in him will start on its cyclic work of Evolution and transformation). In his subsequent descent, and in proportion to the increase of matter he will assert more and more his activity. Now, the congeries of the star-worlds (including our own planet) inhabited by intelligent beings may be likened to an orb or rather an epicycloid formed of rings like a chain – worlds inter-linked together, the totality representing an imaginary endless ring, or circle. The progress of man throughout the whole – from its starting to its closing points meeting on the highest point of its circumference – is what we call the Maha Yug or Great Cycle, the Kuklos, whose head is lost in a crown of absolute Spirit, and its lowest point of circumference in absolute matter – to viz. the point of cessation of action of the active principle. If using a more familiar term we call the Great Cycle the Macrokosm and its component parts or the inter-linked star worlds Microkosms, the occultists’ meaning in representing each of the latter as perfect copies of the former will become evident. The Great is the Prototype of the smaller cycles: and as such, each star world has in its turn its own cycle of Evolution which starts with a purer and ends with a grosser or more material nature. As they descend, each world presents itself naturally more and more shadowy, becoming at the “antipodes” absolute matter. Propelled by the irresistible cyclic impulse the Planetary Spirit has to descend before he can reascend. On his way he has to pass through the whole ladder of Evolution, missing no rung, to halt at every star world as he would at a station; and, besides the unavoidable cycle of that particular and every respective star world, to perform in it his own “life-cycle” too, viz.: returning and reincarnating as many times as he fails to complete his round of life in it, as he dies on it before reaching the age of reason, as correctly stated in Isis. Thus far Mrs. Kingsford’s idea that the human Ego is being reincarnated in several successive human bodies is the true one.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 18, Chronological Edition or Letter 63-4, Barker Numbering.]

Your hidden Self has mirrored itself in our Akasa; your nature is – yours, your essence is – ours. The flame is distinct from the log of wood which serves it temporarily as fuel; at the end of your apparitional birth – and whether we two meet face to face in our grosser rupas – you cannot avoid meeting us in Real Existence. Yea, verily good friend your Karma is ours, for you imprinted it daily and hourly upon the pages of that book where the minutest particulars of the individuals stepping inside our circle – are preserved; and that your Karma is your only personality to be when you step beyond. In thought and deed, by day, in soul-struggles by nights, you have been writing the story of your desires and your spiritual development. This, every one does who approaches us with any earnestness of desire to become our co-worker;...

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 47, Chronological Edition or Letter 131, Barker Numbering.]

Modern science is our best ally. Yet it is generally that same science which is made the weapon to break our heads with. However, you will have to bear in mind (a) that we recognize but one element in Nature (whether spiritual or physical) outside which there can be no Nature since it is Nature itself, and which as the Akasa pervades our solar system, every atom being part of itself, pervades throughout space and is space in fact, which pulsates as in profound sleep during the pralayas, and [is] the universal Proteus, the ever active Nature during the Manvantaras; (b) that consequently spirit and matter are one, being but a differentiation of states not essences, and that the Greek philosopher who maintained that the Universe was a huge animal penetrated the symbolical significance of the Pythagorean monad (which becomes two, then three ... and finally, having become the tetraktis or the perfect square, thus evolving out of itself four and involuting three ... , forms the sacred seven) – and thus was far in advance of all the scientific men of the present time; (c) that our notions of “cosmic matter” are diametrically opposed to those of western science.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 65, Chronological Edition or Letter 168, Barker Numbering.]

A centre is formed in the nebulous matter of the condensation of the solar dust disseminated through space and a series of three evolutions invisible to the eye of flesh occur in succession, viz., three kingdoms of elementals or nature forces are evoluted: in other words the animal soul of the future globe is formed; or as a Kabalist will express it, the gnomes, the salamanders, and the undines are created. The correspondence between a mother-globe and her child-man may be thus worked out. Both have their seven principles. In the Globe, the elementals (of which there are in all seven species) form (a) a gross body, (b) her fluidic double (linga sariram), (c) her life principle (jiva); (d) her fourth principle kama rupa is formed by her creative impulse working from centre to circumference; (e) her fifth principle (animal soul or Manas, physical intelligence) is embodied in the vegetable (in germ) and animal kingdoms; (f) her sixth principle (or spiritual soul, Buddhi) is man (g) and her seventh principle (Atma) is in a film of spiritualized akasa that surrounds her. The three evolutions completed, palpable globe begins to form. The mineral kingdom, fourth in the whole series, but first in this stage leads the way. Its deposits are at first vaporous, soft and plastic, only becoming hard and concrete in the seventh ring. When this ring is completed it projects its essence to globe B – which is already passing through the preliminary stages of formation, and mineral evolution begins on that globe. At this juncture the evolution of the vegetable kingdom commences on globe A. When the latter has made its seventh ring its essence passes on to globe B. At that time the mineral essence moves to globe C and the germs of the animal kingdom enter A. When the animal has seven rings there, its life principle goes to globe B, and the essences of vegetable and mineral move on. Then comes man on A, an ethereal foreshadowing of the compact being he is destined to become on our earth. Evolving seven parent races with many offshoots of sub-races, he, like the preceding kingdoms completes his seven rings and is then transferred successively to each of the globes onward to Z. From the first man has all the seven principles included in him in germ but none are developed. If we compare him to a baby we will be right; no one has ever, in the thousands of ghost stories current, seen the ghost of an infant, though the imagination of a loving mother may have suggested to her the picture of her lost babe in dreams. And this is very suggestive. In each of the rounds he makes one of the principles develop fully. In the first round his consciousness on our earth is dull and but feeble and shadowy, something like that of an infant. When he reaches our earth in the second round he has become responsible in a degree, in the third he becomes so entirely. At every stage and every round his development keeps pace with the globe on which he is. The descending arc from A to our earth is called the shadowy, the ascending to Z the “luminous.”

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 67, Chronological Edition or Letter 184-5, Barker Numbering.]

... there is but one element and it is impossible to comprehend our system before a correct conception of it is firmly fixed in one’s mind. You must therefore pardon me if I dwell on the subject longer than really seems necessary. But unless this great primary fact is firmly grasped the rest will appear unintelligible. This element then is the – to speak metaphysically – one sub-stratum or permanent cause of all manifestations in the phenomenal universe. The ancients speak of the five cognizable elements of ether, air, water, fire, earth, and of the one incognizable element (to the uninitiates) the 6th principle of the universe – call it Purush Sakti, while to speak of the seventh outside the sanctuary was punishable with death. But these five are but the differentiated aspects of the one. As man is a seven-fold being so is the universe – the septenary microcosm being to the septenary macrocosm but as the drop of rainwater is to the cloud from whence it dropped and whither in the course of time it will return. In that one are embraced or included so many tendencies for the evolution of air, water, fire, etc. (from the purely abstract down to their concrete condition) and when those latter are called elements it is to indicate their productive potentialities for numberless form changes or evolution of being. Let us represent the unknown quantity as X; that quantity is the one eternal immutable principle – and A, B, C, D, E, five of the six minor principles or components of the same; viz., the principles of earth, water, air, fire and ether (akasa) following the order of their spirituality and beginning with the lowest. There is a sixth principle answering to the sixth principle Buddhi, in man (to avoid confusion remember that in viewing the question from the side of the descending scale the abstract All or eternal principle would be numerically designated as the first, and the phenomenal universe as the seventh, and whether belonging to man or to the universe – viewed from the other side the numerical order would be exactly reversed) but we are not permitted to name it except among the initiates. I may however hint that it is connected with the process of the highest intellection.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 67, Chronological Edition or Letter 182, Barker Numbering.]

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 67, Chronological Edition or Letter 184-5, Barker Numbering.]

Good and pure “accidents” sleep in the Akasa ...

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 76, Chronological Edition or Letter 239, Barker Numbering.]

Children of Akasa, 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.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 90, Chronological Edition or Letter 281, Barker Numbering.]

We know of no phenomenon in nature entirely unconnected with either magnetism or electricity ...

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 93B, Chronological Edition or Letter 317, Barker Numbering.]

... every phenomenon being but the effect of the diversified motions of what we call Akasa (not your ether) there was, in fact, but one element, the causative principle of all.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 93B, Chronological Edition or Letter 322, Barker Numbering.]

I have a habit of often quoting, minus quotation marks – from the maze of what I get in the countless foilios of our Akasic libraries, so to say – with eyes shut.

[Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, Letter 130, Chronological Edition or Letter 433, Barker Numbering.]

A current of Akasa directed by a sorcerer at a given object with an evil intent, must either be propelled by such intensity of will as to break through every obstacle and overpower the resistant will of the selected victim, or it will rebound against the sender, and afflict him or her in the same way as it was intended the other should be hurt.

[C.W.II, 218]

... a subtle influence is exerted by people upon the houses and even the localities they live in, the paper they write upon, the clothing they wear, the portion of the Universal Ether (the Aryan Akasa) they exist in – and that this is a permanent influence, perceptible even at the most distant epochs from the time when the individual lived and exerted this influence.

[C.W.II, 397]

The astral light of the Western occultists is the akasa of the Hindus.

[C.W.III, 323]

This power [Kamarupa] can gather akasa or prakriti and mould it into any desired shape.

[C.W.III, 409]

... in Akasa lies that eternal, potential energy whose function it is to evolve all visible things out of itself.

[C.W.III, 413fn]

mediumistic rapping is produced by a correlation of vital force, emitted from the person of the rapper, with the potential energy of the ether (akasa).

[C.W.IV, 144]

... there is but one centre of Occult Force in nature.

[C.W.IV, 165]

It is through occult sounds that the adept commands the elemental forces of nature.

[C.W.IV, 166]

The Seventh State of matter – Life. The Fire and Light of the “Astral Virgin” may be studied by the Hindus in the Fire and Light of Akasa.

[C.W.IV, 264]

... the ignorance of physical science of all the potentialities contained in the astral light or akasa.

[C.W.IV, 489]

... the old Aryan dogma that the Akasa (Ether) is the cradle and grave of objective nature; and that it holds imperishably the records of everything that ever existed, every phenomenon that ever occurred in the outer world.

[C.W.IV, 555]

... the mutual ties created in each birth must weaken and at last grow inert, before it can be reborn. The record of those relationships imperishably endures in the Akasa ..

[C.W.V, 93]

As the thought waves are thus impressed on the tissue, materials are drawn to it from the ocean of akas ...

[C.W.V1, 120]

... the psychometer sees the secrets of the Akasa ...

[C.W.V1, 182]

Every thought, as much as action, is dynamic and is impressed in the imperishable Book of Nature – the Akasa, the objective aspect of the UNMANIFESTED LIFE.

[C.W.V1, 228]

Anima Mundi ... simply the Akasa, the noumenon of the Astral Light, the veil between the Earth and the first waters.

[C.W.V1II, 388]

Akasa is not the Holy Ghost because then Akasa would be Shekinah, while Akasa is the noumenon of the Cosmic Septenary whose soul is Ether. Shekinah is a feminine principle just as the Holy Ghost was with the early Christians ...

[C.W.1X, 389fn]

The Ether or Akasa being the first Idea of the yet uncreated Universe; from which must emanate the future Kosmos, in its descending grades of materiality. The Ether is the “Vast abyss” on which the Spirit “dove-like, sat brooding”; it is also “the face of the waters” on which “the spirit rested”.

[C.W.X, 146]

A contradiction. A thing cannot be absolute and still subject to change. What H.R.H. means to say, we suppose, is that space or the abstract universe (Akasa) is infinite and immutable; but that this universe is subject to changes in its periodical manifestations.

[C.W.X, 174]

Q. What relation have the Astral Light and Akasa to memory?

A. The former is the “tablet of the memory” of the animal man, the latter of the spiritual Ego. The “dreams” of the Ego, as much as the acts of the physical man, arc all recorded, since both are actions based on causes and producing results. Our “dreams” being simply the waking state and actions of the true Self, must be, of course, recorded somewhere....

Q. What, in reality, is the Astral Light?

A. As the Esoteric Philosophy teaches us, the Astral Light is simply the dregs of Akasa or the Universal Ideation in its metaphysical sense. Though invisible, it is yet, so to speak, the phosphorescent radiation of the latter, and is the medium between it and man’s thought-faculties. It is these which pollute the Astral Light, and make it what it is—the storehouse of all human and especially psychic iniquities. In its primordial genesis, the astral light as a radiation is quite pure, though the lower it descends approaching our terrestrial sphere, the more it differentiates, and becomes as a result impure in its very constitution. But man helps considerably in this pollution, and gives it back its essence far worse than when he received it.

[C.W.X, 251]

The first line or diameter is the Mother-Father; from it proceeds the Second Logos, which contains in itself the Third Manifested Word. In the Puranas, for instance, it is again said that the first production of Akasa is Sound, and sound means in this case the “Word”, the expression of the unuttered thought, the manifested Logos,...

[C.W.X, 314]

Q. What is meant by prototypes existing in the Astral Light? (The Secret Doctrine, Vol.I, 63)

A. Astral Light is here used as a convenient phrase for a term very little understood, viz: “the realm of Akasa, or primordial Light manifested through the divine Ideation.” The latter must be accepted in this particular case as a generic term for the universal and divine mind reflected in the waters of Space or Chaos, which is the Astral Light proper, and a mirror reflecting and reversing a higher plane. In the ABSOLUTE or Divine Thought everything exists and there has been no time when it did not so exist; but Divine Ideation is limited by the Universal Manvantaras. The realm of Akasa is the undifferentiated noumenal and abstract Space which will be occupied by Chidakasam, the field of primordial consciousness. It has several degrees, however, in Occult philosophy; in fact, “seven fields.” The first is the field of latent consciousness which is coeval with the duration of the first and second unmanifested Logoi. It is the “Light which shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not” of St. John’s Gospel. When the hour strikes for the Third Logos to appear, then from the latent potentiality there radiates a lower field of differentiated consciousness, which is Mahat, or the entire collectivity of those Dhyan-Chohans of sentient life of which Fohat is the representative on the objective plane and the Manasaputras on the subjective. The Astral Light is that which mirrors the three higher planes of consciousness, and is above the lower, or terrestrial plane; therefore it does not extend beyond the fourth plane, where, one may say, the Akasa begins.

There is one great difference between the Astral Light and the Akasa which must be remembered. The latter is eternal, the former periodic. The Astral Light changes not only with the Maha manvantaras but also with every sub-period and planetary cycle or Round.

Q. Then do the prototypes exist on a plane higher than that of the Astral Light?

A. The prototypes or ideas of things exist first on the plane of Divine eternal Consciousness and thence become reflected and reversed in the Astral Light, which also reflects on its lower individual plane the life of our Earth, recording it on its “tablets.” Therefore, is the Astral Light called illusion. It is from this that we, in our turn, get our prototypes. Consequently unless the Clairvoyant or SEER can get beyond this plane of illusion, he can never see the Truth, but will be drowned in an ocean of self-deception and hallucinations.

Q. And what is the Akasa proper?

A. The Akasa is the eternal divine consciousness which cannot differentiate, have qualities, or act; action belongs to that which is reflected or mirrored from it. The unconditioned and infinite can have no relation with the finite and conditioned. The Astral Light is the Middle Heaven of the Gnostics, in which is Sophia Achamoth, the mother of the seven builders or Spirits of the Earth, which are not necessarily good, and among which the Gnostics placed Jehovah, whom they called Ildabaoth. (Sophia Achamoth must not be confounded with the divine Sophia.) We may compare the Akasa and the Astral Light, with regard to these prototypes, to the germ in the acorn. The latter, besides containing in itself the astral form of the future oak, conceals the germ from which grows a tree containing millions of forms. These forms are contained in the acorn potentially, yet the development of each particular acorn depends upon extraneous circumstances, physical forces, etc.

[C.W.X, 360-61]

But the ether of which science has a suspicion, is the grosses manifestation of Akasa, though on our plane, for us mortals, it is the seventh principle of the astral light, and three degrees higher than “radiant matter”. When it penetrates, or informs something, it may be molecular because it takes on the form of the latter, and its atoms inform the particles of that “something”. We may perhaps call matter “crystallised ether”.

[C.W.X, 370]

Q. In what relation does Ether stand to Spirit and Matter?

A. Make a difference between Æther and Ether, the former being divine, the latter physical and infernal. Ether is the lowest of the septenate division of Akasa-Pradhana, primordial Fire-Substance. Æther-Akasa is the fifth and sixth principles of the body of Kosmos – thus corresponding to Buddhi-Manas, in Man; Ether is its Kosmic sediment mingling with the highest layer of the Astral Light. Beginning with the fifth root-race, it will develop fully only at the beginning of the fifth round. Æther is Akasa in its higher aspect, and Ether Akasa, in its lowest. In one sense it is equivalent to the Father-Creator, Zeus, Pater Æther; on the other to the infernal Serpent-Tempter, the Astral Light of the Kabalists. In the latter case it is fully differentiated matter, in the former only rudimentally differentiated. In other words, Spirit becomes objective matter; and objective matter rebecomes subjective Spirit, when it eludes our metaphysical senses. Æther has the same relation to the Cosmos and our little Earth, as Manas to the Monad and body. Therefore, Ether has nought to do with Spirit, but a good deal, with subjective matter and our Earth.

[C.W.X, 384]

The “Father” in this verse means the Svabhavat, Father-Mother. The Svabhavat of the Buddhists, the Father-Mother (a compound word) of The Secret Doctrine and the Mulaprakriti of the Vedantins, Mulaprakriti is not Parabrahman, although, so to speak, contemporaneous with it. It may perhaps be defined as the cognizable aspect of it.

This first-born is the Sanskrit aja, the Greek ... or lamb. Lambs, sheep and goats were sacrificed to Kali, the lower aspect of Akasa or the Astral Light. The “only begotten Son” was sacrificed to the Father; that is to say, that the spiritual part of man is sacrificed to the astral.

Grace (...) is a difficult word to translate. It corresponds to the higher aspect of Akasa. The two aspects are as follows:
Spiritual Plane: Alaya (Soul of Universe); Akasa
Psychic Plane: Prakriti (Matter or Nature); Astral Light or Serpent.

[C.W.X, 490]

6. And there were set there six waterpots of stone after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece.

The six waterpots typify the six principles, the seven without Atma, the seventh or universal principle – six from the earthly standpoint including the body. These are the containing principles from Akasa to the Astral; also the four lower principles (the others being latent) filled with Astral Water. The Lower Manas sports in the Astral waves.

[C.W.X, 500-1]

... the blossoms of magic, whether white or black, divine or infernal, spring all from one root. The “breath of Cybele” – Akasa-tattva in India – is the one chief agent, and it underlays the so-called “miracles” and “supernatural” phenomena in all ages, as in every clime. As the parent-root or essence is universal, so are its effects innumerable. Even the greatest adepts can hardly say where its possibilities must stop.

[C.W.XII, 215]

... “something permeable and interpenetrating” all and everywhere, it is Akasa, whose lowest form is the Ether of Space, the latter, however, being considerably different from the “hypothetical agent” or medium of Science.

[C.W.XII, 408]

Auric Envelope; because the substratum of the Aura around man is the universally diffused primordial and pure Akasa, the first film on the boundless and shoreless expanse of Jiva, the immutable Root of all.

[C.W.XII, 607]

Then the new Astral Form, composed partly of the pure Akasic Essence of the Auric “Egg,” and partly of the terrestrial elements of the punishable sins and misdeeds of the last Personality, is drawn into the woman. Once there, Nature models the foetus of flesh around the Astral, out of the growing materials of the male seed in the female soil. Thus grows out of the essence of a decayed seed the fruit or eidolon of the dead seed, the physical fruit producing in its turn within itself another and other seeds for future plants.

[C.W.XII, 610]

Thus the statement ... that, in the Tattvic scale, the highest Tattva of all is akasa (followed by [only] four, each of which becomes grosser than its predecessor), if made from the esoteric standpoint, is erroneous. For once Akasa, an almost homogeneous and certainly universal principle, is translated Ether, then Akasa is dwarfed and limited to our visible universe, for assuredly it is not the Ether of Space. Ether, whatever modern Science makes of it, is differentiated Substance; Akasa, having no attributes save one – SOUND, of which it is the substratum – is no substance even exoterically and in the minds of some Orientalists, but rather Chaos, or the Great Spatial Void. Esoterically, Akasa alone is Divine Space, which becomes Ether only on the lowest and last plane, or our visible Universe and Earth. In this case the blind is in the word “attribute,” which is given as Sound! It is no attribute at all, but the primal correlation of Akasa; its primordial manifestation, the Logos, or Divine Ideation made WORD, and that “Word” made flesh. Sound may be considered an “attribute” of Akasa only on the condition of anthropomorphizing the latter. It is not a characteristic of it, though it is certainly as innate in it as the idea “I am I” is innate in our thought.

[C.W.XII, 611]

Akasa is shown black or colourless, whereas, corresponding to Manas, it is indigo;

[C.W.XII, 621]

Taking the case cited, the rays of Akasa and their arrangement which cause a star to be seen, are present all round the person, and at any and every point in the aura the one star exists, but as the perceiver is different from the person in front of whom the star exists, he can see one star only, and that at the point where his organs of astral vision cut the rays of the Akasa/ And it is the same with other pictures that might exist in the aura of anyone. Each picture exists in the entire aura without interfering with any other, and at the same time each or any picture is complete at any one spot or point in the same aura. Hence two seers may, and often do, see two different pictures at the same spot in the astral light.

[C.W.XII, 678]

... Ana signifies the “invisible heaven”, the Heavenly Mother of the terrestrial sea; or esoterically Akasa, the mother of the Astral Light.

[C.W.XIII, 75fn]

Buddha held only two things as eternal – Akasa and nirvana. But Akasa being the same as Aditi, and both being translated “Space”, there is no discrepancy so far, since Nirvana as well as Moksha, is a state.

[C.W.XIV, 411]

... AKASA, or life principle, this all-pervading force ...

[Isis Unveiled, Vol.I, 113]

The akasa is a Sanscrit word which means sky, but it also designates the imponderable and intangible life-principle – the astral and celestial lights combined together, and which two form the anima mundi, and constitute the sould an spirit of man; the celestial light forming his ..., or divine spirit, and the other his ... soul or soul or astral spirit. The grosser particles of the latter enter into the fabrication of his outward form – the body. Akasa is the mysterious fluid termed by scholastic science, “the all-pervading ether”; it enters into all the magical operations of nature, and produces mesmeric, magnetic, and spiritual phenomena. As, in Syria, Palestine and India, meant the sky, life, and the sun at the same time; the sun being considered by the ancient sages as the great magnetic well of our universe. The softened pronunciation of this word was Ah – says Dunlap, for “the s continually softens to h from Greece to Calcutta.” Ah is Iah, Ao, and Iao. God tells Moses that his name is “I am” (Ahiah), a reduplication of Ah or Iah. The word “As” Ah or Iah means life, existence, and is evidently the root of the word akasa, which in Hindustan is pronounced ahasa, the life-principle, or Divine life-giving fluid or medium. It is the Hebrew ruah, and means the “wind,” the breath, the air in motion, or “moving spirit,” according to Parkhurst’s Lexicon; and is identical with the spirit of God moving on the face of the waters.

[Isis Unveiled, Vol.I, 139-40fn]

What is then this inexplicable power of attraction but an atomical portion of that essence that scientists and kabalists equally recognize as the “principle of life” – the akasa? Granted that the attraction exercised by such bodies may be blind; but as we ascend higher the scale of the organic beings in nature, we find this principle of life developing attributes and faculties which become more determined and marked with every rung of the endless ladder.

[Isis Unveiled, Vol.I, 144]

--oOo--

This document has been reproduced from Geoffrey Farthing's digital copy created in 2002, and currently in the archive material of The Blavatsky Trust.