Akasha chronicle

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The Akasha chronicle is the spiritual world memory, the Akasha material, in which the spiritual researcher can read the events of the most distant past - not, however, as they occurred directly on the outside, but from the side of the inner soul experience.

World memory in the Western tradition

Accounts of world memory can already be found in Plotinus, Marsilio Ficino, Paracelsus, to some extent also in Agrippa von Nettesheim, and later in the 19th century in Eduard von Hartmann, the philosopher of the unconscious, to whom Rudolf Steiner dedicated his fundamental philosophical work «Truth and Knowledge» (GA 3). The idea of a world memory is also an integral part of the Christian tradition, for example in the celebration of the Mass for the deceased (Missa pro defunctis) from the Missale curiale (1472) or also the Missale Romanum (1570) of the Roman Catholic Church. The Dies irae of the Missa pro defunctis reads:

Liber scriptus proferetur
in quo totum continetur,
unde mundus iudicetur.

A written book will be brought forward,
in which all things are contained,
according to which the world shall be judged.

In the tradition of the Old and New Testament, the Book of Life (Hebrew: סֵפֶר חִיִּים Sefer Chajim) is mentioned several times, in which the names of all the righteous who will not be thrown into the lake of fire on the Day of Judgement and will not suffer the second death are inscribed.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky referred to this world memory in her 1877 work «Isis Unveiled», speaking of "metaphysical tablets", "daguerreotypes printed on the astral light", records "of all that was, is or ever will be" and which would be "presented to the eye of the seer and prophet as a living image" (Lit.: Blavatsky, p. 178ff).

Characteristics of the Akasha Chronicle

Reading in the Akasha chronicle is more reliable than looking at history based only on the interpretation of externally transmitted documents or artefacts, yet here too errors are possible which require later correction.

„Through ordinary history, man can only learn about a small part of what mankind experienced in prehistoric times. Historical evidence sheds light on only a few millennia. And even what ancient history, palaeontology and geology can teach us is only something very limited. And this limitation is compounded by the unreliability of everything that is based on external evidence. Just consider how the image of this or that event or people, which is not so long behind us, has changed when new historical evidence has been found. Just compare the accounts given by different historians of one and the same thing, and you will soon be convinced of the uncertain ground on which you stand. Everything that belongs to the outer world of the senses is subject to time. And time also destroys what has come into being in time. But external history is dependent on what has been preserved in time. No one can say whether what has been preserved is also the essential if he stops at the external evidence. - But everything that comes into being in time has its origin in the eternal. But the eternal is not accessible to sensual perception. But the paths to the perception of the eternal are open to man. He can develop the dormant powers within him in such a way that he is able to recognise this eternal. In the essays on the question: "How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds?" which appear in this journal, reference is made to this training. In the course of these essays it will also be shown that man, at a certain high level of his cognitive faculty, can also penetrate to the eternal origins of temporally transient things. If man expands his cognitive faculty in this way, then he is no longer dependent on external evidence for his knowledge of the past. Then he is able to see what is not sensually perceptible in the events, what no time can destroy from them. He advances from the transient history to an imperishable one. This history, however, is written with different letters than the ordinary one. In Gnosis and Theosophy it is called the " Akasha Chronicle ". Only a faint idea of this chronicle can be given in our language. For our language is calculated for the world of the senses. And what is designated by it immediately acquires the character of this sense world. It is therefore easy to give the impression of a fantasist, if not worse, to the uninitiated who cannot yet convince themselves of the reality of a particular spiritual world through their own experience. - He who has acquired the ability to perceive in the spiritual world recognises the eternal character of past events. They stand before him not like the dead testimonies of history, but in full life. What has happened is played out before him in a certain way. - Those who are initiated into the reading of such living scripture can look back into a far more distant past than that which the outer history represents; and they can also - from immediate spiritual perception - describe the things of which history reports in a far more reliable manner than is possible for the latter. In order to prevent a possible error, it should be said here that spiritual perception is not infallible. This view can also be mistaken, it can be inaccurate, skewed, wrong. In this field, too, no man is free from error, no matter how high he may be. That is why one should not be offended if communications that come from such spiritual sources do not always agree completely. But the reliability of observation is far greater here than in the outer world of the senses. And what various initiates can tell us about history and prehistory will essentially be in agreement. In fact, there is such history and prehistory in all secret schools. And here there has been such full agreement for thousands of years that the agreement which exists between the outer historians of even one century cannot be compared with it at all. The initiates describe essentially the same thing at all times and in all places.“ (Lit.:GA 11, p. 21ff)

The Akasha Chronicle at the Transition from the Lower to the Upper Devachan

According to Rudolf Steiner, the Akasha chronicle, at least as far as all thought-formations are concerned, begins where the upper spiritual world (Upper Devachan, Arupa-Devachan) passes into the lower spiritual world (Lower Devachan, Rupa-Devachan), i.e. where the forming but itself unformed creative power transforms itself into the formed.

„This is the workshop of the world, which includes in itself all the forms from which creation has sprung. This is Plato's world of ideas, the realm of the mothers of which Goethe speaks and from which he lets the phantom of Helena rise. What appears on this level of the Devachan is what the Indian calls the Akasha Chronicle. In our modern language we would call it the astral image of all world events. Everything that has passed through the astral body of man is recorded here in an infinitely subtle substance, which is actually negative matter.“ (Lit.:GA 94, p. 82f)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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