The Akashic Experience: Science and the Cosmic Memory Field

It does not seem that long ago that Laszlo's 75th book –Science and the Akashic Field was reviewed in the Network (90: 2005). In the meantime he's been busy as his latest contribution – The Akashic Experience – brings his total up to a mere 83 books! To Laszlo's credit there is little repetition in this latest oeuvre. Unlike book 75 which was a scientific exposition on such exotic topics as the quantum vacuum, holographic and zero point fields, and Bose-Einstein condensates, book 83 is mostly a compilation of reports of personal experiences from a number of well known pioneers in disciplines that we might loosely characterise as alternative, transpersonal psychology, medicine and consciousness studies. Well-known contributors include psychologists like Stanislav Grof, David Loye, and Maria Sági, the 'visionary' artist Alex Grey, the celebrated physician Larry Dossey and the astronaut Edgar Mitchell. Like Laszlo, Dossey, Mitchell and Sági are SMN members, and the book's later chapters refer to the work of Peter Fenwick and David Lorimer.

Largely leaving aside detailed scientific exposition Laszlo explains that 'the Akashic Experience is a lived experience in the extra- or non-sensory mode' in which the subject no longer feels separate from the objects of experience. This, according to Laszlo, is 'clear testimony that we are connected to an information and memory field objectively present in nature.' This in turn leads to the conclusion that 'The primary 'stuff' of the universe is energy and not matter, and space is neither empty or passive— it's filled with virtual energies and information. The universe is an evolving integral system, staggeringly coherent and interconnected.'

The proof of these interpretations is in the experiential pudding – the varied and sometimes remarkable testimony of Laszlo's 20 contributors whose Akashic Experiences could be categorised as various types of spiritual or religious experience. Several of these people, including C. J. Martes (Chapter 1) and Jude Currivan (Chapter 5) learned of their spiritual sensitivity at a young age when seeing, hearing or sensing divine or spiritual beings. Currivan reports one spiritual guardian 'so energetic that I felt my whole body vibrating.' [This sounds like certain kundalini experience reports]. Others like David Loye report insights into past lives that were compellingly verified by subsequent research and coincidences that brought them to key locations never previously visited, but somehow known through extra-sensory deja-vu experience.

Beyond the realm of personal experience several of Laszlo's Akashic Ambassadors have applied their intuitions in education and healing. Christopher Bache relates that his resonant, group-mind teaching experiences at the California Institute of Integral Studies convinced him that 'Clarified states of consciousness are contagious' (his emphasis) and that 'our spiritual ecology simply does not permit private awakening.' Maria Sági recounts how she came to understand and practice remote healing ultimately concluding that 'the Akashic field is not an abstract theoretical concept but a working reality.' However, as Eric Pearl (Chapter 13) notes, his experience of 'reconnecting' with the Akashic field was facilitated by his patients recounting some of the same bizarre and quite unexpected experiences he himself had undergone. This unexpected resonance snowballed as they were suddenly and unusually responsive to his healing touch when his hands were nowhere making direct contact. The patients felt cool breezes while his hands often blistered, and even bled, — 'not like stigmata' but with little pin prick drops. Some patients even acquired the ability to heal their relatives instinctively with 'hands near' not actual 'hands on' touch. In one remarkable three month period many patients had the same experience of hearing distinct phrases about 'bringing light and information to the planet' and the need to continue this work. The lessons learned by Pearl and his patients were that 'A doorway opened' that allowed them to open doors for others. Moreover they felt that healing and 'field interaction' could not really be taught: rather it 'comes about' when one opens one's awareness to it – when one gives oneself 'permission to acknowledge' it. On a related note Masami Saionji (Chapter 14) makes a particularly powerful statement about the negative and positive power of intention, declaring that 'the energy of our every word …flies into the creative fields that are forming around us, greatly intensifying their activity. Not only do these creative fields generate our individual happiness or unhappiness, but they also give rise to world conditions of poverty or abundance, respect or discrimination, environmental destruction or rebirth, war or peace.' The final section of the book deals with experimental effort to understand the Akashic Field with psi experiments and the like. Grof also gives fascinating clinical examples of past life and reports one patient who claimed that 'emotionally charged memories could be imprinted in the genetic code and transmitted…to future generations.' Whether this Lamarckian 'mechanism' can be evoked rather than Akashic field energy is, I suspect, highly debatable. However, the suggestion that traumatic past life experiences are more readily remembered, or that what David Lorimer calls 'empathetic resonance' between emotionally connected friends and relatives (especially twins) is strong, certainly rings true as countless examples attest. So, it is unfortunate if the powerful reactions that often attend such psychospiritual sensitivity are misread by clinicians as psychotic episodes (or by skeptics as nonsense). Dossey calls such resonances 'non local mind' connections and others note that they may convey influence and intentions not just in the present but in the past and future also. The bottom line is that consciousness remains a mystery: as Jerry Foder says 'Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious… so much for a philosophy of consciousness.' In conclusion Laszlo summarises his 'take' on some fifteen years investigating the Akashic field with a summary, scientific exposition touching on non-locality and other quantum phenomena which allow 'particles' to cohere or de-cohere as a result of their interactions. This seems to suggest that, like people, no entity has permanent intrinsic properties of 'self' independent of the 'other.' Thus 'the Akashic field is a field of quantum holograms, a kind of superconducting cosmic medium.' Simply put, perhaps for those unable to assess quantum arguments unequivocally, the universe is only 'one kind of thing.' This four word summary (my emphasis) may not be a literary masterpiece, but if true the conclusion resonates with perennial wisdom that sees the universe 'holistically' as a unified and coherent flux of energy matter of which we are a conscious organ 'blessed – or cursed –with the consummate passion to find out'… [and even in Laszlo's case enjoy] '…the intuitive certainly that the world of life, mind, and universe is dynamic and whole, and intrinsically knowable.' I predict that skeptics will dismiss many claims and interpretations as speculative, or worse, but for me Laszlo remains an intriguing and inspiring ambassador from the domain of Akashic adventureland.