The name Ervin Laszlo will not be unfamiliar to the majority of New Dawn readers. Laszlo has been a pre-eminent figure in the community of consciousness research, the founder of the Club of Budapest and the General Evolution Research group, and author of 83 books.
     In this, his latest publication, Laszlo asks many important thinkers to describe their own experiences of what is known as the Akashic Experience. Fittingly, Mr Laszlo opens the book with an introduction that outlines what in fact is the Akashic Field.
     Akasha, in ancient Sanskrit, means ‘Cosmic Sky’, which is similar to our concept of ‘space’. In Hinduism, it is believed that Akasha is the cosmic source, the fundamental energy of the universe, where the other four elements, Vata (Air), Agni (Fire), Ap (water), and Prithivi (Earth), rise from and eventually return to.
     In the Western mindset, Akasha can be related to the concept of ‘spirit’ in the pentacle, the top point of the five pointed star, with the other elements below it, all growing out of spirit’s starting point.
     The Akashic Field is a realm of consciousness/existence that lies outside our current perceptible universe, but is also an integral part of it. The Akashic Field encompasses all knowledge and events that have and will happen. This information can be accessed and experienced at any time, if one taps into the Field.
     Laszlo doesn’t want the reader to get bogged down in new-agey mumbo-jumbo, and quickly offers up examples of modern science finding truth in the concept of the Akashic Field.
     Nikola Tesla, the renegade scientist, put forth the proposition of ‘ether’, or cosmic energy. This ether is invisible to humans but is everywhere, travels through, around, in and affects everything. Through the ether, Tesla could transmit electricity over distances without the use of wires. This fact makes it easier to believe that if there is a field unifying everything on this level of perception, then surely deeper levels of perception are interlocked as well.
     After Laszlo’s introduction, we are then presented with twenty essays from diverse people writing about how they came into contact with, drew inspiration, and learned from the phenomenon known as the Akashic Field. This collection is broken up into four sections, the first dealing with direct, individual experiences of the Akashic Field.
     These range from Swami Kriyananda telling of the limitless inspiration he taps into from the Field, helping him to complete any creative process; to American Indian Healers who communicate and remote heal over vast distances via the Akashic Field.
     The second section has to do with people who directly tap the Akashic Record for their work.
     Masami Saionji, Chairperson of the Goi Peace Foundation, delivers a fine essay called ‘Shaping Creative Fields’. She tells of her own near death experience while in her teens and her subsequent entering into the Akashic Field, guided by ancestral spirits. She then explains her understanding of creative energy fields.
     As we draw power and inspiration from the Akashic Field, a sphere of power and influence radiates from our physical bodies, thus meeting and joining with other people’s energy fields. Complementary energies feed and nourish each other, helping us visualise the saying ‘like attracts like’. Much like the Law of Attraction, giving attention to creating and maintaining positive creative fields naturally draws you to the outcomes you envision.
     There are destructive fields, the opposite of creative fields, which sap energy fields much like a vampire. Saionji helpfully gives pointers to deactivating destructive fields.
     Well known conceptual artist Alex Grey relays his first encounter with the Akashic Field while on LSD in the 1970’s. With his wife along for the ride, they both explored the same realm of super-consciousness and knowledge without ever leaving their New York apartment.
     Grey goes on to explain how he drew inspiration from the immense concentration of energy and information that is outside the realm of our reality, and his attempts to interpret this through his art. Of course, a nice dose of LSD helps facilitate such explorations.
     Experimental social psychologist, Oliver Markley, describes his first major Akashic experience, in which he is literally transported to another dimension and shown something like ‘The Invisible College’ from Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles.
     He floats through a city, which reveals itself to be a massive storehouse of information, while a disembodied swarm of voices tell him reassuringly that he has access to any of it, when he needs it. Markley uses this experience in his ‘Alternative Futures’ research group, and gives a very interesting anecdote in which he deduces:
     “…rational/analytical modes of thinking are, in principal, not suitable for creative exploration of transformational alternative futures because such thinking modes are, at root, essentially mechanic extrapolations of what has gone on before.”
     The third part of The Akashic Experience has to do with researching the experience. The standout essay in this part comes from the mind of well known psychonaut Stanislov Grof.
     Grof tells of his early studies in modern consciousness research, and how they took him to the area of ‘past life regression’ therapy, which he firmly believes is another form of tapping into the Akashic Record of all-knowledge/experience.
     He recounts experiments in which subjects, under heavy doses of LSD, regressed so far back through their chain of existence (ie. Indra’s Necklace), that they would sometimes live the experience of being a different species of animal. Grof came to realise that the Akashic Field itself is not only all around us, but also a part of the recorded information locked within our own DNA.
     It would seem that by tapping the Akashic Field, we humans can directly identify information, rather than have it run through the many filters that make up our sensory perceptions.
     Section four of the book is on reviewing and assessing the experience itself. The last section rounds out the book nicely, reminding us that sticking to our classic Aristotelian perceptions won’t necessarily help us along the path to understanding the Akashic Experience. Philosopher John Searle is quoted: “At the present state of the investigation of consciousness, we don’t know how it works and we need to try all kinds of different ideas.”
     Laszlo has really delivered with this collection of varied experiences of the Akashic Field.
     It is reassuring to know that there are a lot of people out there willing to open their minds to new methods of thinking and perception, guiding us along the uncertain path we now walk, on the one side faith in the unknown, the uncertain; on the other, solid scientific evidence. Up ahead the two shall meet and become one, and this reviewer hopes humanity one day comes to bathe in the shining light.