Akasha

Akasha | A Dreamscape
www.jasonmatias.com

Akasha is dreamscape, meaning that; I saw this picture long before it ever existed. I was visiti...
Read more

Akasha | A Dreamscape
www.jasonmatias.com

Akasha is dreamscape, meaning that; I saw this picture long before it ever existed. I was visiting Mono Lake, CA on a 3,500 mile road trip that was largely unplanned. I knew that I was going to Arizona, and I knew that I was coming back. Akasha, in many ways, manifested itself.

As I crouched at the water’s edge and opened my shutter before the sun rose I knew that I wanted an image like a delicate bracelet. I wanted it to feel like time feels when it’s standing still; fragile, precarious, ephemeral. Time is something you love and loath in harmony. It conspires to prove that you exist yet with each measurement of your breath it counts away your life force. But the photo turned out to be more than a bracelet of time. Like the way the pace counter of a wandering monk becomes a way for him to reach into his soul I began to feel like Akasha, then unnamed, took on a different shape.

Later, during many hours of editing, proofing, and editing again, a close friend commented on how the blue and purple hues of the image resemble that of tanzanite, which also flashes pink and red as light flickers from it. Tanzanite is a beautiful stone found only in Africa. Indeed, looking at a raw piece of tanzanite is much like looking at this photograph. Among its many values, tanzanite allows an attuned individual to slip into profound meditation and access the Akashic Record.

Here I found myself deep in theosophy and esoteric philosophy with a small background of readings in theoretical sociology/physics. The Akashic Record is a life force of information described by H.P. Blavatsky as “indestructible tablets of the astral light.” The word akasha means “sky”, “space”, “luminous”, and “aether” and is referenced in Buddism and, quite separately, by clairvoyants around the world. In his book, "Science Set Free," Rupert Sheldrake repeatedly quotes mounting empirical evidence of the cloud-like repository of information accessible by the human mind. Buddhists believe that the Akasa is a permanent record that can be accessed, potentially, by anyone.

Is it possible that, with one knee in the silky wet shoreline of a lake a thousand miles from me that I caught a glimpse of the Akashic Record? Then, weeks later, while trying to name what I saw and created I am led to the very thing by the gentle nudge of a beautiful rock from Africa? Certainly, this is the journey I wish to be on.
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