"When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place." – Bhagavad Gita 6.19
Akasha
In Sanatana Dharma, a prominent conception has been that the universe is all vibration, which is known as Nada Brahman. The scriptures of Sanatana Dharma hypothesise that it is the vibratory field that is at the root of all true experience and scientific investigation. Today, modern physics echoes this ancient insight: gravitational waves are observed to ripple across space-time, while quantum physics describes matter itself as arising from oscillating energy fields and vibrating particles like strings or quanta. In this way, what the rishis intuited as divine sound or vibration — Nāda — is increasingly reflected in scientific models that portray the universe not as solid materiality, but as pulsations of energy, woven together in an ever-resonating cosmic symphony.
It is this same field of energy that saints, bodhisattavas, yogis, mystics, priests, shamans and seers have observed by looking within themselves. This vibratory field has been called Akasha, the primordial Om, the word in the beginning, Indra’s Net of Jewels, the Music of the Spheres and hundreds of other names throughout history.
This field is common root of all religion and spirituality, which drives us on the spiritual journey of self-realisation and liberation from this material world.
3rd Century Mahayana Buddhism delineated astronomy and cosmology similar to the advanced physics of the modern-day. Indra’s Net of Jewels is a metaphor used to desribe the way the fabric of the universal tapestry has been woven together that derives from a much older Vedic teaching. Imagine a complex nexus of jewels that extends across dimensions. Each and every jewel contains the reflection of all the other jewels and in each reflected jewel you will find the reflections of all the other jewels, the entire réseau in that reflection and so on. This analogy known as Indra’s Net can be described as a holographic universe where even the smallest stream of light contains the reflection of the whole which is encompassed by the abstraction of akasha.
Serbian-American scientist Nikola Tesla has been described as “The Man Who Lit the World” and the “Man Who Invented the Modern World” in the shadow of his scientific discoveries and achievements that have fundamentally defined our life today such as the his success in making Alternating Current light cities across the globe and his contributions to radio, wireless communication and electric motors. Nikola Tesla had a deep interest in the Vedic traditions and used the term ‘akasha’ to describe the etheric field that extends throughout all things and studied with the great Swami Vivekananda who ignited a global spiritual renaissance by introducing Vedanta and the universality of Sanatana Dharma to the West.
In Vedic teachings, akasha is space itself. The space that the other elements fill that exists simultaneously with vibration (the two are inseparable). Akasha is quite literally yin to Prana’s yang (prana - literally life-force -is the hand creates the brushstroke of vibration across the canvas of akasha).
Ancient yogis and seers have maintained that there is a field at the foundational level of consciousness that is otherwise known as the Akashic Records. The Akashic Records is where all experience, past, present and future, exists now and always. This field is the matrix from which everything from subatomic particles to galxies, planets, stars and all life arise. You can never see anything that arises from this matrix in its pure form because it is made from layer upon layer of vibration and constantly changing, exchanging information with Akasha. A tree absorbs energy from the Sun, uses energy from the rain, uses energy from the air and gets energy from the earth.
Particle physicists at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire – the European Organization for Nuclear Research) continue their search for the all-pervading field at the root of physical existence, not by turning inward like the ancient mystics, but by probing ever deeper into the fabric of the outer universe. On 4 July 2012, CERN scientists in Geneva announced what has been heralded as the most significant scientific breakthrough of the century: the detection of the Higgs Boson – popularly called the “God Particle.” Its discovery confirmed that an invisible energy field, the Higgs Field, which was called akasha by ancient seers, permeates the vacuum of space, giving rise to mass itself. At the heart of this quest is the Large Hadron Collider – a colossal 17-mile-long underground ring where particles are accelerated to tremendous speeds and smashed into one another so their cosmic debris can be analysed.
The Standard Model of physics describes a universe made of vibrating fields, yet cannot explain what substance is vibrating, or how particles acquire the mass that allows matter to exist. The Higgs Boson, as the excitation of the Higgs Field, offers a key to this mystery – the fundamental tremor of creation whose properties might account for the unknown mass and energy propelling the cosmos. Yet far from resolving the puzzle of the universe, its discovery has only deepened it, revealing a reality even more enigmatic and wondrous than previously imagined.
In Kabbalah — the mystical stream of Judaism — it is said that the Divine Name of God is ineffable, not because it cannot be spoken, but because it is vibration itself, present everywhere as the underlying sound behind all matter, all speech and all existence. This sacred Name is written as YHWH (י ה ו ה), the Tetragrammaton — literally “the Four Letters.” Each letter expresses a stage in the descent of spirit into form:
• Yod (י) – the primordial spark, a point of pure fire (Keter).
• He (ה) – the breath of expansion and formation (Water, Binah).
• Vav (ו) – the descent into connection and structure (Air, Tiferet).
• He (ה) – the final crystallisation into matter (Earth, Malkuth).
A tetrahedron (a four-pointed polyhedron) is often used to symbolise this configuration: its four vertices represent the four elements, while the inner space — the Akasha — is the subtle ether that sustains and permeates them.
The Tetragrammaton signifies the Logos — the creative Word of God. In the original Greek of the Gospel of John the verse reads “In the beginning was the Logos,” not “the Word.” In Sanatana Dharma, it is the primordial Om that reverberates at the dawn of creation, birthing the etheric field known as Akasha that fills all things. The philosopher Heraclitus spoke of the Logos as the hidden principle behind all form, while the Stoics described it as the animating flame of the cosmos. Sufi mystics taught that the Logos lies within all manifestation — the bridge between the unmanifest and the manifest. At its heart, logos means unveiled truth. When we discover the Logos, we behold Reality. Yet that truth becomes increasingly concealed as vibration folds Akasha into complex forms — a cosmic game of hide-and-seek in which humanity, through generational forgetfulness, has even forgotten that it is playing.
Yoga teaches that we must re-discover the Self and unite it with God — and Akasha is the vibratory field through which this reunion occurs. Once we recognise that all religions arise from this single universal field, the idea of “my Om” or “my God” becomes as illogical as saying “my Higgs Field.” This is why the greatest saints, mystics and philosophers continuously return to the vision of Sanatana Dharma — the eternal consciousness underlying all.
The Pythagorean-Platonic tradition hinted at a golden key that unites all the mysteries of nature — an outward expression of the Logos, of Om, of Akasha — almost like the Mind of God reflected in the divine symmetry woven throughout creation. Giants such as Pythagoras, Kepler, Leonardo da Vinci, Nikola Tesla, and Albert Einstein touched the edges of this vast mystery. Einstein remarked, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious – it is the source of all art and science. He who is stranger to this emotion, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe is as good as dead.”
He compared the human condition to a small child entering a vast library written in many languages: the child knows someone authored these books, yet cannot comprehend the language or the order behind them. So too, we perceive a universe perfectly arranged in accordance with laws, even though our limited minds cannot fully understand the invisible force that guides the stars.
And yet, every mystic who turns inward in search of the Self eventually encounters the same truth — revealed not in words, but through the divine geometry of vibration, spirals and sacred form.
