Guest guest Posted February 7, 2006 Report Share Posted February 7, 2006 Chitra guptam mahaa praajnam lekhaneepatra dhaarinam; Chitra-ratnaambara-dhaararn madhyastham sarvadehinaam. The Chitra Guptas, who are endowed with great intelligence and copious memory, keep records and preserves on leaves with pencil, the memory of every act of the souls. Wearing jewels of precious stones, they mediate as umpire between all souls that are embodied. Chitra guptam - The Chitra Guptas (who are endowed with) maha praajnam - great intelligence and copious memory, (and who) lekhaneepatra - with (their) pencil, on leaves dhaarinam - keep records and preserve the memory (and who) Chitra-ratnaambara-dhaararn - wearing jewels of precious metals madhyastham - mediate as umpire (madhyasthaha is an epithet of Lord Shiva also) sarvadehinaam - between all souls that are embodied. Hindus meditate on this invocation to the Chitra Guptas, the recording angels of the Hindu pantheon, on the Chitra Purnima day (full moon day of the Chaitra month) that falls in April. The twelve months of the Hindu lunar year are named after the star during whose ascendency the full moon of that month occurs. Chaitra is the first month of the year and the Chaitra star is sacred to the Chitra Guptas. The festival of Chitra Purnima is celebrated with offerings to these angels in Yama Dharma Raja's court, who keep the karmic records of all souls that are embodied on successive reincarnations. Based on these records, Lord Yama guides the souls on further course of their evolution. The terms chitra and gupta are highly evocative. Together they refer to the picturized and esoteric records of memory. Even though the recording angels are symbolized with pencil and leaves for keeping the records of souls, their very name implies that the records are kept in the form of pictures. Not just still photographs, but a living, cinematograpic record, as we will see in this article. The Chitra Purnima festival ends with a moonlight dinner served with chitraannam, a variety of colorful rice dishes, such as the lemon rice, the tamarind rice, the coconut rice and the curd rice, among other delicacies. When a man dies, and while his prana and etheric double withdraw from his physical body, he watches a personal movie of his life in the incarnation that just ended. Arthur Powell, who compiled the works of leading Theosophists (other than H.P. Blavatsky) in five volumes, speaks of this scenario in the volume The Etheric Double as below: "It is during the withdrawal of the double, as well as afterwards, that the whole of the man's past life passes swiftly in review before the Ego, every forgotten nook and corner of the memory yielding up its secrets, picture by picture, event by event. In these few seconds the Ego lives over again his whole life, seeing his successes and failures, loves and hatreds: he perceives the predominant tendency of the whole, and the ruling thought of the life asserts itself, marking the region in which the chief part of the post-mortem life will be spent. As the Kaushitakopanishat describes it, at death Prana gathers everything together and, withdrawing from the body, hands everything onwards to the Knower, who is the receptacle of all." People who had NDE (near-death experiences) have testified to watching the movie of their personal life. The karmic records of the souls are stored as multimedia books of evolution of each soul through its long journey of repeated incarnations. These karmic records are generally referred to by the term Akashic Records. The equivalent of Chitra Gupta's records are found in other religions too. The following is an excerpt from the book What Becomes Of The Soul After Death by Swamy Sivananda (of the Divine Life Society): "The departed soul will wait for some time. Then God will appear to judge them. Mohammed will take the office of intercessor. Then everyone will be examined regarding all his actions in his life. All the limbs and parts of the body will be made to confess the sins committed by each. Each person will be given a book in which all his actions are recorded. This corresponds to the books of the Hindus in which Chitragupta, the Superintendent of Lord Yama, records all the actions of human beings. Gabriel will hold a balance and the books will be weighed in the balance. Those, whose virtuous deeds are heavier than the evil ones, will be sent to heaven. Those, whose wicked deeds are heavier than their good actions, will be sent to hell. This belief of the Mohammedans has been taken from the Jews. The old Jewish writers have mentioned of the books to be produced at the last day, which contain a record of men's deeds and the balance wherein they shall be weighed. The Jews borrowed this idea from the Zoroastrians. The Zoroastrians hold that two angels named Mehr and Sarush will stand on the bridge on the day of Judgement to examine every person as he passes. Mehr represents divine mercy; He will hold a balance in his hand to weigh the actions of men. God will pronounce the sentence in accordance with the report of Mehr. If the good actions preponderate, if they turn the scale even by the weight of a hair, they will be sent to heaven. But those whose good deeds will be found light, will be thrown from the bridge into hell by the other angel, Sarush, who represents Justice of God. There is a bridge called Al Sirat by Mohammed, which is on the road to heaven. This bridge is thrown over the abyss of hell. This bridge is finer than hair and sharper than the edge of a sword. Those Mohammedans, who have done good deeds, will easily cross this bridge. Mohammed will lead them. The evil-doers will miss their footing and fall down headlong into the hell, which is gaping beneath them. The Jews speak of the bridge of hell which is not broader than a thread. The Hindus speak of Vaitarani. The Zoroastrians teach that all men will have to pass over the bridge called Pul Chinavat on the last day." The Akashic Records constitute the only reliable history of the world. They are also referred to as the memory of nature, the true Karmic Records, or the Book of the Lipika. The term Akashic is a misnomer: though the records are read from akasha, the matter of the mental world, they do not belong to that world. The term Akashic implies that it is in the mental world that the first definite reflections of the records is encountered. The originals of these records are stored in far higher planes, of which little is known. The great original records are actually the memory of the Solar Logas, whose causal body includes the entire solar system. They are reflected in the matter of the lower planes. Theosophical research has shown these reflections to exist on the buddhic, mental and astral planes. A person with a developed causal body can read these records with reliable accuracy on the mental plane. Akashic Records on the Astral Plane -- On the astral plane, the matter is in rapid and turbulent motion. So the reflections of the records on this plane are highly imperfect and unreliable. Further, the reflections are like three-dimensional objects reflected in a two-dimensional water surface: they show only the shape and colour, and the objects are reversed. If a cliarvoyant has acquired only astral sight, then he can never reliably read these astral records. He can of course, train himself with vigorous practice to sift the chaff from the grain and construct from broken reflections, but that would be a waste of labour, because by the time he acquires this facility, he would have developed mental sight, which would enable him to read the records far more reliably from the mental plane! Akashic Records on the Mental Plane -- On the mental plane, the akashic records can be read without mistakes, since the conditions here are far different. This means that if two or more clairvoyants examine a record using mental sight, they would see the same reflection, and get a correct impression from reading it. The ability to read the records on the mental plane requires that the Ego is fully awakened in order to use the atomic matter of the plane. People witnessing events on the physical plane differ in their details when they describe them later, because of inherent personal choices in their observations. This kind of personal equation affects only minimally the description of the records on the mental plane, but there is another difficulty. The real difficulty lies in conveying the impressions received to lower planes. We should remember that experiences on the mental plane can hardly be described in identical manner within the resources of the physical plane expressions. Just as two-dimensional photographs cannot convey the true perspective of the objects they represent, the impressions of the five-dimensional mental plane can hardly be adequately described on the three-dimensional physical plane. Theosophical investigations on the mental plane are therefore, checked and verified by two or more people, before they are published. Nature of Akashic Records on the Mental Plane ------------ On the astral plane the records generally appear as still pictures. Occasionally they might be endowed with motion, implying that the reflection is clearer. A person on the mental plane who just observes the records without thinking about them, would find that the records surround him as the background to whatever is going on. He would feel like being surrounded by an array of television screens, wherein the action takes place in motion pictures, since they are really continuous reflections of the ceaseless activity of a great Consciousness upon a far higher plane. Secondly, when the observer turns his attention to a scene, he actually enters the scene as an unperceived observer! This is akin to Harry Potter entering into a scene in the life of Tom Riddle through the latter's diary. The observer is only a witness who cannot change the course of a scene though he is present there, and the actors are totally uncouscious of him, as they are only reflections. More interesingly, the observer has these powers with which he can control the scenes: Using his thoughts, he can fast-forward, rewind, or zero-in on a picture to examine it minutely, spread the entire lot of scenes before him and examine each picture, and go through the events of one year in a time span of one hour! Since he is actually present on the scene, he hears and understands what people say. He is also conscious of their thoughts and motives! There is one special case wherein the observer can take part in the drama that unfolds before him: A scene he was part to, in an earlier life. In this case, the observer can either witness what passes before him, or re-experience his thoughts and emotions of that time, though he cannot change the course of the scene. In this case, since he is involved, the observer downloads the related portion from the universal consciousness. Educative Use of Akashic Records -------------------------------- Akashic records thus throw up interesting possibilities to the student who has the power to examine them. He can review the history of the world at his leisure and correct errors and misrepresentations. He can also watch the geological history of the earth, as it went through its cataclysms. While observing history, determining the actual dates might be done in many ways: 1. From the mind of an intelligent person present on the scene. 2. Actually observing the date in a document or monument and later converting this date to other calendar systems. 3. Turning to other contemporary records to ascertain a date. 4. Observing a known date and then fast-forwarding to the required date, counting the years that pass by rapdily. 5. When the years to pass by are in millenniums, compute the date from astronomical data. 6. For records involving millions of years, using the period of the precession of the equinoxes (approximately 26,000 years) as a unit, as much accuracy is not required in this case. To make these things happen, the observer requires to have perfect mental sight at his command. Even with perfect mental sight at command that minimizes errors of observation, we should remember that on the mental plane we are looking at the records only from below (looking at them from above is far beyond our present capabilities) and hence the perceptions are not necessary perfect. Akashic Records and Public Thought-Forms ------- An abundance of public thought-forms exist on the astral and mental planes. These should not be confused to represent the akashic records. Public thought-forms comprise of public opinions of events and characters, real and fictional. Products of thought-forms are also made by authors of cinema, drama, fiction and other creative arts. While watching the akashic records requires real mental sight, watching public thought-forms require only a glimpse at the mental plane. Akashic Records and Psychometry ------------------------------- Psychometry is the faculty of divining knowledge about an object, or about a person connected with it, through contact with the object. It is based on the principle that every particle has within it a record of everything that has occurred in its neighbourhood. The object acts as a conductor between the record and the psychometrist who handles it. A psychometrist for example, can talk about the ancient life around the Stonehenge, by touching a stone in the collection. Psychometry probably finds expression even in ordinary memory. Our brain cells probably act as links to make us remember our past events from the akashic records. A trained clairvoyant also needs a link to find an event he had no previous knowledge of, from the records: 1. Where he has visited a scene of the event, he can call up an image and use it to search the records. 2. Where he has not visited the scene, he might use the date of the records, and then locate an event of that date. 3. He might locate a prominent person he can identify from the records of a period and then use the person as a search reference for the desire event. Thus the power to read the memory of nature exists in varying degress among people: 1. The accomplished clairvoyant who can read the akashic records at will. 2. A psychometrist who requires an object from the past to link to the events of the period. 3. The person who gets glimpses of the past in occasional, spasmodic visions. 4. A crystal-gazer who watches the scenes from the past either consciously or unconsciously. 5. Psychics who can only psychometrise on persons. These people, whey they meet a stranger, can sometimes describe a prominent event in the person's past life. Akashic Records on the Buddhic Plane --- Since time and space are no longer limitations, akashic records on the buddhic plane appear as a concurrent landscape of active events, which appear to play out in an eternal now. The omnipresent consciousness of the observer watches all the events simultaneously, as happening now in the present, past and present merging into one. They are no longer presented as the memory of nature. We can understand the concept of the eternal now by this simple and purely physical analogy, that presumes two things: 1. Physical light travels at its usual speed indefinitely into space without loss. 2. The Ego being omnipresent is present at every point on the space, not successively but concurrently. In this set up, the Ego watches the events that take place along the entire space simultaneously, precluding the concept of time. Using the consciousness as a focus, the Ego can scan the events forward or backward at any speed, and also have a continuous but concurrent view of everything that takes place. It should be noted here, that even with such a faculty, the observer can only have vision and revision but not prevision. That is the future cannot be seen by the limited Ego of the observer as clearly as the past. This is so because the faculty to observe future belongs to a still higher plane. Bishop C.W. Leadbeater states in his book The Devachanic Plane that in the devachanic regions of the mental plane, a developed man can observe the future of an undeveloped man, but cannot forsee his own future perfectly, because of his powerful will, which might introduce changes in the pattern of life to come! >From here, we proceed to the Devachanic Plane in the next article. Sources: 1. The Mental Body by Arthur E. Powell Regards, saidevo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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