60 Biography of a Yogiyet somehow beyond even him— transformed the occult ascended master into a
self- realized Everyman.
The few existing histories of ether tend to tread on the side of either the purely
scientific or the strictly occult and spiritual. This is most likely due in large part
to an understandable disciplinary divide, but the truth of the matter is that many
of the same individuals who were involved in developing theories of ether(s) as
“scientific” concepts were also deeply invested in theorizing the possible functions
of these substances as spiritual media. Ether and ākāśa first came together in the
translations of early Indologists. As we will see, there are undeniable analogies
between the two terms that justify this move. However, translation is always situ-
ated in and therefore inseparable from the historical and ideological context of the
translator and thus can have a way of investing terms with baggage that is not his-
torically their own. In the case of ākāśa, this baggage came not only in the form of
Western esotericism but also contemporary scientific associations. Consequently,
even as the Theosophists adopted and popularized ākāśa as an exotic Oriental
form of their occult subtle materiality, they cleared the space for this Indian meta-
physical concept to become an elaboration of the theorized scientific entity that
the occult mirrors. Vivekananda relied extensively on these linkages in his work,
and he was by no means the last Indian teacher to do so. The final portion of
this chapter illustrates the ways in which an occultized ether entered the age of
quantum theory in the works of another Indian Swami, Paramahansa Yogananda,
who effectively took up Vivekananda’s mantle as the popular embodiment of the
Yogi in America.
Ākāśa, or Akasha as it is usually rendered in English, is certainly not found in
the colloquial Sanskrit vocabulary, consisting of “naturalized” terms like karma,
nirvana, guru, and so on, which are generally recognized by most culturally savvy
Westerners. However, the sudden appearance of this term in metaphysical texts
during the period that marks the introduction of Indian thought into Western
metaphysical spirituality is a smoking gun that testifies to the importance of the
concept that it represents. In other words, we cannot understand the full meta-
physical significance of the more pervasively used “ether” until we examine the
moment at which it became “ākāśa.”
The latter term now survives largely in the Theosophical tradition that first
introduced it into the West as well as in the Theosophical Society’s offshoots,
such as Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy and the work of Alice A. Bailey. In
these contexts, ākāśa manifests as the “Akashic Record,” an increasingly imma-
terial concept that refers to the cosmic repository of all human knowledge and
experience. In the realm of popular culture, ākāśa flits furtively into and out of
view whenever a sufficiently mystically charged term is in order. It appears, for
instance, as the name of the ancient Eg yptian queen from whom all of Anne