Akasha
Ākāśa (IAST)Translation: "Ether / Space"
A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy
Sanskrit: आकाश
Transliteration: Ākāśa
Translation: "“not visible”; ether; space; inner sky; sky; room; any type of space: physical, mental, intellectual, spiritual."
- Space, the subtlest of the five physical elements, which gives rise to the other four elements and which has the attribute of all-pervasiveness. It denotes any type of space: physical, mental, intellectual, and/or spiritual. It is also known as the inner mind or consciousness of an individual. (See Mahābhūta.)
- In Buddhism, one of the three Asaṃskṛta-Dharma. It is held to be a permanent, omnipresent, immaterial substance. Its essence is free from obstruction.
- In Jainism, it is an all-pervasive, subtle, existent substance which provides the ground for all other substances to exist. It is divided into space occupied by things (Lokākāśa) and/or the space beyond, the void (Alokākāśa).
- According to Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, it is what is inferred as the eternal and all-pervasive substratum in which sound inheres.
- According to Sāṅkhya and Advaita Vedānta, it is one of the five elements which are produced and destroyed.
- According to Sautrāntika, it is the same as the ultimate atom, since both are no more than notions.
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
Ākāśa, Sanskrit word translated as ‘ether’ or ‘space’. Indian philosophical systems recognized various ontological categories, including that of substance. Ākāśa was thought of as a substance because it was believed to be the substratum of sound. Because Ākāśa was understood to transmit sound waves, the term is better translated as ‘ether’ than ‘space’, but scholars are not unanimous on this. Ākāśa, though extended in space, was viewed as a non-material substance. It was thought of as all-pervading, infinite, indivisible and imperceivable, being inferred from the sensed quality of sound.
Glossary to the Record of Yoga (Sri Aurobindo)
Ākāśa – ether; the most rarefied condition of material being, “a condition of pure material extension in Space”, the subtlest of the Pañcabhūta; the state of physical substance that borders on the supraphysical and is the medium through which the powers of higher worlds act on the material plane (same as Sthūla Ākāśa); any of various kinds of Sūkṣma Ākāśa or immaterial ether, “depths of more and more subtle ether which are heavily curtained from the physical sense by the grosser ether of the material universe”; (same as Ākāśarūpa or Ākāśalipi) images or writing seen in the Ākāśa.
References:
- Grimes, John (1996). A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy: Sanskrit Terms Defined in English. Albany: State University of New York Press
- Audi, Robert (1999). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Second Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press
- Hartz, Richard. Glossary to the Record of Yoga (Sri Aurobindo). Retrieved from http://wiki.auroville.org.in/wiki/Glossary_to_the_Record_of_Yoga
