The Book of the Akashic: The Unauthorized Autobiography of C. Sanchez-Garcia

Let’s call the woman “Dee”. Dee is roughly five feet, just tall enough that I have to dip my face a little to kiss her with my tongue, but without having to lean in much before feeling the heaviness of her breasts pressing against me just under my collar bone if she wraps her arms above my neck. Broad of shoulder, wide of hip, thick of thigh, which gives her an eminently bear huggable quality when placed on her back and roughly mounted. Dee does not exist. Maybe. I’m waiting to see.

Let’s call the woman “De”. I do not know if De is huggable or kissable, or how her breasts might feel when pressed against me, assuming her breasts have not been lost to cancer or diminished over time. De is a real woman, living somewhere on the west coast, probably about 70 years old by now. I don’t suppose she thinks much about sex anymore and may be relieved to just be rid of the bothersome desire altogether for all I know. She certainly doesn’t think about me.

These Dee’s are the same person.

And not the same.

In private moments of self-pleasuring (my obligatory squeamish confession for this theme) I have lately experienced a vivid sense of otherness, or a feminine presence coming from within, as though in the arms of a woman; a vivid sense of female presence and unconditional acceptance. This is a mystery to me. I’m always telling myself this is an illusion, what Ebenezer Scrooge called “a bit of bad beef or an under done potato” but privately I suspend my judgment on things as I grow older and discover how little I really know for sure is true about anything. A young man is so sure he’s right. An older man isn’t.

I think of the first Dee as “astral Dee”, and she may also be that other within, I’m still observing. I’ve been haunted before. The other De, is the historical De, and is mainly useful as a comparison. The astral Dee is the one I hope to spend time with someday. I think there are many parallels for this. I think about this when I think about Jesus. There is the Jesus of Christianity – “astral Jesus” – which is the one people pray to and swear they’re guided by and saved by. And there is the historical Jesus, of ancient Palestine who would probably be appalled at what has been constructed in his name, as the historical De might be by the astral Dee. But as far as humanity and human history and the human heart are concerned, the only Jesus that matters is the astral Jesus. The one who saves souls. The historical Jesus is irrelevant. It is incidental whether he actually lived or not. The image and the symbol is where all the latent power resides.

I have lately been studying Hermetic Kaballah. I didn’t start out looking for a
way to substitute or even heal my badly shattered faith in God. I was interested in Tarot cards. I’m not sure I believe in Tarot cards as divination, but what I’m seeking is a vocabulary of the subconscious, to establish a language bridge by which my subconscious can talk to me, and the subconscious speaks not in words but in images and symbols. I needed a way by which to construct this symbolic vocabulary. The most direct way was to use tarot cards and educate myself about what the images were intended originally to represent. So with my old deck of Rider Waite cards I began to research the history of the tarot in order to stay close to the original intention of the designers.

The Rider Waite deck was defined and created by a man named Edward Waite, with an artist named Pamela Colman, who created the images under his supervision. Waite was a member of a Victorian magical society called “The Golden Dawn”. The Victorian era was filled with spiritual dabblers, much as the American ‘60s were filled with eastern gurus and their followers. Many of these dabblers established secret spiritualist societies such as the Theosophists and Rosicrucian’s which still exist today. These groups have common beliefs based loosely on Hermetic Kaballism. “Hermes” was the god of magic, and Kaballism was originally an inner path of Jewish mysticism adopted into western values. This westernized form of Kaballism is the key to understanding modern tarot decks.

Both forms of Kaballism are based on “the tree of life”, a stepped series of “sephiroth”, which represent aspects of God at different levels of manifestation. Each, except the highest – Kether- and the lowest “Malkuth” exist in dedicated couplings of female and male energy, male being the unformed and aggressive energy and female being the creative receptive power that uses the male energy for the creation of forms. The level that exists above and behind the material world is called the “astral” or “Yetzirah” and is represented by the suit of swords. It is the world of maya, illusion and abstract forms, and is considered the next stop after death and before birth. It is the world of karma and ego formation. The world of the Akashic.

Now keep in mind – I don’t know if I buy any of this woo-woo. I’ve been burned before. But its interesting stuff to think about, especially when making love to yourself and you mysteriously feel someone making love back.

I have had the experience of lucid dreaming most of my life. A lucid dream is defined as that dream where the dreamer wakes within the dream and realizes he is dreaming. This is a very liberating experience, kind of like a hallucination that you’re in command of. Lucid dreaming is a key discipline in Tibetan yoga, Native American shamanism, and astral projection. In a lucid dream you can do pretty much anything, and what you choose to do can reveal a lot about you. In earlier years I used lucid dreams as an opportunity for harmless sexual adventures, but as I creep towards the grave I’ve begun to use my dreams differently. I have a goal now.

To deliberately experience lucid dreaming requires a certain amount of self discipline and training. You need to choose a “totem”. This is an object that you and your subconscious have agreed on that, when you see this object, which you would not expect to see when you are awake, you’ll know you’re dreaming. These days when I see my personal totem in a dream, I ignore the beckoning women flinging their underwear at me, and close my eyes and chant “Akashic Records”, the place where the story of my lives, past and present is supposed to exist in the astral plane. I want to find out why in the world my life turned out the way it did. What is the purpose, the explanation? Books are where I turn when I want to learn something, and if this Hermetic hoo-doo is real, somewhere in the Akashic there could be a big book with the answers to my questions. I want to spend time with that book. So far all my attempts to go there have only resulted in my waking up in my bed. I have even dreamed down to three levels – a dream within a dream, within a dream, and have not yet reached it.

Judging by my genetics, I’d say I have about fifteen to twenty years left in this world, if nothing terminal cuts me short. Someday I plan to seriously study astral projection. I would like to succeed at this if it will prove there is something beyond the grave and how my relationship with that will be defined. What I’ve read of astral projection sounds to me like just a fancy form of lucid dreaming, which is not what I aspire to. I refuse to kid myself. I want to leave my body and see it there. That would begin to convince me.

The Hermetic magicians say that our thoughts create actual forms in the world of the Astral. These forms are inanimate until our passions and emotions breathe life into them and then these forms have the power to bend the reality of Malkuth, the world we live in daily. Tibetan Buddhism teaches something similar. When different paths converge in the same place, it makes me think there must be something really going on there. If these ideas are true, somewhere in the void is a very interesting book, surrounded by a mob of avidly sensuous women who have been waiting eagerly for me to arrive so they can show me a real good time.

If these things are true – a big hairy if, I say - it’ll be interesting to see which one I’ll I decide to spend my time with first. Maybe that’s what God is waiting to find out too and then decide what happens to me next.


C. Sanchez-Garcia