Akashaja: The Son of the Sky

Story · 09

Akashaja: The Son of the Sky

Akashaja was born from the sky, with no mother, no father, no ground beneath him. Again and again he tried to build a house in the air, and every time the house fell. In the end a rishi said one thing to him, and he stopped looking outside himself for a home at all.

Rama asked, “Gurudeva, can anything at all stand without a foundation?”

Sage Vasishtha, white-bearded in saffron robes, seated under a tree by his riverside hermitage, raising a hand as he begins a tale to a young attentive Rama holding his bow; warm dawn light, classical Indian color painting.

Vasishtha said, “Rama, there is a short story about this, the story of Akashaja. Listen.”

The House

This happened many years ago, when a man was born. He had no mother and no father.

A lone young man in a plain white dhoti standing on bare earth, head tilted up toward a vast deep-blue starry sky swirling with luminous nebulae and clouds, wonder on his face; rich painterly classical-Indian color illustration.

He had been born from the sky, and from the sky came his strange name, Akashaja, the sky-born.

Akashaja grew up, yet he lived nowhere, for a man born of the sky had no place of his own.

He simply lived in the air.

To live in the air was itself a strange thing.

When he wanted to lie down, there was nothing beneath his back. His body did not fall, because it was made of air, and yet there was no support under him either. So lying down was never complete; there was no rest and no pain, only a state of hanging that never ended.

When he wanted to sleep, his eyes would close, but his body felt no pressure, and without pressure sleep never fully came. For this reason Akashaja spent his whole life in a half-sleep.

When he ate, the food turned to air before it ever reached his stomach, and the pleasure of a full belly was never his.

And the strangest thing of all was this: when he wanted to walk, there was nothing under his feet, and so walking had no meaning left in it.

But Akashaja never thought any of this strange, because for him this was simply life. Those born of the sky have no way of knowing what those born of the earth have been given.

One day a thought came to him: I need a house.

So he built a house in the air: walls of air, a roof of air, a door of air as well. The house stood finished.

Akashaja began to live in that house, but one day the wind blew.

And the house began to shake.

Akashaja thought, my house is shaking.

So he built a house stronger than the last.

A fierce dark storm tearing a fragile house apart high in the clouds, beams and thatch whirling away in the wind while the man clings desperately to a post amid the vortex; dramatic stormy color palette, classical Indian style.

But then a storm came, and the house was blown away.

Akashaja grieved, and he built a third house.

But the third house too fell apart.

In this way, for many years, Akashaja kept building houses. Each time a house rose, and each time it fell, because it had no foundation; the foundation rested on air alone.

One day a rishi came to Akashaja and said, “Akashaja, what is this you are doing?”

Akashaja said, “I am building a house.”

“But your house falls apart every time. Why is that?”

“That I do not know myself, revered one.”

The rishi said, “Akashaja, your foundation is in the air, and in the air there can be no foundation at all. Your house will rise, then fall, and this same round will go on and on.”

“Then what should I do?”

A serene white-bearded rishi gesturing gently upward to the awestruck man amid floating wreckage in the open sky, the man pausing to gaze at his own open hands in dawning realization; golden serene light, dignified classical-Indian color painting.

“Do one thing: stop building houses altogether. You are the sky itself, so what need do you have of a house?”

Hearing this, Akashaja went still, and he looked at himself.

I am air, I am my own house, so what need have I of any other house?

Akashaja stopped building houses. Now he lived in the air with no house at all, and yet he no longer felt the lack of one.

Because now he knew that he himself was his own house.

Rama asked, “Gurudeva, are we too building houses without a foundation?”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, every one of us is building such houses. A house of identity, a house of fame, a house of wealth. Every house rests on air, and every house will one day fall, and still we keep on building houses.

“The real truth is this: we ourselves are our own house, and we have no need of any other house outside us.”

Rama looked toward the sky.

Literary background

This story is based on the Yoga Vasistha, its Nirvana Prakarana, sarga 6a.112-113. The figure of Akashaja is a sharp indictment of the way the mind builds identity.

A philosophical view

Akashaja is a human being born from the sky. He has no mother, no father, no earth. He lives in the air. He builds a house, out of air. In a storm it blows away. Then he builds a second, then a third. Every house is made of air, and every time he forgets that there is no foundation anywhere. The story tells us that we are all Akashaja, forever building identities that have no foundation, and each time one identity falls apart we make a new one and repeat the very same error.

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), in his Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927), described Geworfenheit, the way a human being is “thrown” into the world with no say of their own, and it is within this thrownness that a person shapes their own meaning. Akashaja is the extreme form of this. Thrown into the air, with no ground beneath him, still he builds a house. No outside force makes him do it; the building has simply become his habit. Heidegger called this anxiety; the story looks upon it with compassion.