Chidakash

Yes. Chidākāś / Chidākāsha (चिदाकाश, cidākāśa) is a very interesting term in Sant Mat because it sits at the intersection of several older Indian mystical vocabularies. But there is an important distinction: it does not originally mean simply “a region in the inner world where the soul travels.” That is a later, more systematized Sant Mat usage layered onto a much older idea of the “space of consciousness.”

1. First, the word itself

The Sanskrit is:

cit / cid + ākāśa

• cit (चित्) = consciousness, awareness, the principle of knowing

• ākāśa (आकाश) = space, sky, ether, expanse

So literally:

chidākāśa = “the space/sky of consciousness.”

That is quite different from ordinary physical ākāśa. It is an inner or consciousness-space. Traditional yoga sources describe it as the field in which subtle mental and spiritual experience appears.

And there is a very old Indian precedent for precisely this way of thinking: the Chāndogya Upaniṣad speaks of a small space within the heart (dahara ākāśa) that contains what is ultimately to be sought and realized. Later Vedantic interpretation connects this “inner space” with Brahman/ultimate consciousness.

2. But Sant Mat gives it a more geographical meaning

This is where Sant Darshan Singh’s terminology becomes especially interesting.

In Sant Mat/Radha Soami cosmology, consciousness (surat) ascends through progressively subtler levels. The vocabulary includes things such as:

Pind → Sahans-dal-kanwal → Trikuti → higher regions → Sach Khand

and different Sant traditions use somewhat different names and maps.

In one Radha Soami description, Chidākāsh is explicitly called “subtle Akash” and is said to arise from Sahans-dal-kanwal and permeate the body and the lower creation.

That is quite revealing.

It means that when a Sant Mat teacher talks about Chidākāsh, there can be two overlapping senses:

1. the consciousness-space itself, an experiential inner expanse; and

2. a particular level/region of the inner cosmological hierarchy through which surat passes.

So your recollection that Darshan Singh speaks of it as a place where the soul “roams” is probably getting at the experiential Sant Mat meaning, but we shouldn’t translate Chidākāsh too literally as though Sant Mat were describing another physical planet.

3. The really important linguistic history

There is a fascinating progression:

ākāśa → inner ākāśa → mental space → consciousness-space → mystical inner region

Indian thought had been using ākāśa metaphorically for an extraordinarily long time.

In the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha tradition, for example, one finds a threefold distinction:

• bhūtākāśa — physical/material space

• cittākāśa — mental space

• chidākāśa — consciousness-space

The last is associated with Ātman, where the ordinary subject/object distinction ultimately disappears.

That is probably the closest conceptual ancestor to what you’re asking about.

Notice the progression:

physical space → mental space → consciousness itself

The “inner world” is therefore not merely another physical location. It is a progressively subtler mode of spatializing consciousness.

4. This helps explain something peculiar about Sant Mat

Sant Mat frequently speaks in extraordinarily geographical language:

regions, planes, worlds, crossings, ascending, descending, inner skies, sounds, lights, lotuses, etc.

But the older Indian philosophical vocabulary wasn’t necessarily saying:

“There is literally another physical universe located somewhere inside your skull.”

Rather, ākāśa provides a remarkably powerful metaphor for experienced dimensionality.

When meditation turns attention inward, people report:

• darkness or luminous space

• points of light

• colors

• forms

• enormous expansiveness

• sounds

• sensations of movement

• loss of ordinary bodily boundaries

• a sense of entering another “place”

Indian mystical traditions then had to name and organize this phenomenology.

Chidākāśa is almost perfect terminology for it:

the sky that appears when consciousness becomes aware of itself.

Yoga traditions still explicitly associate chidākāśa with the inner visual field, often around the region behind the forehead/ājñā.

5. And there is an especially interesting connection to Sant Mat’s “third eye”

This is where your memory of Darshan Singh becomes particularly plausible.

Sant Mat talks about the third til, the point between/behind the eyes, as an important station of inner perception.

The Radha Soami description I found says that an impression of the Sahans-dal-kanwal level is received first at the third til, and then extends toward the eyes; it subsequently describes Chidākāsh as the subtle ākāśa.

That is strikingly compatible with the broader yogic conception of chidākāśa as the inner visual/consciousness-space experienced when attention is withdrawn from external sensory perception.

So if Darshan Singh says something like the soul enters or moves through Chidākāsh, I would interpret it cautiously as:

the soul’s consciousness has entered an interior field of perception whose “space” is generated not by ordinary physical extension but by increasingly subtle consciousness.

6. The medieval Sant connection

Here we have to be careful.

Kabir, Nanak, Dadu, Ravidas, etc. did not necessarily use the Sanskrit technical term chidākāśa in the later standardized Sant Mat sense.

Their poetry uses a much broader vocabulary:

• gagan — sky

• gagan mandal — celestial/inner sky

• ākāś

• sunn — void/stillness

• anahad — unstruck sound

• shabd

• dasam duār — tenth gate

• sahaj

• antar — within

• brahmāṇḍ — universe/cosmos

This is crucial because “inner sky” is much older and more widespread than the specific word chidākāśa.

Sant Mat later systematizes these poetic images into a fairly explicit inner cosmography.

So one shouldn’t say:

“Sant Darshan Singh invented the idea of Chidākāsh.”

Nor should one say:

“Kabir’s gagan was definitely identical to Chidākāsh.”

The safer historical conclusion is:

Sant Mat inherited an ancient Indian language of inner space and consciousness and integrated it with the medieval Sant vocabulary of gagan, sunn, shabd, dasam duār and spiritual ascent.

7. The most interesting comparison: Chidākāsh vs. Gagan

I think this is probably the key to what you are remembering.

Gagan literally means sky.

Ākāśa also means sky/space/ether.

But:

Chidākāśa = the sky of consciousness.

So when a Sant says that the surat enters the gagan, the language is wonderfully ambiguous:

Is it:

• a cosmic sky?

• an inner sky?

• a state of consciousness?

• a spiritual plane?

• a visionary space?

The answer in Sant poetry can effectively be “all of these simultaneously.”

That ambiguity is not a defect. It is characteristic of mystical language.

8. And this is where “quantum linguistics” needs a qualification

If by “quant linguistics” you mean a close analysis of how the word functions across texts and traditions, that’s very fruitful.

If you mean quantum physics validating Chidākāsh as a physical realm, that would be a different claim, and the evidence isn’t there.

But linguistically, Chidākāsh is fascinating because “space” is being converted from a physical category into a phenomenological category.

The semantic transformation looks approximately like:

ākāśa

→ physical sky/space

→ subtle ether

→ inner space

→ mental space (cittākāśa)

→ consciousness-space (chidākāśa)

→ mystical “region” experienced by the practitioner.

That is a legitimate historical-semantic development.

9. One beautiful paradox

The deepest meaning of chidākāśa in the older Vedantic sense is actually less “a place” than Sant Mat’s later cosmological language can make it sound.

In the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha formulation, cittākāśa still contains a distinction between knower and known, whereas chidākāśa is where that duality ultimately disappears.

So:

At the lower level, you travel through inner space.

At the highest level, you discover that the space itself is consciousness.

That is a profound difference.

And it gives us a very good way of understanding Sant Darshan Singh’s language: “roaming through Chidākāsh” is the experiential language of the path; “Chidākāsh is consciousness-space” is the philosophical language underneath it.

If you give me the exact Darshan Singh passage or poem where he mentions Chidākāsh, I can do an even more interesting analysis: Sanskrit → medieval Sant vocabulary → Radha Soami terminology → Darshan Singh’s particular usage, and determine exactly which “region” he appears to mean rather than assuming all uses of Chidākāsh are the same.