The akashic record is like an immense photographic [276] film, registering all the desires and earth experiences of our planet. Those who perceive it will see pictured thereon:

1. The life experiences of every human being since time began,
2. The reactions to experience of the entire animal kingdom,
3. The aggregation of the thought-forms of a kamic nature (based on desire) of every human unit throughout time. Herein lies the great deception of the records. Only a trained occultist can distinguish between actual experience and those astral pictures created by imagination and keen desire.
4. The planetary "Dweller on the Threshold" with all that appertains to that term and all the aggregations of forms which are to be found in its environment.

The trained seer has learnt to dissociate that which pertains to his own aura and the aura of the planet (which is in actuality the akashic record). He can distinguish between those records which are:

1. Planetary,
2. Hierarchical or pertaining to the work of the twelve Creative Hierarchies as they bring to concretion the plan of the Logos.
3. Imaginative forms, the result of the desire-thought activity of the myriads of men, animated by desire for some form of experience or other.
4. The historical record pertaining to races, nations, groups and families in their two great divisions on the physical plane and on the astral. [277]
   

It should be borne in mind that every human being belongs to a physical family which constitutes his link with the animal kingdom, and also belongs to an astral family. Through that affiliation on the upward arc he is linked with his egoic group and on the downward arc with the vegetable kingdom.

5. The astrological record, or the forms taken on the astral plane under the influence of the planetary forces. These are in two great groups.
1. Those forms or pictures in the akasha produced by the inflow of solar force via the planets.
2. Those forms or pictures which are produced by the inflow of cosmic force from one or other of the signs of the zodiac, that is, from their corresponding constellations.

These points are enumerated to show how impossible it is that the majority of the claims regarding past incarnations can be true. They are the result of a vivid imagination and the assumption that the flashes of astral sight which reveal glimpses of the akashic film give that which pertains to the one who sees. This is not the case any more than the people and activities seen out of any window in a big city reveal to the onlooker his own relatives, friends and pursuits.

The knowledge referred to in the sutra comes in three ways:

1. Direct ability to see the records if so desired. This form of acquiring knowledge is seldom employed except by initiates and adepts in connection with their pledged disciples. [278]
2. Through direct knowledge of the group activities and relations of a man's own ego. This, however, only covers that cycle of time which began when a man stepped upon the probationary path. Experiences prior to that are relatively of no more vital importance than is a second in the life of an old man as he passes in retrospect his long life. All that stands out are events and happenings and not the individual hours and seconds.
3. Through the instinctual life. This is based on memory, on acquired faculty and capacity and on the possession of those qualities which go to the equipment of the ego. The ego knows that the possession of the power to do thus and so in the three worlds, is the direct result of past experience, and knows too that certain effects are only to be achieved through certain causes. These he arrives at through concentrated meditation.

The thought images he becomes aware of are:

1. Those in his aura at the time of his meditation,
2. Those in his immediate environment,
3. Those of his present family, group and race,
4. Those of his present life cycle,
5. These of his egoic group.