Unless you know the basic mechanics behind the workings of the ego, you won't recognize it, and it will trick you into identifying with it again and again.

~ Eckhart Tolle

 

 The law of your mind is this: You will get a reaction or response from your subconscious mind according to the nature of the thought or idea you hold in your conscious mind.

~ Joseph Murphy

 "i would change 'thought or idea' to belief instead. although we react to a thought or idea, we react more if the thought or idea greatly contrasts to an existing belief."

"Though the nature of the conscious mind thought is only held by the perception of the perceiver, thus no thought has a nature of its own, only the one that is placed upon it."

Book 3 - Sutra 18

18. Knowledge of previous incarnations becomes available when the power to see thought-images is acquired.

Excerpt:

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:

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

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.

e. The astrological record, or the forms taken on the astral plane under the influence of the planetary forces. These are in two great groups.
- i. Those forms or pictures in the akasha produced by the inflow of solar force via the planets.
- ii. 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.



from The Light of the Soul - The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali