The word akashic comes from the ancient Tibetan words "aka meaning place, and "sa" meaning unseen in the sky. When the soul emerges from the source (or the creating life force, or God), it begins its pre-destined travel through time and space. Along its travels, it incarnates many times, growing spiritually and at the same time, fulfilling its purpose.
The soul emits energy with every thought, action or event that it engages in during its incarnations.
The akashic records are in the Hall of Records, located in the akashic plane of the universe, an etheric plane, one of the 7 planes. These planes are distant energy fields that we can access through the depths of our minds. Our inner mind can access them because we, along with these fields, are made up of the same cosmic energy. However, it takes work and training from the slower 3 dimensional physical reality we are in today to access the higher vibrational frequencies of these states of reality. Brief experiences of intuition are subconscious forms of momentary awareness of our akashic records (without us aware of the "viewing")leading us to making the right choice or decision (if we follow our intuition).