“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In this essay I’ll touch upon a number of subjects. Some of them have already been mentioned. During our work on these pieces Jane and I have automatically been led back to earlier material again and again, but each time we’ve tried to plunge deeper into the topic under discussion, to uncover new layers of meaning and insight. (Doing this always reminds us of additional points to cover, of course!) Putting it all together is an extremely challenging endeavor as I try to summarize our years of committment to the Seth material—for inevitably we end up dealing with ideas lying outside society’s generally accepted frameworks of belief. Forty-one days have now passed since Jane left the hospital, and this passage of “time” alone has given us more perspective on the whole affair of her illness, and on our beliefs, intents, and desires.

At such times I’m apt to think about ideas of reincarnation and counterparts. Right here I’m dealing with just two of Seth’s larger concepts. But without dwelling upon them too heavily, I may consider the notion of my larger, nonphysical “whole self” or “entity” being made up of a number of other psychically related physical selves projected into time. For Seth, basically there is no time, only a great “spacious present” that’s a manifestation of a sublime, indescribable All That Is. Our gross physical senses, and indeed our very bodies, insist upon interpreting the spacious present in linear terms, however—through the inevitable processes of birth, aging, and death—so to help us get his point here Seth advances his ideas of reincarnational selves and counterpart selves in ways we can understand sensually.

All of this reminds me that lately the media have carried a number of stories detailing how medical science is not only trying hard to approach cures for scourges like cancer (in cancer’s case, possibly through the exploration and understanding of the role played in the cell nucleus by altered normal cells called oncogenes), but is already claiming to have narrowed down its search to specific genes that affect imponderables like behavior—depression, for example. Not only that, sociobiologists are advancing their very controversial ideas that much of human behavior has an ultimate genetic basis, which in turn influences cultural change, and so on.

(Obviously, some counterpart selves can meet physically, as reincarnational selves cannot. Under circumstances and in ways explained in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, again, Jane and I think we’ve encountered a few of our counterpart selves. Just for fun, try to imagine the complicated relationships that can obtain within only a family of five, say, when each member exists within his or her much larger family of reincarnational and counterpart selves. Let the mathematicians among our readers calculate the number of possible psychic interchanges alone that can arise in the “past, present, and future” involving the reincarnational and counterpart selves of these five people!)

Now what kinds of “redemption” can be found amid the interchanges among any combination of reincarnational and/or counterpart lives, for instance? Some, certainly, and no doubt the reader can think of at least a few creative interpretations of redemptive qualities, but I’d rather let the question search for its own approximate answers as I continue work upon this essay. Jane and I do feel sure, however, that the experiences of our current lifetimes have so many psychic and physical ramifications that their numbers are literally beyond our grasp—and that many of those developments are certain to be quite “alien” to us here in our own everday realities. (All of this applies to everyone, of course.)

Within the idea of probable realities, then, there are innumerable opportunities for redemption to take place, between or among creatures—or even between or among ideas—and in all manner of ways. In how many ways? Seth remarked a long time ago that we humans can at least approach the notion of infinity by considering the ramifications inherent within probabilities. For my own amusement, in recent years I’ve often tried to objectify that statement by equating the possible number of probable realities with the current scientific estimate of the number of atoms in the universe: 10⁷⁹, or a 1 followed by 79 zeroes. But even if that rather simple number is inconceivable to us it still won’t do, of course, for it represents only a limit of measurement inside the “physical” universe we think we know. Within the limitless realms of consciousness, 10⁷⁹ is still but a doorway to vastly greater imaginative quantities and qualities of either numbers or probable realities. Fascinating! There are multitudinous possibilities for a redemption—or equalization or love or forgiveness, say—to take place amid such a dazzling array of probable realities. As far as our understanding can go, such a redemptive quality can be psychic, physical, both, or simply based on explorations of feeling and accomplishment we have yet to know.

After nine weeks, however, Jane and I are more than ready for an increase in the strength of the pills, for she obviously needs the boost. I’ve mentioned several times her dozing or falling asleep outright in her chair. Dr. Mandali agrees that the low thyroid activity is directly related to these episodes. Yet there’s more involved with the dozing—effects I haven’t gone into yet, and can only briefly refer to here. We haven’t discussed these with her doctor, either—clear signs of the secretive aspects of our own natures—but Jane believes she’s had a number of part-hallucinatory, part-psychic experiences as a result of the thyroid-medication situation.