“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

He tells us that our reincarnational selves explore the past, present, and future—but basically all at once, since time as he defines it is simultaneous. I’ve written before that as physical creatures we’re always going to find the contradictory notion of “simultaneous time” hard to comprehend, intellectually at least.

Before proceeding I want to make clear just what I mean by “reincarnational selves” (while confining this discussion to “past” lives for the moment). For it’s also contradictory to say, for example, that “I was a serf in the 12th-century Germanic state of Bavaria.” As Seth and I both noted in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, each of us has our focus of identity now—not in some other portion of the spacious present, just as each reincarnational self has his or her own historical focus of identity. How could it be otherwise?

Could one return to that 12th-century life, even as an observer, what would the traveler find? An individual—and one not about to surrender his or her identity to anyone, or have it thought of simply as a manifestation of some “future” self! I think that when they blithely talk about having lived other lives people forget that those living before were—are—fully independent creatures, even if they are psychically related to others. The traveler could hardly move in on one of his or her own personalities! Interesting question: How would our 20th-century individual react when told by a visitor from the year 2355 (for example) that he or she represented one of our futurian’s “past” lives?

The serf will invariably be looking at his time through a different focus than his future self could ever do. And think of the added challenges of feeling and perception where sexual changes between present and past incarnations are involved! Eroticism—and yes, outright sexual curiosity and arousal over reversed genitalia, for instance—must enter in sometimes, although in print at least these specifics of sex in connection with reincarnation seem to be a taboo subject. By contrast, there’s plenty of material in the reincarnational literature on the generalized patterns of sexual behavior, from promiscuity to repression. (I wonder whether a long-term past-life sexual fantasy could be connected to a real sexual problem or challenge in a present—or future—life.)

Further, Jane and I believe that what really happens during a “past-life regression” under hypnosis is that the subject (aside from any responses given to the hypnotist’s own witting or unwitting suggestions) very cosily views his or her previous lives from the comfort and safety of a present existence. This would be the case even when the subject is very unhappy with present challenges, and is trying to assign their origin to events in one or more former existences. All well and good to announce that one was a serf some 900 years ago—but one is much more likely to be either tuning into minute signals surrounding the actual physical and mental reality of the serf (poor fellow), or to be picking up on elements of that individual’s personality as they’re associated with the serf’s whole self or entity. Either possibility makes it much safer—and much more entertaining—to proclaim one’s serfdom.

There’s so much I could discuss here that the lack of time and space is very frustrating. I can only hint at what I consider to be important points. The books and magazines dealing with reincarnation—and the tapes, too, these days—swarm with tales of journeys to past lives, and some of those accounts are most spectacular. Yet, even given ancient concepts like that of Seth’s spacious present, the participants in such adventures usually quite happily ignore the conclusion that reincarnation should also operate from the opposite direction—the future—just as well! As a very perceptive young lady wrote Jane and me recently, why can’t people be progressed to their future lives just as successfully as they’re regressed to their past lives? Indeed. Our rather copious mail brings us questions like that very rarely. (The key word there, I think, is “successfully.”)

Back in 1974 Seth responded to my own musings on the subject by commenting: “You are afraid to consider future lives because then you have to face the death that must be met first, in your terms.” (See Appendix 12 for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality.) Seth referred to the conventional, culturally instilled fear of death that most of us carry, of course. Surely one’s death to come is a much more personal and penetrating prospect—a much more frightening one—than “facing” any past-life deaths one may encounter: Those deaths have already happened! But it certainly seems that in those terms present challenges could be illuminated through exploring “future” lives as well as those of the past.

I referred to a “successful” progression because reaching into the future is evidently much more difficult. By its very nature a future life cannot be proven—records checked, and so forth. Anything goes. Jane and I have read of many systems designed to regress the individual to past lives. Often such “trips” are mediated by hypnosis. It can even happen spontaneously, and I had a most exhilarating glimpse of a past life of my own that way. (See Session 721 in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality.) However, neither of us have had such an outright encounter with a future self—that we know of. I’d say that under hypnosis the urge to fantasize the future lives must be a tempting one; but what’s the explanation for achieving little more than a formless future state while “under,” no matter how hard one tries? The failure to get there, to turn time around, could be taken as a sign of resistance on the part of the present self. (Or even a past self or selves, but that’s too complicated a subject to go into here.)

I’ll digress a moment to note that it’s quite obvious that when conducted by skilled therapists past-life regression has proven to be of great benefit to certain individuals. Whether or not reincarnation has been proven objectively, the belief structures surrounding that concept, or even the idea of it, have served very well as a forum within which certain present-life challenges have been worked out, through the therapists’ use of hypnosis, allegory, association, symbolism, and other very respectable methods.

How richly creative we are: Each of our presents is part of the future from the standpoint of the past; each of our presents is also part of the past from the standpoint of the future.

I think it quite humorous (and ironic) that whether or not they realize it, those who engage in past-life regressions play with the notion of future selves all of the time—for from the standpoint of any “past” lives they reach their present lives obviously represent future existences. In a way, and in those terms, this also applies in Jane’s case when she contacts Seth, even on the “psychological bridge” those two have constructed between them: When Seth tells us that his last physical life was in Denmark in the 1600s, then Jane and I represent future physical selves of his. I put it this way because Seth himself has commented that the three of us are “offshoots of the same entity.” (This time, see Appendix 18 for Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality.) Yet we are all of us different now: “Ruburt (Jane) is not myself now, in his present life. He is nevertheless an extension and materialization of the Seth that I was at one time.”

All of this is most simplified. One ought to be very careful about assigning past and future status to various portions of a self, for ultimately, as one moves further into the spacious present, such constructions as the past, present, and future begin to melt away. And, as in Seth’s case and Jane’s case, probabilities and choices come much more prominently into play.

I keep wondering about the results of an individual’s choosing not to call upon any of his or her bank of reincarnational lives, though, whether from the past or the future. This approach would very nicely eliminate having to deal with one’s “karma” this time around—should there really be a system of consciousness embodying that ancient concept. Think of the fun a person could have who decided at an early age—or even before physical birth—to experience a life unencumbered by other psychic relationships; wherein it had little or nothing to “work out.” What freedoms might lie ahead—and yes, what challenges, too! Buddhism and Hinduism would banish the very thought: How dare one even think of escaping, or just simply ignoring, his or her “fate or destiny” (to put it loosely)! Yet our mass reality obviously is large enough to allow me room to generate such fanatical thoughts….

“I think that a too-specific ‘reading’ of reincarnational material leads us to forget time’s simultaneous nature and promotes a ‘nitty-gritty’ attitude,” Jane wrote for me as I was working on these passages. “We may want to know the place and the time of a past self, for example—and the very concentration upon the ‘past’ simply deepens our commitment to time. The search for detail leads us further away from the larger sensed dimensions in which those facts must lie.

(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!)

Before presenting the promised excerpts on the magical approach, I want to note that Seth is simply saying that from Framework 2 (and possibly from other frameworks) we draw whatever information we want in whatever way we choose to focus upon it: positively, negatively, magically, literally, skeptically, and so forth. As he told us in a private session way back on February 26, 1972: “You get what you concentrate upon. There is no other main rule.” Every reincarnational and counterpart and probable self, located in whatever neatly packaged compartment of time—past, present, or future—can utilize the magical approach as a matter of choice, then. That simple declaration of use involves a world of understanding and experience, however, and one that Jane and I have found extremely difficult to initiate in the way we consciously think we want to—although according to their letters, at least, many of our readers are able to work with various portions of the Seth material with little or no trouble at all.