“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Among the subjects not discussed so far are Seth’s (and our own) ideas on reincarnation, counterparts, probable realities, and Frameworks 1 and 2. Jane briefly referred to Seth’s “magical approach” material in her dictation last month (see her own session of April 16, 1982, in Essay No. 3 on that date)—thus prefacing the long quotations from her “sinful self.” So as counterpoint to her writings on the sinful self, I’ll be presenting two excerpts to hint at what Seth does mean by his magical approach.

If, as Jane dictated in her session for April 17, “We live in a world slung between our dearest hopes and greatest fears,” then surely it can be said that she’s chosen to delve into at least some of her “greatest fears.” Her present impaired condition is certainly generating powerful physical and psychic conflicts and challenges, and it’s my personal assessment that she’s dealing with these in her own unique way. That way is different from anybody else’s way. I think that if parts of her psyche “fear those fears,” other parts do not—or that at least they chose to confront them, and actually began doing so many years ago. Otherwise Jane’s “symptoms” couldn’t exist on any level. Nor am I implying ideas of predestination. The chances here for exploration are very extensive, of course. And I still implicitly believe the quotation Seth gave on April 16, 1981, over a year ago now: “In that larger picture there are no errors, for each action, pleasant or not, will in its fashion be redeemed, both in relation to itself and … to a larger picture that the conscious mind may not be able presently to perceive.”

Since I’m so closely related to Jane in this life, through marriage, as well as through at least several reincarnational and counterpart roles (according to Seth and our own feelings), I’m as deeply involved in this search for redemption as she is. Given our present ideas about the limitless nature of consciousness, we think our joint quest has been underway since before our births—by choice—and we expect it to continue for the rest of our physical lives. I don’t mean that physical or psychic healings, for example, can’t or won’t take place “this time around,” but that if they do happen they too will be deeply connected with those overall, much broader patterns of our lives. To me, redemption means a continuous search or journey, then, involving whatever events and interchanges we choose to create, for whatever purposes, along the way—and truly, I think, some of those purposes will involve things “the conscious mind may not be able presently to perceive.” That we believe such things speaks for our own brands of faith, then, and also signifies that Jane and I think we have much to learn. And we try to keep in our minds Seth’s statement that “your intellect does not have to know the answers to all of your questions.”

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.

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?

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.)

But would our time traveler ever want to give up his or her present mental and physical focus to enter completely into an earlier personality? I think not, in the overwhelming majority of cases—and perhaps never—for in those terms it would mean surrendering a portion of the whole self or entity that had, through a projection into our scheme of “present” time, attained a certain consciousness and physical form of a unique degree. Yet, on second thought I wouldn’t dare rule out completely such bizarre developments. Perhaps transfers like that can and do take place within the vast arena of probable realities (which I’ll also be discussing in this essay). If so, then, they would be strange only from our limited viewpoints.

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.)

And how about reaching a future life through the dream state, perhaps abetted by hypnosis or self-suggestion before sleep? Our own results have been ambiguous at best, in contrast with the “ordinary” precognitive dreams Jane and I have had, which we can document through our written records. Future-life dream recall may be thoroughly disguised so as to not alarm the guardian, conscious present self. I’ve often speculated that clues to oncoming lives must exist within the hundreds of dreams I’ve recorded.

Accounts of projecting into distant future lives seem rare: Perhaps the conscious self deeply hesitates at swimming in such uncharted pools of consciousness, even though present and future relationships are assumed.

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.

However, Jane and I don’t particularly think that in our present lives we’ve been that greatly influenced by any successes, failures, or illnesses chosen from other lives except in the broadest of terms: general bodily and personality characteristics and abilities, say. I freely note, and with some humor, that this can be somewhat of a jointly contradictory attitude for us. Perhaps we’re too stubborn about agreeing wholeheartedly that such possibilities exist, or perhaps we’re just too enamored of our “present” physical lives, even with all of our challenges, to want to fully concur with Seth.

It would be impossible at this time, I’m certain, for a researcher to find any evidence that reincarnational heritages are coded for among the approximately 100,000 genes lined up on the 46 chromosomes we carry in the nucleus of each of our cells. We say that a certain gene contains the instructions for the manufacture of a certain protein the body uses in the construction or function of an eye, for instance, and that in expressing that code the gene passes on characteristics inherited from physical ancestors—but is that endowment influenced or directed in any fashion by reincarnational attributes as well? Might those factors be just as potent as those inherited from a grandfather, say? The genes in each cell have their individual jobs to do in furnishing the quivering templates for the manufacture (via the nucleic acids DNA and messenger RNA) of all of our bodily proteins. But if we think of our genetic endowment as first being a system of consciousness as our reincarnational history is, we can see how the two nonphysical systems could be intermixed, as Seth put it, with one influencing the other. Conceivably, each of us could be a mixed bag of ancestral and reincarnational heritages, then—more “mongrelized” than we may care to admit. Interesting…. What we choose to do with those possibilities that we present ourselves with at each temporal birth may be another matter entirely.

(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!)

We’ve presented lengthy quotations from Seth on his Framework 1 and Framework 2 material both in his Mass Events and in Jane’s God of Jane. His discussions on the subject are an excellent example of how a very creative idea, capable of helping many people, can arise from an attempt to deal with a personal situation—for on September 17, 1977, Seth introduced his Frameworks 1 and 2 concept in a private session designed to help Jane contend with her physical symptoms.

For Seth, Framework 1 is simply a term representing the everyday, linear, conscious “working reality” we take for granted, the one in which “time” and events automatically unfold in moment after undeniable moment. It’s the milieu in which most of us unthinkingly live out our physical lives. Beyond Framework 1, however, exists Framework 2, and it represents the great timeless or simultaneous spacious present that’s so dearly a manifestation of All That Is. All of our dreams, plans, thoughts, actions, and choices live in Framework 2; all flow from Framework 2 into Framework 1 according to our beliefs.

But if the interactions between or among frameworks exist for everybody, in our terms, then as far as I’m concerned they exist for each thing as well—and I do mean the so-called “inanimate.” (This isn’t the place to go into it, but Seth maintains that for many reasons we arbitrarily decide what’s living and nonliving.) Each reincarnational self, each counterpart self and probable self has its complement of frameworks. So does the most minute living or nonliving entity and the most gigantic. So, “probably,” do most of the far-out probable realities one can imagine—for I won’t go so far as to deny that some probable realities may exist without such framework structures. Strange one-dimensional “flatlands” indeed! But in each case where those framework interactions operate, they help each creation, each presence, each essence or vital principle fulfill “a larger picture that the conscious mind may not be able presently to perceive.” In ways I can’t even begin to describe here, all frameworks must ultimately be joined within the ineffable context of All That Is.

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.

“I’ve had several new experiences with altered states of consciousness,” she wrote in labored script, “and these are quite different than anything I’ve done before. For this reason they are difficult to classify….” Also, she’s indulged in long conversations with me—and on occasion with certain friends—when we apparently were present in out-of-body states. Related here are actions she thought she was participating in with me, say, yet when she “woke up,” she discovered we hadn’t done any of those things. She’s referred often to “gaps in my consciousness” while dozing. “I don’t know what I was doing in my chair,” she said at 11:05 A.M. yesterday; she’d fallen asleep after telling me she had to use the commode. “I don’t like the way the thyroid business is making me feel…. I feel like I’m in your way, or in life’s way….” She had certainly been depressed on that occasion, and I’d tried to cheer her up.