“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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 also know that in a couple of chapters for Dreams itself Seth referred to the genetic factors involving reincarnation. He said that basically both our genetic structure and our reincarnational history are systems of consciousness, that they’re “intermixed.” The former is physical, the latter is psychic, a part of our inner bank of knowledge. I don’t doubt that he’s right—that is, in our temporal lifetimes we call upon whatever systems of consciousness we desire to, at whatever “time”: a matter of choice and free will operating within the broad parameters of our sexual orientation and other personality factors.

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….

Well, one may ask, if a so-called negative quality like depression has a genetic foundation, what about the genetics for a positive attribute like joy—or, even, something like reincarnation? (I haven’t come across anything in the media yet about either one of those.) If reincarnational and genetic systems are intermixed, then it could be said that even a person’s decision to ignore his or her reincarnational heritage was in itself genetically based—and it could be fun to explore the contradictory ramifications of such a state. What other wonders might our cells contain? While amusing myself I’m simplifying to a great degree: If traces of one’s “successive” lives are genetically embedded, sorting them out would be an enormous task.

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.

In the first essay I described how Dr. Mandali had told Jane that her thyroid gland had “simply ceased functioning,” and how the doctor had started to cautiously rejuvenate my wife’s endocrine system with 50 micrograms daily of a synthetic thyroid hormone. Jane is supposed to take these pills in some still-to-be-determined strength for the rest of her life (although in his session for April 16 Seth had explained that her thyroid gland “has repaired itself” on several occasions; see the essay for the same date.)