“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.

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.

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.

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.”)

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.)

My main point is that I also feel, without having asked Seth, that the farther one travels ahead in time the greater the play of probable realities and probable lives he or she encounters. To venture into such a skein requires that one constantly picks and chooses among them—for each move, each thought, even, can launch the traveler into a different probability. In some cases there will be a great fear of becoming lost among all of those realities. (What if one doesn’t want a probable reality they choose? But that must happen all of the time!) The uncertainty perceived here by the conscious self, however, can act as a great restraint toward knowing a future life or lives—just as much as might the fear of tuning into one’s physical death ahead of time in this life. Hook up those two factors with the quite natural concern that at least some events in any life to come will inevitably be unpleasant, or worse, and we have at least three powerful restraints, or psychic blocks, inhibiting awareness of future lives. There would be others. Everything considered, we may just not want to know about future lives most of the time.

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.”

Our attitudes, then, may point up our unconscious strengths and weaknesses when it comes to our acceptance and use, or nonuse, of at least portions of the Seth material. We may be more “prisoners,” or more deeply rooted in our times and concepts, than we like to admit. Consciously, however, Jane has never been overly enthusiastic about the idea of reincarnation to begin with. I’ve noted in other books that she seldom talks about it. She was brought up as a Roman Catholic, and more than passionately embraced that faith. Yet she was early subjected to the church’s rigid opposition to the whole idea of reincarnation because, strangely enough, even in her very youthful poetry she dealt with the forbidden subject (although not by name). Jane does believe that long ago she left behind the church’s dogmas on reincarnation. She doesn’t want to use the concept as a crutch; her caution stems from other beliefs, on which I’ll quote her shortly. (As for myself, while growing up I knew nothing of reincarnation beyond its name.) But we’ll be the first ones to agree that in certain Seth sessions, and in her very evocative poetry, Jane has encouraged her intuitive and creative selves to seriously discuss reincarnation. This is very evident in her second and latest book of poetry, If We Live Again: Or, Public Magic and Private Love, which was published in December of last year (1981). From the beginning of Section 3 of “I Am Alive Again”:

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….

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.

“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.

“I feel that Rob and I have lived our lives together many times, for example, and in many relationships. But I don’t want to spend a lot of ‘time’ learning about those lives. I ‘know’ we change and replenish those other existences.

We’re not against reincarnation, then, only careful about our beliefs concerning it. Within the context of my discussion, reincarnation is Seth’s historical version of his counterpart concept, which is that each of us is physically connected with certain other males and females who are living at the same time we are, and who are exploring physical life from a variety of viewpoints in ways that no one physical self could possibly match. This means that each reincarnational self has its own cluster of counterpart selves within its own time period, and that all are interconnected on nonphysical levels, joining together like magical gears meshing in constantly changing patterns across time and reality. And once one understands ideas of reincarnation and counterparts in these terms, it becomes difficult to think of one without the other, so inevitable do they appear to be.

So if Jane undergoes illness in this reality, in another she does not—but in between those extremes she also explores all stages of her illness in a series of probable universes, flashing among them in “no time at all,” basically…. In some of those realitites I accompany her in various relationships. In others I am the one who becomes ill! In some I don’t even physically coexist with her. But as Seth has said, since I live with her in this probable reality from which I write, then my existence is always at least probable within any of her realities. The same applies to me from Jane’s standpoint. And although Seth hasn’t said so yet (that I remember), I also think that within the spontaneous plan of probable realities each of us—anyone, that is—explores all aspects of sexuality and parenthood at the same time.

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.

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.

As Seth told us in that introductory session, over four and a half years ago, Jane’s “body itself has nothing wrong with it except the application of beliefs…. Even if you think the body does have something wrong with it, then the necessary adjustments would be made in another kind of time [in Framework 2] that in Framework 1 would take no time at all—or, the amount of time you thought required.” For emphasis I myself underlined that last phrase, because it’s easy to miss how very important it really is: Our individual concept of the amount of time necessary to accomplish an action like a healing will govern its progress. Then, a bit later, Seth made a statement that I’ve thought most ironic ever since: “In terms of creativity, however, Ruburt has long been operating in Framework 2, and this session should help him make certain correlations so that he can automatically begin to use such methods in regard to his physical conditon.”

There followed many sessions, both regular and private (or deleted, as we sometimes call them), in which Seth discussed Frameworks 1 and 2. As can happen when we’re consciously too close to a deep-seated situation, some little time passed before Jane and I realized the obvious: It wasn’t that we were unable to tune into Framework 2, say, for help in effecting a healing for her in the joint reality we’d created in Framework 1—but that in physical reality we were drawing from Framework 2 exactly what we wanted to, even if often on unconscious or unwitting levels. Again, a matter of choices, and hard truths to face. As I’ve tried to show in these essays, we didn’t suspend our efforts to reach into that larger framework. In a variety of ways we kept trying to do just that through the screens of our emotions and intellects. In those terms, communication between frameworks is unstoppable, really: I think that if one could halt the interchanges, physical death would result. For us, the learning processes were there for the changing anytime we decided that a physical illness was “wrong.” But it would be wrong only when we decided that we didn’t need it anymore.

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.

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.

At this time Jane doesn’t know just how, or to what extent, hallucination was involved in any of these episodes, if at all; sometimes the dream state definitely was. But the experiences I’ve mentioned here, plus others, have uncovered some surprising new dimensions of her abilities, and later she wants to thoroughly investigate and write about them.