“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Then as we sat for the session Jane told me that after supper tonight she’d picked up material from Seth “that I wasn’t sure of because I didn’t understand what he meant….” Involved were her questions about mammals, species, subspecies, and other classifications of living creatures. I thought it obvious that her two latest intuitions from Seth were directly related—and that certain creative portions of her psyche never stopped “working.” Quickly I tried to explain that in biology the science of classification is called taxonomy. I had only a little success delineating terms like “phylum” and “genus,” since I didn’t have a dictionary handy to refresh my own memory; however, I did help her understand that mammals aren’t a subspecies of any other group, but are themselves a major class of warm-blooded creatures.

In view of Jane’s own limited knowledge of the scientific vocabulary man has devised to classify just the multitude of living forms alone on our planet, it’s very interesting that Seth used what I think is the correct popular terminology as he went through the session. Even so, however, he still added meanings of his own to some of those basic categories, or taxa.)

In a manner of speaking (underlined), the physical universe is “transposed” upon another reality that must be its source. The world was and is created in dimensions outside of time, and outside of space as you understand it (intently).

Other realities quite as legitimate as your own, quite as vital, quite as “real,” coexist with your own, and in the terms of your understanding, “in the same space”—but of course in terms of your experience those spaces and realities would appear to be quite separate. No systems are closed, however, so that basically (underlined) the living grid of perception that causes one world or reality is also “wired into” all other such systems. There is a give-and-take between them.

Reincarnation exists, then, on the part of all species. Once a consciousness, however, has chosen the larger classification of its physical existences, it stays within that framework in its “reincarnational” existences. Mammals return as mammals, for example, but the species can change within that classification.¹ This provides great genetic strength, and consciousnesses in those classifications have chosen them because of their own propensities and purposes. The animals, for example, seem to have a limited range of physical activity in conscious terms, as you think of them. An animal cannot decide to read a newspaper. Newspapers are outside of its reality. Animals have a much wider range, practically speaking, in certain other areas. They are much more intimately aware of their environment, of themselves as separate from it, but also of themselves as a part of it (intently). In that regard, their experience deals with relationships of another kind.

When you ask: “When did the world begin?” or “What really happened?” or “Was there a Garden of Eden?”, you are referring to the world as you understand it, but in those terms there were earths in the same space before the earth you recognize existed,² and they began in the manner that I have given you in the early chapters of this book. The patterns for worlds—the patterns—continue in your time dimension, though in that time dimension those worlds must disappear, again, to continue “their existence outside of time.” The patterns are filled out again.

(10:03.) In the case of earth the grid of perception is simply used differently, certain areas becoming prominent in some eras, and less prominent in others. Using your idea of time, I can only say that when the entire gestalt of consciousnesses that formed a particular earth have formed its reality to the best of their abilities, fulfilling their individual and mass capacities as far as possible, then they lovingly turn over that grid to others, and continue to take part in existences that are not physical in your terms. And that has happened many times.

Your tale about the Garden of Eden, then, is a legend about earth’s last beginning. Each world is so cunningly constructed, again, that each consciousness, regardless of its degree, plays a vital part. And each of your actions, however inconsequential, becomes connected in one way or another—in one way or another—to each other reality and each other world (all with much emphasis).

Now in a manner of speaking—though I see that little time has passed in this living room where I speak with Ruburt’s permission—we have transcended time to some extent this evening, for in what I have said there are indeed hints and illusions—cadences—that can, if you are ready, give you a feeling for existence as it is outside of time’s context. Even to try and verbally present such material necessitates alterations involving perception, for while that gridwork appears quite stable to your senses, giving you a reliable picture of reality, this is also because you have trained yourselves to pick up certain signals only. Others at other levels are (underlined) available. You can (underlined) tune into cellular consciousness, for example.

(“Last Saturday morning I had what seemed to be two dreams that were identical and side by side, or at the same time. But they weren’t within the other, as in a double dream—”)

(10:25 P.M. “Gee, I have the feeling that we had a fantastic session,” Jane enthused once she’d quickly left her trance state. I agreed. “I’m really making an effort to free myself from what science believes about evolution, or anything like that,” she said. “That’s what I got before the session—about animals reincarnating—and I thought: Oh, no. But it worked out okay.” Neither of us could remember Seth stating flat out in any of his material that animals reincarnate, although he may have done so. “After all of this time,” Jane mused, “he says that….”

“In color as usual: I can recall hardly any of these, but Jane suggested I write down what I can. I had two dreams, side by side. I believe they were identical to each other, with the same people in each one and the same resolution: a decision I reached in a new house on a hillside. Involved was a male character in a well-known TV program. We saw the show last night. I’m puzzling over how I could have had the dreams beside each other, though; it seems they should have been in sequence. I had no sense of one dream being inside the other one, as in what I call the conventional double dream.”)

2. Seth has told us almost from the beginning of the sessions that in our terms the earth we know is but the latest in a series of earths that have existed in the same “space,” or “value climate of psychological reality.” According to Seth, however, much more is involved. From Session 29, for February 26, 1964 (just 16 years ago): “There are endless planes upon your earth, or rather endless planes occurring simultaneously with your earth. Your solid earth is not a solid to inhabitants that would seem to take up the same space as your earth. The idea of taking up the same space is erroneous to begin with, but I don’t see how we can avoid such terms and still make any sense to you.”

Jane and I, and Seth, hadn’t cared for the trite term, “plane,” even then. “The value climate of psychological reality” is one of Seth’s attempts to originate something better. See Appendix 8 for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.

4. Jane and I had always thought of transmigration (or metempsychosis) as meaning the birth of a human soul in just animal form. Actually, however, the term refers to the journey of the soul into any form, whether human, animal, or inanimate—thus differing from the ordinary doctrine of reincarnation, or rebirth into the same species. Various interpretations of transmigration are ancient in many cultures. Seth, in Session 705 for June 24, 1975, in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality: “There is no transmigration of souls, in which the entire personality of a person ‘comes back’ as an animal. Yet in the physical framework there is a constant intermixing, so that the [molecular components of the] cells of a man or woman may become the cells of a plant or an animal, and of course vice versa.” In Note 2 for Session 840, in Mass Events, I’m quoting Seth from the 838th session for March 5, 1979: “I want to avoid tales of the transmigration of the souls of men to animals, say—a badly distorted version of something else entirely.”

In that 8th session Seth gave us more material on fragments: “In some submerged manner all fragments of a personality exist within an entity, with their own individual consciousnesses. They are not aware of the entity itself…. The entity operates its fragments in what you would call a subconscious manner, that is, without conscious direction. The entity gives the fragments independent life, then more or less forgets them…. Even thoughts, for instance, are fragments, though on a different plane.” Then Jane dictated a key sentence: “Fragments of another sort, called personality fragments, operate independently, though under the auspices of the entity.”