“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(To Theodore.) Now, I simply came to let you know that I was in on your conversation, and because I did not want to have you think that I played your little trick and rob you of the pleasure of realizing that you did it for yourselves. It was an excellent phenomena. Now had the lights been off and candles burning dimly and incense added then, indeed, you would have all had a time. As all of you know, the spirits are somewhat more lively. They do not require any darker rooms than you do.

([Rich L.:] “Why do the dead wish to influence the living so much?”)

Most of the dead do not particularly wish to influence the living. Some of us, however, have a particular course to follow as we did, in your terms, in our lifetime. There are many courses that you can follow after death after you have finished your reincarnation. Because when you are finished with your reincarnation, there is not a time when you can say, “There, I have had it. I put in my chips and now I will find peace ever after.” You continue to develop your abilities, but you continue to develop them in dimensions of reality that you do not understand now and so in this existence of mine I am a teacher and I visit other dimensions of actuality such as your own. In this particular instance, I try to affect you so that you will not blow yourselves off the faces of your planet. Because while your planet is dispensable, it is the only one you have right now and there is no use being so wasteful.

In ordinary terms, however, the dead are not concerned with the living except perhaps in the very earliest phases, when their emotional feelings are connected with those they have left. After that, you see, there are many other personalities for them to meet again. Persons that they have known in past lives. Do you want to add to your question?

Give us a moment. First of all there are not levels, per se. You develop the abilities that are yours, the best you can, within physical reality. You may, therefore, for example, choose to be an intellectual giant in one life and an emotional idiot in order that you can concentrate upon intellectual abilities. Or you may emotionally be extremely mature, and decide not to use your intellect to any great degree so that you can concentrate on emotional reality. Now, in your case, you have had four past lives. Two as a woman and two as a male. There is not time to go into them deeply this evening.

One, however, was as a merchant in Germany in approximately 1830, the area now around Austria. You have been rather pedantic in several past lives and given in one particularized in Spain, as a priest, to severe attitudes and ideas that lead you, alternately, toward violence and peace. You believed so strongly in principle, for example, that you would do anything to uphold it and there was little leeway in your personality. You were not able to give and take and, to some extent, that rigidity is still present in your personality. However, you are learning now to mitigate to some extent. You are, in other words, opening up in those areas. You were involved in the Inquisition. Your ideas of good and evil were highly polarized. You are making strides in this existence although you have also encountered some difficulties along these lines for it is not easy for you to be flexible, psychically or spiritually. And you are learning to do this despite the difficulties that have been involved.