“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Love perceives the grace in another. Like natural guilt, the state of grace is unconscious in the animals. It is protected. They take it for granted, not knowing what it is or what they do, yet it speaks through all their motions and they dwell in the ancient wisdom of its ways. They do not have conscious memory, again, but the instinctive memory of the cells and organs sustains them. All of this applies in degrees according to the species, and when I speak of conscious memory I am using words that are familiar to you — I mean a memory that can at any time look back through itself.

The simplicity of natural guilt does not lead to what you think of as conscience, yet conscience is also dependent upon that moment of reflection that in a large measure sets you apart from the animals. Conscience, as you think of it, is caused by a dilemma and a misunderstanding of the conditions set upon your physical existence. Conscience arose with the emergence of artificial guilt. Give us a moment…

The mind is also equipped to see its own beliefs, reflect upon them and evaluate their results, so using this tool as it was meant to be used would automatically help man in recognizing both his beliefs and their effects. Part of this great permissiveness has to do with the fact that man is to realize that he creates his own reality. Free will is a necessity. The leeway given allows him to materialize his ideas, meet them in physical experience, and evaluate for himself their particular kind of validity.

We have mentioned reincarnation hardly at all (but see the 631st session in Chapter Seven), yet here let me state that the theory is a conscious-mind interpretation in linear terms. On the one hand it is highly distorted. On the other hand it is a creative interpretation, as the conscious mind plays with reality as it understands it. But in the terms used there is no karma to be paid off as punishment unless you believe that there are crimes for which you must pay (as indicated in the 614th session in Chapter Two).

(10:56. Jane didn’t have “the slightest glimmering of what that was all about.” Since she was so curious, I read the last few paragraphs to her. Nor do I always try to keep material in mind. Instead I’m usually concentrating on recording it, checking with Seth when I’m in doubt about a word, asking that worthy to repeat a phrase when I fall behind in the notes….

You seem to think that there is an expanse of time between reincarnational existences, that one follows the other as one moment seems to follow another. Because you perceive a reality of cause and effect, you hypothesize a reality in which one life affects the next one. With your theories of guilt and punishment you often imagine that you are hampered in this existence by guilts collected in the last life — or worse, accumulated through the centuries.

These multiple existences, however, are simultaneous and open-ended. In your terms the conscious mind is growing toward a realization of the part it has to play in such multidimensional reality. It is enough that you understand your part in this existence. When you fully comprehend that you form what you think of as your current reality, all else will fall into place.

Your beliefs, thoughts and feelings are instantly materialized physically. Their earthly reality occurs simultaneously with their inception, but in the world of time, lapses between appear to occur. So I say one causes the other, and I use those terms to help you understand, but all are at once. So are your multiple lives occurring as the immediate realization of your being in the natural extension of its many-faceted abilities.

“At once” does not imply a finished state of perfection nor a cosmic situation in which all things have been done, for all things are still happening. You are still happening — but both present and future selves; and your past self is still undergoing what you think is done. Moreover, it is experiencing events that you do not recall, that your linear-attuned consciousness cannot perceive on that level.

Your body has within it the miraculous strength and creative energy with which, in your terms, it was born. You most probably take this to mean that I am implying the possibility of an unending state of youth. While youth can be physically “prolonged” far beyond its present duration, that is not what I am saying.

Imagine where your breath goes when it leaves your body, how it escapes through an open window perhaps and becomes a part of the space outside, where you would never recognize it — and when it has left you it is no longer a part of what you are, for you are already different. So the lives you have lived are not you, while they are of you.

No one atom of air is like another. Each in its own way is aware and capable of entering into greater transformations and organizations, filled with infinite potential. As your breath leaves you and becomes part of the world, free, so do your lives leave you and continue to exist in your terms. You cannot confine a personality that you “were” to a particular century that is finished and deny it other fulfillments, for even now it exists and has fresh experience. As your moment of reflection gave birth to consciousness as you think of it — for both really came together — so then can another phenomenon and kind of reflection give birth to at least some dim conscious awareness of the vast dimensions of your own reality.