“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

In one dream she seemed to meet a probable self of her own. This was the dream:

We mentioned that the dreaming self has its own memories. It has memory of all dream experience. To you, this might mean that it has memory of its past, and, indeed, to you, memory itself is dependent upon a past or the term seems meaningless. To the dreaming self, however, past, present and future do not exist. How can it be said to have memory?

All experience is basically simultaneous, as I have told you. The dreaming self is aware of its experience in its entirety. You, obviously, are not. You are hardly familiar with your dream experience and barely aware of its significance.

The dreaming self is to some considerable degree aware of the probable self. There is give-and-take between the two, for much data is received by the dreaming self from the probable self — the self that experiences what the ego would call probable events.

This data is often wound by the dream self into a dream drama which informs the subconscious of dangers or of probable success of any given event which is being considered by the subconscious for physical actuality.

Were it not for the experience of this probable self, and for its information given via the dreaming self to the subconscious, then it would be most difficult for the ego to come to any clear decisions in daily life. The ego does not realize the data that is being constantly fed into it. It cannot afford to, generally, since its focused energy must be used in the manipulation of physical actuality.

This probable self has operated in each reincarnation, in each materialization of the personality, and has at its command literally millions of probable situations and conditions upon which to make value judgments. Of itself, however, it does not make the decision as to whether or not a particular event will be made physical. It merely passes on the information that it has received through experience.

This information is sifted often through the dreaming self to the subconscious which has intimate knowledge of the ego with which it is closely connected. The subconscious makes its own judgments and passes these on with the data. Then the ego makes its decision. In some cases, the ego refuses to make the decision, and it is done by the subconscious. On occasion, when an unwise decision is made by the ego, the subconscious will change it. …

The probable self can be reached through hypnosis but only with excellent subjects and operators. Often it will not be recognized, however, for there will be no evidence of its experience in physical reality to back up its statements. Its data will agree when considered within its own framework. Reaching it in this manner would be highly difficult in any case. To my knowledge, it has not as yet been reached through hypnosis. It has been glimpsed but not recognized as a separate part of the self — in dream recordings and analytic sessions.

Again, these portions of the self exist in each reincarnation. In the materialization of personality through various reincarnations only the ego and layers of personal subconscious adapt new characteristics. Other portions retain their experience, identity, and knowledge. The ego, in fact, receives much of its stability because of this retention. Were it not for experiences in other lives on the part of deeper layers of the self, the ego would find it almost impossible to relate to other individuals, and the cohesive nature of society would not exist.

In your present life, the same process continues. Most of these dreams are very disconnected from the ego and will not be recalled. The self who pursues these divergent paths is actual, however. The doctor you might have been once dreamed of a probable universe in which he would be an artist. He continues to work out his own probabilities. He exists in fact. You call his system an alternate system of probability, but this is precisely what he would call yours.

Reincarnation is but a part of this probability system, the part that falls within your particular universe. There are also root dreams shared by the race as a whole. Most of these are not as symbolic as Jung thought them to be but are literal interpretations of the abilities used by the inner self. For that matter, as you know, flying dreams need not be symbolic of anything. They can be valid experiences, though often intermixed with other dream elements. Falling dreams are also simple experience in many instances, representing downward motion, or a loss of form-control during projection.

Seth told us that Rob’s doctor probable self was a Doctor Pietra. As mentioned in my earlier book, we tried to contact him — so far, without success. Some years ago, Rob did do some medical artwork and was astonished at his success. He has no conscious knowledge of wanting to be a doctor as a child, but in painting he always emphasized body structure and form.

The ego structure remains, of course. The responsibility of dealing with physical reality remains, but in some respects the nature of this manipulation changes. It becomes more direct. Physical properties are manipulated more and more at a mental level. The ego becomes more like the inner ego and less like its old self, comparatively speaking. It accepts large portions of reality that it previously denied. Structurally, it remains intact, yet it has changed chemically and electromagnetically. Now it is far more open to inner data. Once this freedom is achieved, the ego can never return to its old state.

I have told you that the ego is self-conscious action that attempts to set itself apart from action and to consider action as an object. Now this altered ego retains its highly specialized self-consciousness, and yet it can now experience itself as an identity within and as a part of action.

Now, the inner self is psychologically influenced by these probable personalities, for they represent a whole personality structure or gestalt with which you are utterly unfamiliar. Your psychologists are dealing with a one-dimensional psychology, at their best.

They remain latent within you, and unexpressed in your system. You have their abilities, unused. You remain latent in their personality structures, and your main abilities are unused within their systems. Yet each of you is a part of one self in a multi-dimensional psychological structure.

These do not necessarily represent more evolved selves. Certain abilities will be more developed in them than in you, and vice versa. I am not speaking of portions of your self that exist in the ‘future.’ Each probable self, you see, has ‘future’ selves.

This multi-dimensional personality or identity is the psychological structure with which we will be concerned in many sessions. The term includes probable selves, reincarnated selves and selves more developed than the self that you know. These make up the basic identity of the whole self. All portions are independent.

You use probabilities like blocks to build events. This presupposes inner knowledge and calculations, for you must be aware of the probabilities in order to choose from them. The inner self, therefore, has this knowledge. These probabilities include webworks, probable actions and reactions involving not only yourself but others. Computers are toys compared with these inner workings.

All of these probable systems are open. In your system it seems as if you chose one course, one main line of probabilities, and that is the end of it. In your system, only one ego predominates and you think of yourself as that ego. In other systems, this is not necessarily the case. In some, the inner self is aware of having more than one ego, of playing more than one role at a time. As an analogy, this would be as if you lived, say, the life of a rich man of great talent, the life of a poor man and the life of a mother and career woman. You would be aware of each role and find abilities being developed in each. This is an analogy, and in several respects it could lead you astray if taken too literally. In such a system, there would be no breakup of time, you see. …