“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

‘They actually were you in a sense,’ I say. ‘At that moment they created you out of their fears and negative emotions, with all their talents but with all their aggressions and bitterness too. You had to go on from there.’

We all laugh at that. I can’t get over the change in them since our first dream encounter. Now their love for each other is much freer and more open than it was that first time, and they seem happier.

Carl nods. At once I realize that somewhere — I don’t understand where — Carl does not own a cycle and that the two of us are man and wife, and have a baby. It is as though I am remembering physical life as a dream, and yet I have the feeling that Carl and I have done this cycle bit before, that we are doing it still in another place and that we will do it even as we are doing it now. The all-at-oneness seems perfectly natural.

The whole series of experiences concerning probabilities raised many questions. Seth answered several in a class session held several days after Sue’s last dream. Speaking to her directly, Seth first mentioned the headache that had been plaguing her all day:

You are upset over the implication of probable selves, and that caused the headache. Simply tell yourself that you are doing well in this reality, using your abilities, helping your husband and caring for your child. You do not need to feel guilty over the creation of any probable selves. They come into reality with problems, but all of you come into reality with challenges that you have set ‘ahead of time.’ You have given them the gift of existence. They will learn how to use it and develop their own abilities in their own way. You have also given them individuality, which means that they are not yourselves, but variations on yourselves.

Many do. You give probable selves a foundation and history and identity, and without your creation of them they would not exist. Would you, then, deny them reality in order to save them from any pain? Now, your headache can vanish. All existence is vulnerable … to the possibilities and probabilities of creation that dwell deeply with it. Even when you thrust a pain apart from yourself and give it as a heritage to a fragment personality, you give it also your creative power and your hopes. You do not set these personalities adrift without hope or potential.

You need not do so at all. Once you realize that your guilt is groundless, then it can dissolve. It is only when you become frightened that you project it in such a way.

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.

If you would have some idea of what the probable universe is like, then examine your own dreams, looking for those events which do not have any strong resemblance to the physical events of waking existence. Look for dream individuals with whom you are not acquainted in normally conscious life. Look for landscapes that appear bizarre or alien, for all of these exist somewhere. You have perceived them. They do not exist in the space that you know but neither are they nonexistent, mere imaginative toys of the dreaming mind, without substance.

But what is the point of all these probable selves? What do they have to do with the development of personality as we think of it? Seth is still discussing probabilities in his own book, so we don’t have all the answers, by any means. One night, Rob asked Seth how our own egos had changed as a result of our sessions, however, and Seth used the question as an opportunity to give us more information about personality and probable selves.

This is a cornerstone for consciousness and for personality. It is only a first step, however. Without it, no further development of consciousness can occur. It is not attained by all within your system. You are at that point now.

The next step is taken when identity is able to include within itself the intimate knowledge of all incarnations. Yet in this state, the independence of the various reincarnated selves is not diminished. Each of these steps of consciousness involve identity with the inner recognition of its unity with All That Is.

As each separate identity then seeks to know and experience its other portions, then All That Is learns Who and What It Is. Action never ceases its exploration of itself. All That Is can never know itself completely, since action must always act and each action creates a new unknown. Action must travel through itself from every conceivable point, and yet the journey, being itself action, will create new paths.

There are many you’s in the probable systems, and each You is related psychologically in a personality structure. The You that you know is a part of this. In your system, all the other You’s seem to exist in a probable reality.

To any of them, the others would seem to exist in a probable universe, yet all are connected. All of you did not have the same parents, for example, and there are portions of probable situations existing in your own parents’ separate lives. [To Rob:] In two probable realities, your mother did not have children. You do not exist in these. In some, she married but not the man you know as father. A psychological connection exists between that first son in that other system and yourself.

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.

They have evolved beyond all probabilities as we understand them yet, outside of probabilities, they still have existence. This cannot be explained in words. Yet, none of this is meant to deny the individual, for it is the individual upon whom all else rests, and it is from the basis of the individual that all entities have their existence. Nor are the memories or emotions of an individual ever taken from him. They are always at his disposal.

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. …