“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

18
Probable Selves

I realize that I am dreaming, and tell myself to go to another probability system. I am standing by Chamberlain’s Dairy outside Elmira, but the scenery doesn’t change, so I will myself to Jane and Rob’s apartment. The next thing I know, I’m there.

The two of them don’t answer me. They seem to be sharing a secret. ‘Look,’ I say again, to explain. ‘This is a probable system of reality, one of many. In the one I come from, I also know Jane and Rob Butts. Do you remember that?’

‘In that probability, Jane is a lot thinner. She eats constantly to gain weight.’

In the meantime, one of the other people with Seth speaks with him. One is a large, jolly-looking monk. I also notice that Rob’s back seems much more comfortable than at our first meeting. ‘You’ll go on and develop your own way in this probability system,’ I say. Affection seems to well up among us.

Apparently Rob and Jane were moving into the same apartment my Rob and Jane have lived in for years, but in another probability.

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

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.

Sue said, “I was afraid that I’d created some pretty sorry probable selves of my own.”

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.

Another student asked, “Do we often project our fears and guilts on to probable personalities?”

The following excerpts from the Seth Material will explain probable systems more clearly, and relate probable selves with dream experience.

“Dream Selves and Probable Selves”

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.

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.

“Dreams and Probable Events”

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.

You may not be able to make sense from what appears to be a chaotic jungle of disconnected images and actions. The main reason for your confusion is the inability of an egotistical identity to perceive order that is not based upon continuity of moments. The order within the probable system is based upon something that could be compared to subjective associations or intuitive flashes of insight — experiences that can combine ingredients that could appear to the ego as disconnected. Here they are combined into whole integrated patterns of action.

The probable system does not achieve its order through subjective association, but the term is the nearest I can use to approximate the basic causes for this order. The events within it are, indeed, objective and concrete within their own field of reality, for example. Your own system is real and concrete only within its own field, remember.

So far, we’ve experienced two main types of dreams that seem to involve probabilities. Sue’s, given earlier, represent the personally-oriented dream in which we seem to perceive probable events that could have happened or could happen in the future in our normal environment. Other kinds of dreams involve the “bizarre environments” Seth mentioned and show societies or civilizations quite alien to us, but built up around elements at least recognizable.

I write: ‘Do you breathe water somehow?’ She answers, ‘Yes. They outlawed those suits a number of years ago, so we can’t get to …’ She stops suddenly and I get the idea that once again I’m in some kind of a warp of a probable dimension of submarine people, or people who live in a water-based atmosphere. My mask becomes uncomfortable and begins to fill with some water.

A group of us are at my parents’ house, in the cellar, projecting. I look into the furnace room and notice a formation of something like hot water heaters near the ceiling. It elongates and expands into a porcelain corridor. I step into it and meet several strange catlike people who explain that I have projected into a warp of dimensions and entered their reality. It is a probable system where consciousness decided to use the cat form as the most satisfactory and in which the cat walked upright, used tools and so forth.

The people have orangish faces, pointed ears and very long hair on their heads and hands. They are dressed in dark robes. One ‘man’ and I walk to a complex of offices. This particular room is done in dark wood and leather, with no windows. He tells me that this warp will only exist for a short time, connecting his reality and mine, before it disconnects and that the same situation probably will not happen again. He also tells me that it is difficult to get back.

You may act out many probabilities within dream reality and try out alternatives, and not necessarily short-term ones. You would have made an excellent doctor, for example. In your terms, you worked out this possibility by weaving, over a period of three years, a dream framework in which you learned exactly what your life would have been, had you gone into medicine.

This was more than imaginative. You examined one probability and chose another. The individual, then, chooses which probabilities he desires to actualize physically. In one such episode, for example, you followed your present course through; therefore, you are subconsciously aware of your own ‘future’ — since you chose it. There are always new choices, however. You foresaw the future possibilities within the main choice system.

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.

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.

“Probable Selves and Multi-Dimensional Personality”

“Action and Probabilities”

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.

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.

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.

“Probabilities and ‘No Time’“

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.

Events, then, are materialized in your time from their origins in ‘no time.’ There is no end to the source or supply of probabilities, therefore ‘no time’ is not a static, completed storehouse. Each event you form from any set of probabilities automatically gives rise to new probabilities.

The nature of any given probable action does not lead to any particular inevitable act. Probabilities expand in terms of value fulfillment. One given act does not necessarily lead, then, to act A, B and C, onward to some concluding action. Instead, it has offshoots in infinite directions, and these have offshoots.

This is what I know of reality. There is far more to be known. Outside of the realities of which I am aware and others are aware, there are systems that we cannot describe. They are massive energy sources, cosmic energy banks, that make possible the whole reality of probabilities.

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. …