“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This afternoon, I gave myself suggestions that I have a projection experience when I lay down, but I did not succeed. Then, shortly after supper, I had a visual experience like that described in the notes for the 534th session, in Chapter Eight. I told Jane about it as it progressed. Once again she was concerned, but as usual I felt no alarm. The experience lasted for perhaps half an hour.

(In Chapter Eight, Seth had said this was my way of trying to see models for my paintings. I hoped to see something really good this evening now that I was prepared, but nothing developed. The only aftereffect was a slight headache, as before, and this soon passed.

(With this explanation, I didn’t feel it necessary to ask Seth about the experience. I did hope he would comment on it, but he did not…. Jane and I were both ready for the session ahead of time, for a change.)

Again, the physical picture would not be necessarily that of a well- developed or balanced personality. Specific creative abilities might be specialized in the same manner. If you looked at these lives as a series of progressions in usual terms, then you would be left with many questions unanswered. Nevertheless the development does occur, but the individuals choose the way in which they prefer this development to take place.

In this time of rest and choosing, all counsel is given. Some personalities do reincarnate before they are advised to, for many reasons. This is usually unfortunate in the short run, for the necessary planning has not taken place. But in the long run great lessons will still be learned from the “error.” There is no time schedule, and yet it is very unusual for an individual to wait for anything over three centuries between lives, for this makes the orientation very difficult, and the emotional ties with earth have become weak.

The relationships for the next life have to be settled upon, and this involves telepathic communication with all those who will be involved. This is a time, then, of many projections. There are those who are simply loners, who reincarnate without any great feeling for earth’s historical periods. There are others who like to return when their contemporaries from some particular past historical time return again, and therefore there are group patterns that involve reincarnational cycles in which many, but not all, are involved.

There are different depths to be probed in reincarnational existences. Some choose to “go all the way.” These personalities specialize in physical existence, and their knowledge of this system is most comprehensive. For these there is a movement through each of your racial types — a requirement that is not laid upon most. There is intensive preoccupation with historical periods. Many of these personalities live comparatively short lives, but very intense ones, and they experience more lives than most other individuals. They return, in other words, in as many historical times as possible, finally helping to shape the world as you know it.

Ideas of good, better, best can lead you astray, for example. You are learning to be as completely as possible. In one way you are learning to create yourselves. In so doing during the reincarnational cycle, you are focusing your main abilities in physical life, developing human qualities and characteristics, opening new dimensions of activity. This does not mean that good does not exist, or that in your terms you do not “progress,” but your concepts of good and progression are extremely distorted.

Now many personalities have extraordinary talents along specific lines, and these may show up again and again in succeeding existences. They may be tempered, used in various combinations, and yet overall still remain a personality’s strongest mark of individuality and uniqueness. While most people adopt different trades, occupations, and interests, for example, throughout the reincarnational cycle, with some there will be a very noticeable line of continuity. It may be broken occasionally, but it is always there. They may be priests or teachers, for example, almost exclusively.

There will be some more material in this book dwelling specifically upon reincarnation, but here I want to point out that in this time of choosing between lives, many more issues are at stake than a simple matter of proposed rebirth.

Entering the field of probabilities can be compared to entering the reincarnational cycle. There will be a sustained focus of awareness and existence in an entirely different sort of reality. Powers latent but barely glimpsed within the multidimensional personality are drawn upon and used when such a choice is made.

(9:40.) In this one, as in no other reality, intellectual and intuitive abilities finally work so well together that there is little distinction between them. The self that decides upon reincarnational existence is the same self who chooses experience within the probable system. The structure of personality, however, within the system is quite different. The personality structures with which you are familiar are but one variety of the many forms of awareness available to you.

(9:51.) But this is not a time of confusion, but of great illumination, and unbelievable challenge. There will be later material in this book on the god concept that will help you understand some things that remain unsaid in this chapter.

The earth years will be experienced again, but not necessarily in continuity. The events may be used in any way the individual chooses; altered, played back the way they happened for contrast; the way, perhaps, an actor would play an old movie in which he appeared over again in order to study it. Only in this case, of course, the actor can change his approach or the ending. He has full freedom with the events within those years.

(10:00. During the last delivery someone began to move into the apartment above us. Once out of trance, Jane said she had been bothered by the racket over our heads, but that she “held on to the trance” until break. Resume at the same slow rate at 10:12.)

He is told the nature of those who participate with him. He realizes they are thought-forms, for example, and his own; but again, thought-forms do possess a certain reality and consciousness. They are not cardboard actors for him to simply push around at will. He must, therefore, take them into consideration, and he has a certain responsibility toward them.

Now in this time of choosing all of these matters are considered, and suitable preparations made, but the planning itself is all a part of experience and of development. The in-between existence, therefore, is every bit as important as the period that is chosen. You learn to plan your existences, in other words. You also make friends and acquaintances in these rest periods whom you meet again and again — and only, perhaps, during in-between existences.

Van Elver the younger. (The cities were) clearing houses for country artists, but many more painters did portraits of wealthy farmers and their land and establishments. These were hung of course in places of honor in the homes.

Two friends continued to travel and paint, however, and visited you occasionally, and you envied them to some degree. One became fairly well known at the time. His name was Van Dyck, but not the famous one. You loved your land but blamed it also, thinking that perhaps you might have been well-known as an artist had you not obtained it.

You thought you would settle down and paint on your fine farm, but instead you turned into a farmer, and a lecherous one at that. There is some connection here with your ambiguous feelings about money now, you see, and possessions.