“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Maybe, I thought, the experience was a delayed reaction to the projection suggestions. Just before the session I asked my pendulum a few questions — keeping in mind that I wasn’t so sure this technique should be used to explore other than physically oriented data. Usually I get excellent results with the pendulum; I learned now that the visual-interference effects had been caused by my unsuccessful attempts to perceive a thought-form sent out by a survival personality. This backed up the reasons given by Seth, then, for the eye phenomenon. Usually we use the pendulum to reach information that is just below normal waking consciousness.

(I also learned that no particular painting of mine was involved, nor were my efforts to project this afternoon; that the survival personality was unknown to me, and that the pendulum couldn’t tell me who the personality was.

(8:45.) Some, for example, choose to isolate various characteristics in a given life, and work on these almost exclusively, basing a given existence upon, say, one main theme. As seen from a physical viewpoint, such a personality would appear very one-sided, and far from a well developed individual.

In one life the intellect may purposely be very high, and those powers of the mind carried as far as the individual can take them. These abilities are then studied thoroughly by the entire personality, both the benefits and the detrimental aspects of the intellect weighed carefully. Through experience in another life this same kind of individual might specialize in emotional development, and purposely underplay intellectual abilities.

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.

(8:51.) Through denying themselves, say, intellectual development in a given life, personalities also learn the value and purpose of that which they do not possess. The desire for it is then born within them — if, for example, earlier they did not understand the purposes of the intellect. So in the time of choosing, personalities decide upon the ways in which they will develop in the following incarnation.

Some will choose progression at an easier rate and in a more balanced manner. They will help keep all the strands of personality working at once, so to speak, and even meet again and again people they have known in other lives. They will work out problems at a rather easy rate, rather than in, say, an explosive way. They will pace themselves as dancers do.

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.

(To me, now, at 9:02): You, for example, did not operate within a cycle in those terms. Now: There are personal cycles of course, in which families may reincarnate, taking different relationships to each other, and you have been involved in several of these.

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.

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.

On occasion, some personalities may be given an exception to the general rule and take a sabbatical (humorously) from reincarnations, a side trip so to speak, to another layer of reality, and then return. Such cases are not common, however. Such matters are also decided at this time. Those who choose to leave this system, whose reincarnational cycles are finished, have many more decisions to make.

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.

The psychological experience varies considerably from that you know, and yet there are hints of it within your own psyche. Here the personality must learn to group events in an entirely different way, and completely without any reliance upon the time structure as you know it.

(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.

In parentheses: (There is also a probable system, of course, in which no reincarnational cycles exist, and a cycle of reincarnations in which no probabilities exist.) The openness and flexibility of the personality is highly important. Doorways to existences can be opened, and the personality can refuse to see them.

On the other hand, all probable existence is open, and consciousness can make a door where there was none in those terms. There are guides and teachers in this time of choosing and decision, to point out alternatives and to explain the nature of existence. All personalities are not at the same level of development. There are therefore advanced teachers and teachers at “lower” levels.

Now: Under these conditions the personality manipulates events consciously of course, and studies the various effects. The focus demanded is quite intensive.

Frank Withers was a fragment personality of mine. He will continue, himself, to reincarnate and go his own way. Many of us leave fragment personalities as you leave children. Do you follow me?

(10:57 P.M. Jane’s trance had been deep. We’ve received little information on our past lives, preferring to wait on this endeavor for various personal reasons. We found the data concerning Denmark intriguing. Jane and I ended up unsure, though, as to whether I lived two short lives, or one longer life divided into two spheres of activity.