“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Resume dictation: Reincarnation involves far more than a simple decision to undergo another physical existence. In this in-between period of which I am speaking, many issues therefore are considered.

When most people think of reincarnation, they think in terms of a one-line progression in which the soul perfects itself in each succeeding life. This is a gross simplification. There are endless varieties of this one theme, individual variations. The process of reincarnation is used in many ways, therefore, and in this time of rest individuals must decide on the unique way in which reincarnation will be of use.

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.

(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: Dictation. In one way or another you are all travelers before you begin even your first reincarnational cycle. To make it as simple as I can, I will say that you do not have the same backgrounds, necessarily, when you enter the physical system of reality. As mentioned earlier, earthly existence is a training period; and yet as far as possible I would like you to forget your ordinary ideas of progression.

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.

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.

(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.

The probable system, therefore, is as complicated as the reincarnational one. Now I have told you that all action is simultaneous; therefore, on the one hand, you exist in both systems at once. However, to explain to you that decisions are involved, and to separate these events, I must simplify them to some degree. Put it this way: A portion of the whole self focuses in reincarnational cycles and handles developments there. Another portion focuses in probabilities and handles developments there.

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.

With them you may discuss your experience during reincarnational cycles. These are like old friends. The teachers, for example, are themselves within a cycle. The more advanced ones have already encountered the systems of reincarnation and probabilities, and are themselves deciding upon the “future” nature of their own experience. Their choices, however, are not your choices. While I may mention some other realms of existence open to them in a later chapter, we will not be involved with them here.

Give us a moment. That was my last full reincarnation, adopted then because I loved the sea, and it served a strong purpose in spreading ideas from one country to another. The men who traveled with me also took part in the seeding of ideas. We spread them about the world as it was then known.

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?