“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

These rigid ideas can indeed act as leashes, so that you are forced to circle like a tied puppy dog about a very small radius. In such cases, through perhaps a group of existences, you will find yourself battling against ideas of good and evil, running about in a circle of confusion, doubt, and anxiety.

Oftentimes members of various groups — military groups, church groups, hunting groups, will in another life form family relationships in which they will then work out old problems in new ways. Families must be considered as gestalts of psychic activity; they have a subjective identity, of which no particular member of the group may be aware.

Families have subconscious purposes, though the individual members of the family may pursue these goals without conscious awareness. Such groups are set up ahead of time, so to speak, in between physical existences. Oftentimes four or five individuals will set themselves a given challenge, and assign to the various members different parts to play. Then in a physical existence the roles will be worked out.

The inner self is always aware of the hidden mechanisms of these family gestalts. Those who have been closely bound through emotional ties often prefer to remain in closely tied or loosely tied physical relationships that continue through many lifetimes. New relationships are always encouraged however, for you can have ingrown reincarnational “families.” Many of these form physical organizations that are actually manifestations of inner groupings.

This does not mean that every one in your present acquaintanceship has been known to you, and it certainly does not imply a boring record played over and over again, for each encounter is a new one in its own way. Remembering what I said about families, realize also that towns and villages may also be composed of the past inhabitants of other such towns and villages, transposed with new experiences and backgrounds, as the group tries different experiments.

In such dreams, general mass-information is given, that the individuals then use as they desire. Overall plans for development are made, as the group members, say, of a town decide upon its destiny. Some individuals always choose to be born as a part of some group — reborn, in other words, with past contemporaries, while others, disdaining such endeavors, return in much more isolated positions.