“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Reincarnational experiences are a part of the framework of the self, a facet of the multidimensional reality of the living psyche. These experiences will, therefore, be reflected not only in the dream state, but in other layers of activity.

The fabric of the present self is interwoven with these reincarnational “pasts,” and from them the present self draws unconsciously from its own bank of personality characteristics, activities, and insights. Often past-life memories come to the surface but are not recognized as such, since they appear in fantasy form, or are projected into art creations.

Many writers of historical pieces, for example, are writing out of direct experience with those times. Such instances represent an excellent working rapport between the present self and the unconscious, which brings these memories to the surface in such a way that current life is enriched. More often than not, true awareness of the situation often becomes almost conscious, and just beneath awareness the individual knows the source of his authentic material.

The whole self is obviously the sum of these characteristics, and more. After the final incarnation, the physical, sexual type of creativity is simply no longer needed. You do not need to reproduce physically, in other words. In simple terms the whole self contains male and female characteristics, finely tuned together, blended so that true identity can then arise — for it cannot, when one group of characteristics must be emphasized over the other group, as it must be during your present physical existence.

The projection of the man’s anima, or hidden female self, upon [his] relations is quite natural, and allows him not only to understand them better but to relate with the other female existences of his own. The same is true of the woman’s projection of the animus upon male relatives and friends. The reality of the anima and the animus is far deeper then than Jung supposed. Symbolically speaking, the two together represent the whole self with its diverse abilities, desires, and characteristics.

Personality as you know it, cannot be understood unless the true meaning of the anima and the animus is taken into consideration. The reincarnational pattern is generally speaking an open one, in that within it there is room for diversity. Each whole self has its own individual characteristics. It can live its lives as it sees fit within the guidelines. There may be a series of male or female existences, unbroken. Such a choice has some drawbacks.

The animus and the anima become even more important in these instances when a series of one-sex lives are chosen. The original pattern for the animus and anima comes from the whole self before reincarnations. The animus and the anima are born into the individual with the first physical life, and serve as an inner pattern, reminding the personality of its basic unity. Here is another reason for the strong psychic charge behind these symbols and the godlike quality that they can transmit and project.

(9:48.) The male yearns toward the anima because it represents to the deep unconscious those other characteristics of the whole self that, on the one hand, lie latent, and that, on the other hand, struggle for release. The tension between the two leads him to temper aggressiveness with creativity, or to use aggressiveness creatively.

Now there are deep correlations between these symbols and the struggle in which mankind is involved. Your consciousness as you know it, your particular present kind of consciousness, is a statement of awareness brought about by a particular kind of tension, a specific kind of focus arising from the true unconscious of the whole self.

There is also a natural tension, then, between sexes that is based on far deeper causes than physical ones. The tension results from the nature of your consciousness that arises from the anima, but depends for its continuation upon the “aggressiveness” of the animus. I have to some extent explained the fascination that one has for the other, as resulting from the inner knowledge of the whole self, that strives to attain true identity as it struggles to combine and fulfill the seemingly opposite tendencies that are a part of it.

At the end of the reincarnational cycle, the whole self is far more developed than it was before. It has realized and experienced itself in a dimension of reality unknown to it earlier, and in doing so, has of course increased its being. It is not a matter, then, of a whole self splitting in half, and then simply returning to itself.