“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Some personalities are drawn to enter at conception as a result of seemingly less worthy motives — greed, for example, or an obsessional desire that is partially composed of unresolved problems. Other personalities who never completely take to earthly existence may hold off full entry for some time, and even then always remain at a certain distance from the body. At the other end of the scale, before death the same applies, where some individuals remove their focus from physical life, leaving the body consciousness alone. Others stay with the body until the last moment. In the early days of infancy, there is not a steady focus of the personality in the body in any case.

You do not have completely empty shells of matter about to be filled, in that the new personality hovers in and about, particularly after conception and with greater frequency and intensity thereafter. The shock of birth has several consequences, however, that usually draw the personality full blast, so to speak, into physical reality. Before this, the conditions are fairly uniform. The body consciousness is nurtured almost automatically, reacting strongly but under highly controlled conditions.

At birth, all of this is suddenly over, and [new] stimuli [are] introduced with a rapidity that the body consciousness has never to that point experienced.

(10:10.) It greatly needs a stabilizing factor. Previously the body consciousness has been enriched and supported by deep biological and telepathic identification with the mother. The communication of the living cells is far more profound than you imagine. The identification is almost complete before birth as far as body consciousness alone is concerned.

When it enters at the point of birth, it is fairly independent, not yet identified with the form it has entered, and acting in a supportive role. If the personality entered at conception or sometime before birth, then it has to some extent identified with the body consciousness, with the fetus. It has already begun to direct perception — though perception has begun whether or not it is so directed — and it will experience the shock of birth in immediate, direct terms.

(10:19.) There will be no distance between the personality and the experience of birth, then. The newly entered personality, as a consciousness, flickers, in that there is a while before stabilization takes place. When the child, particularly the young child, is sleeping, for example, the personality often simply vacates the body. Gradually the identification with the between-life situation dwindles until nearly full focus resides in the physical body.

There are obviously those who identify with the body far more completely than others. Generally speaking, there is an optimum point of focus in physical reality, a period of intensification that has nothing to do with duration. It can last for a week or thirty years, and from then onward it begins to dwindle, and imperceptibly begins to shift to other layers of reality.

Now. A crisis, particularly in very early or very late life, may so shatter the personality’s identification with the body that he vacates it temporarily. He may do one of many things. He may leave so completely that the body goes into coma, if the body consciousness has also suffered shock. If the shock is psychological and the body consciousness is still operating more or less normally, then he may revert to an earlier reincarnational personality.

The hold of the personality over the body is tenuous in the early years, and grows stronger. The personality, for its own reasons, may decide upon choosing a body that is not aesthetically pleasing. He may never relate to it, and while the existence will serve what purposes he had in mind, there will always be a basic sensed distance between the body and the personality within it.

Those mentioned earlier who enter at the point of conception are usually highly anxious for physical existence. They will, therefore, be more fully developed and show their individual characteristics very early. They seize upon the new body and already mold it. The control over matter is vigorous, and they usually stay within the body, dying either in accidents where death is immediate or in sleep or with a disease that strikes quickly. They are manipulators of matter as a rule.

Again generally speaking, they are always more at home with ideas, philosophies, and nontangible realities. They are thinkers always a bit apart, their body types showing a lack of muscular development. Poets and artists, while somewhat of this nature, as a rule are more deeply appreciative of the physical values of earthly existence, although they have many of the same characteristics.

The attitude toward the body will always vary, therefore. Various types of bodies may be chosen, but there will still be overall preferences on the part of the whole self, and characteristics that will lead the whole self, so that generally the various lives lived will still have their own individual flavor.

It is almost impossible to speak of when the personality enters the physical body without discussing the ways in which it leaves it, for all this is highly dependent upon personal characteristics and attitudes toward physical reality. Decisions as to future lives may be made not only in between-life conditions but also in dream states in any given life.