“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.

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.

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.