“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(2. What procedures are available to the nonphysical personality when it decides to incarnate physically for the first time? What is the initial life like? Is it apt to be savage, or more “cultivated” to some degree? Or is any sort of predetermined pattern involved at all?

(Since I’ve been curious about these questions for some time, I thought the readers of Seth’s book might be also. As things develop, however, Seth doesn’t pay any attention to the first question now, and takes off from the second one in a most interesting way.

(Just before the session tonight I wondered aloud what the present Chapter Thirteen would have been like if Jane hadn’t begun to read, early this month, the anthology containing the long section by Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst. As I mentioned, Seth suggested Jane lay the book aside on October 19, before she had time to finish it. See the notes at the beginning of the 555th session for October 21. Neither of us has looked at the book since.

Then, I wanted him to put it aside for another time, after he had read so far. (Pause.) We will resume dictation.

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: In all cases the decisions have been made ahead of time, as I told you. The reincarnating personality is aware, therefore, when the conception for which it has been waiting takes place. And while it may or may not choose to enter at that point, it is drawn irresistibly to that time and point in space and flesh.

You may have already decided for example, now, upon the circumstances for your next incarnation. Although in your terms your new parents may be infants now, or in your scale of time not even born, the arrangements may still be made.

(11:00 P.M. Jane’s trance had been deep. She had a time getting her eyes to stay open. “I like it when he does it like that — when I’m just out,” she said. “But when I come back I don’t know what I’m doing…. I was really out.”