“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(1. In the 556th session, Seth said that many writers of historical pieces are writing out of direct past-life experience. My question concerned a hypothetical experiment in which, say, a hundred such writers would be hypnotized without being told what the purpose of the experiment was; once under, they would be queried about past-life memories. I wondered what percentage of them would recall any, and if such a test might furnish good evidence for reincarnation.

(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?

(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.

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.

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.

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.

Now there are some who resist the new existence, even though they chose it, as long as possible. To some extent they must be present at birth, but they can still escape any full identification with the born infant. They hover within and about the form, but half reluctantly. There are many reasons for such behavior. Some personalities simply prefer in-between-life existence and are much more concerned with the theoretical solving of problems than the practical application necessarily involved. Others have discovered that physical existence does not meet their needs as well as they thought it would, and they will progress much better in other fields of reality and existence.

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.

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.

(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.”