“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(In the 586th session, earlier in this chapter, Seth stated that by the year 2075 the third Christ — Paul or Saul — would have enacted the Second Coming, exerting of course a profound effect upon religion and world history. Jane thought a period of less than a century was much too short a time to encompass so many dramatic changes. She wanted me to ask Seth if she had distorted this data while delivering it.

(My questions concerned relationships between the three personalities of the Christ entity: John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, and Paul. What sort of psychic interactions had taken place between them in any strong or exceptional way? Were their dreams and other psychic experiences — other than the recorded instances — outstanding on a regular basis as they lived out their lives day by day?

(All of the following historical dates are quite approximate, but they show the overlapping pattern of the physical lives of the three personalities making up the Christ entity.

(John the Baptist was born between 8 and 4 B.C., and died in A.D. 26 to 27. Jesus Christ was born between 8 and 5 B.C., and died in A.D. 29 to 30. Paul [Saul] of Tarsus was born between A.D. 5 and 15 and died in A.D. 67 to 68.

(Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, was a cousin of Christ’s mother, Mary. John baptized Christ at the beginning of his ministry in A.D. 26 to 27, when he was about thirty. John was already active in his own ministry, and often called himself a “forerunner of one who would be nobler and stronger.” Shortly after he baptized Jesus, John was imprisoned by Herod Antipas in the fortress Machaerus, near the Dead Sea.

(It isn’t known for sure that Christ and Paul ever met. Paul was converted several years after Christ’s death; before that he had been a zealous persecutor of Christians. Nor does it appear that John and Paul met.

(According to history, all three members of the Christ entity met violent ends. Christ was crucified near Jerusalem at the order of Pontius Pilate; Herod had John beheaded; and Paul was beheaded near Rome during the reign of Nero.

(Readers of The Seth Material had asked Seth to elaborate upon data of the three Christs given in Chapter Eighteen, “The God Concept,” of that book. Some wanted to know if one of the three Christs could have been the Teacher of Righteousness; this personage was the leader of the Zealot sect in Judaea early in the first century A.D. There were four known Jewish sects flourishing there at the birth of Christianity.

(Other questions concerned a variety of names for Christ himself. Jane and I had been saving these, and we went over them now before the session. Jane’s pace as the session opened was quite a bit slower than usual.)

In any given historical period, one religious drama may finally emerge as the exterior representation, but there will also be many minor dramas, “projections,” that do not entirely take. These represent, of course, probable events. Any of them could supersede the actual exterior drama. In the time of Christ there were many such performances, as many personalities felt the force of inner reality and reacted to it.

There were probable Christs, in other words, living in your terms at that time. For several reasons that I will not go into here, these projections did not mirror inner events faithfully enough. There were, however, a score of men in the same general area, physically, who responded to the inner psychic climate and felt upon themselves the attraction and responsibility of the religious hero.

Some carried on following the same pattern taken by Christ, performed psychic feats and healings, had groups of followers, and yet were not capable of holding that powerful focus of psychic attention that was so necessary.

His rigidity prevented the spontaneity necessary for any true great religious release. He fell, instead, into the trap of provincialism. Had he performed the role possible, he could have been of benefit to Paul. He was a probable personality of the Paul portion of the Christ entity.

In their dreams they were in contact. Consciously Paul remembered many of these dreams, until he felt pursued by Christ. It was because of a series of recurring dreams that Paul persecuted the Christians. He felt that Christ was a kind of devil who pursued him in his sleep.

John the Baptist, Christ, and Paul were all connected in the dream state, and John was well aware of Christ’s existence before Christ was born.

(Of course, we hadn’t known just how Seth was going to present his material in the chapter on religion on the third Christ and related data. Both of us were surprised to hear him declare a connection between Paul and the Zealots. Many questions automatically came to our minds; but we had to stop somewhere, so we reluctantly decided not to ask them.

In the historical time of Christ, I was a man called Millenius, in Rome. In that life my main occupation was that of a merchant, but I was a highly curious gentleman, and my travels gave me access to many different groups of people.

— who was, as clearly as I could figure out at the time, a “sacred” assassin. He was drunk the night I spoke to him in a stinking stall outside of Jerusalem. It was he who told me about the symbol of the eye. He also told me that the man, Christ, was kidnapped by the Essenes. I did not believe him. Nor at the time he told me did I know who Christ was.

At the time that Christ lived his existence was known to very few, comparatively speaking. To put it bluntly (and humorously) I knew that someone had the ball, but I was not certain of the person. In dream states, the situation finally became known to me and to many others.

(At this writing we do not know which pope Seth referred to. When I came to type up this session I wondered if Seth-Jane’s mention of the third century might be an error. [If so, I hadn’t been quick enough to catch it; I could have asked about it at once.] Since Seth gave A.D. 300 in the class session for last May, I personally think it more likely that his papal incarnation followed this date, taking place in the fourth century. The fourth century encompasses the years A.D. 301 to 400, since our modern computation of time is based upon the assumed date of the birth of Christ. The Encyclopaedia Britannica lists eleven popes and two antipopes between A.D. 296 and 401. Some of the reigns were very brief, some of the dates of tenure uncertain or estimated.