“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Aside from the information given in that chapter, there have been distortions in some past material concerning that life. These were not caused by Ruburt’s feeling about reincarnation. They were simply a result of correlating many details into the correct specific pattern.

(Long pause at 10:15.) The details that so concern you now are, of course, important, and yet in a larger way it is the deep emotional experience of your life that is “later” remembered. Basically the names and dates are meaningless to the inner self. Therefore in reincarnational data the emotional values will come through more vividly, and with much less distortion.

Many such reincarnational narratives are liberally sprinkled with names and dates simply to satisfy those who insist upon them, because the emotional and psychological validity may not be accepted otherwise. This applies to any kind of reincarnational material, however it may be obtained.

The reincarnational structure is built along the same lines of existence that you know now. Some individuals are more intrigued by detail than others: A particular “previous personality” may be one who had a great love of detail, in which case you would discover the richness of it. The particular likes and dislikes of any given personality will also have much to do with the descriptions given of a particular reincarnational episode.

(Pause at 10:35.) Again, those details will emerge that were important to him. In my particular case, I am so unfocused on my own reincarnational selves, and they have gone so far on their own, that I have little feeling of immediacy. Since we [Seth, Jane, and I] have been so involved however, those relationships remain important, and in your terms our present relationship was latent then. The Denmark life exists as much as this one does for you. “You” are simply focused within this picture of reality.

Now: The reincarnational structure is a psychological one. It cannot be understood in any other terms. The distortions and interpretations that have built up about it are natural enough, considering what seems to be your practical experience with the nature of time.

You will be more strongly drawn to those “past lives” that somehow reinforce your own at this time. You realize that your early memories are sparse. Most of you remember little of the years spent as an infant and child. You make use of the knowledge gained then, and while it is part of you, you are not aware of it consciously; and so you are not consciously aware of other reincarnational existences. (In a whisper, humorously): New paragraph.

Earlier in this book I mentioned alternate presents on several occasions, and reincarnational lives are indeed alternate presents. There is interaction between you and your reincarnational selves constantly. There is, as your friend Sue Watkins said, “constant action across the board.”

(11:01.) Those selves are not dead, in other words. Your understanding of this must be limited because you automatically think in terms of one life experience at a time, and in linear patterns of development. In your terms, a reincarnational self can be aware of your environment, and interact sometimes through your own relationships.

Certain “present happenings” can, indeed, spark such interactions. In quite other terms, however, the reincarnated personality, while interacting with or through you, can still be having other kinds of experience at other levels.

Because time is open-ended, as you think of it, you can also affect what you would think of as past reincarnational selves, and at times react in and to their environment. You would usually do this in the dream state, but this is often accomplished just below the level of waking consciousness, and is blotted out by you as you go about your daily business.

(11:07.) Strong emotional associations can often trigger such responses. (Pause.) Reincarnation, as it is usually explained, in terms of one life before another, is a myth; but a myth enabling many to partially understand facts that they would otherwise dismiss — insisting as they do upon the concept of a continuity of time.