“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Now if the life in question is a recent one, in your terms, the details may be more readily recalled and far more precise. Even a life centuries ago may be perfect in detail however if it included, for example, battles or events of great import, where the dates themselves were impressed upon the personalities because of the occurrences at those times.

It will do no good to ask deep questions concerning the history of the times of some personality who was impoverished, ignorant, and limited. He simply would not know the answers. The picture of any given life, therefore, usually comes through the experience of the personality who lived it.

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.

(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.

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.

(11:27 P.M. “That was funny,” Jane said, after she rested for a few minutes. “I was really out that last time but it was for such a short time that I really felt the transitions from ‘here’ to ‘there’ and back. That word Sue used — ‘acceleration’ — is a good one….” See the 594th session.)