“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The topmost layer of the subconscious contains predominantly present associations, but in these are mixed and interwoven associations which have their origin elsewhere. These may be called self-unifying associations, since merely by their presence in the uppermost layers of the subconscious they provide a unifying sense of psychic continuity; of which however the ego is not aware.

Like the fossilized layers within the physical earth, so do the subconscious layers hold intact the traces of an individual’s past lives. And as your physical eras of time may be deduced through studying the physical fossilized layers of rock, so can the time and place of past lives be deduced through studying the layers of the subconscious.

The personal present subconscious could be compared, using this analogy, with the topmost layer of soil dealing with the present seasons. Through it reach the roots of living emotions and desires. Directly beneath, still using our analogy, will be found the nutrients and seeds of those desires. The topmost layers of the subconscious hold then, first of all, almost conscious just-under-the-surface needs and desires; and under these those more deeply buried, reaching backward to birth, even as the loose dry autumn leaves still contain traces of earlier pigment.

The second layer, still of the personal subconscious, contains those elements most deeply feared for personal psychological reasons, those which somewhat frequently arise as in an earthquake, to shatter the seemingly solid surface of the ego.

Beneath this layer, in a third subconscious level, still dealing with the present personality, lie those possibilities of development which have lain barren and were not sufficiently strong to send up seeds to bloom in the sun of conscious ego.

It is from this layer that so-called secondary personalities may sometimes arise, usually due to one of the psychic earthquakes mentioned earlier. As earthquakes cause lava to boil up seemingly from the center of the earth, so do some secondary personalities in their explosive emersion bring with them debris from other levels of the subconscious, often personifying themselves in the guise of those buried and frightening fears that have, until then, found no vehicle for expression.

There are methods, some of which you know, that make entry into these levels comparatively easy. Before I continue into a discussion of other layers, and hence into a following dissertation connecting various types of dreams according to their origin in these layers, I will make a present, pertinent statement.

Now, since we are thinking in terms of archeological layers, we would continue to express ourselves along those lines. So. Directly beneath personal subconscious you will find upon examination either through hypnosis or applied association, a layer dealing with the period before this life, and after the life before this one.

Beneath this undifferentiated subconscious layer we will find, and psychologists can find through testing and hypnosis, a layer composed of memories, dealing successively with each previous existence, and separated by a layer between lives that is, again, undifferentiated.

Historical knowledge and verifications of identity—identities—may be achieved through communication with those layers of the subconscious dealing with past lives. But no information may be gathered here that was unknown to the particular previous personality as a rule. Some particularly gifted may use one of these levels as a focus point, looking outward even to the present personality, but this is unusual.

Communications that give valid information concerning the reality beneath the camouflage world must be attained through one of the separating layers between lives.

At the bottom so to speak, will be found a layer of the subconscious dealing with racial heritage, concerning the dim first materialization of man; and beneath this a heritage dealing with a comprehension of reality as concerned in physical matter before the physical evolution of man, following backward to that first inner self within its mental enclosure, that was adept enough to translate and transform its psychic energy to form the first, most minute physical materialization, from which all other physical constructions then flowed.

These so-called layers of the subconscious, however, are not really layers at all, but part of the spacious present.