“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It is true that Priestley speaks in terms of consciousness being retained at this stage, but a consciousness devoid of personality is an odd bird indeed. The personality structure changes, it is true, but consciousness of overall identities within any given unit of consciousness is always retained. There is no blending or merging, willy-nilly, into a gigantic ever-rushing-on spirit of life. And the spirit of life in these terms cannot be considered as something apart and separate from, and outside of, those consciousnesses which illuminate it, and through which they are illuminated. And here is our second difficulty with Priestley.

But when you leave time one behind, or because you leave time one behind at death, this is no reason to imagine that time one exists separate and apart from basic time. The same sort of error here exists concerning the life force, as I mentioned. You are merged with the life force now, and no one can deny that you are individualistic.

It is a mistake to assume that any future or inevitable merging with a life force is ahead of you, in those terms. This is an error that is precisely due to that which Priestley himself abhors: distortions in thought caused by reliance upon the concept of time as a series of moments.

One concerns myself and where I would stand in this time framework, and you should find this highly interesting. The other has to do with Dunne, for in one instance he saw further than Priestley, for he carried these times further. But he also fell into an understandable error. For at some point the separate selves of Dunne’s, with their separate times, become aware of each other, and merge into the sort of superconsciousness that we have always called the entity.

These times do not go on indefinitely in the precise manner that Dunne thought. Neither do they stop as Priestley believes, at time three. There is a merging of selves into what you may call a superconsciousness, a synthesis; and from then on, dear friends, there is a beginning toward something new, and a something of which I am not prepared to speak this evening, but of which I shall speak in the near future.