“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(See the tracing on page 211. For the test object I used a wallet identification card that I picked up two years ago in an empty house that Jane and I nearly purchased. Both of us had met the owner of the house, Jim Birch, a few times. He had changed jobs and left Elmira at the time we were interested in his house, in June 1964, however. Seth dealt with the purchase of this house in several sessions, saying it would be a good one for us psychically. See these sessions among others: 65, 67, 69, 71, 74, 76, 77, 79, 82. See Volume 2.

The past exists as a series of electromagnetic connections, held in the physical brain on the one hand, but it also consists of the same sort of realities retained in the nonphysical mind. These electromagnetic connections can be changed. The present exists as a series of electromagnetic connections in both the brain and the mind, and this is the only reality which you are justified in giving to your present.

The connections therefore can be changed at any time, and such changes are far from uncommon. They happen spontaneously on a subconscious basis a good deal of the time. The past was seldom what you remember it to be, for you have already rearranged it from the instant of any given occurrence.

There is of course a composite past that is composed of such individual electromagnetic connections, and this composite past is not the same past that once existed, in those terms. The past itself is being continually recreated by every individual, as attitudes and associations change. This is an actual recreation, and not a symbolic one. The child is indeed still within the man, but he is not the child that once was, in those terms. For even the child within the man continually changes, and again I am not speaking of symbolic change.

Now. Difficulties are caused when such changes in the past do not occur automatically. Such difficulties as severe neurosis are often caused precisely because the individual has not automatically changed his past. Once more, the only reality that can be assigned to the past is that granted to the symbols and associations and memory images that exist electromagnetically both within the physical brain and within the mind.

But this is the only reality that can be granted to the present. I am speaking now in your terms only, and this point should be clearly understood, for I am simplifying conditions considerably. A change of attitude, a new association, any of innumerable other actions, will automatically set up new electromagnetic connections, and break others. Now part of this we shall explain later, for these changes obviously affect both the future and the past. But the past, again, is continually changed by you, and by every individual. For basically you see, it is not something done and finished with, as is supposed.

Every action changes every other action. We return to our ABC’s. Therefore every action in the present affects those actions which you call the past. Ripples from a thrown stone go out in all directions.

In all of these instances however there are uncertainties, for probable future events can be foreseen as clearly as events that will more actually occur. No event is destined to occur, and it can be changed, not only before and during, but after its occurrence. Again, I do not speak symbolically, and I am leaving myself open to many strong critical remarks which cannot all be answered in one evening.

You have yourself doubtless thought of some, but we shall do our best to make these ideas clear and understandable, and to explain various complications that can be anticipated. There are for example certain limitations set here that must be clearly stated; but within these limitations you will find that events can be changed, and are constantly changed, regardless of the point or the apparent point of their original occurrence.

He may return to the system however, as you know, through reincarnation. Many changes may occur however in that same point for the murderer who is still within the system.