“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The overall efficiency of the inner self, or prime identity, is best displayed of course when it adopts an ego that mirrors its own characteristics and intents as closely as possible. There is bound to be a difference however, between the purposes of the inner identity and the ego.

Now, the ego, the dominant ego, does indeed affect the inner identity, and changes it even as it affects and changes the dominant ego. For we are dealing here after all with an interdependent gestalt. The interworkings of the whole gestalt have never been completely understood.

Because you are obsessed with the idea of time as past, present and future, you are forced to think of reincarnations as strung out one before the other, and indeed we speak of past lives simply because you are used to the time sequence concept. What you have of course, loosely speaking, is something like the developments narrated in The Three Faces of Eve. You have various dominant egos, all part of an inner identity, dominant in various existences. To make the concept understandable to you it is convenient to speak of past and future reincarnations.

The whole self or identity is aware of the experiences of all the egos, and since one identity forms these egos there is bound to be some similarities between them, and characteristics. The material that I have given you on reincarnation in the past is quite valid, particularly for working purposes, but it is a highly simplified version of what actually occurs.

These four personalities existed however in one physical lifetime. Now to an observer whose time concept was still further segmented, and slowed down in comparison to your own, then theoretically within his time system the four personalities would indeed appear to be four separate existences in fact. In the same manner, you see, several manifestations of one identity appear to you to be stretched out in serial form within a successive time framework.

There is simply the simultaneous expression of a prime identity or inner self within the physical system. There are as you know other systems.

There is communication between these various aspects of inner identity that are obviously cooperative. As a rule I make no attempt to take over the mechanism that Ruburt operates in any general manner.

Again, this does not mean that I am a secondary personality. Reincarnation does mean that we are all multiple personalities with an underlying prime identity. I am myself, Ruburt is himself. Or if you prefer, Jane is herself. (Smile.)

You forget, you see, that you have also been, and are, part of this identity, Joseph. In your particular cases now you have branched out to form prime identities of your own, though we were originally part of the same.

Now. I am the prime identity that you were part of. And I was myself at one time, so to speak, a part of another prime identity. This development does not always occur, for many reasons. Some fragments of an identity simply do not wish to so develop. In the spacious present you see we are one, yet entirely individual.

Now we may possibly develop into a newer gestalt, for I cannot see all portions—underline all portions—of the spacious present. There are still veils before my eyes. This is a part of the present I do not perceive. If so, it will be one in which identities are completely retained, and there is no question of a dominancy, but of a smooth-working organization.

I helped you then, before you knew me. You were quite literally waiting for Ruburt, and this is why you did not marry earlier. The connections between you, and your development from the same prime identity, made your union an excellent one. There is a constant maintenance of identity, and a search for stability, psychologically speaking. But then identity, sure of itself, seeks to enlarge its experience for it is no longer afraid that experience will swallow it.

Identity always becomes part of that which it perceives, however, and so it constantly forms new gestalts, while accepting as itself a larger variety of experiences. Therefore identity grows, and as I have told you there are no limitations to it. Therefore we are forming new identities, and you have already accepted as part of yourself experiences which previously would have been considered alien, and not accepted.