“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Why would anyone choose a life of illness or poverty? And what about children who die young, or servicemen killed in war? All of these questions came into our minds when Seth began speaking about reincarnation. As I mentioned earlier, when the sessions started I didn’t believe that we survived death once, much less many times. If we lived before, I thought, and if we can’t remember, then what good does it do? “Besides,” I said to Rob, “Seth says that we live in the ‘Spacious Present,’ and that there really isn’t any past, present, and future. So how can we live one life ‘before’ another?”

“Uh huh,” I said, and the details of that last episode rushed into consciousness once more. It had been a bright sunny Saturday afternoon several months earlier. I was in jeans, housecleaning, when a student called. She had a particularly knotty problem and she wanted me to try to contact her deceased mother-in-law. The student had been to only a few classes, and her mother-in-law lived and died in Florida. I didn’t know her family at all.

Rob was watching my face. “You didn’t think it was so funny then, though, did you?”

If it was subconscious role-taking on my part, then it was a darned good job, and if telepathy was involved, then it was a darned good job too, because my student had to check some of the facts with others. But I didn’t like it, and I didn’t want anything like it to happen again. I’m pretty choosy as to whom I let in my house, and living or dead, people like that weren’t going to find a welcome mat here.

He recommended that Sally’s limbs be rubbed with peanut oil, and that iron be added to her diet. He emphasized that she would be happier in another room and said: “I believe you have a fairly small sunny parlor. This room has beneficial connotations for her. Let her be moved there.” In passing he spoke of several episodes in Sally’s present life, some that Jon corroborated in his next letter, and one in particular that he did not know about until Seth mentioned it. Seth said, for example, that she had worked in a five-and-dime store with a girl friend, and that a visit from this friend would be helpful. Jon didn’t know that Sally had worked in such a place, but her mother remembered.