“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?”

I told Rob, and while he said that it was up to me, he wasn’t too happy. “Remember what happened last time you tried to contact someone’s deceased relative?” he said. “Anyway, let Seth handle it.”

I nodded, remembering only too well the incident to which Rob referred. It had been in the back of my mind all the time I talked to Ann Linden over the phone.

That’s the last thing I remember saying as myself. The next moment Seth’s deep booming voice came rushing through me: “The boy was briefly with you for his own reasons. He was to enlighten you, and so he did. You have known him in past lives. At one time, he was his present father’s uncle.

Seth went on to say that Jim had fallen by the wayside in some respects, forgetting what he had learned in the past. “He [Peter] could not force you to remember, but he could give you a nudge and a push, and in this existence he did so.

I really felt besieged, mostly because I wanted to help so badly. Then again I managed to remember that the inner I was so much stronger than the Jane-I, and that Seth knew much more than either of us. So I agreed.

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.

Seth went on to say that even in such apparently tragic conditions, the personality is not abandoned. “The inner self, as distinguished from the more accessible subconscious, is aware of the situation and finds release through frequent inner communications where successes are remembered and reexperienced. The dream state becomes an extremely vivid time, for such experiences assure the personality of its larger nature. It knows it is more than the self that it has for a time chosen to be.”