“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Have you lived before, and will you live again? According to Seth all of us have been reincarnated, and when we are finished living our series of earthly lives, we will continue to exist in other systems of reality. In each life we experience conditions that we have chosen beforehand, circumstances and challenges tailored to fit our own needs and develop our own abilities.

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 grinned, a bit guiltily. I’d wondered about that episode. Had I decided to try my own wings to see what evidence for survival I could get on my own?

I said “Yes” in a sort of daze, and hung up. Rob was afraid that I’d feel under pressure, knowing that they were driving such a long way and back the same night for a session. I’d explained to Ann that I could give her no guarantee of any kind as to what would happen. Purposely I put the matter out of my mind and watched television during the early evening. Then to top it off, at about eight Phil dropped in, explaining that he was in town for the night and would like to attend a session!

Jim and Ann arrived about 10 P.M. Rob and I liked them at once. They were in their late twenties, intelligent, and, like us, informal. Over wine they told us about their son. “He was exceptionally bright,” Jim said. “He was fantastic, and I’m not just saying that because he was our child. From the start he was way above average, quick in his reactions, so much so that we were almost frightened in a way. And then, overnight, he died of aplastic anemia. No one even knows what causes it.”

What can you say in a situation like that? I wanted to help. I felt their terrific need, but I also realized that it was well-nigh impossible to prove life after death. Suppose I contacted the boy, or thought I had? How would this help? Instead of making them face the facts of his separation, couldn’t such an incident simply make things worse? And my own doubts rose: if subconscious playacting were involved …

“He did not mean to stay within physical reality. He only came to show you what was possible, and to bring you both to an understanding of inner reality. He chose his illness. It was not thrust upon him. He did not manufacture sufficient blood, for he did not want to be physical beyond the time he had allotted.

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.

“It is not time for you to run willy-nilly, looking for truth in any treetop. The truth is inside yourself. Your son is not a three-year-old any longer. He is an entity older than you, and he has tried to point out the way to you. … He was not a child taken before his promise was achieved, but a personality who left you when his own reincarnations were finished. He will not return, but go on now to another reality in which his abilities can be used to more advantage.”

Seth went on to give an analysis of Jim’s present personality as it was connected with events from past lives, and to give him some advice about the future. Jim told us earlier that he had been a disc jockey. Now Seth said, “No one can tell you what road to follow. You have the answers within you. Beware of those who give you ready answers. I am speaking in terms of probabilities, for the future is plastic.”

Seth gave more information concerning the past lives of all involved, then added, “I am giving you what I believe is the most important information, whether you can check it out or not. … Your inner selves digest what I have said, and this is more important than ten pages of notes and dates that you cannot check, since these lives were so long ago.”

But what about serious diseases—and where does reincarnation fit into the picture? To begin with, Seth does not use the word “punishment.” We are not “punished” in one life for the “transgressions” of a past one. Nor do we choose illness per se as a given life situation, even though we may utilize such an illness as a part of a larger plan, as a method of teaching ourselves some important truth or as a means of developing certain abilities.

Seth began by saying that Karma does not involve punishment. “Karma presents the opportunity for development. It enables the individual to enlarge understanding through experience, to fill in gaps of ignorance, to do what should be done. Free will is always involved.”

After that life, however, Sally’s personality decided to take on the unfinished problems of development. “This time the personality is being cared for rather than caring for—being physically dependent. The personality in the earlier existence would not and could not try to understand the circumstances and position of the crippled daughter. Not for a moment then could the personality bear to contemplate the inner reality in personal terms.

Seth answered, “This is characteristic of that entity, an impatience and yet a daring, because the situation represented such a challenge. All the weak points are intensified, hence the gravity of the physical situation. The entity preferred this, rather than a series of smaller difficulties. In this, Jon subconsciously acquiesced, to learn patience and forbearing—to take what he considered his medicine all in one dose, so to speak.”

Now, over two years later, Sally is still alive but in poor condition. Seth said that she had solved the challenges she had set for herself, but in so doing had damaged her physical body to such an extent that she had decided to discard it. As of this writing she is in coma. Jon wanted to know what was happening to her in this state. “Is she really conscious someplace else? Or just dreaming? And what happens after death?” In a recent session Seth answered these questions. Many of the answers apply to death in general, so I’ll include some excerpts from this session in the next chapter, and also go into Seth’s ideas on reincarnation more thoroughly.