“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Her whole reality is far greater, and she is endeavoring to put these memories in place, as you would put furniture into a new house. Time as you think of it has little meaning for her. You could compare the two different time experiences in this way:

“There have been guides to help her. She will hardly notice that she has entirely moved in, for she will feel so at home. In her case, she has been forming memory pictures of her childhood, of days before her physical illness, and entering into them. She is learning that events that seem to be in the past can be re-created.

“She sees herself supported in a religious sense by conventional figures from the Bible. These personalities will explain the nature of reality to her in vocabulary that will make sense to her. Again, she has solved the problems that she set, and brought forth in her husband compassion and understanding, qualities that greatly help in his own development.

“You must understand the nature of reality before you can manipulate within it well. In physical reality you are learning that your thoughts have reality, and that you create the reality that you know. When you leave this dimension, then you concentrate upon the knowledge you have gained. If you still do not realize that you create your own reality, then you return, and again you learn to manipulate, and again and again you see the results of your own inner reality as you meet it objectified. You teach yourself the lesson until you have learned it; then you begin to learn how to handle the consciousness that is yours, intelligently and well. Then you can form images for the benefit of others, and lead and guide them. Then you constantly enlarge the scope of your understanding.”

“You. If you are very tired, then you rest. If you are wise, you take time to digest your knowledge and plan your next life, even as a writer plans his next book. If you have too many ties with this reality or if you are too impatient, or if you have not learned sufficiently, then you may return too quickly. It is always up to the individual. There is no predestination. The answers are within yourself then, as the answers are within you now.”

“You will reincarnate whether or not you believe that you will,” Seth began, smiling. “It is much easier if your theories fit reality, but if they do not, then you do not change the nature of reincarnation one iota.” He went on to give Lydia a rather detailed description of a past life around the area of Bangor, Maine, in 1832, when she was a male. This was Lydia’s first Seth session and she sat wiggling nervously in her chair as Seth gave names, dates, and particular episodes of this past life.

“Your idea of time is false. Time as you experience it is an illusion caused by your own physical senses. They force you to perceive action in certain terms, but this is not the nature of action. The physical senses can only perceive reality a little bit at a time, and so it seems to you that one moment exists and is gone forever, and the next moment comes and like the one before also disappears.

“There is no past, present, and future. These only appear to those who exist within three-dimensional reality. Since I am no longer in it, I can perceive what you do not. There is also a part of you that is not imprisoned within physical reality, and that part of you knows that there is only an Eternal Now. The part of you who knows this is the whole self.

“When I tell you that you lived, for example, in 1836, I say this because it makes sense to you now. You live all of your reincarnations at once, but you find this difficult to understand within the context of three-dimensional reality.

I’ve tried, through excerpts from readings, to show Seth’s ideas on reincarnation as they are personally applied. But there are several important questions we haven’t considered as yet. For example, how many lives do we live? Is there a limit to them? Quite simply, we live as many physical existences as we feel we must in order to develop our abilities and prepare ourselves to enter other dimensions of reality. This will be discussed thoroughly in the chapter dealing with the nature of personality.

Seth also told us that some personalities do not develop well in the physical environment, but fulfill themselves in other realities. In other words, the “last” reincarnation is not the end. There are other dimensions of existence in which we have an even greater part to play in the maintenance of life and consciousness. These dimensions, and our part in them, will be explained along with the God concept, probabilities, and time. But central to Seth’s discussions of reincarnation are the following excerpts from session 233 that place reincarnation in perspective, individually and historically.

We are still having sessions that deal with reincarnation, and when questions come up, we ask them. This helps to add to our material on the subject, of course, but yet in the entire fabric of the sessions, reincarnation plays a comparatively minor part, as only one aspect of our reality.

Whether or not you understand or accept your reincarnational background, it is highly important to live a sane, balanced life in this life. We form our day-to-day reality. We formed our past lives, and we form this one. And by solving problems now, we can make things vastly easier for our “past” and “future” selves.