“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Seth had often told us that when we’re finished with our lives here, we’re actually anxious to leave this existence. When the body is worn out, we really want to get rid of it. The instinct for survival is served quite well, because the inner self knows that it lives beyond death. Still, I hated to say this to Jon over the phone. In theory it sounded fine, but naturally I knew he wanted Sally to live. I knew that he hoped for some miracle—at least a partial recovery, a reprieve.

“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.

“Pretend that you have several dreams, and you know that you are dreaming. Within each dream, one hundred earthly years may pass, but to you, the dreamer, no time has passed, for you are free of the dimension in which time exists. The time you seem to spend within the dream—or within each life—is only an illusion, and to the inner self no time has passed because there is no time.”

“The whole self is aware of all of the experiences of all of its egos, and since one identity forms them, there are bound to be similarities between them and shared characteristics. The material I have given you on reincarnation is quite valid, particularly for working purposes, but it is a simplified version of what actually occurs.”

Some people are better able to utilize past life experience, I think, while others insulate themselves rather closely in each life, closing themselves off as much as possible from such influences. Some people’s lives seem to make no sense, for instance, unless you know their “previous” ones. Our fifty- or sixty- or seventy-year life-spans are like self-contained novels, well plotted and executed.

There is no doubt, though, that a knowledge of reincarnational influences sheds invaluable light on the nature of personality and helps us to see our present selves with some perspective. The following excerpts from a reincarnational reading show the continuity and interrelationships that can be involved in the tapestry of the self we now call ours.

“Now he has begun to synthesize these inner and outer conditions. He realizes that the inner self need not be so heavily guarded, that his identity will not escape from him like a dog who leaves the leash. … Now, you see that I am a friendly chap, indeed, like an old dog with a long leash—”

“In the materialization of personality through various reincarnations, only the ego and the layers of personal subconscious adopt new characteristics. The other layers of the self retain their past experiences, identity, and knowledge.

“In fact, the ego receives much of its [relative] stability because of this subconscious retention. Were it not for past experiences in other lives on the part of deeper layers of the self, the ego would find it almost impossible to relate to other individuals, and the cohesiveness of society would not exist.

“They changed it in their own ways, not in your ways, but this will be discussed at a much later date. Yet all of this occurs, basically, within the blinking of an eyelid, all with purpose and meaning, and based upon achievement and responsibility. Each part of the self, while independent to some considerable degree, is nevertheless responsible to every other portion of the self; and each whole self [entity] is responsible to all others, while it is largely independent as to activity and decision.

“For as many layers of the self compose the whole self [entity], so many entities form a gestalt of which you know relatively little and of which I am not as yet prepared to tell you.” (This last remark was to lead, much later, into whole blocks of sessions dealing with the God concept.)