“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“Shortly, training periods will begin. It will be her turn now to help others and be their source of strength. She has already begun a new life, therefore [Seth does not mean another physical life here, of course], though presently her experience is being monitored to some degree by guides.

During our break, Rob mentioned several questions that he thought Jon would like answered, or that might come to his mind as he read the session. One had to do with the kind of body Sally had at her disposal. Seth said, “Now the new body is, of course, not a new one at all, but simply a body not physical in your terms, one that you use in astral projections, one that gives the vitality and strength to the physical body that you know.

“Your flesh is embedded in it now. When you leave the physical body, the other body is quite real to you and seems as physical, although it has many more freedoms. … Sally is delighted with this body, comparing it with the [sick] physical one. She is trying to cut off all identification with her physical body, whether it is alive or dead in your terms.

“You go where you want to go,” Seth said. “Now, when your ordinary, waking, conscious mind is lulled in the sleep state, you travel in other dimensions. You are already having experiences in these other dimensions then. You are preparing your own way. When you die you go into those ways that you have prepared. There are various periods of training that vary according to the individual.

“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.”

There was no time for more discussion though, because Seth now began to speak to Jean, the most psychically gifted of the group:

So along with the reincarnational histories Seth had given each girl a point of information, highly significant, and unknown to anyone in the room except for the person for whom it was intended. And this bit of information tied in beautifully with some small unexplainable attitudes that had previously puzzled them. Suddenly they were quite interested in reincarnation, and as usual, their minds were trigger-fast. Now they wanted to know everything at once.

“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.

In the 256th session he said, “Because you are obsessed with the idea of past, present, and future, you are forced to think of reincarnations as strung out one before the other. Indeed we speak of past lives because you are used to the time sequence concept. What you have instead is something like the developments narrated in The Three Faces of Eve. You have dominant egos, all a part of an inner identity, dominant in various existences. But the separate existences exist simultaneously. Only the egos involved make the time distinction. 145 B.C., A.D. 145, a thousand years in your past, and a thousand years in your future—all exist now.”

In fact, Seth gave three or four sessions in which he compared cases of “split” personalities to our reincarnation selves. He ended up by saying, “It is interesting that the personalities [in Three Faces of Eve] did alternate, and all were in existence at once, so to speak, even though only one was dominant at any given time. In the same way, so-called past personalities are present in you now but not dominant.”

Seth began by saying gently, “Your feelings toward me are connected with other attitudes deeply ingrained within you. You have been afraid of your father since infancy. Now you think of me as an old but wise, extremely powerful male adult, as you thought of your father when you were a child. This attitude overshadows your relationship with the males with whom you come into contact.

He told her that she was projecting this image upon each male she met, and then reacting to it instead of to the individual. He gave her some mental exercises calculated to help her dissolve this false image. Here Doris began to cry a little. Seth smiled and said, “Now, now, do not sniffle. I am not your father giving you an arithmetic lesson. I put myself out to help you, and for this I get tears. I usually do not have that effect on people.”

“He was a woman. His present parents were his brothers in the American Revolutionary period in the same geographical area as now. His brothers were involved as spies. Your Frank, as their sister, disclosed their hiding place in a cellar beneath an old inn. She was captured when she went out for supplies, gave away the location, and could not warn the brothers. She felt she had abandoned and betrayed them.”

Seth went on to say that in this life, Frank chose to return as the son of the two brothers who themselves are now man and wife. “Now he rationalizes his desire not to leave home. The brothers never held him responsible … they knew the girl had been terrified and spoken out of fear with no intent to betray them. There is no punishment involved. He has chosen in this life to be of service to them and to help others. His secrecy [he was very tight-lipped] is the result of these past experiences. Once he feels he spoke too much and betrayed too much. Now he is secretive about matters he considers important.”

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.

Some people, I’ve discovered, have the strangest ideas about mediums or psychics. When I first found this out, I used to knock myself out proving how normal I was. People usually found this very disappointing, and I found it very inhibiting. Now, most of this has just worn off. I’m as normal or abnormal as anyone else.

“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—”

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.