“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

“In your dimension it is as if remembered events were like pieces of furniture, all arranged in one room, in a given order. Living in that room, you can find your way between the various pieces easily.

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.

I had no idea whether or not Seth would come through that night. In the beginning, I’d jokingly introduced the minister as a rock drummer, to put both him and the class at ease. Someone commented that the presence of a minister must have quieted everyone down, since no one was saying much.

The girls were all intelligent, bright, alert—and wary. They weren’t about to be taken in by any mumbo jumbo. At the same time they were intensely interested in Seth’s ideas that consciousness can be expanded safely and without drugs, using his methods. One girl, Lydia, was the most vocal of the group in her arguments against reincarnation.

“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.

“That’s what I mean,” Connie said. “I just could never make sense of it before. No one in my family ever died of diphtheria.”

“Seth said earlier that all time existed at once,” said Jean. “Then how come he talks about reincarnational lives or a series of lives one before the other? The two don’t seem to go together.”

“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.

“But everything in the universe exists at one time, simultaneously. The first words ever spoken still ring through the universe, and in your terms, the last words ever spoken have already been said, for there is no beginning. It is only your perception that is limited.

“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.”

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.”

As far as we know, this reconciliation of reincarnation and simultaneous time is original with Seth. Most other theories of reincarnation take the time sequence for granted. But what about cause and effect, then? When Seth introduced this idea, this is one of the first questions Rob and I thought of. Seth’s attitude toward cause and effect will become clear enough in his later explanations of the true nature of “time,” but when Rob first asked the question, Seth answered:

“Since all events occur at once in actuality, there is little to be gained by saying that a past event causes a present one. Past experience does not cause present experience. You are forming past, present, and future—simultaneously. Since events appear to you in sequence, this is difficult to explain.

“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.”

So while Seth often explains present life problems as the result of past life difficulties, he makes it clear to those that can understand that the lives really exist simultaneously, just as three personalities can exist in one body at one time. But all problems are not the result of such “past life” influences. In one case, a friend’s hang-ups in the present originated right in this life, though her boyfriend’s were left over from the past.

Doris was having all kinds of problems. For one thing, she kept falling head over heels in love with men who didn’t want marriage under any circumstances. In these relationships she was the aggressor. The men in each case were men who did not date, were overly attached to their parents, or who for some reason or other did not have ordinary relationships with women. Doris was smart enough to see this, but each time she was certain that there was something about the new man that made him more eligible—or at least more liable to accept her advances. In the meantime she was dreadfully lonely, for she would refuse dates with “ordinary” men, since they seemed so inferior compared to the new idol.

Finally after the breakup of one such episode, she asked for a Seth session. She knows both of us well, so I was quite astonished at her behavior before the session. She was so uptight that I found it difficult to go into trance. She just sat there, really white-faced, unsmiling, looking quite terrified.

“You see the male in terms inspired in you in this childhood. You felt that your father had godlike qualities and attempt to project these onto the men you meet. Therefore they disappoint you, but this also serves your needs. Because while you see the male as godlike, you also see him as one who gives out punishment, and as unreasoning and cruel. So you are afraid to ‘come under a man’s thumb’ or domination. Because you were a male in past lives, you resent this all the more.

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.

“In two other lives, there was instead the development of inner abilities to the exclusion of others, a closing down of windows and barring of doors. He would not look out, and no one dared look in. He would make horrible funny faces at the window of his soul to frighten others away. Yet through all of this, the inner abilities did grow. He ‘added to his stock.’

At this, Rob and Matt both burst out laughing. Then Seth went into some information, connecting some of the young man’s present interests with past activities. He mentioned several past lives, but emphasized one as being particularly significant. “You were a member of a monastic group who classified and collected various kinds of seeds. The group worked on manuscripts officially, but our friend here and several others were bootleg seed finders, believing against currently held theories that questions concerning nature could be answered by examining nature.

He also gave some excellent advice that I’m sure many other people could use: “Do not use your intellect like a shiny banner to wave from your windows. You are using it like a gaudy plaything that belongs to you. You wind it up like a fine toy, but you are careful of the directions in which you let it run. Your intellect is a fine one, but you have allowed yourself to be fascinated by its sparkling quality, and not used it thoroughly as a tool.”

Matt, for instance, was astonished by the character analysis which he said pegged him to a T. More, the crest mentioned by Seth was highly similiar, he told us, to his own private doodle that he sketched while on the phone or in odd moments. Another interesting point: a few years earlier the editor had written two plays—one featuring a monk who lived on the seacoast near Bordeaux, and the other also set in France in the thirteenth century. These facts, of course, were unknown to us.

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.