“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

It was just last week that Jon called again. Sally was in the hospital, after a bad attack during which her heart had stopped for a short time. Jon was torn between praying for her recovery and for her release by death, and he asked if we’d have a session on the matter.

I did promise to hold a Seth session for him, and later I was glad I did. Not only was the session a help to Jon, but it contains some excellent information on what can go on while a person is supposedly unconscious, in coma, and what we experience just before and after death.

Again, at the time of the session Sally was in deep coma. She hadn’t been able to speak for over a year. First Seth gave a page or so of impressions, names, initials, events, and so forth, that he said he “derived from a certain portion of the girl’s consciousness—disjointed memories, thoughts, and ideas.

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.

A few days after this session we were visited by a retired minister and his wife. Rev. Lowe, as I’ll call him, publishes a national newsletter which discusses the psychic elements of Christianity. We had been corresponding for a few years, but had not met. I told him about Jon’s session, and he was very interested in what Seth had to say about Sally’s experience while in coma.

Seth rarely gives reincarnational data unless it is directly tied in with the overall development of an individual’s present life, and he refuses to give past life histories, for example, to those he thinks will not apply the lessons involved. Strangely enough, he did give such information once in a class to three college girls who clearly did not believe in reincarnation to begin with. They had just begun classes, and while they were curious about ESP, they had little patience with the theory of reincarnation—before the session, that is.

“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.

Actually Seth has used several analogies to explain reincarnational experiences. On page 3,600 of our own sessions I find this: “The various reincarnational selves can be superficially regarded as portions of a crossword puzzle, for they are all portions of the whole, and yet they can exist separately.”

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.”

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.

From what Rob said later, Doris sat there red-faced and somewhat embarrassed. Our tape recorder was on. Seth went on citing examples from Doris’ early life of which Rob and I knew nothing. The entire session took up nine pages of single-typed copy, in which Seth analyzed Doris’ attitudes and traits, illustrating them with specific episodes formerly known only to her, and ending up with some excellent advice.

Much more psychological advice was given. The whole session was of great help to Doris—who hasn’t been frightened of Seth since, by the way! But it is an oversimplificaton to say that all present problems are the result of past life difficulties. We are not “stuck” with our problems, whether they come from this life or another. We don’t have to drag them along with us. They can be solved, and while reincarnational influences certainly operate, they don’t operate in a vacuum. The following chapter on health will contain some of Seth’s methods for maintaining mental, psychic, and physical vitality—and perspective.

Seth had previously given us some information about Matt, his publishing company, and his associates. And the next evening, when we were all more comfortable with each other, Seth came through and held an excellent session.

My eyes were open during much of the session—my physical eyes, that is, because at such times they are definitely mirrors of a different personality. “There has been a sense of a void to be filled,” Seth began. “A fear of identity escaping and running outward. My cup runneth over, and there will be none of me left—you see? On the other hand it has always been natural for the personality to turn outward in an easy manner and with exuberance.

I’m only giving excerpts from personal readings, picking out passages that deal with reincarnation. Usually the readings themselves include far more—health suggestions as well as character analysis and advice on other matters. And so far, each such session has been highly significant to the person concerned.

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.

“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.)

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.