“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Slowly:) Give us a moment … Through these units consciousness makes its mark, and not one scribble is ever annihilated.

You think of one I-self (spelled) as the primary and ultimate end of evolution. Yet there are, of course, other identities with many such I-selves, each as aware and independent as your own, while also being aware of the existence of a greater identity in which they have their being. Consciousness fulfills itself by knowing itself. The knowledge changes it, in your terms, into a greater gestalt that then tries to fulfill and know itself, and so forth. There have been experiments upon your earth (by consciousness) with both men and animals at a different level than just mentioned, but with that in mind — herds of animals, for example, with each animal quite aware of the joint knowledge of the herd, the dangers to be encountered in any individual territory, and a psychological structure in which the mass consciousness of the herd recognized the individual consciousness of each animal, and protected it.

There was a constant give-and-take between the individual animal and the mass herd consciousness, so we are not speaking of a condition in which the individual animal was controlled.

The same thing with variations happened with your own race, and for that matter is happening. In the past as you think of it historically, several groups experimented along those lines. At those times the individual consciousness became so entranced with its own experiences, however, that the clear-cut, steady, and conscious communication with the mass consciousness went underground, so to speak. It became available to those who looked for it, but the same kinds of psychological organization did not result on those occasions.²

It is quite possible, for example, for several selves to occupy a body, and were this the norm it would be easily accepted. That implies another kind of multipersonhood, however, one actually allowing for the fulfillment of many abilities of various natures usually left unexpressed. It also implies a freedom and organization of consciousness that is unusual in your system of reality, and was not chosen there.

(10:11.) Not when I am finished. Most individuals, for example, develop intellectually or emotionally or physically, ignoring to a large degree the body’s and the mind’s full potential. The limited I-structure that you presently identify with selfhood is simply not capable of fully using all of those characteristics.

In some systems of physical existence, a multipersonhood is established in which three or four “persons” emerge from the same inner self, each one utilizing to the best of its abilities those characteristics of its own. This presupposes a gestalt of awareness, however, in which each knows of the activities of the others, and participates; and you have a different version of mass consciousness. Do you see the correlation?

In the systems in which evolution of consciousness has worked in that fashion, all faculties of body and mind in one “lifetime” are beautifully utilized. Nor is there any ambiguity about identity. The individual would say, for example, “I am Joe, and Jane, and Jim, and Bob.” There are physical variations of a sexual nature, so that on all levels identity includes the male and female. Shadows of all such probabilities appear within your own system, as oddities. Anything apparent to whatever degree in your system is developed in another.

The point of all this is that these units are unpredictable, and fulfill all probabilities of consciousness. Any concepts of gods or other beings that are based upon limited ideas of personhood will ultimately be futile. You view the fantastic variety of physical life — its animals, insects, birds, fish, man and all his works — with hardly a qualm; yet you must understand that the nature of consciousness itself is far more varied, and you must learn to think of an inner reality that is as infinite as the exterior one. These concepts alone do alter your present consciousness, and change it in degree. The present idea of the soul, you see, is a “primitive” idea that can scarcely begin to explain the creativity or reality from which mankind’s being comes. You are multipersons (intently). You exist in many times and places at once. You exist as one person, simultaneously. This does not deny the independence of the persons, but your inner reality straddles their reality, while it also serves as a psychic world in which they can grow.³

These units combine into various kinds of gestalts of consciousness. Basically, it is not correct to say that one is more progressed than another. The petal of a flower, for example, is not more developed than the root. An ant on the ground may see that the petal is way above the root and stem, but ants are too wise to think that the petal must be better than the root.

Now: Consciousness flowers out in all directions —

All directions taken by the flower of consciousness are good. The flower knows it is alive in the bulb, but it takes “time” for the bulb to let the stem and leaves and flower emerge. The flower is not better than the bulb. It is not even more progressed than the bulb. It is the bulb in one of its manifestations. So in your terms, it may seem as if there are progressions, or consecutive steps of development, in which more mature comprehensive selves will emerge. You are a part of those selves now, as the petals are of the bulb. Only in your system is that time period meaningful.

Your idea of one soul, one self, forms a significance and a selectivity that blinds you to these other realities that are as much “here and now” as your present self. The units of consciousness that compose your physical being alone are aware of those greater significances, to which your limited ideas make you opaque.

The concepts in such a system as this can help break those barriers. There are, then, stratas of consciousness existing at once. The ones you are not aware of yet seem more progressed, developed than your own. You are a part of them now. You can know them as you begin to stretch your concepts of personhood and awareness. In terms of time you have many bodies, as you are born and reborn in earth experience. Your consciousness straddles those existences, and even the atoms and molecules within your present body contain the coded knowledge of those other (really simultaneous) forms. These units of consciousness are within all physical matter, containing their own memories. Both biologically and psychically, then, you are aware of your multipersonhood.

(With emphasis:) Reincarnation simply represents probabilities in a time context (underlined) — portions of the self that are materialized in historical contexts. Period. All kinds of time — backward and forward — emerge from the basic unpredictable nature of consciousness, and are due to “series” of significances. Each self born in time will then pursue its own probable realities from that standpoint. Again, each such self is immediate.

(Long pause, one of many.) All consciousness, in all of its forms, exists at once. It is difficult, without appearing to contradict myself, to explain. Go back to our bulb and flower. In basic terms they exist at once. In your terms, however, it is as if the flower-to-be, from its “future” calls back to the bulb and tells it how to make the flower. Memory operates backward and forward in time. The flower — calling back to the bulb, urging it “ahead” and reminding it of its (probable future) development — is like a future self in your terms, or a more highly advanced self, who has the answers and can indeed be quite practically relied upon. The gods can be seen in the same light, only on a larger scale; and understood in that context, they can be relied upon. It is almost a natural tendency to personify the gods while you are caught up in limited ideas of personhood. Larger concepts of personhood will indeed lead you to some glimpse of the truly remarkable gestalts of consciousness from which you constantly emerge.

(11:10. Long pause during a strong delivery.) That godhood is formed from the eternal yet ever-new emergence and growth of those basic units of consciousness. The reality of the godhood straddles the reality of each unit, and the mass reality of all units.

(“I’ve got a few questions,” I said after she’d rested a bit. “I was going to ask them during the delivery, but I’m afraid to hear the answers — at least to the first two.” I was only half joking. I’d had the first question in mind since Seth had come through with the 679th session two weeks ago:

(2. “Are these units of consciousness that Seth started talking about in the last session the same as the EE units he described in Seth Speaks, a development of that original idea, or what?” [See Note 3 for Session 682.]

I do indeed. Now: We will call the basic units of consciousness “CU” — the letter “C,” the letter “U” — consciousness units. From them EE units are formed, and the first roots sent out into the world of physical matter. Period.

(“What the hell’s going to be in it?” she demanded. “Really — where can he go, considering where he started? Oh, forget it. As I came out with that, I got something over here” — she gestured to her right, indicating one of the channels of information available from Seth — “about the unpredictability of consciousness, and precognition and heredity: the cell’s soul and the soul’s cell….”

1. Jane uses “multipersonhood” on the last page of Chapter 11 in her Adventures in Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology. “But really,” she said, “the whole chapter builds up toward that definition, or idea.” In her view, the quality called multipersonhood encompasses all of the inner personifications, or Aspects, of the source self, which she defines in the Glossary of Adventures as “the ‘unknown’ self, soul, or psyche; the fountainhead of our physical being.” In her own case, then, Seth would be a personification of an Aspect of her source self; but he would also have an existence of his own at other levels of reality.

2. In connection with Seth’s discussion of animals and men here, see his excellent material in Chapter 12 of Personal Reality. Summarizing parts of that chapter very simply: In Session 647 Seth goes into the challenges early man faced as he contended with his own burgeoning consciousness. In Session 648 he discusses animal instinct, health, illness, and suicide, and the eras during which men and animals mixed. For the same session Jane contributed impressions of her own on animal medicine men.

As I write this note, I’m struck by a curious connection I feel but find almost impossible to explain in words, let alone simply — that while Seth’s mention of “another book” in Session 657 may refer to “Unknown” Reality, it’s also echoed in the first question I asked Jane at break in tonight’s session. Yet how can this be, I wonder, since when the 683rd session was held I didn’t have Session 657 in mind; and when the 657th was delivered I had no ordinary way of knowing I’d have the question to ask in the 683rd. I’m unwilling to ascribe the “conventional” notions of precognition or retrocognition to such a tenuous relationship between the two sessions. Such odd connections have arisen before in the Seth material. Usually I simply recognize their existence and my inability to think clearly about them, and go on from there.

5. This “margin of safety” between my mother and me is beautifully illustrated in my dream of two nights ago. And as if to further reassure my conscious mind, I saw my mother with people who were still “living”; this has been the case in other recent dream experiences I’ve had with her. Here’s the relevant portion of the description I wrote for Through My Eyes: “Then I saw my mother [Stella] between my brother Linden and his wife, all separated each from the other a little bit, all walking obliquely toward me across a featureless plain. Everything was in brilliant color. The three figures were cut off at their waists, as though I saw them on a screen. My mother didn’t speak to me or look directly at me; like the others, she faced just past my left shoulder.