“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

For the second exercise, take a photograph of yourself and place it before you. The picture can be from the past or the present, but try to see it as a snapshot of a self poised in perfect focus, emerging from an underneath dimension in which other probable pictures could have been taken. That self, you see, emerges triumphantly, unique and unassailable in its own experience; yet in the features you see before you — in this stance, posture, expression — there are also glimmerings, tintings or shadings, that are echoes belonging to other probabilities. Try to sense those.

Now: Take another photograph of yourself at a different age than the first one you chose. Ask yourself simply: “Am I looking at the same person?” How familiar or how strange is this second photograph? How does it differ from the first one you picked this evening? What similarities are there that unite both photographs in your mind? What experiences did you have when each photograph was taken? What ways did you think of following in one picture that were not followed in the other one? Those directions were pursued. If they were not pursued by the self you recognize, then they were by a self that is probable in your terms. In your mind follow what directions that self would have taken, as you think of such events. If you find a line of development that you now wish you had pursued, but had not, then think deeply about the ways in which those activities could now fit into the framework of your officially accepted life.² Such musings, with desire — backed up by common sense — can bring about intersection points in probabilities that cause a fresh realignment of the deep elements of the psyche. In such ways probable events can be attracted to your current living structure.

Now: Choose another photograph. I want you to look at this one somewhat differently. This should also be a photograph of yourself. See this as one picture of yourself as a representative of your species in a particular space and time. Look at it as you might look at a photograph of an animal in its environment. If the photograph shows you in a room, for example, then think of the room as a peculiar kind of environment, as natural as the woods. See your person’s picture in this way: How does it merge or stand apart from the other elements in the photograph? See those other elements as characteristics of the image, view them as extended features that belong to you. If the photograph is dark, for example, and shows shadows, then in this exercise see those as belonging to the self in the picture.

When you see a picture of an animal in its environment, you often make connections that you do not make when you see a picture of a human being in his or her environment. Yet each location is as unique as the habitat of any animal — as private, as shared, as significant in terms of the individual and the species of which that individual is a part. Simply to stretch your imagination: When you look at your photograph, imagine that you are a representative of a species, caught there in just that particular pose, and that the frame of the photograph represents, now, “a cage of time.” You, from the outside looking down at the photograph, are now outside of that cage of time in which your specimen was placed. That specimen, that individual, that you, represents not only yourself but one aspect of your species. If you hold that feeling, then the element of time becomes as real as any of the other objects within the photograph. Though unseen, time is the frame.

Now: Look up. The picture, the photograph, is but one small object in the entire range of your vision. You are not only outside yourself in the photograph, but now it represents only a small portion of your reality. Yet the photograph remains inviolate within its own framework; you cannot alter the position of one object within it. If you destroy the photograph itself, you can in no way destroy the reality that was behind it. You cannot, for instance, kill the tree that may be depicted in the picture.

(Pause.) In your terms, think of those ancestors in your family history. Now think of yourself and your contemporary family. For this, try to imagine time as being something like space. If your ancestors lived in the 19th century, then think of that century as a place that exists as surely as any portion of the earth that you know. See your own century as another place. If you have children, imagine their experience 50 years hence as still another place.

Now: Think of your ancestors, yourself, and your children as members of one tribe, each journeying into different countries instead of times. Culture is as real and natural as trees and rocks, so see the various cultures of these three groups as natural environments of the different places or countries; and imagine, then, each group exploring the unique environment of the land into which they have journeyed. Imagine further of course that these explorations occur at once, even though communication may be faulty, so that each group has difficulty communicating with the others. Imagine, however, that there is a homeland from which our groups originally came. Each expedition sends “letters” back home, commenting upon the behavior, customs, environment, and history of the land in which it finds itself.

Give us a moment … Remember, in this analogy the various children represent your ancestors, yourself, and your own children. They are exploring the land of time. Now in your physical world it is obvious that nature grows more of itself. In the land of time, time also grows more of itself. As you can climb trees, both up and down the branches, so you can climb times in the same way. Back home, Mama and Papa know this. The family tree exists at once — but that tree is only one tree that appears in the land of time. It has branches that you do not climb and do not recognize, and so they are not real to you. There are probable family trees, then. The same applies to the species.