“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The development freed Ruburt from many old limitations, and allowed him to at last have practical experience with the unknown reality in intimate terms. Ruburt’s library does exist as surely as this room does. It also exists as unsurely as this room. It is one thing to be theoretically convinced that other worlds exist, and to take a certain comfort and joy from the idea. It is quite another thing to find yourself in such an environment, and to feel the worlds coincide. Reality is above all practical, so when you expand your concepts concerning the nature of reality, you are apt then to find yourselves scandalized, appalled, or simply disoriented. So in this work I am presenting you not only with probabilities as conjecture, but, often, showing you how such probabilities affect your daily lives, and giving examples of the ways in which Ruburt’s and Joseph’s lives have been so touched.

Ruburt and Joseph chose to specialize, so to speak, in precisely those excursions or explorations that are secondary to others. The focus of each of their consciousnesses therefore was made up of a certain kind of mixture that made such probabilities, in your terms, possible as prime incentives.

1. Yesterday afternoon, Sunday, I lay down for a nap. Just before I drifted into the sleep state I had three little experiences involving internal vision. My eyes were closed. In the episode of interest here, I saw myself back in the first century A.D.: I was an officer of rather high rank in a Roman legion, and I was aboard a small galley in the Mediterranean Sea. I knew that I was on official military business for a land-based armed force, even though I was on ship. I didn’t much like the blunt, unfeeling “I” that I saw. Briefly through those eyes I looked out upon twin rows of galley slaves … I described the scene and my feelings about it to Jane, and made small, full-face and profile pen-and-ink drawings of myself as the officer. I had no name for that other self. Given Seth’s concept of simultaneous time, I thought I might have glimpsed another existence — whether a reincarnational one or a probable one — that I was living now.

This afternoon, Monday, I decided upon a nap once again, and once again I was aware of myself as the Roman officer; at least I thought I was that individual. I entered into a sequel to the first vision: I felt myself floating face down in the Mediterranean with my hands tied behind my back. I knew that I’d been deliberately thrown into the sea. I cut off my awareness of the experience right there, possibly to avoid undergoing my own death in that life. From the safety of the cot in my studio, I didn’t panic as that other me faced such a life-threatening situation, yet I was disturbed by it — enough so that I repressed conscious recall of the whole episode until the evening after this (715th) session was held. I’m citing it here so that I can present my “first and second Romans,” as I call them, together.

After my first Roman, I speculated about whether I might have touched upon a reincarnational self or a probable one. See, therefore, Seth’s material on reincarnation in Chapter 4 (among others) of Seth Speaks; then see his material on probable selves in Chapter 16 of that book, and in Session 680 for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality.

For myself, I think of reincarnational selves as having their roots in the physical reality we know (whether in simultaneous or linear terms of time), but of probable selves as having much wider and more complicated ranges of existence: I believe that even though we create them on an individual basis, our probable selves can reach into a multitude of other realities, both physical and nonphysical. I don’t remember Seth discussing such “probable” possibilities in just that way, especially, and they would be much too involved to go into here, but I’ve often felt that some of our probable selves move into realms of being that are literally incomprehensible to us, so different — alien — are they and their environments from our usual conceptions of “solid” physical existence.

In Chapter 16, see the 567th session for February 17, 1971, at 9:24: “You understand that there are spectrums of light. So there are spectrums of matter. Your system of physical reality is not dense in comparison with some others. The dimensions that you give to physical matter barely begin to hint at the varieties of dimensions possible. Some systems are far heavier or lighter than your own….”

Later, we were to learn about the distortions that could happen as Jane relayed some of Seth’s material; given the open-ended nature of time, and considering the idea of probable realities, we came to realize that simultaneously we could and could not be Seth’s “first lesson class.” But in those early sessions we had no background knowledge out of which to ask meaningful questions. In the 15th session Seth told Jane and me: “I am giving you what may be considered a broad outline to be filled in.”