“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(The day before the 724th session was held on December 4, I had another experience involving internal perceptions of myself as a Roman soldier in the first century A.D. As far as I can tell, however, this latest episode was not a continuation of my three visions of last October, in which I saw the end of my life while I was an officer in the armed forces of Imperial Rome¹ — yet this time also I confronted circumstances surrounding my own death. The little adventure certainly fits in with Seth’s idea of counterparts, as he introduced it in the 721st session, but it raises a number of questions, too. Jane discussed my previous “visits” to the first century in Chapter 4 of her Psychic Politics, but [I can add later] she never did deal with this one. I don’t mind noting that I wish she had.² She might have been able to offer insights about it that I couldn’t come up with, especially concerning the seemingly endless abilities of the psyche — call it personalized energy, consciousness, or what-have-you — to travel through its own space and time.

6. My ruminations in notes 3 and 4 should indicate how difficult it can be for the conscious mind to interpret psychic data arising from other “layers” of itself. Jane and I haven’t been to Jerusalem, although we’d like to make the trip some day, but even if we did I don’t think it would be easy to identify the physical site of my “fourth Roman.” To do so would take much cautious study. For one thing, I’m sure that my imagery — and drawings — of Jerusalem’s fortifications would turn out to be much too meager in scale; surely those “real” works would be far more overpowering in height and mass. To insist upon interpreting my mental information in literal terms only might lead into a labyrinth of supposition, then.

As best I can interpret the objective information at hand, the physical locale of my subjective experience is a precarious one, since outside the eastern and southern boundaries of Jerusalem the terrain quickly drops away into valleys close and steep enough to protect the city from large-scale attack — with hardly enough room there for the “hordes” of Roman soldiers I saw on the “flat ground.” I cannot explain my terminology or choice of locations, except to say that I expressed just what I wanted to. I trust the elements of those perceptions, and my reactions to them, but their conscious understanding and integration remain beyond my abilities at this time. Obviously (as will be explained), I think it wise to ascribe as much of the episode’s validity to its symbolic meanings as to its physical ones.

8. Much could be written about the ageless conflicts the individual feels between society’s demands and his or her urges toward personal freedom. It seems to me that no matter what role in any life the individual decides upon before birth (to incorporate Seth’s ideas here), that individual will carry consciousness’s innate drive toward personal expression — but still within the protection furnished by social organization. This applies even to my Roman selves in their restrictive military environments (which are also protective), and even if their chosen courses of action result in demands or challenges they cannot surmount….

10. I note with some amusement that my rather vehement statement may simply reflect the natural, protective attitude of my currently focused consciousness: Even though I find them fascinating, I may be quite reluctant to embrace other equally valid portions of what I conveniently call my whole self. Yet that whole self may not consider that any more than a tiny segment of itself “belongs” to me!

(A group of us — Alex, Warren,² and others — had come over to Jane and Rob’s for a casual get-together, and also to talk about that week’s class, which seemed to be one of the “milestone” classes that happen occasionally.³ During the conversation, Alex said that the rise of literacy in the world would spread Seth’s ideas on a scale that had never previously been possible. In the discussion of “primitive” and “civilized” man that followed, Warren presented his opinion that some civilizations, such as those of Babylonia, Egypt, the Incas, and so forth, had been founded by initiate groups from Atlantis⁴ … that while “primitive” man may have had a kind of gestalt consciousness, he had no individual consciousness. As Warren made similar remarks about the development of individual consciousness through historical times to our point of civilization, Seth suddenly and unexpectedly came through loudly and forcefully:

(Warren: “But isn’t this stuff all about the development of ego consciousness?”)

As you know, my dear Joseph, there is a difference between probable realities and reincarnational ones. To keep the discussion simple, I will answer you in reincarnational terms; but as Ruburt is discovering as he writes his Adventures in Consciousness,⁶ many more elements are involved.

(With a smile:) “Your particular conscious and subconscious viewpoints are fluent enough so that they do not hamper the basic material, or cover it with the rock of dogmatism so that it becomes impossible to find … Actually, what I needed were personalities who were not fanatics along any line — including scientific fanatics who would object as forcibly to the reincarnational data as religious fanatics would object to some of the other material.