“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(9:34.) Identity itself is composed of pure energy. It takes up no space. It takes up no time. I said that there are invisible particles that can appear in more than one place simultaneously.⁵ So can identity. Atoms and molecules build blocks of matter, in your terms, even while the atoms and molecules remain separate. The table between Joseph and myself (Jane, in trance, sat with her feet upon our long narrow coffee table) does not feel invaded by the invisible particles that compose it. For that matter (amused), if you will forgive me for that old pun, the atoms and molecules that form the table today did not have anything to do with the table five years ago — though the table appeared the same then as now.

Give us a moment … (Then slowly:) It is difficult to explain on spiritual and psychic levels without speaking in terms of gradations of identity, for example, but in your terms even the smallest “particle” of identity is inviolate. It may grow, develop or expand, change alliances or organizations, and it does combine with others even as cells do. (Long pause.) Your body does not feel as if you invade it. Your consciousness and its consciousness are merged; yet it is composed of the multitudinous individual consciousnesses that form the tiniest physical particles within it. Those particles come and go, yet your body remains itself. What was physically a part of you last year is not today. Physically, you are a different person. Put simply, the stuff of the body is constantly returned to the earth,* where it forms again into physical actualization — but always differently.

(Long pause, eyes closed. Jane’s delivery had slowed considerably.) In somewhat the same way your identity changes constantly, even while you retain your sense of permanence. That sense of permanence rides upon endless changes — it is actually dependent upon those physical, spiritual, and psychic changes. In your terms, for example, if they did not occur constantly your body would die. The cells, again, are not simply minute, handy, unseen particles that happen to compose your organs. They also possess consciousnesses of their own. That [kind of] consciousness unites all physical matter.

(10:00.) Give us a moment … Cells compose natural forms. An identity is not a thing of a certain size or shape that must always appear in one given way. It is a unit of consciousness ever itself and inviolate while still free to form other organizations, enter other combinations in which all other units also decide to play a part. As there are different shapes to physical objects, then, so identity can take different shapes — and basically those forms are far more rich and diverse than the variety of physical objects.

A mountain exists. It is composed of rocks and trees, grass and hills, and in your terms of time you can look at it, see it as such, give it a name, and ignore its equally independent parts. Without those parts the mountain would not exist. It is not invaded by the trees or rocks that compose it, and while trees grow and die the mountain itself, at least in your terms of time, exists despite the changes. It is also dependent upon the changes. In a manner of speaking, your own identities as you think of them are dependent upon the same kinds of living organizations of consciousness.

(10:21.) Let us look at it differently. People who read so-called “occult” literature may consider me “an old soul,” like a mountain. Period. In grand ancient fashion above other more homey village-like souls, I have my own identity. Yet that identity is composed of other identities, each independent, as the mountain is composed of its rocks and could not exist without them, even while it rises up so grandly above the plain. My understanding rests upon what I am, as the mountain’s height rests upon what it is. I do not feel invaded by the selves or identities that compose me, nor do they feel invaded by me — any more than the trees, rocks, and grass would resent the mountain shape (intently) into which they have grown.

Physically speaking, and generally, your body is composed of grasses and ants and rocks and beasts and birds, for in one way or another all biological matter is related.⁹ In certain terms, through your experience, birds and rocks speak alphabets — and certain portions of your own being fly or creep as birds or insects,¹⁰ forming the great gestalt of physical experience. It is fashionable to say: “You are what you eat” semicolon; that, for example, “You must not eat meat because you are killing the animals, and this is wrong.” But in deeper terms, physically and biologically, the animals are born from the body of the earth, which is composed of the corpses of men and women as much as it is of other matter. The animals consume you, then, as often as you consume them, and they are as much a part of your humanity as you are a part of their so called animal nature.

The constant interchange that exists biologically means that the same physical stuff that composes a man or a woman may be dispersed, and later form a toad, a starfish, a dog or a flower. It may be distributed into numberless different forms. That arithmetic¹¹ of consciousness is not annihilated. It is multiplied and not divided. Reminiscent within each form is the consciousness of all the other combinations, all of the other alliances, as identity continually forms new creative endeavors and gestalts of relatedness. There is no discrimination, no prejudice.