“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.

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.

(“Right now I think I’m getting that everything on the face of the earth is related — that your consciousness is in an ant, or a rock⁸ or a tree, but that we’re not used to thinking that way. Not that one is superior to another — just that we’re all connected — that there’s some kind of weird familiarity, biologically and psychically, that we’ve never gotten consciously … What I’m getting is that your father could do any of the things that you wrote about [in Note 4], without invading anything or anyone. It’s just that our ideas of personhood and soul make it sound terrible, until you get used to those ideas….