“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause.) In the same way, quite separate identities can merge with others in a give-and-take gestalt, in which the overall intent is as clear as the shape of the table. To some extent Joseph was perceiving that kind of inner psychic organization.

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.

There is indeed a communication existing that joins all of nature, an inner webwork, so that each part of the earth knows what its other parts are doing. Cells are organizations, ever-changing, forming and unforming.

(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.

(Long pause.) Because a tree is physical, physical properties will be involved, and the seeds will mature following certain general principles or characteristics. Atoms and molecules will sometimes form trees; sometimes they will become parts of couches. They will form people or ants or blades of grass, yet in each of these ventures they will also retain their own sense of identity. They combine to form cells and organs, and through all of these events they obtain different kinds of experience.

When you eat, you must eliminate through your bowels. That resulting matter eventually returns to the earth, where it helps form all other living things. The “dead” matter — the residue of a bird, the sloughed-off cells — these things are not then used by other birds (though they may be occasionally), but by men and women. There is no rule that says your discarded cellular material can be used only by your own species. Yet in your terms any identity, no matter how “minute,” retains itself and its identity through many forms and alliances of organizations.

Through such strands of consciousness all of your world is related. Your own identity sends out strands of itself constantly, then. These mix psychically with other strands, as physically atoms and molecules are interchanged. So there are different organizations of identity in which you play a part.