“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(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.

Water rushes down the hillside into the valley, and there is a constant give-and-take between the village below, say, or the meadows, and the mountain. So there is the same kind of transformation, change, and cooperation between all identities. You can draw the lines where you will for convenience’s sake, but each identity retains its individuality and inviolate nature even while it constantly changes.

(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.

Ruburt is connected with me in that manner. He is also connected with any ant in the backyard in the same way. Yet I retain my identity, the ant retains its identity, and Ruburt retains his.¹² But one could not exist without the other two — for in greater terms the reality of any one of the three presupposes the existence of the others.