“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane held her last session for “Unknown” Reality three weeks ago. She came through with a private session two days later, on December 18, and we’ve been resting from psychic work — including ESP class — since then. All the time, we were unaware that Seth had finished Section 5.

Give us a moment … In your terms, the land changes through the ages. Mountains and islands arise, then disappear, to reemerge in new form. The oceans rise and fall also, and in some cases the floor of the ocean becomes the surface of the planet, only to be covered again by water. Yet through all of these changes the earth retains a landscape, and at any given time the features of the land are quite dependable and permanent enough for your purposes.

As all physical matter is connected in any particular time, or era, so the individual consciousness of each being is also connected with every other. This applies to all consciousnesses as you understand that term.

A mountain is composed of many layers of rock that serve, as you think of it, as its foundation. The top of the mountain represents the present to you, and the tiers of rock beneath stand for the past. The mountain itself is not any one of those rock layers that seemingly compose it, however. There is a relationship between the mountain and those strata but the term “mountain” is one that you have applied. In greater terms the mountain and all of its components exist at once, of course. You can examine the various levels of rock structure. Geologists can tell when, in terms of time, certain sedimentary deposits formed. The rocks themselves still exist in the geologists’ present time, or they could not make such an examination. The mountain would not be a mountain without that “foundation.” Again, however, it is not any one of those rock layers.

Your present existence, however, is highly related to those other levels of selfhood. Now what happens at the top of the mountain affects all that goes on below, and so everything that you do affects those other realms of selfhood, and there is an interchange that occurs constantly. Physical conditions may be quite different in the valley, in the foothills of the mountain, and at its top. The very climate and vegetation may vary considerably, and yet all life and vegetation within the area are interrelated. Each layer of life that composes the mountain —

(Pause at 9:43.) In the physical world, islands, valleys, plateaus, continents and oceans all have their place, and serve to form the physical basis of your reality. Each blade of grass helps form the life of the earth. So each consciousness, however minute, is indispensable in its place and time.

(Pause.) When it rains, water rushes in great exuberant gushes down the sides of the mountain, bringing life and vitality to all of its parts. In somewhat the same way, your own experiences flow down and into the cracks and crevices of all the other times and centuries that compose your present lifetime.

Cellular transmission, for example, is indeed much more precise than any verbal language, communicating data so intricate that all of your languages together⁶ would fall far short of matching such complexity. This kind of communication carries information that a thousand alphabets could not translate. In such a way, one part of the body knows what is happening in every other part, and the body as a whole knows its precise position on the surface of the planet. It is biologically aware of all the other life-forms around it to the most minute denominator.

To a future self no more illuminated than you are, you appear dead and lifeless — a dim memory. When you look out into the universe from your viewpoint, it seems as if you look into the past.⁸ Scientists tell you that when the light from every distant galaxy reaches you, the galaxy is already dead. In the same way, when you look “backward” into the psyche the life you may indistinctly view — the past life — is already vanished. Why is it that your scientists’ instruments do not allow them to look into the future instead, into worlds not yet born, since they operate so well in discerning the past? And why is it, with all of your ideas about reincarnation, there is precious little said about future lives?⁹

2. See the 683rd session in Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. As Seth told us: “All kinds of time — backward and forward — emerge from the basic unpredictable nature of consciousness, and are due to ‘series’ of significances … Memory operates backward and forward in time.”

“To your way of thinking, some lives are lived in a twinkling (in various systems), and others last for centuries. The perception of consciousness is not limited, however. I have told you, for example, that trees have their own consciousness. The consciousness of a tree is not as specifically focused as your own, yet to all intents and purposes, the tree is conscious of 50 years before its existence, and 50 years hence. Its sense of identity spontaneously goes beyond the change of its own form. It has no ego to cut the ‘I’ identification short. Creatures without the compartment of the ego can easily follow their own identity beyond any change of form.”