“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(With a smile:) I have a surprise for you, however, for I have been speaking of you as the top of our mountain — for it certainly seems to you that you are at the top, so to speak. Instead, your vantage point and your focus is such that you cannot turn your head to look higher. Perhaps you are like a fine sunny cliff on the side of the mountain, jutting out, looking down to the valley beneath, not realizing that the mountain itself continues [up] beyond you. You are, then, in the position of any of the other levels “beneath,” many also thinking themselves the top of the mountain, looking only downward.

You are convinced that you cannot see the future, and this means — in terms of our analogy, at least — that you cannot look upward beyond your own time. While that is the case, you will always think of reincarnation as occurring in the past.

“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.”