“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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.

Now: In somewhat the same manner, the self that you know is the mountain, and the rock layers forming it are past lives.

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 —

Like the mountain, therefore, you have a history in terms of the present that is yours, and yet not yours. It does not control you, for you alter it with each thought and action, even as each motion at the mountain’s top affects its base. The layers at the bottom, however, are also constantly changing, so that the whole area is a gestalt of relatedness.

(Most emphatically:) In terms of time only, there is an archaeological meaning that is hidden within your own nature. To discover it you look “down” through the levels of your own being, there to find the layers of selfhood that in your world represent the past history of yourself, from which you emerged. You are not those selves psychically, however, any more than you are your mother’s or your father’s in physical terms. You are as different from those reincarnational selves, therefore, as you are from your parents, though you share certain backgrounds and characteristics.

The knowledge of probabilities⁴ brings forth present time and reality. Voices speak through the genes and chromosomes that connect the future and the past in a balance that you call the present form. The history of the private psyche and the mass experience of the species, again, resides in each individual. The archaeology of the past and the future alike is alive within the layers of consciousness that compose your being.