“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

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

An archaeologist or a geologist examining “old” rock strata will find dead fossils, just as from your viewpoint you will discover “dead” past lives as you look “downward” through your psyche. You will seem to view finished reincarnational existences, even as from his present the geologist will discover only inanimate fossils embedded in rock. Those fossils are still alive, however. The geologist is simply not tuned in to their life area. So reincarnational lives are still occurring, but they are a part of your being. They are not you, and you are not your reincarnational past.

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

“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.”

9. Seth’s point, that “there is precious little said about future lives,” is well taken. It’s one that Jane and I feel pretty much alone with; others don’t initiate the idea in discussions with us, for instance. In a very casual way lately I’ve been trying to tune in to a “future” existence so that I can do some writing and drawing about it, but haven’t made any meaningful contact so far.

One of the Roman soldiers, Maumee, and Nebene are mentioned in Appendix 21; see the excerpts there from the private session for November 18, 1974, as well as Note 1. Then see the comments Seth made the next evening in ESP class: “There are, of course, future memories as well as past ones … As Joseph often says: ‘When you think of reincarnation, you do so in terms of past lives.’ You are afraid to consider future lives because then you have to face the death that must be met first, in your terms. And so you never think of future lives, or how you might benefit from knowing them….”