“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The idea of counterparts¹ somewhat shatters that old concept, yet you still want definitions for the self so that you know where you “stand.” You are so taken with the idea of labels that many follow astrology blindly. You are born at a certain time, at a certain place, under certain conditions — but consciousness always forms the conditions. If it is to some extent affected by those conditions, then, it is because the effects follow in the same way that a painter is affected by the landscape that he has himself created. So you decide to be born, say, in a certain month when the planets are thus-and-so. Ahead of time, you choose the seasons of your birth.

(9:29.) Now: In greater terms, probabilities operate to an extent you may not suspect. For one thing, any focus point of physical life is caused by a merging of probabilities. Our session is being witnessed by a student, a most intelligent young man (humorously). He also helps Ruburt with correspondence. Earlier tonight he wrote to a woman who has the same birthdate as Ruburt. In our last session I compared a year to a ledge on a mountain. I said that the seasons came and went, and that many crops of spring flowers grew there over a period of time. So each year, in those terms, is like a ledge.

Again: Your reality is like a shining platform, a surface resting upon probabilities. You follow these so unconsciously and beautifully, you swim through them so easily, that it does not occur to you to question your origin, or the medium in which your experience has its existence. All of those sharing any given birthdate, however, sharing even place as well as time, do not have the same “destiny”; but more, they do not share the same conditions necessarily. They are each affected by their own probability system at birth, and those conditions drastically alter the nature of their development.

Some persons will be much more affected by, and sensitive to, other probabilities — which, for instance, do not show at all in conventional astrological “charts.”

Those charts emphasize one line of probabilities at the expense of all others. Interpretations based upon the charts then will make more sense to those who have chosen the same probable birth circumstances — but they will be of no value to those who were born at the same time, in your terms, but who follow a different order of probabilities.³

(10:17.) Now give us a moment … As the cells operate with the knowledge of probable actions and still maintain the physical body in your chosen system, so the psyche, operating in the same way, “seeds” itself in many different probabilities. In this case specifically, I am speaking of other physical probabilities — alternates, in other words, of the world as you know it. Those alive with you, your contemporaries, do not all belong to the same probable system. You are at a meeting ground in that respect, where individuals from many probable realities mix and merge, agreeing momentarily to accept certain portions of the same space-time environment.

Because you focus upon the similarities in experience, and play down the variances, then the oftentimes greater dissimilarities⁴ in so-called experience escape you completely. You take it for granted that memory is faulty if you do not agree with another person on the events that happened at a certain place and time — say those in a recently experienced historical past. You take it for granted that interpretations of events change, but that certain definite events occurred that are beyond alteration. Instead, the events themselves are not nearly that concrete. You accept one probable event. Someone else may experience instead a version of that event, which then becomes that individual’s felt reality.

Unimaginable differences would be present if those posies could see the same environment of the year before, and all of the minute variations that you ignore would be gigantic; different enough indeed so that at their level the flowers might think that a different kind of reality was involved. So there are variations, and highly significant probabilities, operating even between those born generally in the same month of the same year — not only in terms of exterior conditions, but of inward ones.

Consciousness does not simply choose to be born at a certain place in space and time, but it also endows its physical organism ahead of time with certain inner triggers so that it will respond to those conditions in highly individualistic ways.

(Very intently:) In the same manner, the self knows ahead of time the best conditions for its own development, in light of the time and the place of its chosen birth. It has, however, literally endless probabilities to choose from, to fulfill its abilities while maintaining a workable selfhood.⁶ Consciousness chooses the best overall conditions available for its own purposes of growth. It then preconditions its own organism to respond or not to respond to the time and place of birth, to exaggerate or minimize, to negate or accept.

The emergence of consciousness into those physical conditions automatically alters them — a fact not recognized by astrologers. Each child born alters the entire universe,⁷ and changes the world of its time and birth by bringing into it action not there earlier, in your terms, and by impressing the universe with the stamp — the indelible stamp — of its reality. Each child chooses its own probable version of any given birthdate. Such dates are obviously not just points in time, pinpointed in space. In the first place, since all time is simultaneous, you are always dying and being born, and your later experience affects the time of your birth.

I admit that a birthday operates as a handy reference. But if you realized that your consciousness did exist before that time, your memory will open up, and your accepted birthdate will appear far less important. “Coming out of the womb” is an event, and much better to use than “birth.” In greater terms — far greater terms than you imagine — you are aware of probable “births,” and your other parentages [that are] quite as legitimate as the personal history you now accept.

Give us a moment … Using conventional astrology, you will find certain correlations, because of particular events occurring, that are indeed interrelated. Yet many individuals will not discover semblances of themselves in the charts of astrology simply because their chosen probabilities are, qualitatively speaking, so different from the “norm.”

3. Jane and I appear to be two of those individuals “who follow a different order of probabilities” as far as astrology is concerned. Beyond some general reading we’ve done on the subject — both pro and con — we know little about it. However, horoscopes that readers have cast for us, after we’ve given the requested information about our births, seldom show much correlation with the Jane and Rob we think we know — nor will one person’s charts for us agree with those prepared by others. We’ve ended up feeling that astrology, as it’s presently practiced, is too limited in conception.

5. I think that in his material from 10:17 to 10:25 here, Seth very neatly summarizes much of his thinking about how each of us constantly moves through a multitude of probable realities, meeting certain others in any one space-time environment, perceiving individual versions of any given event … Very useful information. Jane and I try to keep it in mind.

6. See the 565th session as it’s continued in Chapter 16 of Seth Speaks. Seth talked about the myriad probable actions available to any self. After 10:19: “To the extent that you are open and receptive, you can benefit greatly by the various experiences of your probable selves … often what seems to you to be an inspiration is a thought experienced but not actualized on the part of another self … Ideas that you have entertained and not used may be picked up in this same manner by other probable you’s. Each of these probable selves considers itself the real you, of course, and to any one of them you would be the probable self; but through the inner senses each of you are aware of your part in this gestalt.”