“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

You think that the self must begin or end someplace. There must be a fence around it, a yard of identity in which you can feel safe. I have said many times that there are no limitations to the self. You seem to be afraid that the self will bleed out and lose “itself” in a maze in which all identity is lost. Yet you recognize that your self is a far greater dimension than you usually suppose, so you speak in terms of reincarnation. This allows you to imagine greater realms of identity while still holding your concepts of selfhood intact. You think of being one self after another, each identity being neatly separated from the others by a passage of years, an obvious death and an obvious 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.

Say, again, that the year is 1940. All of those born on a particular date in 1940 will not necessarily be born “at the same time” at all. What you think of as 1940 is but one season on that ledge, the season that you recognize. Flowers from the spring of one year “do not see” or mix with the flowers of the following spring, or with those of the spring before. In the same way, those born in 1940 “at one season” do not, in a greater context, mix with those born in the same year either.

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.

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.

The self is not limited. The true meaning of that statement may sometime dawn. The idea of one personhood still closes your eyes to the greater multipersonhood that is your true reality. Often your dreams give you a hint of this kind of existence.

With physical perception the picture all fits, of course. You realize that someone — some interested observer — viewing the earth from another planet in another galaxy, would be seeing what you think of as earth’s past. But as I pointed out, “he” might also be seeing earth’s future,⁹ according to “his” viewpoint. This would in no way alter your reality. The positions of the stars and planets, however, and your time scheme, cannot be depended upon to give an indication of “causal” effects. The personality simply exists in greater terms.