“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The very practice of pinpointing the time of physical birth at conception itself errs. There is no point at which you can say in basic terms (underlined twice) that an individual is alive,² though you do find it more practical to accept certain points of life and death. It is true that you emerge into space and time at a certain point in your perception. Your consciousness has been itself long before, however.

In the first place you are looking at one version of the universe, as it seems to exist at the moment of your perception. The entire nature of a personality cannot be considered in its totality in that small context.

It is quite as true to say that the planets behave in a certain way because you are what you are, as it is to turn the statement around, as is generally done. The very positions of the planets and the stars are effects of the senses — perceptions that would have no meaning were it not for your own kind of consciousness. Those perceptions, then, cannot cause you to behave in any given way because of conditions that have no meaning outside of your own consciousness.

(Pause.) Now: The universe exists, but it takes the shape and form that you recognize only in your own perceptions. The motion of the planets, indeed their very perceived reality, exists in far different terms.

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.

I understand that some of this will be difficult to follow. The only other recourse, however, is to repeat myths and tales that you have outgrown. The stars and planets simply are in more than one place at one time. I admit that your perception of them makes them appear to be relatively stable, and you are biologically tuned in to that perception. Your experience of time and motion, as you know, is relative, and in comparison with your own relatively brief lives the planets seem to endure for almost endless periods. This is your viewpoint as you look out from your ledge.

2. See Note 1 for the 727th session; it contains references to two sessions on the fetus, as Jane excerpted them for The Seth Material. Now see the 557th session for Chapter 13 of Seth Speaks; Seth presented additional information on the various ways reincarnating personalities associate themselves with the fetus. And after 11:24 in the 688th session, for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, he talked about the present and future physical perceptions of the infant.

7. For some analogous Seth material — on how the “slightest perception alters every atom within your body” — see Note 24 for Appendix 18.