“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A third line supporting your selfhood as you think of it is the reincarnational one.⁹ This is somewhat like the ancestral line (long pause), and there are also reflections in the genes and chromosomes undetected by your scientists. The ancestral and reincarnational lines merge to some extent to form what you think of as your genetic patterns ahead of time, so to speak. Before this life you chose what you wished from those two main areas.

Reincarnational experience is also transmitted, then, and can be retranslated from a biological code-imprint into emotional awareness. Again, however, as you are not your parents or your ancestors, you are not your “reincarnational selves.”

Here also ideas of time hamper you, for I must explain all of this in temporal terms. Since time is simultaneous, at other levels your ancestors knew of your birth though they died centuries ago in recognized continuity. The same applies to reincarnational existences that you think of as occurring in the past.

You cannot say that your ancestors, like some strange plants, were growing toward what you are, or that you are the sum of their experiences. They were, they are, themselves. You cannot say that you are the sum of your past reincarnational lives either, and for the same reasons. You cut off the knowledge of yourself, and so divisions seem to occur. You are somewhat like a plant that recognizes only one of its leaves at a time. A leaf feels its deeper reality as a part of the plant, and adds to its own sense of continuity, and even to its own sense of individuality. But you often pretend that you are some odd dangling leaf, with no roots, growing without a plant to support you.

All of the leaves now growing on this plant could be thought of as counterparts of each other, each alive and individual in one time, each contributing yet facing in different directions. As one leaf falls another takes its place, until next year the whole plant, still living, will have a completely new set of leaves — future reincarnational selves of this batch.

Selves (spelled) have far greater freedom than leaves, but they can also root themselves if they choose — and they do. Reincarnational selves are like leaves that have left the plant, choosing a new medium of existence. In this analogy, the dropped leaves of the physical plant have fulfilled their own purposes to themselves as leaves, and to the plant. These selves, however, dropping from one branch of time, root themselves in another time and become new plants from which others will sprout.

9. When Seth mentions reincarnation now, I usually think of a certain delivery of his in Volume 1. After 10:45 in the 683rd session, see the paragraph of material beginning with this phrase: “Reincarnation simply represents probabilities in a time context….” Also see Note 3 for that session.