“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Pause at 9:57.) Let those who will, laugh at tales of spirits turning into the trees⁵ — a simplistic theory, certainly, yet a symbolic statement in such societies: The dead were buried at home in the same close territory, to form in later times the very composition of the ground upon which religions grew. Again, your limited concepts of selfhood make what I am saying difficult for you to perceive.

To that extent the so-called past experience of your ancestors and of your species is concurrent with your own, biologically speaking. That is but one line, however, covered by the chromosomes. You have “another line” of existence that also serves as a support for the one that you presently recognize. It includes other interweaving physical relationships that bind you with all others upon your planet at the same adjacent level of time. That is, to some extent or another you are related to all of those alive upon the planet. You are time contemporaries. You will have a far closer relationship with some than with others. Some will be your counterparts.

(10:45.) Give us a moment … These may or may not be closer to you than family relationships, but psychically speaking they will share a certain kind of history with you. You will also be connected through the physical framework of the earth in the large give-and-take of its space-time scheme.

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.

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.

There is a constant interaction in the plant, between its parts, that you do not perceive. The leaves now present are biologically valid, interrelating in your terms. Yet in time terms each leaf is also aware of the past history of the plant, and biologically they spring up from that “past.”

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.

The larger self, then, seeds itself in time. In this process no identity is lost and no identity is the same, yet all are interrelated. So you can theoretically expand your consciousness to include the knowledge of your past lives, though those lives were yours and not yours. They have a common root, as next year’s leaves have a common root with the leaves now of this plant (pointing again to the begonia).

3. Seth packed a lot of information into the short 689th session for Volume 1. He discussed the innumerable experiments of consciousness with animal-man and man-animal forms; the great communication between man and animal in ancient times, and the deep rapport of both with their natural heritage; psychic and biological blueprints and cellular precognition; the growth of man’s ego consciousness; the beginnings of our god concepts and mythology; and more.

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.