“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The people alive during any century are embarked upon certain overall challenges. These are the result of private challenges that can best be worked out within a certain kind of framework. Time as you understand it is utilized as a method of focus, a divider like a room divider, separating purposes instead of furniture. If you want a “Victorian room,” you do not plank it down in the middle of a Spanish arrangement. Instead, you set it aside and frame it with its own decor, as you might in a museum that has separate rooms designating life in past centuries. The rooms in the museum exist at once. You may have to walk down a long corridor, go in a particular room and out the same door, before you can get to the next, adjoining room. The 18th-century drawing room may be next to a 12th-century chapel in this hypothetical museum, but you cannot move through one to the other. You have to go into the corridor first.

(2. Once when Jane woke up she had the idea of “counterparts and four-fronted selves” in mind. As she wrote today: “There might be four counterparts alive in one general time period — a century — for example. These form a psychic ‘block’, and any of the four can pick up information from this joint pool [of identity]. Each person is distinct, yet each is an added dimension of the others, so that on different levels the four [in this case] create an alliance and become a four-fronted counterpart self; covering a given century … This is a ‘working alliance’ that exists in potential form always. But the four-fronted counterpart self’s own sense of continuity is not broken up; it persists outside of space and time, while its parts — the individual selves, or counterparts — live in space and time….”⁶

(Yesterday afternoon, to my surprise, I had still another internal vision experience with a Roman counterpart self of mine in the first century A.D.; it was reminiscent of my three Romans of last October, yet perplexing, too — for this time I saw a different Roman counterpart. See Appendix 22 for my own material on the event, plus Seth’s comments about it in ESP class last night, plus a quite unusual “confirmation” offered by class member Sue Watkins. My Jamaica experience of November 16 is also referred to by another student.

(“I’m getting all this stuff,” Jane said at 9:43, as we waited for Seth to come through, “but I can’t verbalize it yet. It’s like concepts that I have to unscramble. It’s sort of frustrating … Strange … I’m getting images, too, but not clearly. One of them is about a world theater, made up of a particular century. I think we’re going to get some great new material.

6 Century.

3 centuries ago.

3 centuries ago.

(“Did Jane and I know each other three centuries ago in Denmark?”)

The revelations have come through the centuries. The revelations are the centuries. The centuries are transparent. [...]

Illuminating the centuries and the landscapes of your thought, revelations have indeed appeared and appear now. [...] There is not a revelation that stopped happening centuries ago. [...]

(The day before the 724th session was held on December 4, I had another experience involving internal perceptions of myself as a Roman soldier in the first century A.D. As far as I can tell, however, this latest episode was not a continuation of my three visions of last October, in which I saw the end of my life while I was an officer in the armed forces of Imperial Rome¹ — yet this time also I confronted circumstances surrounding my own death. [...] Jane discussed my previous “visits” to the first century in Chapter 4 of her Psychic Politics, but [I can add later] she never did deal with this one. [...]

11. It’s of interest here to note that although he referred to my three Roman-officer perceptions of last October in the 721st session (which itself was held a month after I’d experienced them), Seth didn’t mention that I had a second Roman-soldier counterpart living in the same time and area of the world in the first century A.D. I didn’t ask about any such possibility, either. [...] If his material on counterparts is correct, any of us could have many such relationships going in a given century — too many to conveniently uncover, perhaps, considering the physical time that would be necessary to do the psychic work.

[...] I ‘knew’ that the tower I faced marked the southeastern corner of Jerusalem, and I ‘knew’ that the wall itself was an enormous fortification that had surrounded that ancient city sometime during the first half of the first century A.D.

[...] I don’t know whether or not the city had a wall surrounding it earlier in that century, but assume it did.³

Our new guest: 15th century, rather a strange itinerary, from Holland to Turkey. [...]

[...] The personality then irresponsible but full of gaiety, with some effeminate characteristics from an earlier 9th century life. [...]

[...] (Pause.) Late 17th century. [...]

In the past century you lived in this country in Oklahoma. [...]

[...] If Seth means that the Essenes were promulgating the Speakers’ codes of ethics in, say, the first century A.D., then this of course is a time many centuries later than Ron’s life in 1200 B.C.

[...] One portion of the group traveled to the land we now call Palestine, and the other migrated, in the next century, appearing in southern Europe.

[...] Baal worship appeared in Syria and Israel many centuries before the birth of Christ — as early as 1400 B.C., according to Syrian cuneiform texts. [...]

[...] You do not experience your century simply from one separate vantage point, and the individuals alive in any given century have far deeper connections than you realize. [...]

[...] Here’s one of her examples as she described it to me: “We can span a period like a century if we want to. We can be a child at one end of it and an old man or woman at the other … Michelangelo [who lived for 89 years, from 1475 to 1564] decided to span a century himself instead of as three counterparts, say. [...]

[...] The time period was — is — the 19th century. [...]

[...] The realization is usually put in reincarnational terms, so that the self is seen as traveling through the centuries, moving through doors of death and life into other times and places.

[...] If your ancestors lived in the 19th century, then think of that century as a place that exists as surely as any portion of the earth that you know. See your own century as another place. [...]

[...] He also said these artifacts would date from either the 7th century, or the 17th century.

[...] He told us the 7th century reference would be correct if the Vikings were to be involved, since, he said, this date in history finds Viking evidence in the Great Lakes to the west. [...]

(Bill also said the 17th century date could be correct if bronze artifacts were shown to be related to the Jesuit missionaries, who were known to be in this section of the country then. [...]

This one to which I refer has definitely to do with the 17th century. [...]

[...] For centuries Christianity served to preserve old frameworks while still allowing for transforming elements and symbolic activities that allowed individuals to assert some independence and originality by moving from one religious symbol, say, to another—still, however, within that larger framework. [...]

(8:44.) In terms of reincarnation, Christianity in numberless cases even served as a uniting framework connecting lives: you could for example theoretically move from one century to another, and while there were social and political changes, the overall cultural framework might well be the same. [...]

(Long pause.) The original ideas connected with the Sinful Self’s beliefs were at one time, for example, not as obviously unfortunate, since the system itself also provided for salvation, methods of appeasement and so forth—all of which were thoroughly accepted through many centuries. [...]

[...] For many centuries creativity itself was firmly directed by Christianity, and to some extent (underlined) Christianity brings with it an air of uneasiness for society—to the extent that any original thought or insight must indeed imply an intrusive force to a world that must exist in a rare balance that is the result of preserving old values and obtaining new knowledge. [...]

(It is of interest here to note that a current Biblical reference work, in dealing with the very early history of Israel, has much to say about the “oral traditions” which preceded — and thus helped shape — the written word by many centuries. [...] Recent work has shown that the early gathering and writing of traditions dates from about the twelfth century B.C. This in turn led to the biblical books. [...]

(10:41.) Various bands of the Speakers continued through the centuries. [...]

[...] It was for this reason however, through the centuries, that many who heard it translated it into parables and tales. [...]

[...] Sometimes only one or two Speakers were alive in several centuries. [...]

[...] When I came to type up this session I wondered if Seth-Jane’s mention of the third century might be an error. [If so, I hadn’t been quick enough to catch it; I could have asked about it at once.] Since Seth gave A.D. 300 in the class session for last May, I personally think it more likely that his papal incarnation followed this date, taking place in the fourth century. The fourth century encompasses the years A.D. 301 to 400, since our modern computation of time is based upon the assumed date of the birth of Christ. [...]

[...] The four major Jewish sects known to flourish in the Holy Land at the beginning of the first century were the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Zealots and the Essenes.)

[...] Much later in your terms I would end up as a minor pope in the third century, meeting again some of those I had known — and, if you will forgive a humorous note, once more familiar with the sound of bells.

[...] My sniffing goes back for centuries.

[...] You may have an existence in the seventeenth century, for example. [...] The seventeenth century is not dead. [...]

You exist, say, in seven different centuries at once. [...]

[...] These too serve as practical ideals, but in a different kind of context, for you have other centuries to play with and many existences instead of one.

[...] In a large regard the church through the centuries ruled through the use of fear far more than the use of love. [...]

By such tactics the church managed to hold on to an entire civilization for centuries. [...]

Ruburt did initiate a small religious order in the 16th Century, in France, and he was in love for many years with the man he met in his dream—a cleric. [...]

[...] I’ve read that it’s predominantly rural in character, and thought that it was probably even more so back in the l6th century. [...]

[...] It is easy for you to think in terms of messages taking centuries to pass through space with your technology. In those terms only, some messages can take centuries to pass through the psyche—that greater psyche that straddles the eons.

[...] Was the monk Nebene—me when I was a very strict teacher of the children of rich Romans in first-century A.D. Italy? [...]

[...] In the time in which we are speaking, the duration of those lives straddles your centuries. [...]

He (to Gene) Fifteenth century—both France and Italy—a brief journey to Spain—the name however would seem to be Italian. [...] A life in the 13th century. [...] None after the existence just spoken of until 18th century—a rural area—Spain. [...]

[...] The methods have been known for centuries, not only for centuries as you know them, but for centuries as this earth existed, as you now know it. [...]

I want you to understand the nature of your inner self or, for your friend over here (to Joel Hess) the nature of your soul, for it is a focal point of reality from which other realities spring and not imprisoned in tiny boxes of days or weeks or months, or even of centuries. [...]

And if there is any redemption, my good, holy friend, (to Joel) it takes place in each moment of time now in each day, not back so many centuries ago. [...]

He will lead man behind the symbolism upon which religion has relied for so many centuries. [...]

[...] All along we’d been thinking the three personalities making up the Christ entity had already lived and died, but now here Seth was talking about the third personality returning in the next century. [...]

(10:27.) In the next century, the inner nature of man, with these developments, will free itself from many constraints that have bound it. [...]

[...] At first I’d thought he was going to say there was a connection between Paul, or Saul, and the Zealots, one of the religious sects the Jewish people had been divided into in Judaea in the first century A.D. The Holy Land was occupied by the Romans then, and Paul was a Jew and a Roman citizen. [...]

[...] One may be called “Life in the twelfth century A.D.” One may be called “Life in the eighteenth century,” or “in 500 B.C.,” or “in A.D. 3000.” [...]

[...] The scene is set in the twentieth century. [...]

[...] It is difficult for you to imagine being in two places at once, much less in two or more times, or centuries.

By the end of the 10th century the first group of personalities completed their cycle. It took the period of time from then until the late 1600’s for any valid readjustment to take place, and by the middle 17th century you began to get bursts of beneficial activities and new thrusts of knowledge.

(“In what century did this period begin?”)

[...] The world so to speak got back on its feet when these personalities reappeared centuries later; and by this time new personalities who had taken the place of those whose cycles were completed also began to use and show their abilities.

(“In what century did the withdrawal take place?”)