“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

A simple tree deals with the nature of probabilities as it thrusts forward into new seeds. Computations go on constantly within it, and that communication involves an inner kind of language innocent of symbols and vowels. The tree knows its present and future history,⁷ in your terms, but it understands a future that is not preordained. It feels its own power in the present as it constructs that future. In deeper terms the tree’s seeds also realize that there is a future there — a variety of futures toward which they grope.

The fetus itself, before its conception, responds to a self not yet physically apparent; and the future, in those terms, draws new life from the past. A reality of selfhood, an idea not yet materialized in the unformed future, reaches down into the past and brings that future into realization. The cells are imprinted with physical information in terms of space and time,³ but those data came from a reality in which space and time are formed.

To a future self no more illuminated than you are, you appear dead and lifeless — a dim memory. When you look out into the universe from your viewpoint, it seems as if you look into the past.⁸ Scientists tell you that when the light from every distant galaxy reaches you, the galaxy is already dead. In the same way, when you look “backward” into the psyche the life you may indistinctly view — the past life — is already vanished. Why is it that your scientists’ instruments do not allow them to look into the future instead, into worlds not yet born, since they operate so well in discerning the past? And why is it, with all of your ideas about reincarnation, there is precious little said about future lives?⁹

One of the Roman soldiers, Maumee, and Nebene are mentioned in Appendix 21; see the excerpts there from the private session for November 18, 1974, as well as Note 1. Then see the comments Seth made the next evening in ESP class: “There are, of course, future memories as well as past ones … As Joseph often says: ‘When you think of reincarnation, you do so in terms of past lives.’ You are afraid to consider future lives because then you have to face the death that must be met first, in your terms. And so you never think of future lives, or how you might benefit from knowing them….”

The idea of future lives brings into consideration certain emotions—man’s fear of the future, for he is often afraid of what tomorrow will bring. Again, a future life presupposes death in the present one. That idea of death usually serves as an effective block against such future explorations.

One of the main root assumptions of your popular world has been that the future does not exist in the present. Religion deals with the idea of an afterlife, again, a future event. Even those who accept reincarnation, again, usually believe that the past is finished and the future yet to come. [...]

Most people could not handle a knowledge of future lives in the present. [...] You can try to contact future selves, however, simply by trying to do so. It is better to concentrate on the subjective reality involved—that is easier, for if successful you will automatically tune into the future self that “emerged” from your present reality. [...]

[...] In a manner of speaking, future lives are not “there” as completed entities to be grasped, either. [...] You do have “future selves.” [...]

In thinking in terms of consecutive time, however, evolution does not march from the past into the future. Instead, the species is precognitively aware of those changes it wants to make, and from the “future” it alters the “present” state of the chromosomes and genes² to bring about in the probable future the specific changes it desires. [...]

[...] To the self the future, of course, is not experienced as future. [...] The cells’ practically felt “Now” includes, then, what you would think of as past and future, as simple conditions of Nowness. [...]

[...] On the one hand as a species your present forms your future, but in even deeper terms your precognitive awareness of your own possibilities from the future helps to form the present that will then make that probable future your reality.

[...] In very simple terms the architect’s dream can be called a precognitive event, inserted from a probable future into the present. The physical planning carried out is in line with the envisioned future, and brings it about. [...]

If you are aware of such a future episode, you will be forced to react to it as a conscious being. [...] The future incident may then occur in its time sequence, and you recognize it through memory, in which case your reactions in that future present will be altered because of the seemingly past memory.

The past does have its own past, present and future, therefore. From a given past event you will only materialize a particular future, but the event itself continues, and possesses a dimensionality of its own — or rather a multidimensionality that you also possess.

[...] There are elements in your past that are as unpredictable, however, as the elements in your future now appear to be (emphatically). There is creativity in your past waiting for you even as there is in your future, but to utilize such experiences you must learn to alter your beliefs, and to some degree escape from the particular kind of limited conscious focus that you habitually use.

[...] In the same way, a future experience may also be physically perceived in your present. Now beneath your usual consciousness, your physical organism can react to future events without your knowledge, as it can to past ones. [...]

(1. About reincarnations Why do people say they remember past lives, but very seldom refer to future lives? If Seth’s ideas on the subject are correct, people should remember both past and future lives.

There is something else, in that in certain terms the way must be open, because people believe in a continuous time, and would feel the weight of future actions bearing down upon them in this life if they were aware of their future existences. [...]

As a matter of fact, however, many futuristic books and novels fictionally contain elements of such future knowledge. When people form even dreams about other lives, they often draw upon the picture books of history, and there is no such heritage of a cultural nature with which they can flesh out any dreams of future lives.

[...] Those futures in your terms so affect the present, however, that vast confusion would result with any mass knowledge. Yet many inventions occur in a strange fashion, as men do at times travel into their own futures and bring back the memory of, say, gadgets existing there, which then in this life they “invent.”

[...] You can make plans for the future, but do not worry about the future. [...]

In a basic way, it is against nature’s purposes to contemplate a dire future, for all of nature operates on the premise that the future is assured. [...]

(I told Jane that we have to follow it — that we simply must dump all else and trust the body, that nothing else makes any sense any more, that it’s the key to our futures. [...] She said she’s going to start with Day One tomorrow, and take it from there, trusting the body, not dwelling upon the past, and leaving the future open. [...]

[...] It is perfectly fine to make plans for the future, yet each individual should live day by day, without worrying (underlined) about the outcome of those plans.

[...] In certain terms, however, the future represents, say, another kind of depth that belongs to events. [...] But the roots of events go through your past, present, and future.

In those terms, past or future-life memories usually remain like ghost images by contrast. [...]

Often by purposefully trying to slow down your thought processes, or playfully trying to speed them up, you can become aware of memories from other lives — past or future. [...]

[...] You form your past lives now in this life as surely as you form your future ones now also.

5. Since he cannot see up or down (as we cannot see the fourth dimension) he is not aware that his “future” is already there and that his “past” still exists. [...] Seth has told us that there is no past or future, only the spacious present. All of the past and the future exist now to those who can see time as the fourth dimension. [...]

6. If this two-dimensional being, through psychic ability were able to project himself into other levels of his existence (the stack) he could see his “future” and that of other beings in nearby stacks. [...]

[...] He did so this evening also, of course, when he remarked at 10:59 that our “ideas of Atlantis are partially composed of future memories” — thus leaving room for past manifestations. Seth’s theory of simultaneous time, which can encompass the notion of future probabilities projected backward into an apparent past, for instance, leaves great leeway for the interpretation of events or questions, however, and makes the idea of contradiction posed by an Atlantis in the past and one in the future too simple as an explanation. At any given “time,” depending on whatever information he’s given previously, Jane could just as easily quote Seth as placing Atlantis in our historic past, or in a probable past, present, or future — or all four “places” at once, for that matter. [...]

[...] Apart from that, the legend as picked up, so to speak, by Plato (see Appendix 14) was a precognition of the future probability, an image of an inner civilization of the mind actually projected outward into the future, where it would be used as a blueprint, dash — the lost grandeur, as, in other terms, Eden became the lost garden of paradise.

[...] It exists both in your past and future, a probable world that some of you will choose from a model placed in the past of your future — partially based upon fact, in your terms, but with its greatest validity lying in its possibilities.”

[...] ) Your ideas of Atlantis are partially composed of future memories. [...]

I referred to a “successful” progression because reaching into the future is evidently much more difficult. By its very nature a future life cannot be proven—records checked, and so forth. [...] (See Session 721 in Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality.) However, neither of us have had such an outright encounter with a future self—that we know of. I’d say that under hypnosis the urge to fantasize the future lives must be a tempting one; but what’s the explanation for achieving little more than a formless future state while “under,” no matter how hard one tries? [...]

[...] But that must happen all of the time!) The uncertainty perceived here by the conscious self, however, can act as a great restraint toward knowing a future life or lives—just as much as might the fear of tuning into one’s physical death ahead of time in this life. Hook up those two factors with the quite natural concern that at least some events in any life to come will inevitably be unpleasant, or worse, and we have at least three powerful restraints, or psychic blocks, inhibiting awareness of future lives. [...] Everything considered, we may just not want to know about future lives most of the time.

I think it quite humorous (and ironic) that whether or not they realize it, those who engage in past-life regressions play with the notion of future selves all of the time—for from the standpoint of any “past” lives they reach their present lives obviously represent future existences. In a way, and in those terms, this also applies in Jane’s case when she contacts Seth, even on the “psychological bridge” those two have constructed between them: When Seth tells us that his last physical life was in Denmark in the 1600s, then Jane and I represent future physical selves of his. [...]

The serf will invariably be looking at his time through a different focus than his future self could ever do. [...] (I wonder whether a long-term past-life sexual fantasy could be connected to a real sexual problem or challenge in a present—or future—life.)

[...] If he so chose, he would also feel the past amd future essence of each living thing within his range.”

[...] Since past, present, and future have no basic reality, this sense allows us to see through the apparent time barriers. [...]

[...]

(12:02.) In a very limited and fumbling manner this is hinted at through the use of computers, where you try to assess “future probabilities” and act accordingly in your present. [...] The brain would become aware of more of the mind’s knowledge, and the probabilities of future events would be made consciously available.

Now you can alter your present through altering your past, or you can change your present from the future. [...] Many people have at one time or another changed their present behavior in response to the advice of a “future” probable self, without ever knowing they have done so.

(12:21.) In other terms, the self that you have projected into the future is sending you back encouragement from a probable reality that you still can create. That focused self operates from its present, however, and some day in your own future you may find yourself thinking nostalgically of a moment back in your own past, when you were indecisive and irresolute, but took the proper course.

[...] And in that moment you are the future self that “once” spoke encouragingly to the person of the past. The probable future has caught up with the practical present.

[...] This future shadowing the present, or future illuminating the present, represents a vital element in the formation of events as they are perceived in time. In a fashion the triplets were reacting in their past to a future event that has now caught up with them, so that each of their actions in any moment of that past happened as a result of a tension — a creative tension — between the event of their original separation and the event of their future reunion.

[...] When you look at world events, however, the present world situation for example (the war between Iraq and Iran, which began a few days ago), try to enlarge the scope of your intellectual reach, so that you consider world events as living multidimensional “novels” being formed in the present in response to both future and past triggers. The impact of the future on the past, in your terms — or rather, the implications of the future on the present — are highly important, and such precognitive reactions are as vital, numerous, and real as you ordinarily think that the reactions to past events are (intently).

The idea, then, of the novel came from past and future events, though you were to catch up with those future events very quickly. [...]

[...] Men act, then, in relationship to events that have, historically speaking, not yet occurred — but those events happening, say, in the future, in certain terms cast their shadows back into the present, or illuminate the past according to the events’ characteristics. [...]

For example: It is truer to say that heredity operates from the future backward into the past, than it is to say that it operates from the past into the present. Neither statement would be precisely correct in any case, because your present is a poised balance affected as much by the probable future as the probable past.

[...] It should appear obvious from what I am saying that neither future nor past is predetermined. From your platform of poised now-experience, you alter both the past and the future, and that alteration, that change, that action, causes your point of immediate sense life.⁵

(A one-minute pause at 11:22.) Such behavior even causes a certain corporal dishonesty, for the cells’ freedom from time means that on certain levels the cellular structure is aware of probable future events, as mentioned (just before break). The body, therefore, is reacting to future and past activity as well, in order to maintain its present corporal balance.

[...] Although the body appears permanent and in existence from one moment to the next, basically it constantly rises out of the bed of probabilities, hovering at your now-point of perception and experience, and its apparent stability is dependent upon the knowledge of “future” probabilities as well as “past” ones.

[...] There is a constant interchange going on between what you think of as your present self, and your past and future selves. [...] Therefore, actions that you make now can help a so-called past personality; and a so-called future personality may step in and help you along your weary way.

[...] When you understand the nature of reality, then you realize that predictions of future events are basically meaningless. You can predict some events and they can occur, but you create the future in every moment.

[...] Often, however, the suggestion involved in a dream brings about the event, so it seems when the dream becomes real that you have looked into a future that already existed. [...] The question cannot be answered simply for there are many ramifications, but from this instant of reality you form and change not only the future, but the past. [...]

[...] You not only form the future, as you think of it, but you also form the past. [...]

[...] And a so-called future personality will step in and help you along your weary way, but also, your actions now can also affect the future personality as well as the past one. [...]

I am not cautious, I am simply realistic and when you understand the nature of reality then you realize that predictions of future events are basically meaningless. Now you can predict some events and they occur, but you create the future in every moment in your frame of reference, and time in your terms is plastic. [...]

[...] You not only form the future, as you think of it, but you also form the past. [...]

[...] There is a constant interchange going on between what you think of as your present self and what you think of as your past self and what you may think of as your future self. [...]

This joining of the past and present, in that context, predisposes you to similar future events, for you have geared yourself for them. Change now quite practically alters both the past and the future. For you, because of your neurological organization, the present is obviously the only point from which past and future can be changed, or when action becomes effected.

[...] Do not be intimidated therefore by the past or the future. There is no need at all for undesirable aspects of your contemporary reality to be projected into the future, unless you use the power of the present to do so.

[...] In the most intimate of terms, your past and future are modified by your present reactions. [...]

For an exercise, sit with your eyes wide open, looking about you, and realize that this moment represents the point of your power, through which you can affect both past and future events.

[...] Now Ferd looked into a possible future, and this was quite legitimate—as a probable future. [...] It is possible to perceive the future as it will be; on the other hand the future itself is always changing, for you change it in the present. [...]

Had your abilities been developed sufficiently, you could have seen through these probable futures into the actual physical future event that would come to pass. [...]

[...] In the attempt to use your ability, to probe into the future, you allowed yourself to take more upon yourself than you should have.

[...] However, the future event predicted was bound up with a series of events that would have had to occur within that two-day period. [...]

[...] The future is in no way predetermined on basic levels. This does not mean that the future cannot be predicted sometimes, for in practical terms you will often continue with certain lines of probability which can be seen “ahead of time.”

(A one-minute pause at 11:21.) Learned behavior therefore alters not only present and future but also past conduct. [...] The moment as you think of it, then, is the creative framework through which you, the nonphysical self, constantly form corporeal reality; and through that window into earthly existence you form both its future and its past.

In your terms, practically speaking, probable events seem to make more sense when you think of them as latent future ones.

[...] As far as you are concerned the present is your point of action, focus, and power, and from that point of volition you form both your future and past. [...]

[...] You may for example request before sleep that you project into your own future, to see what occurs there. [...] You will be projecting of course into the probable future as it exists for you at this point.

[...] It is also possible of course to move into your own future. [...]

[...] If you have your wits about you, you can gain information concerning the future by studying your projection environment, if for any reason you suppose it to be ahead of you in time.

[...] I am not saying that this future environment is not real, however. [...]