[...] Generally, underlined four times, suicides do not appreciate, for example, for whatever reasons, the quality of life, but set up demands as to what life should be. They require a perfection that life itself never delivers. To whatever extent you place demands upon life, or others—to that extent you will cut down on your options and experience difficulties. Life does not perform on demand.

To the extent that you enjoy the quality of life itself, you do not need to place demands upon it, for its abundance shows in profusion. Whenever you concentrate upon “what can happen” negatively, you literally cut down your options, inhibit your own and life’s abundance. [...]

[...] If you honestly trust life and your situation in it, all seeming problems disappear. [...]

In your terms, birth defects of whatever kind are chosen before this life. This is done for many different reasons (just as people choose to be ill in this life, regardless of the duration involved). That is, a certain psychic framework is set up through which an individual decides “ahead of time” to experience an entire life situation. [...]

(9:54.) Since all existences are simultaneous, this simply means his stressing certain aspects in this life — at the expense of others, you would say — and setting up a frame of reference that may seem to be limiting. [...] One of the latter may be miserably poor in one life, luxuriously rich in another, an intellectual giant in still another, a great athlete, and then a complete invalid. Individual differences operate then in the kinds of life situations chosen.

(Very emphatically at 10:03:) On an individual basis a grave illness, for instance, will represent the adoption of a particular highly intense focus in which a given aspect of usual experience is deliberately cut out or denied; the context of life itself must then be magnified along other lines. [...] The life challenge is inherent within the problem itself and springs from it. [...]

Since all is simultaneous, your present beliefs can alter your past ones, whether from this life or a “previous” one. [...] Yet within the abilities of your creaturehood, your current beliefs can change your experience; you can restructure your “reincarnational past” in the same way that you can restructure the past in this present life (as explained in sessions 657-58 in Chapter Fifteen.

[...] The sacredness of life cannot be sacrificed for life’s convenience, or the quality of life itself will suffer. In the same manner, say, the ideal is to protect human life, and in the pursuit of that ideal you give generations of various animals deadly diseases, and sacrifice their lives.³ Your justification may be that people have souls and animals do not, or that the quality of life is less in the animals, but regardless of those arguments this is fanaticism — and the quality of human life itself suffers as a result, for those who sacrifice any kind of life along the way lose some respect for all life, human life included. [...]

[...] I do not want to define his existence by those attitudes alone, however, for when he forgets the great gulf between his idealism and practical life, and speaks about other activities, then he is full of charming energy. That energy could have sustained him far more than it has, however, had he counted on his natural interests and chosen one of those for his life’s work. [...] There are satisfactions in his life [however] that prevent him from narrowing his focus even further.

[...] Roger, let us call him, is an idealist at heart, but he believes that the individual has little power in the world, and so he did not pursue his personal idealism in the events of his own life. “Everyone is a slave to the system.” [...]

[...] Had he begun the work of actualizing his ideals through his own private life, he would not be in such a situation. [...]

[...] It has seen the value of life largely only as that life conforms to its own standards. (Pause.) That is, the reasoning mind, as you have used it, considers that only reasoning creatures are capable of understanding life’s values. Other forms of life have almost seemed beside the point, their value considered only insofar as they were of service to man. But man’s life is obviously dependent upon the existence of life’s other species, and with him those species share certain values. Life is sacred—all life—and again, all life seeks value fulfillment, not simply physical survival.

(Long pause.) In physical reality, if you will forgive me, life is the name of the game—and the game is based upon value fulfillment. That means simply that each form of life seeks toward the fulfillment and unfolding of all of the capacities that it senses within its living framework, knowing that in that individual fulfillment each other species of life is also benefited.

(9:45.) In no way do I mean to demean the indisputable value of geniuses, or their great contributions to the quality of life—but the quality of life is, again, also benefited by the existence of idiots. [...]

[...] The proceedings, however, do involve a biological violation, a going against nature’s flow and intent, a process in which a form of life is made to go against its own value fulfillment, and it is because of such attitudes involving other kinds of life that the horrors of the Jewish war camps were made possible.

(With emphasis, while Billy slept curled up against my left elbow as I sat on the couch writing down Seth’s material:) Animals know that their own lives spell out life’s meaning. They feel their relationship with all other forms of life. [...] Beyond that, they identify themselves with the spirit of life within them so fully and so completely that to question its meaning would be inconceivable. Not inconceivable because such creatures cannot think, but because life’s meaning is so self-evident to them.

(Long pause.) Whenever man believes that life is meaningless, whenever he feels that value fulfillment is impossible, or indeed nonexistent, then he undermines his genetic heritage. He separates himself from life’s meaning. [...] Any philosophy that promotes the idea that life is meaningless is biologically dangerous. [...]

[...] On the whole, in the vast scheme of reincarnational reality, a belief in life’s meaning is by far the rule, and other excursions are indeed eccentric variations. Specifically, however, such life episodes will of course involve their “moments” of after-death realization—dismay, shock, or what have you.

If there is no life after life,
then what cosmic spendthrift formed
the universe,
for Chance alone can’t be
that prolific, or fake an order in which
an accident of such proportions
as the creation of a world
seems so inevitable,
each random element
falling pat, into place,
and each consciousness promptly appearing
with body parts all neatly assembled—
only to be squandered,
falling apart, dissolving into nothingness
while Chance grinds out newer odds.

(9:15.) Now, as you have memory of your waking life and as you retain a large body of such memory for daily physical encounters, and as this fount of memory provides you with a sense of daily continuity, so also does your dreaming self have an equally large body of memory. As there is continuity to your daily life, so there is continuity in your sleeping life.

[...] The soul creates the flesh for a reason, and physical existence for a reason, so none of this is to lead you to a distaste for physical life, nor toward a lack of appreciation for those sensual joys with which you are surrounded. Any inner journeys should allow you to find greater significance, beauty, and meaning in life as you know it now; but full enjoyment and development also means that you use all of your abilities, that you explore inner dimensions with as much wonder and enthusiasm. [...]

“DEATH” CONDITIONS IN LIFE

(Humorously): Now: Chapter Ten: “‘Death’ Conditions in Life.” [...]

To “let go” is to trust the spontaneity of your own being, to trust your own energy and power and strength, and to abandon yourself to the energy of your own life. [...] To abandon yourself, then, to the power of your own life, is to rely upon the great forces within and yet beyond nature that gave birth to the universe and to you.

[...] To a strong extent, such individuals reject their own lives, and often the conditions of life in general. Many of them object that they did not want to be born in the first place, and they feel that way because they have so thoroughly repressed the will to life within them. [...]

Those same unfortunate beliefs, feelings, and attitudes are also present to a lesser degree, and in different mixtures, in the cases of life-endangering diseases. [...] They are often triggered, finally, by a traumatic life situation — the death of a spouse or parent, a major disappointment, or any experience that is particularly shocking and disturbing to the particular person involved.

[...] It seems as if some drugs permit an individual to let down barriers of fears and repressions, and to emotionally transcend the problems of daily life. [...]

The “true facts” are that you exist in this life and outside it simultaneously. [...] The deeper dimensions of reality are such that your thoughts and actions not only affect the life you know, but also reach into all of those other simultaneous existences. [...] Your life is a dreaming experience to other portions of your greater reality which focus elsewhere.

There is little use in trying to discover other levels of your own reality if you insist upon applying the laws of physical life to your own larger experience. [...] You cannot, however, insist that the laws of your vaster existence, as you discover them, supersede the physical conditions of known life — for then no facts would apply either. [...]

If, however, you learn to know yourself better in daily life to become more fully aware even of your earthly life, then you will indeed receive other information that hints of a deeper, more supportive reality, in which physical existence rests. [...]

[...] Daily life is a focus taken on the part of that portion of the psyche you call you, and there are many other such focuses. [...]

(3. Something about my Roman life in the first century AD. Although Seth discussed reincarnation in the last regular session, he gave nothing on that life per se. [...]

[...] At times, however, you refused to lead in this life when circumstances might have warranted a more active role at particular times, because in that previous life you would not buck Ruburt, and because you also were more cautious this time about the use of personal power.

[...] In this life you concentrated upon the search for knowledge—and even in that particular past life, power was important only because it was considered the gift to believers from God, and therefore the natural result of knowledge.

In that life you did not understand, however, the true independence of men’s minds. You went overboard, trying to influence their minds, and not influencing their minds at the same time in this life, lest they follow you blindly.

You felt that you wanted to give a life for the one you accidentally destroyed, but it need not have been the life of the same personality, had you chosen otherwise. You also still remember that the father of your child was a woman, and your sister, and so in this life you have found the relationship ambiguous.

Your child, in a past life, this child was an uncle and in an accident you killed him. [...]

[...] While there was a past family connection, you were not the closest of friends, and there was no need or desire on either of your parts for a family connection of any duration in this life.

[...] She likes horses this life. [...]

[...] If you do, then again from your viewpoint that particular next earthly life will be yours. If you do not, your next earthly life will be a different one, where for example that information from the future did not take, or was not given.

Any life is a future one according to your framework, or any life is a past one according to your framework. [...]

[...] In basic terms, however, you cannot equate one self with another self—or for that matter one life with another life, for the subjective realities of people involve dimensions that do not show physically.

[...] One entity might focus its main energy, intent, and drive in one particular earth life, filled with incredible creativity, so that that “focus life” becomes a central core for all other existences, the foundation and the source of energy for all other lives.

(1. In the 556th session, Seth said that many writers of historical pieces are writing out of direct past-life experience. My question concerned a hypothetical experiment in which, say, a hundred such writers would be hypnotized without being told what the purpose of the experiment was; once under, they would be queried about past-life memories. [...]

In the beginning, the womb state under these conditions is a dreamlike one, with the personality still focused mainly in the between-life existence. Gradually the situation reverses, until it becomes more difficult to retain clear concentration in the between-life situation.

[...] Decisions as to future lives may be made not only in between-life conditions but also in dream states in any given life.

[...] What is the initial life like? [...]

Consciously you knew this was a rich country in your present life, but unconsciously you held to these old feelings of fear. [...] In that life, in that life of which I am speaking—you had a man, roughly resembling your wife in bone structure, and in temperament. [...] When you found this sort of a woman in this life, for your own reasons, you were attracted to her. [...]

[...] For one thing, this still involves you with problems from a past life. [...] The particular life that we dealt with so briefly made an extremely strong psychic effect upon you for it was nearly impossible to cope, there was no food. [...] But it left you, that life, with the feeling that physical reality was so difficult that you could not handle it alone. [...]

[...] For information is given to you not only in your waking, conscious, alert daily life but in what you would call your unconscious sleep state. [...] Your dream life is continuous, only your waking ego closes out the inner stimuli and does not see it, for it must concentrate upon physical daily reality. [...]

[...] And in this life you decided to experience these. [...]

3 but all life is not your type life.

[...] Your senses can only see your own kind of life.

(“Has earth been visited by alien life?”)

(“What will happen when we begin making our journeys to other planets and stars, looking for life?”)

You were a stern teacher and yet the love of music in that life sustains you often in this life. [...] You were, in that life, a male. [...] You had an earlier life at the time when the most important Greek plays were being written. In that life, the earlier one, you were an actor. [...]

[...] 1832 there to 1856, a very short life, under I believe a czar, and during this life, you met your present husband who was a young girl, the brother (sister?) of one of your students. This brief life taught you strongly, however, that music, as a portion of creativity, could be violently used by the state and by authority. You were at the time, extremely dogmatic, and you did not allow yourself full freedom with your instrument or with your life. [...]

[...] This from a life in England before the German experience, and this a long life in which you were a woman and unmarried. [...] You had a fondness for music but all your life you copied the notes and letters of others. [...]

[...] So you also have strong healing abilities but these, so far in your personal life, have been latent because of your fear and your obsession in the other direction. [...] In your own personal life you are afraid to use your abilities of this healing. [...]

So while Seth often explains present life problems as the result of past life difficulties, he makes it clear to those that can understand that the lives really exist simultaneously, just as three personalities can exist in one body at one time. But all problems are not the result of such “past life” influences. In one case, a friend’s hang-ups in the present originated right in this life, though her boyfriend’s were left over from the past.

Some people are better able to utilize past life experience, I think, while others insulate themselves rather closely in each life, closing themselves off as much as possible from such influences. [...] Our fifty- or sixty- or seventy-year life-spans are like self-contained novels, well plotted and executed.

[...] She has already begun a new life, therefore [Seth does not mean another physical life here, of course], though presently her experience is being monitored to some degree by guides.

Seth rarely gives reincarnational data unless it is directly tied in with the overall development of an individual’s present life, and he refuses to give past life histories, for example, to those he thinks will not apply the lessons involved. [...]

In all cases, however, the need for value fulfillment, expression, and creativity are so important to life that when these are threatened, life itself is at least momentarily weakened. Innately, each person does realize that there is life after death, and in some instances such people realize that it is indeed time to move to another level of reality, to die and set out again with another brand-new world.

The would-be suicide’s problem is usually not one of suppressed rage or anger, it is instead the feeling that there is no room in his or her private life for further development, expression, or accomplishment, or that those very attributes are meaningless.

People with life-threatening diseases also often feel that further growth, development, or expansion are highly difficult, if not impossible to achieve at a certain point in their lives. [...]

[...] The desire to die is considered cowardly, even evil, by some religions — and yet behind that desire lies all of the vitality of the will to life, which may already be seeking for new avenues of expression and meaning.

[...] Perhaps they were instead efforts on the part of my own explorations of value fulfillment to reorganize my life’s vast energies. But instead of facing up to a considerable change in life-style, I panicked and felt myself to be almost assaulted, forced into a life that offered less and less physical freedom. [...]

[...] In this book, Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment, for example, Seth portrays us as a vibrant, well-intended species—a physically attuned kind of consciousness beautifully tailored by our own cosmic ingredients to live lives of productivity, of spiritual and physical enjoyments, with each individual life in charge of its own fate and adding to the potentials of all other life as well.

[...] But more than that, I’ve seen in my own life the steady accumulation of physical symptoms.

If life has such great potentials, as Seth maintains, if it began—and begins (and continues to begin) at such rich creative and productive levels—then why did our experience so often make it seem that we struggled against unknowing or uncaring cosmic forces, or that we were at the most so ignorant of our own source and creativity that our hands were tied, or that we were forever shut off from our natural heritage?

You cannot divorce philosophy from life, for your thoughts and opinions give your life its meaning and impetus. There are some people who believe that life is meaningless, that it has no purpose, and that its multitudinous parts fell together through the workings of chance alone. [...]

All of life is seen as heading for extinction in any case. The entire concept of a soul, life after death, or even life from one generation to the next, becomes largely doubtful, to say the least. [...]

Again, each portion of nature is propelled by the inner vitality, energy, and life force within it. [...]

Both mechanisms suddenly line up the belief systems in one particular manner, knocking aside all doubts but accepting instead a strict obedience to the new belief system, and a new reorganization of life itself beneath that new cause.

(Pause.) Life at all levels of activity is propelled to seek ideals, whether of a biological or mental nature. That pursuit automatically gives life its zest and natural sense of excitement and drama. Developing your own abilities, whatever they may be, exploring and expanding your experience of selfhood, gives life a sense of purpose, meaning, and creative excitement — and also adds to the understanding and development of the society and the species.

[...] Your thoughts, feelings and expectations are like the living brush strokes with which you paint your corner of life’s landscape. If you do your best in your own life, then you are indeed helping to improve the quality of all life. [...]

As you learn to allow your impulses some freedom, you will discover their connection with your own idealized version of what life should be. You will begin to discover that [those spontaneous urges] are as basically good and life-giving as the physical elements of the earth, that provide the impetus for all biological life.

[...] When you do not take any steps toward an ideal position, then your life does lack excitement. [...]