“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

[...] In that context corporeal life is an entranced one, with the focus of attention largely concentrated through the senses’ belief in the reality of their sensations. Yet that experience is the image that reality takes for you now, and so in other terms earthly life is one version of reality — not reality in its entirety, but a part of it. [...] The large events of your life, your interactions with others, including the habitual workings of the most minute physical events within your body — all of this follows your conscious belief.

[...] Is physical life a hallucination? [...]

[...] Their effects may have surrounded you, or you may have switched beliefs in one particular area of your life; but each can be changed if you utilize the power of action in the present. [...]

Each of you will find habitual thought patterns in your own life backed up by resulting action — conditioned behavior as it were — by which you continually reinforce negative aspects, concentrate upon them to the exclusion of conflicting data, and so bring them into experience through natural hypnosis.

(Pause.) There has been great discussion in past years about the survival of the fittest, in Darwinian terms,⁴ but little emphasis is placed upon the quality of life, or of survival itself; or in human terms, [there has been] little probing into the question of what makes life worthwhile. Quite simply, if life is not worthwhile (louder), no species will have a reason to continue.

Now if you believe in one life only, then such conditions will seem most disastrous, and in your terms they clearly are not pretty. [...] The lives of intimate survivors are shaken, and according to the extent of the epidemic the various elements of social life itself are disturbed, altered, rearranged. [...]

New paragraph: Despite all “realistic” pragmatic tales to the contrary, the natural state of life itself is one of joy, acquiescence with itself — a state in which action is effective, and the power to act is a natural right. You would see this quite clearly with plants, animals, and all other life if you were not so blinded by beliefs to the contrary. [...]

The quality of life is important above all. Newborn animals either die quickly and naturally, painlessly, before their consciousnesses are fully focused here, or are killed by their mothers — not because they are weak or unfit to survive, but because the [physical] conditions are not those that will produce the quality of life that makes survival “worthwhile.”

(9:14.) If it were not for this most basic, initial loving cooperation, that is a given quality in life itself, life would not have continued. Each individual of each species takes that initial zest and joy of life as its own yardstick. Each individual of whatever species, and each consciousness, whatever its degree, automatically seeks to enhance the quality of life itself—not only for itself but for all of reality as well.

[...] Your beliefs often tell you that life is hard, however, that living is difficult, that the universe, again, is unsafe, and that you must use all of your resources—not to meet [life] with anything like joyful abandon, of course, but to protect yourself against its implied threats; threats that you have been taught to expect.

[...] That is given—the gift of life brings along with it the actualization of that cooperation, for the body’s parts exist as a unit because of inner relationships of a cooperative nature; and those exist at your birth (most emphatically), when you are innocent of any cultural beliefs that may be to the contrary.

This is a given characteristic of life, regardless of the beliefs that may lead you to misinterpret the actions of nature, casting some of its creatures in a reprehensible light.

Pretend that your life’s experience is a page of a book that you write, read, and experience from top to bottom, left to right, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. [...] Still another, vaster you might be aware of all the different methods of experiencing that particular page, which is your life as you understand it.

[...] In larger terms, however, what you are is always vaster than your knowledge of yourself, for in physical life you cannot keep up with your own psychological and psychic activity.

[...] In the “entire book of life,” however, just physically speaking, there are interrelationships on adjacent levels that you do not perceive, as other portions of your own biological consciousness or biological language relate to the entire living fabric of the world. [...]

[...] To it the intense experiences of your life exist simultaneously. [...]

[...] The same applies to medicine, of course, when in its worthy purpose to save life, its methods often lead to quite unworthy experimentation (see Note 3 for Session 850), so that life is destroyed for the sake of saving, say, a greater number of lives. (Pause.) On the surface level, such methods appear sometimes regrettable but necessary, but the deeper implications far outdo any temporary benefits, for through such methods men lose sight of life’s sacredness, and begin to treat it contemptuously.

[...] When man spoke of the sacredness of life — in his more expansive moods — he referred to human life alone. [...]

[...] So I would like to reinforce the fact that life is indeed a cooperative venture, and that all the steps taken toward the ideal must of themselves be life-promoting.

[...] It is based upon the democratic belief in each individual’s right to pursue a worthy and equitable life. [...]

[...] You will not “glimpse eternal life” by attempting to deny the life that you have now — for that life is your own unique path, and provides its own clues for you to follow.

[...] Life possesses an exuberance. If this is cherished, nurtured, encouraged, then additional energy is generated that is not needed for the purposes of daily private life — a superabundance, that can be effectively directed in those areas of the world where help is most needed.

[...] Practical help is needed in all areas of the human life. [...]

[...] Purposefully in your own life, in your daily dialogues with others, in your relationships through your groups or clubs, reinforce as well as you can the strength and abilities of others.

Those who look upon physical life as inferior to some other more perfect spiritual existence do a great injustice to physical existence in general. Physical life is everywhere filled with the universal energy that is its source, so it can hardly be inferior to it’s own composition.

[...] It is because you so often view your world through a system of highly limited beliefs that you so often misread the implications of temporal life. [...]

(Long pause.) Such beliefs serve to limit your comprehension, until it seems often that physical life consists of a frantic struggle for survival at every level of consciousness. [...]

(At the supper table this evening we had been speculating about the times Seth had given in connection with his life as a pope, both in the ESP class session for May 25, 1971, and the 588th session in this chapter. [...] To our further surprise, Seth added to the data concerning that life in tonight’s session.)

The dates 325 and 375 come to mind in connection with my own life at that time. [...] In that life I learned to understand the interplay between men and their ambitions, the gulf that often exists between ideals and practical action.

(10:50.) If you think, however, that the self as you know it is the end or summation of yourself, then you also imagine your soul to be a limited entity bounded by its present ventures in one life alone, to be judged accordingly after death on the performance of a few paltry years.

[...] The soul stands both within and without the fabric of physical life as you know it. [...]

[...] Life was given, was free to develop according to its characteristic conditions. The planet was prepared, and endowed with life. Consciousness built the forms, so life existed within consciousness for all eternity. There was no point in which chemicals or atoms suddenly acquired life, for they always possessed consciousness, which is life’s requirement.

But what gives life to the egg or the seed now, keeps it going, provides that energy? Imagining some great big-bang theory (to explain the creation of the universe) gives you an immense explosion of energy, that somehow turns into life but must wear out somewhere along the line — and if that were the case, life would be getting weaker all the time, but it is not. [...]

[...] You wonder what gave life to the first egg or seed, or whatever, and think that an answer to that question would answer most others; for life, you say, was simply passed on from that point.

[...] If science wants to talk about the tree of life, of reptiles turning into birds, then we’ve certainly got the right to see all — or at least most — of the leaves on the tree, not just those at the tips of the branches.” [...]

The inborn leanings and attitudes that we have been discussing should ideally (underlined) remain with you for the rest of your life, leading you to express your abilities, and finding fulfillment as your knowledge expands through experience. [...] While these inbred psychological supports never leave you entirely, they are often diminished by beliefs encountered later in life, that serve to undermine the individual’s sense of safety and well-being.

2. My existence enriches all other portions of life, even as my own being is enhanced by the rest of creation.

3. It is good, natural, and safe for me to grow and develop and use my abilities, and by so doing I also enrich all other portions of life.

Next: By nature I am a good deserving creature, and all of life’s elements and parts are also of good intent.

Thou shalt not violate against nature, life, or the earth. In your terms creaturehood, while striving for survival and longing for life, while abundant and rambunctious, is not inherently gluttonous. [...] A cell that becomes omnivorous can destroy the life of the body.

There is hardly anything mysterious in the idea that life can kill. On a biological level all death is hidden in life, and all life in death.

[...] So the principle applies to both life and death. [...]

[...] In cancer cells the growth principle runs wild; within creaturehood each of the species has its place, and if one multiplies out of its proper order then all life and the body of the earth itself comes into peril.

[...] They are embedded in the life of insects, and in fish and fowl. They are the directions that provide life with purpose, direction, and impetus. No organism automatically expects to find starvation or disappointment or detrimental conditions — yet even when such circumstances are encountered, they in no way affect the magnificent optimism that is at the heart of life.

[...] (Long pause.) All elements of life are optimistic.

The fetus, for example, is remarkably optimistic, carrying within itself the miniature pattern for an entire human adult, taking it for granted that conditions will be favorable enough so that the entire pattern of normal life will be fulfilled despite any impediments or adverse conditions.

This expectation to grow and flourish is addressed within each atom, cell, and organ, and all of life’s parts contain this optimistic expectation and are blessed with the promise that their abilities will grow to maturity.

[...] It is quite simplistic, for example, to say, as some people do, that any given particular event from a past life leads inevitably to a particularly matching effect in a present one. [...] No one is punished in one life for “evil” activities in a previous one.

A person who has been cruel in one life may choose to experience conditions in the next life in which he or she understands the meaning of cruelty, but this does not mean that such a person would then necessarily experience an entire lifetime as a victim.

[...] The body consciousness alone understands that its physical existence in any one life is dependent upon its physical death — and that that death will assure it of still another existence. [...]

[...] Because of the true nature of time, and the interrelationships of consciousness, a future life affects a past one, for in actuality all of these existences happen simultaneously. [...]

In one life the intellect may purposely be very high, and those powers of the mind carried as far as the individual can take them. [...] Through experience in another life this same kind of individual might specialize in emotional development, and purposely underplay intellectual abilities.

[...] I mentioned to Jane now my curiosity as to whether my artistic career had any connection with my Denmark life. I wanted to know my life span then, also.

When most people think of reincarnation, they think in terms of a one-line progression in which the soul perfects itself in each succeeding life. [...]

(8:45.) Some, for example, choose to isolate various characteristics in a given life, and work on these almost exclusively, basing a given existence upon, say, one main theme. [...]

[...] Something also about improving one’s station in life. My father was in the dream with me as I knew him in “real” life, and oddly enough he was about the same age as I was in the dream. [...] Anyhow, he used a phrase that I remembered when I woke up: “I live in a brown-paper-bag part of town,” meaning a lower middle-class neighborhood; he implied that that was his station in life, and that he had no idea of trying to change it, or felt that he couldn’t. In the dream I wore a brown faded coat and perhaps a small matching hat. [...]

[...] This will improve your painting, your creative life, and your psychic life, but you are turning inward too much without knowing what you are doing, at this time. [...]

[...] And you will see at the end of a life only death and annihilation and wonder what the life was for. [...]

[...] Take me home to your laboratory for within me is the kernel of life.” [...]

[...] Now, a situation in your life can serve to trigger it as a relatively minor situation. [...]

[...] You are not, therefore, at the mercy of any neuroses from a past life any more than you are at the mercy of any neuroses from this life. There are no fears from your present life that you cannot escape and conquer. [...] You cannot be threatened in this life by fears from your early childhood in this life or by so-called past existences unless you believe so thoroughly in the nature of fear that you allow yourselves to be conquered by fear. [...]

[...] Suppose the worst, that in this life you have the following background—you are poor, you are of a minority race, you are not intellectual, you are a woman, you have a severe physical defect and you are no beauty. Now these challenges, in a so-called past life, you have set for yourself. [...]

[...] If you become too determined to justify your existence then you will begin to close out areas of your life. [...]

[...] In life you can be as dead as you think any corpse is, by contrast far deader. [...]

[...] Suppose the worst, that in this life you have the following background: You are poor, you are of a minority race, you are not intellectual, you are a woman, you have a severe physical defect and you are no beauty. Now you set these challenges for yourself in a so-called past life. [...]

[...] If you become too determined to justify your existence then you will begin to close out areas of your life. [...]

[...] In life you can be as dead as you think any corpse is — even, by contrast, far deader.

[...] I simply want you to realize that if this life is a trance, then you can turn the direction of your consciousness to perceive greater realities that presently exist. [...]

Why would anyone choose a life of illness or poverty? [...] So how can we live one life ‘before’ another?”

[...] We are not “punished” in one life for the “transgressions” of a past one. Nor do we choose illness per se as a given life situation, even though we may utilize such an illness as a part of a larger plan, as a method of teaching ourselves some important truth or as a means of developing certain abilities.

The story of Sally’s past life is fascinating. Note that this was not the life immediately past, but an earlier one in which problems were “shelved” until this existence:

Seth went on to say that in her next life, Sally was reborn as a woman of some artistic merit in a very successful existence, also in Italy. [...] “Here the personality was born only fifty miles away, and as the wife of a wealthy landowner, she often drove through the very land where the small house [of her former life] still stood with its farm. [...]

[...] Now in the middle of life, of life conditions, you also appear on occasion as ghosts in other levels of reality, where your “pseudoappearance” causes some comment and is the ground for many myths — and you are not even aware of this.

In the same way in the midst of life, you dwell with so-called ghosts and apparitions, and for that matter you yourselves appear as apparitions to others, particularly when you send strong thought-forms of yourself from the sleep state, or even when unconsciously you travel out of your physical body.

[...] The very words “life” and “death” serve to limit your understanding, to set up barriers where none intrinsically exist.

[...] So others, strangers, may communicate with you when you are sleeping, and even guide you through various periods of your life.