Reincarnation and Seth --by Dale Mann

Getting to know ourselves. If we are going to accept the idea of reincarnation we must try to understand it. We must format a working relationship with our reincarnational selves, and to begin we must set aside any notion that our past lives can not be influenced by who and what we are today. Those other selves are not gone, not lost within some timeless void, but are forever, and at this very moment, as you read this, part of and influenced by what you are. Your reincarnational selves exist. We do indeed stand on the chasms of ourselves and the pinnacles of ourselves.

During an ESP class session held by Jane Roberts on June 15, 1971 Seth said:

"In larger terms, however, you are not only the people that you were but the people that you will be. So you are affected, again only in your terms, by your future reincarnations as well as your past ones. You can, therefore, in your present say something that will change the past. And 5,000 years from now you can speak to your present selves and carry a message which you will now, in this moment, understand...."

Seth: "So, supposing we call your presently conscious self your immediate self. Will you accept that phrase? All right. So we will say you all have immediate selves which deal with the here and now, in those terms. Now the immediate self can, indeed, become aware of other portions of your own reality, and it is up to you to bring it into line. To some extent you can do this; not entirely, but intuitively, you can make great strides. You may not be able to translate the experience clearly, but you may be able to translate it capably enough so that the immediate self realizes that it is indeed a part of other experiences." (ESP Class session held by Jane Roberts on July 13, 1971)

While I do not come from a large family I, like many of you, have many cousins--somewhere. I'm sure of this having met and played together with them when I was a child. When I was young Sundays were set aside for family gatherings which not only included close relatives but sometimes distant kin. During these meetings, everyone was informed of the goings-on within the family. Afterwards everyone usually knew what activities the others were involved in.

However, over the years we loose contact with our cousins, we become separated, scattered across space, and time. And we can imaginatively think of our reincarnational selves much the same way. But with our reincarnational selves contact is never lost, only for the moment forgotten, and such links can be renewed with vigor.

As our species of consciousness became more firmly embedded within the physical system, humankind gradually became less aware, on conscious levels, of its nonphysical roots, greater heritage or history. On a smaller scale, each of us tends to lose sight of our nonphysical selfhood as we grow from childhood into adults. As we grow older, our knowledge of our greater selves is often forgotten.

After having read Seth, I've become acutely aware of that loss, and I regret it--all the while believing it was unavoidable. It's as if we've each mapped out a life's plan that includes or makes room for the joy of rediscovery. Through contrast we can more fully appreciate the difference between life with and life without that knowledge.

Having learned from Seth about reincarnational selves, we can begin to playfully think of them as cousins with whom we once had closer ties but have somehow forgotten. As Seth points out:

"You are not any of those past selves, even though they are a part of the history of your being. They are themselves in their own space and time...You are as different from those reincarnational selves, therefore, as you are from your parents, though you share certain backgrounds and characteristics." (Unknown Reality, Vol. 2, , Section 6, Session 727)

Reincarnational ties are close and important to us in ways that are vital. According to Seth, reincarnational influences make earthly relationships possible, but those influences occur on levels beyond our direct awareness. Using "family" as a simple attempt to understand the nature of our multipersonhood, we can consider what a "family reunion" of such selves could be like. The gathering place could be the altered state that comes just before sleep and may carry over into our dreams. It may prompt psychic activity from which we can draw information. As Seth said: "So you can theoretically expand your consciousness to include the knowledge of your past lives, though those lives were yours and not yours." ("Unknown" Reality, Vol. 2, Section 6, Session 731)

People often try various experiments aimed at developing their awareness or psychic abilities-little exercises that, afterwards, may seem to provide few or no results. Naturally this can cause us to doubt the validity of such attempts. Therefore it's important to realize we are often changed in some way by these very attempts. We often succeed in ways we do not comprehend. I cannot stress this point enough. Do not insist upon direct results, for there will be indirect, subjective, results which you will feel, and which will justify what you are doing.

If you will "playfully" attempt to expand your consciousness in this way, you will eventually progress to a point at which, upon falling asleep each night, you will somehow know you are about to become involved in meaningful nonphysical activities. You will launch yourself into liaisons, learning sessions, and excursions that may have nothing to do with your dreams. Each night, you will be "up to something" yet never sure what it is. This silent personal "knowing" has a tantalizing, alluring quality that's difficult to describe.

Seth said: "Now, if you are going to understand human personality or deal with the psychology of being, then you must first of all examine your own be-ing, and you cannot examine it as you can a rock. You must become your own vehicle and travel through the realities that lie within yourselves. Travel through your own reactions to each other, and you will find the answers that seem to elude you....Do not think: this could be true but it is fantasy. Follow it through and see what you get and then examine it. The answers never lie outside of yourselves...."

So as bold adventurers, we can trust ourselves and know that such experiences are all part of our becoming more than we were. The information we seek comes to us from dreams, waking inspirations, or sudden knowings; and it should make no difference how long it takes. We shape our physical future now, and that Seth taught us how to shape our nonphysical future as well. We create new tasks for ourselves that, through inner attempts at understanding, bring introspective knowledge that language cannot convey, as we prepare ourselves for future nonphysical roles and being.

According to Seth: "The next step is taken when identity is able to include within itself the intimate knowledge of all incarnations. Yet in this state, the independence of the various reincarnated selves is not diminished...As each separate identity then seeks to know and experience its other portions, then All That Is learns Who and What It Is. Action never ceases its exploration of itself." (Seth, Dreams and Projections of Consciousness, Chap.18, Session 309)

"You sense here the energy of your being, and it is death and it is life, for the two are one and united, and, in your terms, are the faces of the same reality. You will never know, in your terms again, the self that you are now, and yet it will never end, and you will always remember it. Yet there is a history, in other terms, to your being, and you can read that history. In your terms, you can look backward toward reincarnational lives, but they are not you....You are more than the selves that you think you are, and yet the selves that you are have absolute freedom within the framework of your reality, and you can even walk out of that reality, and you do, and will, and have. I am death and I am life, and so are each of you...." (ESP Class session held by Jane Roberts on January 7,1975.)

We have learned from Seth how to help ourselves, and that's a loaded statement, because, as we help ourselves, we also help our reincarnational selves, the members of our multidimensional families.