You have other centuries to play with...In the dream state you meet and interact with your own reincarnational selves...I prefer that you think of them as simultaneous selves. In the dreaming condition there is a great interchange of information with these other portions of your selves.
The speaker is the entity named Seth, as channeled by the remarkable medium and author Jane Roberts in The Nature of Personal Reality. I first read this important book nearly quarter of a century ago. I came to it reluctantly, because I find I often have resistance to channeled material. Maybe that's related to the fact that my great-aunt was a gifted psychic medium, as well as an opera singer, who foresaw my death when I was three years old. She was right; the following winter, I developed pneumonia and "died and came back" - as a physician put it - in a hospital in Tasmania. What spurred me to read Jane Roberts was the arrival of a lively woman from Venezuela at the farm where I was then living. I had met her on a boat on the Amazon river, drinking caipirinhas, which were then unknown in the United States. Before she crossed my threshold, Romelia said urgently, "You must read Jane Roberts."
It was excellent advice. In the Seth books and in her novels - the Oversoul Seven trilogy - Jane Roberts and her source intelligence provide one of the clearest models of the multidimensional self, and of the role of dreaming in awakening to our connections with personalities in other times and dimensions. As in the passage quoted above, Seth invites us to go beyond simplistic, linear approaches to reincarnation. When we step outside chronos time (as we do constantly in dreams) we find that everything is going on now. If I am connected to the druid in Scotland circa 600, or that young priestess-scientist of 2300, then choices I make now can affect them in their own times, as choices they make can affect me, sending influences both ways through the skeins of the web that connects us.
In the Oversoul Seven stories, Jane Roberts dramatizes how all of this may operate, with a lively depiction of a supervising intelligence ("oversoul") that is watching over personalities whose life dramas are unfolding in very different places and times, from the Stone Age to the present. The oversoul is very far from infallible. It is on probation, being supervised by an intelligence on a higher level. It can lose its perspective when it is drawn too deep into the adventures of one of its family of personalities, and even forget that its responsibilities go beyond one life situation.
To know more about such things, Jane Roberts and Seth remind us over and over, we must tune into our dreams, and never forget the correct time, which is always Now. "Realize that now is your point of power."
The portrait of Seth was painted by Rob Butts, Jane Roberts' husband. In one of their sessions, Seth declared that the likeness was "excellent". Before I had access to this picture, I dreamed of a Seth who looked very much like this, and appeared to be a publican in a Northern European fishing port.
20 comments:
After Carl Jung, Seth was the next important eye opener in my life. His philosophy and psychology is indeed very helpfull to understand the multidimensional richeness of dreams.
Another "dead guy" who follows the footsteps of Seth is called "Elias". Seth was his teacher and Elias was involved in the creation of the Oversoul 7 trilogy. His philosophy can be found here: http://www.eliasweb.at/
Greetings from Switzerland,
Christoph
I don't want to be a buzz-kill, but there are some inherent risks involved in dealing with channeled material. Besides the obvious dishonest hucksters, there can be others ways this material can be misleading. There are lower vibrational entities that seem to like to take advantage of humans by channeling false teachings, as well as entities that have good intentions but aren't as advanced spiritually as they believe, misleading followers out of ignorance. This is not to say that all channeled material is bad, from "A Course in Miracles" to (some would argue) the bible there's a lot of good to be found. However without a verifiable method of discerning the false from the true, I believe it's best to exercise significant caution in this area. Please don't read this as an attack on anyone's personal beliefs, rather as just a friendly word to the wise.
Michael
Michael - I think you have expressed some of my own resistance to much of this material as a genre. One needs a working BS detector in approach it, plus a sense of humor. Jane Roberts' Seth passes muster with me, royally, though I could do without all the interpolated notes on how sessions were conducted and sometime wish we could simply have had the essence of this communicated by Jane in her own voice - she was a very good write.
Christoph - I will check out the Elias material, despite my continuing resistance to most channeled material. So you won't have to turn up on my doorstep yelling like the woman friend from Caracas :-)
I, too have felt a lot of resistance to channeled material. I used to refuse to accept it at all. I have never read any Jane Roberts publications.
But on the other hand I have read quite a bit of, and about, Edgar Cayce. Your post inspired me. I now feel more encouragement to read the Seth material.
Thank you, Robert ~~ Don
@michael and don:
My approach to channeled material is to check the content. If it resonates strongly and positively in me, the material is for me personaly valuable. The whole corpus of the Seth Material and of Elias philosophy fullfill this criterion.
Kind regards,
Christoph
Robert, Christoph, Don,
As a chiropractor I have found Dr. David Hawkins work very useful in this area. He utilized an applied kineseology muscle testing procedure to determine truthfulness/perspective. However, I think its much more difficult to be accurate than he does.
Mike
Discernment is essential in approaching these areas, and it is something that is developed by practice, which is likely to involve some degree of trial and error. In my book "Dreamgates" I suggest some very clear guidelines for discerning whether a contact on psychospiritual levels is authentic and helpful.
When it comes to transcribed material, we have to rely on what resonates (as Christoph says), use our common sense, and do what verification and fact-checking we can. In"The Dreamer's Book of the Dead", I describe, rather frankly, a series of conversations with "dead guys" of the era of William Butler Yeats, and the subsequent research I was able to do to check bona fides and the reliability of information that they gave me; you might want to consider what I learned (during and after one of these dialogues) of Kuno Meyer, one of the great early translators if the Irish voyage stories and wonder tales.
I have a very healthy skeptic resident in my left brain, and I call on his services to check everything. I also trust my gut and the "shivers" I feel in my energy field.
I will add that, as a writer and student of the deeper reality, I am often more interested in the style and quality and objective value of the material than in whether it came from a specific "dead guy" or "personality essence."
Seth is one of the few channeled beings I've paid attention to, because, as with me, he has concluded that personality-selves in parallel universes make more sense as a theory behind the existence of our "other" lives than linear reincarnation.
As a lifelong lucid and vivid dreamer, a multi-level OBEr, and an ontologist since my days in crib, I realized early on that so-called physical life is but a tiny subset of a greater realm that I often refer to as the Dreamworld. Like Lovecraft's Randolph Carter, I am an avid and well-recognized explorer in the many realms of the Dreamworld, and have found that my "dreams" share a coherent history, connecting a perhaps infinite number of lives and experiences that are connected both to one another, and to my Master Self (or Identity).
In my dreams/OBEs/extra-physical experiences, I am able to recall my other dreams, their connection with one another as part of a whole, and see how they form a much larger existence for me than "waking" earth consensus reality - and also, how this "physical" life fits in with the greater Dream.
My sense of things is that we are, ultimately, Master Identities much like Plato's perfect forms, living beyond time and space, and that - maybe springing into the denser "3D" energy environments as the harmonic resonances of vibrating stings of energy, as some string-theorists suggest - we manifest across a perhaps infinite spectrum of dimensions or parallel universes as more limited personality selves. These selves tend to get caught up in the minutia of their various realities and tend to forget that they are fractals or holons of their Master Selves. In our earth-life case, this may have to do with the regulation of the pineal valve and DMT-like secretions.
Anyway, I have always been unhappy with the idea of linear reincarnation, knowing that we actually exist beyond time, space, and apparent death, and I view my task in this physical life (at least the main task) as waking up to all the interconnected versions of myself that are accessible in dreams/OBEs, and remembering the Master Identity, and who I really am. My dreaming life, and synchronicities in wakng life, help me to achieve this.
At my Lilli Pierce and the Big Trip message board, we have an ongoing Nowness project dedicated to waking up to our greater selves beyond space and time.
Years ago I wrote an essay on this subject that might be of interest to some of you: "On the Tao of Being a Holon: Paradox, Madness, and Love." http://www.lillipierce.com/onbeing.htm
Robert, you are my favorite writer on dreaming ourselves alive, and I enjoy your work immensely. The interview on Canadian television was excellent. I have beeen sharing your posts on Facebook.
-Dave
Hi David - Grand to hear your voice here. Thanks for your lively confirmation that (as you quote Vonnegut) we can become "unstuck in time", and for your generous endorsement of my Active Dreaming approach.
I've always liked Plato's idea (in the Timaeus, as memory serves) that psyche is too vast to fit into one body; only a part takes up residence, while the rest remains in a larger reality. And Plotinus' perception that the fundamental life teacher is the self on the level of reality and consciousness above the one where we are living, and that personal evolution may bring a fusion with that self that will bring us, together, in contact with a self on a yet higher level. For me, this is an accessible and mobilizing way of understanding progression towards that "Master identity" of which you speak.
Noting you two deletions, I'm wondering whether these are the white shades of comments posted by parallel Davids in parallel worlds :-)
Hi Robert,
Just before visiting this blog posting I was attempting a dream reentry to a favorite dream I had never visited. It just wouldn't take and so instead I went looking for some guidance. Climbing my great grandfather's maple tree I found myself in another favorite dream. This time a dream from the future where I am visiting a scientist priestess who is responsible for moving high tech operations out of the biosphere and into orbit. She is quite a revered figure and very old at the point in time of the dream. In my reentry I am told that this dream is a visit to some other self in the multidimensional realm and I am shown possible lines of development and connection. Back in the dream she shows me some of her "past" lives. Back in waking reality I decide to catch up on the recent blog posts and see that the topic is on the mark. Ah, it is all so beautifully mixed up and this is just the tip of the iceberg!
I also have many concerns about channeled material, but Jane and Seth are full of good stuff. I still recall how jarring and wonderful it felt to finally see someone talking about reincarnation working outside of time and thus there is no need to bind it in time. My intuition had always been that this was the case and to see it explained in detail was a revelation.
In any case, I'm looking forward to exploring more of my multidimensional self in dreams and etc..
--fran
Fran - It seems we are very much on the same page, in the library of the scholar-city of Anamnesis, one of my favorite locales in the imaginal realm. In my work as a teacher and writer, I am very conscious of my obligations to a priestess-scientist of the possible future. I look forward to reading more of your reports and travelogues from your adventures in the multiverse.
Robert, I'm glad you mentioned the imaginal realm in your response to Fran. I had forgotten how critically important Henry Corbin's work has been for me, for it confirmed - and delineated so beautifully - those concepts about greater reality that I'd already intuitively grasped, and created in me a fascination for Persian literature, books such as "Thousand and One Nights," and (the Polish work) "The Manuscript Found in Saragossa."
As with the stories in these books, my extra-physical experiences can be like layers of an onion, or boxes within boxes (these are unsufficient analogies), but never losing complete connection with the greater whole. For example: I might go from a session of what I call 3D color imagery into a lucid dream, and from there, launch into a sort of etheric OBE; during this period (in the OBE) I may conceivably realize that my third eye is wide open, and practice a sort of remote viewing, as if my whole head were a viewing scope; then I might come awake in a bed not my own in physical life, but instantly recognizable as my>bed; at this point I might choose to leave this> body and attempt to have a more rarefied astral-type OBE; or, I might find myself waking up in a number of different beds/realities, all familiarr to me somehow and connected to one another. And the possibilites go on and on. My purpose is generally is not so much random exploration as it is to find my daughter, Lilli, who died in 1999, and to find out how she's doing and simply spend some precious time with her.
I wrote a book about this called "A Father's Astral Diary: Looking for Lilli in the Afterlife." I am proud of it but it may never see publication, as it is apparently too bizarre even for Hampton Roads and Llewellyn.
But the evidence for me has been overwhelming that we live our other lives simultaneously, now. I'm not completely averse to the idea of linear reincarnation in our earth physical reality, though I find the idea distasteful, particularly in the Hindu sense of which we are bound by the wheel of karma and have no choice in the matter. I conccede to my friends that some of us may choose to reincarnate back here, but I do not believe it is an almost endless process, unreliant on our personal choices. I prefer John Lennon's idea of "instant karma."
Thanks for mentioning Plotinus! I shall read his work.
Yes, the two deletions you noticed were caused an alternate Dave who is prone to typos.
I read the Oversoul triology this summer after hearing about it on this site. I am grateful for having read it for the story line allowed me to understand quite a few disturbing experiences I have had in my life - experiences that I never dared share. Reading this novel shed light on old & new experiences and helped me regain a certain sense of "normality." ... I will definitely read the Seth books.
David - I am moved by your quest to find your daughter. Thanks for all the thought, experience and spirit you bring to our discussions.
My favorite quotation from Plotinus is one I gave to a friend when she was confronting a life-threatening illness: "The soul has the ability to conform to her character the destiny that is allotted to her." This, for me, is not only simple truth; it is the kind of truth that will get us through when we are able to embody it fully, as my friend got through her close-up encounter with Death.
Irène - One of the things I especially enjoy in the Oversoul 7 trilogy is the understanding that our "spiritual guides" may be very fallible, and are themselves on a learning curve. This understanding was shared by the ancient philosophers who knew what they were talking about, as in Plutarch's description of the varying reliability and morality of daimons in the astral realm of the Moon who have frequent dealings with humans.
Thank you, Robert. I am struggling to understand the Plotinus quote, despite its apparent simplicity, but shall place intent before falling asleep that I'll receive a clue about it during my dreams...or in the course of the morrow's events.
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