Seth "Unknown" Reality, Volume 2 Session 731
Your present idea of identity is
maintained only because you grant as valid such small aspects of your own
reality.
In other words, your accepted
concepts of selfhood would disappear if you ever allowed any significant
subjective experience to intrude. “The
Absent Self” – the absent or unknown self – is the portion of your own
existence that you do not ordinarily perceive or accept, though there is within
you a longing for it.
Much of “Unknown” Reality is involved with the breaking up of theories that
have been long accepted, but that prevent you from perceiving the
powerful nature of those absent portions of the self. As you focus upon certain details from a larger
field of physical reality, so then you focus upon only the small portion of
yourself that you consider “real”.
You carry within you, however, the
deep knowledge of experience that in your terms would be prior, yet in your
cells and your own deeper mind such information is current.
Selfhood overspills with great
luxurious outcroppings, yet you jealously guard against such creativity. To a certain extent you do carry the
knowledge of your forefathers within your [cells’] chromosomes, which present a
pattern that is not rigid but flexible – one that in codified fashion endows
you with the subjective living experience of those who, in your terms, have
gone before. As Ruburt recently
suspected, some very old cultures have been aware of this. While being independent individuals their members
also identified with their ancestors to some extent, accepting them as portions
of their selfhoods. This does not meant
that the individual self was less, but was more aware of its own
reality. A completely different kind of
focus was presented, in which the ancestors were understood to contribute to
the “new” experience of the living; one in which the physically focused
consciousness clearly saw itself as perceiving the world for itself, but also
for all of those who had gone before – while realizing that in those terms he
or she would contribute as well as the generations past.
The animals were also accepted in
this natural philosophy of selfhood as the individual plainly saw the living
quality of consciousness. The
characteristics of the animals were understood to continue “life”, adding their
qualities to the experience of the self in a new way.
The human body would be used in
earth’s great husbandry as, from it, dying and decaying new forms would
arise. This was a give-and-take in
which, for instance, a jungle neighborhood was truly home, and all was a
portion of the self psychically, spiritually, and physically.
Let those who will, laugh at
tales of spirits turning into the trees – a simplistic theory, certainly, yet a
symbolic statement in such societies: The dead were buried at home in the same
close territory, to form in later times the very composition of the ground upon
which religions grew. Again, your
limited concepts of selfhood make what I am saying difficult for you to
perceive.
I am not saying, for
example, that the living consciousness of each individual returned to the earth
literally, but that the physical material permeated and stampede with that
consciousness did, and does. Again, even
the cells retain knowledge of all of their affiliations. In physical terms the consciousness that you
understand is based upon this.
Selfhood is poorer when it does
not at least intuitively understand this heritage.
Those intimate realizations,
however, had to be counterbalanced in line with certain purposes set by your
species, and even for that matter momentarily set aside so that other abilities
and characteristics could emerge. The
species’ sense of curiosity would not allow it to stay in any home territory
for long, and so the sense of intimacy was purposely broken. It would become highly important again,
however, when the planet was populated extensively, as it is now – only the
original feeling of home area has to be extended over the face of the
earth. The “absent” portions of the self
are ready to emerge. The other, to you
probable, lines of consciousness can now come into play.
These different lines of focus
will each show you other aspects of your own reality, as individuals and as a
species.
I said once that no knowledge
exists outside of consciousness.
In those terms, neutral data are
not transferred through the chromosomes.
Consciousness passes on information through “living”
vehicles. Whether physically
materialized or not, knowledge is possessed by consciousness. It is always “individualized”, though
not necessarily in your terms.
The information carried by the
chromosomes is not general, but highly specific. It is codified data (itself alive) that
contains within it the essence of ancestral experience – of specific
ancestral experience. Biologically you
do indeed carry within you, then, the memories of your particular
ancestors. These form a partial
basis for your subjective and physical existence, and provide the needed
support for it.
Since one portion of your
heritage is physical, in those terms, those memories can be translated again,
back into emotional and psychological events, though usually they are not in
your societies.
To that extent the so-called past
experience of your ancestors and of your species is concurrent with your own,
biologically speaking. That is but one
line, however, covered by the chromosomes.
You have “another line” of existence that also serves as a support for
the one that you presently recognize. It
includes other interweaving physical relationships that bind you with all others
upon your planet at the same adjacent level of time. That is, to some extent or another you are
related to all of those alive upon the planet.
You are time contemporaries.
You will have a far closer relationship with some than with others. Some will be your counterparts.
These may or may not be closer to
you than family relationships, but psychically speaking they will share a
certain kind of history with you. You
will also be connected through the physical framework of the earth in the large
give-and-take of its space-time scheme.
A third line supporting your
selfhood as you think of it is the reincarnational one. This is somewhat like the ancestral line and
there are also reflections in the genes and chromosomes undetected by your
scientists. The ancestral and
reincarnational lines merge to some extent to form what you think of as your
genetic patterns ahead of time, so to speak.
Before this life you chose what you wished from those two main areas.
Reincarnational experience is
also transmitted, then, and can be retranslated from a biological code-imprint
into emotional awareness. Again,
however, as you are not your parents or your ancestors, you are not your “reincarnational
selves”.
Here also ideas of time hamper
you, for I must explain all of this in temporal terms. Since time is simultaneous, at other levels
your ancestors knew of your birth though they died centuries ago in recognized
continuity. The same applies to
reincarnational existences that you think of as occurring in the past.
You cannot say that your
ancestors, like some strange plants, were growing toward what you are,
or that you are the sum of their experiences.
They were, they are, themselves.
You cannot say that you are the sum of your past reincarnational lives
either, and for the same reasons. You
cut off the knowledge of yourself, and so divisions seem to occur. You are somewhat like a plant that recognizes
only one of its leaves at a time. A leaf
feels its deeper reality as a part of the plant, and adds to its own sense of
continuity, and even to its own sense of individuality. But you often pretend that you are some old
dangling leaf, with no roots, growing without a plant to support you.
All of the leaves now growing on
this plant could be thought of as counterparts of each other, each alive and
individual in one time, each contributing yet facing in different
directions. As one leaf falls another
takes its place, until next year the whole plant, still living, will have a
completely new set of leaves – future reincarnational selves of this batch.
You are not plants, but the
analogy is a simple one. And if you will
forgive me – overall it holds water.
There is a constant interaction
in the plant, between its parts, that you do not perceive. The leaves now present are biologically
valid, interrelating in your terms. Yet
in time terms each leaf is also aware of the past history of the plant,
and biologically they spring up from that “past”.
Each leaf seeks to express its
leafhood as fully as possible. Leaves
take in sun, which helps the plant itself to grow. The development of the leaves, then, is very
important to the plant’s own existence.
The cells of the plant are kept in contact with the environment through
the leaves’ experiences, and future probabilities are always taken into
consideration. The smallest calculations
involving light and dark are known. The
life of the plant and its leaves cannot be separated.
The plant has its own “idea” of
itself, in which each of its leaves has its part. Yet each leaf has the latent capacities of the
whole plant. Root one, for instance, and
a new plant will grow.
Selves have far greater freedom
than leaves, but they can also root themselves if they choose – and they do. Reincarnational selves are like leaves that
have left the plant, choosing a new medium of existence. In this analogy, the dropped leaves of the
physical plant have fulfilled their own purposes to themselves as leaves, and
to the plant. These selves, however,
dropping from one branch of time, root themselves in another time and become
new selves from which others will sprout.
The larger self, then, seeds
itself in time. In this process no
identity is lost and no identity is the same, yet all are interrelated. So you can theoretically expand your
consciousness to include the knowledge of your past lives, though these lives
were yours and not yours. They have a
common root, as next year’s leaves have a common root with the leaves now of
this plant.
Such knowledge, however, would
automatically affect those past lives.
Ideas automatically affect those past lives. Ideas of cause and effect can hold you back
here, because it seems to you that the leaves of next year come as an effect
cause by this year’s leaves. To the
plant and its innate creative pattern, however, all of its manifestations are
one – an expression of itself, each portion different. The knowledge of its “future” leaves, as
potential pattern, exists now. The same
applies to the psyche. In that greater
realm of reality there is creative interplay, and interrelationships between
all aspects of selfhood.
