Physical Death (3)

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 8, Session 398

Death (3)

(Miss Callahan, with whom some of the early sessions were concerned, died this past week.  In Volume 1, see sessions 28 and 29, February ’64.)

Now.  Consciousness can never fully express itself in physical terms as you know.  Through various reincarnations the entity attempts to express itself more and more competently within the framework of physical reality.

In a situation such as your father’s or Miss Callahan’s, the overall consciousness is not less, but less of it expresses itself in physical terms.  It either has less and less control over the organism because it has not solved its problems well enough, because it has already largely decided to leave the system, but does so gradually; or because in some instances there is a psychic block, which prevents full utilization of energy in this important regard.

The personality is less and less apparent within the physical organism.  The personality itself has not disintegrated.  Its control over the organism, for various reasons, has lessened.  In these cases the personality gradually makes inroads into the next reality.  It gathers its energy within the next system.

Now there is a comparable situation occurring on some occasions in a completely different direction, and for completely different reasons.  At birth the past reincarnated self may in some cases refuse or be unable to let go control over physical matter.  When this happens there is awareness on the part of the new personality of the old life, but more, a clinging over, a tenacious holding onto, on the part of the previous self.

The consciousness of the personality has not left too soon, or unusually soon, as in your father’s case, but stubbornly persists.  It is as if an artist found the last painting showing up over and over in the next one.  In such cases there is a lack of understanding.  The inner identity does not understand that it is simply taking a different guise, fulfilling different obligations, or using unfulfilled energies.

The ego is so strong that it clings even to the new materialization.  There are two faces of the same problem, you see.  As I am sure you know, your father is not unhappy.  You never knew your father.  The man who was to have been your father left.  This does not mean that you were an orphan in that respect, nor did he leave out of cruelty to you.

He left you and he left your brothers something you hold in high regard.  Lingering within the man you call your father there was always the sense of the unfinished.  There was a feeling of the searcher.  There was the need from which creativity springs.  In some measure this became your impetus.  You sensed it intuitively.

He left you things to do in your own way.  He worked with photography because he could not paint.  He could not create himself.  He could not see himself in physical surroundings.  As the photographer he was often out of the picture.  He did not leave you empty-handed.

He could not materialize.  In a sense he was more your passive mother than your father.  He could not communicate.  His love of machinery was his attempt, his strongest attempt, to make his being physical.  The man you call your father is happier now than he has ever been.

The whole personality has for a long time been waiting in another system of reality.  There is no law that says that a personality must fully materialize within a given system, though it is usually wiser to do so.

Your father and two brothers were originally part of the same entity.  Your two brothers and Ruth Butts are part of the same entity.  Now hear me.  This is difficult.  The main energy of the man you call your father left long ago, as I told you.  He gathered his energies together and is waiting, but part of his energies were given to the son of Ruth (my first cousin).

This is a voluntary arrangement.  The boy needs the additional vitality.  I do not believe the boy will live to old age.  The father loaned this vitality and helps the boy, knowing beforehand the boy’s difficulty.  The boy is unable to relate fully to physical reality.  When the man called your father dies his energy will return to the self who is waiting.  That self will then call back the energy which it has loaned to Ruth’s son.

If the boy has learned to relate by then he will call for reinforcement from his entity and receive it.  There may be a temporary illness for example while transitions take place.  If not he will die or be largely incapacitated.

Your father has therefore helped the boy.  He has also served to you as an example, and he knows this; for you did not want to relate fully.

All of this is not as complicated as it sounds.  If you have time left over you help others.  If a personality is between systems it loans its energy to others.

Your mother is facing realities she would not face in the past, and seeing in physical terms the results of her own inner actions.  There was no other way for her to learn.  What my seem a disaster to you in your scrutiny of her life, is a well-learned lesson in reality, and a victory.

There was a particular time when your father said goodbye to you.  You were two.

You were playing.  You were on your mother’s lap, in their bedroom, and he said simply “goodbye”, to you both.  And you both knew that he meant it.  It had followed a quarrel with your mother.  He went out of the house and when he returned he was not the same man.  Yet you understood subconsciously, and he left in you that moment the desire to create.

Personalities are not static things.  Entities are eternal.  They are not as nicely nor as neatly packaged out, one to a body, as your psychologists believe.  They constantly change.  They grow.  They make decisions.  They use the physical body fully, or they partially depart according to their own inner needs and development.

When psychic gestalts are made and formed they are not static.  They make different alliances until they find their place in a whole identity that serves their purposes, or are strong enough to become indestructible.  They are always becoming, they are not closed units.

Your father was not simply your father.  That identity that is his has grown, developed, changed its circumstances and its physical components many times, searching for the psychic soil that will best develop his own potentials.

This is not simple to explain, yet I would do poorly by you if I left you with a simple explanation.  Emotional feelings are vital.  Emotional identities are indestructible.  Personalities that you have known in past lives will know you after transition.  This does not mean that for their own purposes they have not joined in psychic mergers that you cannot presently understand.  As I am joined in a psychic merger with you now, and am still myself, and you yourself.

There are spiritual bridges but they are formed by individual personalities.  Your father is forming a spiritual bridge.  He is one rung of the ladder, yet he is also part of the rung above him, and the rung below.  Because you cannot put your finger upon him does not mean that he does not exist, and that he has not helped you fulfill yourself, and that he has not helped teach the woman you know as your mother.

Now I hope that you will understand me intuitively, for what I have said confounds the intellect to some considerable degree.  But I speak through Ruburt, and Ruburt is himself and I am myself, yet without your support of Ruburt I could not speak.  This in no way minimized my reality, or Ruburt’s.  So your father’s use of his own energies does not minimize what he is, nor his overall sense of direction.

He did not leave you with no thought.  He left you what he thought was the best he had to give you, a need for creativity that he could not express in physical terms.  He left for your young brother a sense of sweetness, an innocent, untouched quality that will always sustain him.

He left your middle brother a stubborn persistence that will help him if he uses it correctly.  He left for your mother the questions she needed – what had she done that she should not have done; for that question was important for her development.

Now all of this pertains to our main discussion, for the implications are plain.  He, in the old-man body, enjoys the solitude that he always wanted.  Your mother was originally the spark that made him relate at all to physical reality, and that is why he resented her, why he fought her, and why she could not respect him.  He enjoys the luxury now of not reacting, in his terms.

There will be a joyous gathering together of his identity when the body dies.  These are like the weaving together of mosaics, the weavings of the personality in and out, and no effect is meaningless nor without benefit.  In this life you were meant to create, and teach.  All creation is teaching.  Your entity is older than your father’s.  You and Ruburt and I have been connected many times.  The gestalt, the conditions, have in the past been beneficial for us all.

You have already traveled the way individuals like your present mother and father have traveled.  All is a process of development therefore.

Now, I am here in this room.  I am also in another place in another time.  Your father is in several dimensions at once.  All of this is value fulfillment.  It is growth.

We are doing well with Ruburt.  We are coming through so clearly in fact that he is now in the process of learning how to disentangle himself from me.  I leave willingly, but my energy is so strong that he does not know how to let me go.  He is fully relaxed.  He is not used to feeling my presence however so strongly.

I suggest you speak his name, his present name, three times, and touch him.  This is only a temporary procedure, and a mark of our progress.  He will quickly learn the procedure, and then there will be no need.

Physical Death (2)

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 8, Session 397

Physical Death (2)

Now.  We will continue from our last session.

In the case of the apparitions and ghosts mentioned in that session, there was one main difficulty behind their situation.  Even though the physical image as such had been left behind, the individuals were not able to change their focus of attention away from the physical system.

At times they were able to be perceived as pseudoimages.  They are doing subconsciously what came naturally, attempting to form, as always, their own physical construction.  However it is impossible for them to create a consistent solid image in your terms, for while they are still focused within your system the inner self knows well that the individual is finished with a given life situation, is out of alignment so to speak, and is therefore denied full use of its own energy.

The focus of attention cannot be so strong as it was in physical life, hence the inability to deal with energy in those terms.  The personality insists on behaving as if it were in the physical condition however, and out of habit attempts to construct a physical form.  He is not imprisoned within this pseudoimage, since he forms it, but the energy used is misdirected and largely futile.

The image can be perceived at times.  Contact can be made by those who are psychically aware.  Now.  It is obviously beneficial to learn now to change your own direction of attention away from your physical system.  When this is accomplished then legitimate firsthand experience can be gained, that is not physical in your terms.

You can glimpse other realities, and this knowledge and confidence will automatically be of benefit to you when the transition takes place.  You can indeed then leave your body while still conscious, and arrive so to speak with your senses about you.

Otherwise you may have consciousness drugged or in a disintegrating state, because of the body’s condition.  Under those circumstances the transition is not as easy.

The full personality consciousness indeed places an additional strain upon what you may call the overall body consciousness, and prolongs the sense of pain connected with that body consciousness.  Each cell, as I told you, is aware.  In a terminal illness, the personality consciousness, the ‘I’ as you know it, bears down in panic upon the body consciousness when it does not understand the state of affairs.

It is like Ruburt keeping the bird alive, you see.  (Last summer, Jane found an injured bird, and for several days tried to make it live.)  When the personality understands, it can indeed then will itself to leave the body in an aware state, and as it goes bless the body consciousness who has served it so well, release the tiny birdlike awareness within each cell, and go on to its own transition.

There is release also, you see, for the body consciousness, which as you know then changes to other forms.  The exercises which Ruburt is barely beginning will be of great help in our work, and in the development of his abilities.  They are also however excellent exercises that will result in the training so advantageous at the point of transition.

If you know now that you exist independently of the body, if you have experiences within other realities and messages from them, then you need not fear leaving the body, for you can already begin to make inroads.

I will tell you this: Neither of you realize as yet the full extent of Ruburt’s inner change of mind, his commitment now to our work, the commitment of his abilities to these matters for this lifetime.

He does not as yet consciously know the extent of his changed attitude.  His body knows.  You and Ruburt both know subconsciously, and you have begun to sense the implications on a conscious level, but barely.  All of this directly affects your own personal and joint – I have to use the term for you – future, experience; both in this life and later.

This change will also attract more energy, bring it forth from you Joseph …  And for you.  You will use more energy in helping to sustain Ruburt, but you will because of his new affirmation have more available.  Enough in fact to show itself considerably in new impetus in your own work.

One point: Ruburt’s whole personality did indeed protect itself, for unless it were integrated and fully committed it would not have the energy to sustain the activities with which it will now be involved.

Now.  You read a theory to the effect that cells ejected signals as they died.

Consciousness ejects signals, the consciousness within the cell, not the cell, you see.  Now the consciousness is within the cell, all through the cell, not localized within it, and yet it is not the matter of the cell.

Basically speaking of course the matter of the cell does not exist.  You were correct in the assumption that upon death the personality sends out signals; but the personality constantly sends out signals, in any condition of existence.

In one of our earliest sessions I told you that trees have consciousness, and that consciousness resided within all things, as the plants within this room to some extent are aware of you, and the happenings here, can sense strangers, and can strongly sense emotional and psychic atmospheres, to which they do indeed react.  (In Volume 1, see sessions 9 of 12/18/63 and 18 of 1/22/64.)

Ruburt was correct in his assumptions about your cat.  All of this has to do with the nature of existence and personality, for your personality directly affects your plants.  Personality can have a corrosive or soothing effect upon such unlikely things as the paint upon your walls.  So smoothly and yet so constantly do these effects change as personalities come and go that your universe as it seems to you, seems to continue to exist.

I will comment here for all of this fits into our discussion.  Existence is not a game in the terms spoken of by our Mr. Watts, though he is often on the right track.  We do not have a static god, recreating himself as he is in various guises.  Using those terms, we have a god constantly in the process of creation, action acting upon itself, always with new possibilities, each existence bringing forth new varieties.  Legitimately, each personality is a co-creator, and part of All That Is, but this All That Is constantly develops, and develops in terms of growth fulfillment.

There is a turning inward upon itself, but the inwardness is not a static condition.  It is difficult to put this into language. 

Evil, so termed, is a lack of knowledge, a lack of fulfillment, a lack of growth, measured against that which has felt inward enough to understand more of its nature.  Evil is therefore less desirable.  The whole process however is toward understanding in which the evil is doubled and erased, but the growth must come from something that is not yet grown, and you cannot call a seed evil because it is not yet the flower.

We will in the future deal with its problem of evil, and hint of some of its implications in our life after death material.

Disease is not evil, for example.  The murderer kills no one, yet if his intent is to do so then he must face the consequences of his intent.  Crime after death is not punished.  There is no crime to be punished, but between those last two statements lies a world of understanding, and knowledge that must be attained.  And punishment enters in between those two statements as the individual takes the consequence for the action and the intent.

By the time he realizes the truth of the second statement, neither crime nor punishment affect him.

There is no final judgment, for nothing is final.  There is no judgment because all is in transition toward greater knowledge and understanding.  Between those statements again lies worlds that must be deciphered.

The child is not evil because he is not a man, and cannot be judged for his childishness.  Value fulfillment is always working, yet there is between those two statements – you realize the ones to which I refer – the idea of judgment as an impetus and spur against the inner self’s knowledge of the growth that must come.

There are several subtle points here; I want to make sure that you have them.

…  We will continue with this material, the main material of the session, at our next session.  …

Physical Death

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 8, Session 396

Physical Death

I want to begin a series of sessions dealing in rather practical terms with those events that follow immediately after physical death.

Now, I could not have done so earlier, for Ruburt would not have liked it; and before, you would not have particularly liked it.  Part of the discussion will deal with the ways in which I can communicate with you.  And while the discussions begin with material giving specifics in your terms, this will be supplemented by other material in terms of electromagnetic realities, and also moment points.

I believe that shortly Ruburt will be ready to deal with some particular considerations.  He will want perhaps practical experience in communication with others.  If you learn to know yourself as you are, and not simply as you seem to be, then you will become quite familiar with the part of yourself that does survive physical death.

You do not suddenly become a spirit.  You are one.  Your training – for you are also involved, Joseph – your training has only begun.  Without Ruburt’s acquiescence neither of you could go further.  Your acquiescence has been given.  His was given only recently.  This permits us to use more energy for our purposes in our sessions.

I will give you theoretical material, and I hope that we shall implement it with our own demonstrations.  The coming sessions will of necessity involve us thoroughly in the nature of human personality in its psychic electromagnetic properties.  Reincarnation will, of course, enter in here, for you cannot separate it.  I am more solidly here in our sessions now than I was permitted to be in the past.  It goes without saying that there is no other place in those terms, into which those who have survived physical death disappear.

There are indeed no physical places.  There are the illusions.  The psychological reality, the psychic reality, always forms its own environment.  The divisions between various environments have nothing to do with space.  There are fields of energy set up and channels that open between various such environments, and communication can be made through these.

Upon physical death you simply step out of the intense focus upon one self-constructed plane.  You are released into a wider spectrum of activity.  The mental and psychic energy which you have expended in the physical system does continue, to some varying degree, to sustain it.  A lingering feeling allows those who have left your system to keep in contact with it if they so desire.  I do not mean necessarily that in all cases communication will occur, but a psychic return can be made at will.

An individual who has survived physical death can if he wishes recreate any portion of his own past as it was.  He can recreate any portion of his own past in any way he wishes, changing his own actions within it if he so chooses, combining and reforming the entire composition.  Such a procedure is usually a dead-end enterprise.  The others involved are vivid hallucinations, and he may not realize this.

Some personalities are prone to this sort of activity.  Until they realize the nature of such actions, two or three personalities may join as partners in such an endeavor, in which case the situation is more difficult to untangle.  Here there is simply an arrangement and rearrangement of a time already dealt with. 

It is as if an artist finished a painting, and instead of going to a new one he does countless variations of the original, without realizing what he is doing.  This is a between-plane existence, and legends refer to it as purgatory.

Such individuals are usually beyond reach from anyone within your system.  They are not beginning new reincarnations, nor resting, nor going on to new realities.  They will eventually awaken to the nature of their activities, for there will be no counteraction of personalities, you see, and no growth.

Those who struggled and did not achieve fame for example, will sometimes recreate their past, manipulate hallucinatory relationships and events and achieve it within that counterfeit environment.  This is simply an example.  Some may attempt to gain revenge in this way, finding satisfaction in gaining control over another, finally, but the victim in such a case is only the hallucinated image of the victor.

In a considerable number of ghost or apparition cases this is what is involved.  Here the emotional energy is at such a pitch that the individual appears out of context within your physical reality, but has no freedom within it.

He is acting out the past so vividly and with such a frenzy that electromagnetic patters are momentarily disrupted.  He breaks through into “current” physical reality, but he cannot step forth freely into it, but is imprisoned by his own overpowering and blind purposes.

He does not realize his condition.  When this momentary breakthrough does occur however, then someone with disciplined and developed abilities can explain the situation to him.  He can then release himself.  In such cases the break with physical reality was somehow incomplete at physical death.  The stubborn spirit, usually impelled by still strong unfulfilled wishes, refuses to break contact.

Physical death alone is not enough then.  A misguided individual can still cleave to the physical system, though he cannot operate within it as before.

In any case, such a situation could not be maintained indefinitely.  The individual involved is indeed a ghost image of the personality.

Even the misguided desires behind their activities diminishes.  They are not utilizing  energy correctly.  Their sense of time is completely different.  They do not experience centuries, you see, though they may remain attached to your system for centuries of earth time.

As some of your reading material of late suggests, the more you know of the nature of reality the better equipped you are to deal with the point of transition.  Here your inner beliefs are your only contact with reality.  Believing for example that death is a complete end can result in a quite unnecessary period of unconsciousness.

Believing in a physical hell can cause quite unnecessary psychological torment, with hallucinatory images.  Believing in the stereotyped idea of heaven can cause no harm, but a delay in facing up to new responsibilities.  Those who have known you and with whom you have had true rapport, will help you.

More rapport may have existed between you and some forgotten friend, you see, than between you and those bound to you through various other relationships in earthly existence.  There may be some who have known you in past lives, to assist you.

I will greet you, of course, though you did not know me in a physical relationship in this life, you see.

It is far easier to learn and to make contacts now, for this is training that will be invaluable.  With the change in Ruburt’s whole attitude, I hope that I can make many of my points more clearly, and give you quite practical training.  If all goes well you should both be able to see me quite clearly, mentally.  This will involve time, but the inner concentration is growing on Ruburt’s part.

Time Is An Illusion

Seth Early Sessions, Vol 8, Session 393

Time Is An Illusion

Your idea of time is false.  Time as you experience it is an illusion caused by your own physical senses.  Your physical senses force you to perceive action in certain terms, but this is not the nature of action.

You must perceive what you do of reality through your physical senses, but your physical senses distort reality.  They present reality to you in their own way.  The physical senses can only perceive reality a little bit at a time, and so it seems to you that one moment exists, and is gone forever, and the next moment comes, and like the one before it disappears.  But everything in the universe exists at one time, simultaneously, and the first words ever spoken still ring throughout the universe; and in your terms the last words ever spoken have been said time and time again, for there is no ending and no beginning.  It is only your perception that is limited.

Reality is not limited.  There is no past, present and future.  These only appear to those who exist within three-dimensional reality.  Since I am no longer within it, I can perceive what you do not see.  But there is a part of you that is not imprisoned within three-dimensional reality, and that part of you knows that there is no time, that there is only an eternal now; and that part of you that knows is the whole self, the inner personality that knows all of your lives.

When I tell you that you lived for example in 1936, I say this because it makes sense to you now; but you live all of your reincarnations at once.  Only you are not aware, and you cannot understand within the framework of three-dimensional reality.

Pretend that you have seven dreams at once, and you the dreamer knows that you are dreaming.  Within each dream 100 earthly years may pass – but to you the dreamer no time has passed, and there is no time to pass, for you are free of the dimension in which time exists.  The time you seem to spend within the dream, within each life, is only an illusion, and to the inner self no moment has passed, and to the inner self there is no time.