“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

His experience appeared to imply that his father’s identity had so much mobility, and so many possibilities for development, that the very idea of identity seemed to lose its boundaries.⁴

First of all, in your terms “pure” identity has no form. You speak of one self within one body because you are only familiar with one portion of yourself. You suppose that all personhood in one way or another must have an equivalent of a human form, spiritual or otherwise, to “inhabit.”

(9:34.) Identity itself is composed of pure energy. It takes up no space. It takes up no time. I said that there are invisible particles that can appear in more than one place simultaneously.⁵ So can identity. Atoms and molecules build blocks of matter, in your terms, even while the atoms and molecules remain separate. The table between Joseph and myself (Jane, in trance, sat with her feet upon our long narrow coffee table) does not feel invaded by the invisible particles that compose it. For that matter (amused), if you will forgive me for that old pun, the atoms and molecules that form the table today did not have anything to do with the table five years ago — though the table appeared the same then as now.

(Pause.) In the same way, quite separate identities can merge with others in a give-and-take gestalt, in which the overall intent is as clear as the shape of the table. To some extent Joseph was perceiving that kind of inner psychic organization.

Give us a moment … (Then slowly:) It is difficult to explain on spiritual and psychic levels without speaking in terms of gradations of identity, for example, but in your terms even the smallest “particle” of identity is inviolate. It may grow, develop or expand, change alliances or organizations, and it does combine with others even as cells do. (Long pause.) Your body does not feel as if you invade it. Your consciousness and its consciousness are merged; yet it is composed of the multitudinous individual consciousnesses that form the tiniest physical particles within it. Those particles come and go, yet your body remains itself. What was physically a part of you last year is not today. Physically, you are a different person. Put simply, the stuff of the body is constantly returned to the earth,* where it forms again into physical actualization — but always differently.

(Long pause, eyes closed. Jane’s delivery had slowed considerably.) In somewhat the same way your identity changes constantly, even while you retain your sense of permanence. That sense of permanence rides upon endless changes — it is actually dependent upon those physical, spiritual, and psychic changes. In your terms, for example, if they did not occur constantly your body would die. The cells, again, are not simply minute, handy, unseen particles that happen to compose your organs. They also possess consciousnesses of their own. That [kind of] consciousness unites all physical matter.

(10:00.) Give us a moment … Cells compose natural forms. An identity is not a thing of a certain size or shape that must always appear in one given way. It is a unit of consciousness ever itself and inviolate while still free to form other organizations, enter other combinations in which all other units also decide to play a part. As there are different shapes to physical objects, then, so identity can take different shapes — and basically those forms are far more rich and diverse than the variety of physical objects.

(Long pause.) You speak about the chromosomes. Your scientists write about heredity, buried and coded in the genes,⁶ blueprints for an identity not yet formed. But there are psychic blueprints,⁷ so to speak, wherein each identity knows of its “history”; and taking any given line of development, projects that history. The potential of such an identity is far greater, however, than can ever be expressed through any physical one-line kind of development (forcefully).

Identities, then, do send out “strands of consciousness” into as many realities as possible, so that all versions of any given identity have the potential to develop in as many ways as possible.

You, as you think of yourself, may have trouble following such concepts, just as you would have trouble trying to follow the “future” reality of the cells within your body at this moment. (Long pause.) You must understand that in greater terms there is no big or small. There is not a giant identity and a pygmy one. Each identity is inviolate. Each also unites with others while maintaining its individuality and developing its own potential.

A mountain exists. It is composed of rocks and trees, grass and hills, and in your terms of time you can look at it, see it as such, give it a name, and ignore its equally independent parts. Without those parts the mountain would not exist. It is not invaded by the trees or rocks that compose it, and while trees grow and die the mountain itself, at least in your terms of time, exists despite the changes. It is also dependent upon the changes. In a manner of speaking, your own identities as you think of them are dependent upon the same kinds of living organizations of consciousness.

(10:21.) Let us look at it differently. People who read so-called “occult” literature may consider me “an old soul,” like a mountain. Period. In grand ancient fashion above other more homey village-like souls, I have my own identity. Yet that identity is composed of other identities, each independent, as the mountain is composed of its rocks and could not exist without them, even while it rises up so grandly above the plain. My understanding rests upon what I am, as the mountain’s height rests upon what it is. I do not feel invaded by the selves or identities that compose me, nor do they feel invaded by me — any more than the trees, rocks, and grass would resent the mountain shape (intently) into which they have grown.

Water rushes down the hillside into the valley, and there is a constant give-and-take between the village below, say, or the meadows, and the mountain. So there is the same kind of transformation, change, and cooperation between all identities. You can draw the lines where you will for convenience’s sake, but each identity retains its individuality and inviolate nature even while it constantly changes.

The tree does not feel less, itself, because it brings forth such seeds. So identities throw off seeds of themselves in somewhat the same fashion. These may grow up in quite different environments. Their realities in no way threaten the identity of the “parent.” Identities have free choice, so they will pick their environments or birthplaces.

(Long pause.) Because a tree is physical, physical properties will be involved, and the seeds will mature following certain general principles or characteristics. Atoms and molecules will sometimes form trees; sometimes they will become parts of couches. They will form people or ants or blades of grass, yet in each of these ventures they will also retain their own sense of identity. They combine to form cells and organs, and through all of these events they obtain different kinds of experience.

The constant interchange that exists biologically means that the same physical stuff that composes a man or a woman may be dispersed, and later form a toad, a starfish, a dog or a flower. It may be distributed into numberless different forms. That arithmetic¹¹ of consciousness is not annihilated. It is multiplied and not divided. Reminiscent within each form is the consciousness of all the other combinations, all of the other alliances, as identity continually forms new creative endeavors and gestalts of relatedness. There is no discrimination, no prejudice.

When you eat, you must eliminate through your bowels. That resulting matter eventually returns to the earth, where it helps form all other living things. The “dead” matter — the residue of a bird, the sloughed-off cells — these things are not then used by other birds (though they may be occasionally), but by men and women. There is no rule that says your discarded cellular material can be used only by your own species. Yet in your terms any identity, no matter how “minute,” retains itself and its identity through many forms and alliances of organizations.

Through such strands of consciousness all of your world is related. Your own identity sends out strands of itself constantly, then. These mix psychically with other strands, as physically atoms and molecules are interchanged. So there are different organizations of identity in which you play a part.

Ruburt is connected with me in that manner. He is also connected with any ant in the backyard in the same way. Yet I retain my identity, the ant retains its identity, and Ruburt retains his.¹² But one could not exist without the other two — for in greater terms the reality of any one of the three presupposes the existence of the others.

3. Here Seth referred to his material in the 687th session for Volume 1. After 11:07: “I am saying that the individual self must become consciously aware of far more reality; that it must allow its recognition of identity to expand so that it includes previously unconscious knowledge. To do this you must understand, again, that man must move beyond the concepts of one god, one self, one body, one world, as these ideas are currently understood.”

The material I picked up about my father’s psychic intents was at first very bewildering. Hinted at was such a diffusion of consciousness that at the time individuality seemed to have little meaning. For I glimpsed Robert Butts, Sr. as he decided to disperse “himself” into a series of other personalities in both the past and the near future, so that I wondered how — in that mélange of identities — my father could possibly know himself. Seth’s explanations in ESP class last night and in this evening’s session helped clear my mind considerably, though: According to him, consciousness has no difficulty in making such alliances while maintaining continuity of identity, though its vast abilities are certainly almost impossible for us to grasp.

“There are no ceilings to the self, and no boundaries set about you. There is no place where identity need stop — yours or anyone else’s. Now, if you want to rest for a while in the familiar privacy of your self-adopted selfhood, then that is all right. But if you discover paths or ‘strands of consciousness’ leading from yourself into other realities, then follow them….

A student asked: “What’s the difference between a strand of consciousness and an identity?”

“That is for you to play with!” Seth replied. “To play with as you spook out the universe that spooks you out in return. Think of — my dear friend — the tiny weblike positions of the neurons within your skull. If they want to find you, where do they look? Where do they find your identity as apart from their own? Where do they draw the lines of identity? And where do their ‘thoughts’ break off so that they cannot follow, and yet they follow?

And added over a year later: Note 35 for Appendix 18 contains excerpts from the 775th session. See Seth’s comments on the patterns of identity formed by consciousness, with their “particleized” and “wavelike” characteristics.

12. While reading those passages on identity, the reader might keep in mind the subject matter of Appendix 18: the complicated relationships involving Jane, Ruburt, and Seth.