Do we incarnate as animals too?

[Doro]

I may get this wrong and ask you of your interpretation :

"After death, an individual may visualize his (immediately previous physical) life as an animal with which he must come to terms, and such a battle or encounter has far-reaching consequences, for the man must come to terms with all portions of himself. In this case, whether the hallucination ends with him riding the animal, making friends with it, domesticating it, killing it or being killed by it, each alternative... (Jane coughed, then paused and took a sip of beer) is carefully weighed, and the results will have much to do with his future development."

—SS Part Two: Chapter 9: Session 536, June 22, 1970

[inavalan]

I remember Seth saying that he may choose to "incarnate" as a tree, to take a vacation, and that some time while he was delivering the material he was having an "incarnation" as a dog, that at some point ended.

[Sena]

"After death, an individual may visualize his (immediately previous physical) life as an animal with which he must come to terms, and such a battle or encounter has far-reaching consequences, for the man must come to terms with all portions of himself. In this case, whether the hallucination ends with him riding the animal, making friends with it, domesticating it, killing it or being killed by it, each alternative...

Doro. thanks for finding this quote. Seth is clear that he is describing a "hallucination". I am pretty sure that no human reincarnates as an animal, although Buddhists do talk about that.

[inavalan]

This is the larger context of Doro's quote:

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[Doro]

@Sena @inavalan

Thank you very much!
This is very interesting. I find the whole process after physical death much more challenging that in this physical life. Of course this is because I can't really imagine (well I can only imagine because I can't remember 🙈) how I would handle all this stuff....
I do often think that I would love to be my cat, living with myself. Or a rescue dog...
But I never thought this could be perhaps an issue on day (or one time after death)
I do hope that there will indeed be friends to help me understand and go on in my learning - like I learn here a lot to go on in my understanding.

[inavalan]

From your quote, I went on reading here and there in "Seth Speaks", and now I read and understand some passage as if I read them for the first time ...

For example, I just browsed session #528, where Seth talks about non-physical perception. Synchronistically, I am currently browsing other writings that made me think about the possibility of direct-perception, and what I read in this session confirms some hypotheses I had developed.

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[inavalan]

"In the 4th session for December 8, 1963, the personality Jane and I had been contacting through the Ouija board, Frank Withers, spelled out with the board's pointer the message that he preferred to be called Seth—and Seth it's been ever since. Shortly before he announced himself as Seth, I'd asked Frank Withers if people were ever "reborn as animals." His answer was as direct as possible: "No." Next I asked him: "Is part of your psyche alive on earth now?" The answer was very strange to us at the time: "Very small part. I hardly miss it. I watch it but I leave it alone. It is a dog fragment." Frank Withers would not give us the location of this dog: "No."

[... 1 paragraph ...]

In that 8th session Seth gave us more material on fragments: "In some submerged manner all fragments of a personality exist within an entity, with their own individual consciousnesses. They are not aware of the entity itself.... The entity operates its fragments in what you would call a subconscious manner, that is, without conscious direction. The entity gives the fragments independent life, then more or less forgets them.... Even thoughts, for instance, are fragments, though on a different plane." Then Jane dictated a key sentence: "Fragments of another sort, called personality fragments, operate independently, though under the auspices of the entity."

When I asked him in the same session about his evocative use of "fragment," Seth replied: "That is an original term with me, as far as I know." Within another couple of sessions, however, he began to let "fragment" semantically yield to other terminology as he continued developing his material in ever-deepening discussions of personalities and entities, reincarnation, time, dreams, and other related subjects. I was surprised when he returned to the word here in Dreams. I've designed this note to supplement Jane's writing on fragments in The Seth Material, which Prentice-Hall published in 1970.

Some years after the 4th session was held, and without telling us anything else about the subject, Seth volunteered the information that his dog fragment had died. We haven't tried to pursue the matter with him."

—DEaVF1 Chapter 5: Session 903, February 25, 1980

[Deb]

This is interesting to me, because I remembered Seth saying we don't reincarnate as animals, but then also (I thought) said there is no specific "cat" or "dog" etc. consciousness, it's consciousness choosing to experience different life forms.

I found these this morning. Bolding is mine.

• "From Session 837 for February 28, held on the evening of the day Billy died: "My dear friends: Existence is larger than life or death. Life and death are both states of existence. An identity exists whether it is in the state of life or in the state of death. Your cat's consciousness never was dependent upon its physical form. Instead, the consciousness was itself choosing the experience of cathood. There was nothing that said: 'This consciousness must be a cat.'"

• ""There is no such thing as a cat consciousness, basically speaking, or a bird consciousness. In those terms, there are instead simply consciousnesses that choose to take certain focuses. We have not touched upon some of these matters, and some are, again, most difficult to explain, as we wish to avoid distortions. These would have nothing to do with Ruburt per se, but simply the way you put concepts together at this stage of development.""

• "From Session 838 for March 5: "I want to avoid tales of the transmigration of the souls of men to animals, say — a badly distorted version of something else entirely. If there is no consciousness 'tailored' to be a cat's or a dog's, then there is no prepackaged, predestined, particular consciousness that is meant to be human, either...."

—NoME Part Three: Chapter 6: Session 840, March 12, 1979

and these:

"Reincarnation exists, then, on the part of all species. Once a consciousness, however, has chosen the larger classification of its physical existences, it stays within that framework in its "reincarnational" existences. Mammals return as mammals, for example, but the species can change within that classification.1 This provides great genetic strength, and consciousnesses in those classifications have chosen them because of their own propensities and purposes."
—DEaVF1 Chapter 5: Session 903, February 25, 1980

"1. Seth is telling us a great deal here, on a subject Jane and I have done little to explore with him. We'd like to know much more. Mammals are animals of the highest class of warm-blooded vertebrates, the Mammalia. They are usually hairy, and their young are fed with milk secreted by the female. Dogs, cats, manatees, lions, dolphins, apes, bats, whales, shrews, sloths, and deer are mammals, to name just a few. I'm interpreting Seth to say that a consciousness can choose to range among such forms. However, for reasons to be hinted at later in the session, the primate man (who is also a mammal) falls outside of Seth's meaning here."
—DEaVF1 Chapter 5: Session 903, February 25, 1980

Does Rob's "However... the primate man (who is also a mammal) falls outside of Seth's meaning here" explain Frank Withers's abrupt "No" answer?

[Doro]

@Deb

Thank you for researching! Wow!

[inavalan]

"(10:30.) In one manner of speaking, you are fragments of your entities. Yet you consider yourselves quite independent, and not thrust-off second-handed selves; so dogs and other animals are not simply the manifestation of stray psychic energy on the part of human beings.

Animals have varying degrees of self-consciousness, as indeed people do. The consciousness that is within them is as valid and eternal as your own, however. There is nothing to prevent a personality from investing a portion of his own energy into an animal form. This is not transmigration of souls. It does not mean that a man can be reincarnated in an animal. It does mean that personalities can send a portion of their energy into various kinds of form.

(10:35.) Perhaps reincarnations are over for a given individual, for example, yet within him is still some sense of yearning for the natural earth with which he has so often been involved. So he may project a fragment of his consciousness in such a way into an animal form. When this is done, the earth is then experienced in the way natural for the form. A man is not an animal, then, nor does he invade, say, the body of one.

He simply adds some of his energy to that present in the animal, mixing this vitality with the animal's own. This does not mean that all animals are fragments in this manner, however. Animals, as any pet owner knows, have their own personalities and characteristics, and individual ways of perceiving the reality available to them. Some gobble experience. Their consciousness can be immeasurably quickened by contact with friendly humans, and emotional involvement with life is strongly developed.

The mechanics of consciousness remain the same. They do not change for animals or men. Therefore there are no limitations set upon the development of any individual consciousness, or growth of any identity. Consciousness both in the body and without finds its own range, its own level. A dog, then, is not limited to being a dog in other existences.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

(10:45.) As you know, consciousness has a great tendency to maintain individuality, and yet to join in gestalts at the same time. An animal consciousness after death may form such a gestalt with other such consciousnesses, in which abilities are pooled and the combined cooperation makes possible, for example, a change of species"

—SS Part Two: Chapter 20: Session 581, April 14, 1971

[Deb]

Yep that has come up before. I remember Seth saying humans will not fully incarnate as animals, but that Seth himself had a fragment personality for a while that was a dog. Very good quote explaining the mechanics behind that.

I've come across some animals that seem to me to have a human intelligence or consciousness, but I always write it off as projection on my part. Maybe not. I once had a dream that I was a cougar. What I experienced was running through woods, the exhilaration of speed and seeing my forelegs stretching out in front of me. After 50 years I still remember that feeling.