Seth on Consciousness and Reincarnation

[jbseth]

Hi All

Recently I came across an interesting section of the Seth information where Seth was talking to Rob, about why Rob and Jane's cat "Billy" had recently died. The majority of this information can be found in NOME, Chapter 6, Session 840, in both Rob's introductory notes prior to Session 840 and in Note 2, immediately following Session 840.

Specifically what caught my attention was what Seth had to say about consciousness.

"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."

Then, following this in the very next paragraph, Seth says:

"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 ..."



To be honest, these statements caught me off guard. What? There is no such thing as a cat consciousness. There is no consciousness that is meant to be human. There are simply consciousnesses that choose to take certain focuses.  What does he mean by this?

After reading this, I thought, wow, somewhere, somehow, I must have really misunderstood something that Seth had said about consciousness.



In Seth Speaks, Chapter 1, Session 512, Seth tell us that, "I can tell you, for example, that there is consciousness even within a nail." 

Furthermore, in this very same session, Seth also says the following:  "Nevertheless, the atoms and molecules within the nail do possess their own kind of consciousness."





Yesterday, I came across some information that appears to be related these comments made by Seth. This related information is located in DEaVF1, Chapter 5, Session 903.

In Session 903, Seth starts out by talking about what he calls the "conscious grid of perception". He says:

"The world as you know it exists as it does because you are yourself a living portion of a vast "conscious grid" of perception."

In this session he tells us that all of the larger divisions of life - men, mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, plants, and so forth - are an integral part of this living gridwork. Then, later on in this same session, he says:

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.

Then immediately after this session is over, Rob and Seth have the following brief conversation.

("In a session I'm working with now for Mass Events—the 837th, *about the death of our cat, Billy One, a year ago—you said there wasn't any such thing as a cat consciousness, per se."*3 Seth nodded. "Tonight's session reminds me of that one. I see how they fit together.")

They do indeed. Billy can be as he chooses—reincarnated into any species within his classification—as a mammal.

("That isn't going to run into the idea of transmigration, is it?" I was thinking that man is also a mammal.)

That is something else—that is, men being born as animals. I am including man as his own classification. Remember, however, there are also fragments, which [again] is something else.4








It seems to me that what Seth is giving us here is a more complete understanding of the nature of consciousness. 

In many places across the Seth information, Seth tells us that consciousness creates form, it is not the other way around. He also tells us that atoms, and molecules, and nails and animals and humans all "possess" consciousness. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that consciousness "exists" in the form of a bird, or a cat, or a human for example.

It appears that in Session 903, Seth is telling us that consciousness, rather than choosing to exist as a bird or a cat or a human, chooses these "larger classifications" of physical existences.  This is perhaps a subtle bur significant point, when it comes to understanding the true nature of consciousness.




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- jbseth

[LarryH]

That is something else—that is, men being born as animals. I am including man as his own classification. Remember, however, there are also fragments, which [again] is something else

Somewhere I believe that Seth said that a fragment from him had become a dog.

[jbseth]

Hi SpiceMerchant42, Hi LarryH, Hi All,

I think that "fragments" could also be an interesting topic of discussion.

Regarding Seth's dog fragment comments, in TES1, Session 4, way back when Rob and Jane were still using the ouija board, they had the following communication with Frank Watts.

("Frank Watts, is part of your psyche alive now?")

Very small part. I hardly miss it. I watch it but leave it alone.

(Gratis.)

It is a dog fragment.

("Where? Can you give us the location of this dog?")

No.


Then later, in "Seth Speaks" in Chapter 20, the Questions and Answers chapter, Session 581, in regards to Question twenty-five, Rob and Seth said the following:

(Many sessions ago, Seth told us he had a dog fragment personality still here on Earth. He wouldn't tell us where it was, though. "Number twenty-five: Do you have any physical fragments of any kind still here on earth?")

I do not now. My dog is gone.


- jbseth

[Deb]

What? There is no such thing as a cat consciousness. There is no consciousness that is meant to be human. There are simply consciousnesses that choose to take certain focuses. What does he mean by this?

I wonder. This morning I was listening to UR1 (third time I'm starting the book), and this caught my attention:

"Consciousness is composed of energy, with everything that implies. The psyche, then, can be thought of as a conglomeration of highly charged "particles" of energy, following rules and properties, many simply unknown to you. Think of a given "self" as a nucleus of an energy gestalt consciousness. That nucleus, according to its intensity, will attract to it certain masses of the entire energy patterns available to a given identity."

So maybe Seth is saying consciousness, which is made of energy that is neutral, is itself neutral until it takes on focus in some form or another. Energy (as EEs) is the building block of everything. Like Legos are neutral building blocks until they are put together (over-simplified, I know).

What threw me was "Once a consciousness... has chosen the larger classification of its physical existence, it stays within that framework..."  Glad that was explained more fully in the quote from DEaVF1 Session 903 in the paragraph starting with "Reincarnation exists, then, on the part of all species" :

"This provides great genetic strength, and consciousnesses in those classifications have chosen them because of their own propensities and purposes. The animals, for example, seem to have a limited range of physical activity in conscious terms, as you think of them. An animal cannot decide to read a newspaper. Newspapers are outside of its reality. Animals have a much wider range, practically speaking, in certain other areas. They are much more intimately aware of their environment, of themselves as separate from it, but also of themselves as a part of it (intently). In that regard, their experience deals with relationships of another kind."

Somewhere I believe that Seth said that a fragment from him had become a dog.

"(Many sessions ago, Seth told us he had a dog fragment personality still here on Earth. He wouldn't tell us where it was, though. "Number twenty-five: Do you have any physical fragments of any kind still here on earth?")

I do not now. My dog is gone."

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

"My dog is gone."  Ha ha ha.

The last line quoted in Session 903 ended with "Remember, however, there are also fragments, which [again] is something else."

I have the Dreams book, I'll take a look at that Session. It looks pretty chock-full of information.

PS

I think that "fragments" could also be an interesting topic of discussion.

jbseth I think we were synchronized posting, lol. You're reading my mind. Or I read yours. I think it would be an interesting topic as well.

[Sena]

In Seth Speaks, Chapter 1, Session 512, Seth tell us that, "I can tell you, for example, that there is consciousness even within a nail."

Furthermore, in this very same session, Seth also says the following:  "Nevertheless, the atoms and molecules within the nail do possess their own kind of consciousness."

jbseth, thanks for this interesting topic. I think what Seth is doing is that he is challenging the "scientific" idea that consciousness "arises" or "springs from" the brain.If consciousness is dependent on the brain, then when a person dies and the brain dies, consciousness should cease. The Christian religion claims that each human being has a mysterious something called "the soul", which is responsible for consciousness. So if you have defied the Christian Church during life, your "soul" could be punished for all eternity in hell. Seth describes the soul idea as a "fantasy":

"The soul fantasy, or spirit fantasy, arose at about this time, and has been a disadvantage to him because it gives a name and a designation to one part of the whole self, setting it up against the other part. It is this basic conception, however, that also forced him to face one truth despite himself—that of continued existence, to which he gave the word immortality."
—TES1 Session 24 February 10, 1964

Seth's teaching on Consciousness Units rejects the scientific fantasy as well as the Christian fantasy. Buddhism teaches reincarnation but rejects the soul. If there is no soul, what is it that reincarnates? Only Seth has the answer.

Seth does refer to the Inner Self, which is quite different to the Christian soul because it is connected to the Entity:

""The inner self, which has been called the soul, has connections through the entire physical organism, and is not concentrated in any one portion. More adjustments are made by the physical organism than you know, and when I say that it exists in many fields, I mean that it actually not only appears within them, but is a part of them in an intimate manner, that the physical organism as it is materialized within your universe is actually a coming together and merging that has its existence, and is a blending of data from many planes, that would be considered foreign by the intellect."
—TES3 Session 118 January 4, 1965

[jbseth]

Hi Sena,

Thanks for your reply. 

I can see from what you just posted here that we are completely in agreement on this.

- jbseth

[Tob]

When asked about the different parallel reality frames we are constantly 'shifting' through in order for us to create the illusion of time and movement, Bashar's explanation given in the 'Parallel Reality Wheel' – session was relatively comprehensive and clear.

Bashar: 'You are not in all of them. The idea is that each of those versions is its own distinct person. But the idea is that what you experience through continuity as a change in yourself is not a change in your personality. It is a shift of your consciousness to express itself through a completely different personality, a completely different person. So any change, as we have said, is a total change. And since you are shifting billions of times per second, you are literally shifting your consciousness through billions of people per second, billions of versions of you, but versions of you are not you in the sense of the personality, its only you in the sense of your consciousness, your overall consciousness that perceives itself to be itself, but any change in what you consider your personality to be is actually your consciousness now perceiving through a different person entirely'.

Using the graphic (link below) it becomes obvious that we should not identify ourselves with any of the lines of frames we are 'shifting' through. We should rather perceive ourselves to be just the 'NOW'—point, i.e. the dark green circle in the middle of any perceived timeline, constantly changing its vibration, thus 'organizing' a new history and a new future which comes with the modified vibration of the new state of being we are in. The 'timelines' are just convenient illusions, as they are created from the NOW-point in the middle anyway - by constantly collapsing and recreating a new universe (YOUniverse) which is then more in line with our slightly modified state of being in the new 'now'.

It would help to visualize ourselves as a spotlight or a projector, illuminating the dots from behind, thereby activating them for a moment as an informational nodal point, thus creating the illusion of 'being' in a specific parallel reality frame, before moving on to the next one. We should identify ourselves rather with the projector/focus, not with the parallel reality frame and the associated personality structure or the respective timeline which comes with that frame.

Then it would be easier to understand that the question of 'what happens to the frames we left a moment ago' becomes relatively obsolete, as those frames continue to 'exist'. They may be 'lit' by the 'spotlights/projectors' of other individuated 'I'-consciousnesses expressing 'another aspect' (Bashar) of the greater being that 'we' are and that we will recognize ourselves to be as soon as we perceive ourselves from a higher perspective (i.e. a conglomerate of aspects/focuses). Leaving the frame does not mean we are 'shifting' the body into another frame. It means we are creating an entirely new universe and are looking through the eyes of our body who is already there.

Bashar: 'Other aspects of the greater being are expressing themselves through it simultaneously. It's not a matter of the idea of leaving it empty. It's a matter of the idea of understanding that what 'your greater being experienced a moment ago' as coming through one personality, is still being experienced by that aspect of your greater being, but now the greater being has also allowed itself to experience another personality perspective and that's going on simultaneously too; its simply shifting, in a sense, it's attention in a certain way to allow that personality to think it's the only one having that experience'.

Thus, the terms to ask for are 'aspects', 'focus', and 'individuated stream of consciousness', rather than 'timeline', 'person', 'personality construct', etc. as the latter ones are frame-specific and - for us - ephemeral. This applies as well to the different realities in the context of the splitting train tracks.

'Only the aspects of those people that belong in that reality are in that reality with you. Even if there is a representation of them still there and they seem to have changed the way they behave, it isn't really that they have, it's just that you are getting the version of them that belongs in that reality and you make the continuity connection or assumptive jump that they have changed, but they haven't really, it's just that you are now interacting with the person that is representative of being in that reality with the version of you that belongs in that reality. It's just that your consciousness is now looking through those eyes and theirs is looking through those eyes in that reality thinking that that is one reality and in fact it is when the other reality you thought you left is still going on. But you are not experiencing it anymore from your perspective. Yes, this is the matrix.' (Bashar: 'Total Impact', 2005).

Seth: "There are units of consciousness, then, as there are units of matter. I do not want you to think of these units as particles.
•   There is a basic unit of consciousness that, expressed, will not be broken down.
•   The basic unit of consciousness obviously is not physical.
•   It contains within itself innately infinite properties of expansion, development, and organization; yet within itself always maintains the kernel of its own individuality.
•   Despite whatever organizations it becomes part of, or how it mixes with other such basic units, its own identity is not annihilated.
•   It is aware energy, identified within itself as itself, not "personified" but Awareized.
•   It is therefore the source of all other kinds of consciousness, and the varieties of its activity are infinite. It combines with others of its kind, forming then (organizations or gestalts of awareness) ...
•   This basic unit is endowed with unpredictability. That very unpredictability allows for infinite patterns and fulfillments.
•   You would call a soul the result of a certain organization of such units, which you would then recognize as a "soul."
•   Their nature is the vitalizing force behind everything in your physical universe, and others as well.
•   These units can indeed appear in several places at once, and without going through space, in your terms.
•   Literally now, these basic units of consciousness can be in all places at once. They are in all places at once.
•   They will not be recognized because they will always appear as something else.
•   Of course they move faster than light.
•   There are millions of them in one atom—many millions.
•   Each of these units is aware of the reality of all others, and influences all others.
•   These units can move forward or backward in time, but they can also move into thresholds of time with which you are not familiar.
•   All probabilities are probed and experienced, and all possible universes created from these units. Therefore, there are realities in which the endless probabilities of one given event (underlined) are probed, and all experience grouped about that venture.
•   These units of consciousness do not have human characteristics, of course. They do, however, possess their own "inclinations," leanings, propensities.
•   They are vitalized, aware, charged, with all the qualifications of being.
•   All psychological structures then are composed of such organizations.
•   They are innately endowed with the desire or propensity for growth and creative organization. They are not found alone, then, in isolation.
•   Since these units of consciousness exist at once, they are aware of all the organized self-structures of which they are a part. To this extent, all probable realities are connected in that basic manner.
•   Since I have told you that in your terms your past, present, and future exist at once, these units are constantly emerging out of your NOW-POINT from both the future and the past.
•   All matter is based upon these units." (Seth)

The concepts presented by Seth decades earlier may further help to shed some light on the way how we are constructing our realities. They may be all the more instrumental in this context as they can be presumed to concur with Bashar's cosmology. 'Everything that Seth is saying is correct' (Bashar). Core terminology is, however, used differently.'You-ness' maybe another key concept that could help closing gaps in understanding reality. The term was used by Seth only once, unfortunately without further definition. It is occasionally used by Bashar as well and may provide an appropriate approach for dealing with the spotlight/projector.

"The so-called stream of consciousness is simply that — one small stream of thoughts, images, and impressions — that is part of a much deeper river of consciousness that represents your own far greater existence and experience. You spend all your time examining this one small stream, so that you become hypnotized by its flow, and entranced by its motion. Simultaneously these other streams of perception and consciousness go by without your notice, yet they are very much a part of you, and they represent quite valid aspects, events, actions, emotions with which you are also involved in other layers of reality.

'You' are not divorced from these other streams of consciousness in any basic way; only your focus of attention closes you off from them, and from the events in which they are involved. If you think of your stream of consciousness as transparent, however, then you can learn to look through and beneath it to others that lie in other beds of reality. You can also learn to rise above your present stream of consciousness and perceive others that run, for analogy's sake, parallel. The point is that you are only limited to the self you know if you think that you are, and if you do not realize that that self is far from your entire identity.

You are as actively and vividly concerned in these realities as you are in the one in which your main attention is now focused. Now, as you are merely concerned with your physical body and physical self as a rule, you give your attention to the stream of consciousness that seems to deal with it. These other streams of consciousness, however, are connected with other self-forms that you do not perceive. The body, in other words, is simply one manifestation of what you are in one reality, but in these other realities you have other forms."
—Seth Speaks Chapter 7: Session 531, May 25, 1970

"You have a greater identity outside of your context, yet a part of it is inside your context, as you. Your youness is your significance, a focus of awareness, conscious of itself, that seeks out and views experience with its own unique propensities. The existence of probable realities and probable selves in no way denies the validity of your own experience or individuality. That rides secure, choosing from unpredictable fields of actuality those that suit its own particular nature." Seth: 'Unknown Reality', Vol.1: Session 682 February 13, 1974

"Anything you can imagine is being played out in some parallel reality versions of you. The 'real' you is All-that-is. You are All-that-is experiencing itself as an aspect of itself, but that takes nothing away from the fact that you are All-that-is. Every single one of you, every single one of us, every single being within creation is All-that-is experiencing itself from another point of view, from another perspective within itself. You are already there (i.e: 'it') because it is you." Bashar: 'Voices in Your Head', 2014

[Tob]

According to Bashar everything that Seth is saying is correct. However the terminology used is different. Some text snippets on Bashar's cosmology can be found here:

http://www.sethforum.de/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2609

It would make sense to align his understanding of the cosmos and All-that-Is with the information provided by Seth.

Seths books have to be read word by word. Going for 'the general gist' is not sufficient. Key to understanding his teachings is the nested character of consciousness. (like the consciousness of an atom vis-a-vis the consciousness of a cell composed of that atom vis-a-vis the consciousness of an organ composed of those cells vis-a-vis the consciousness of an 'animate being' composed of those organs.

According to physicists (Tom Campbell, Jim Elvidge) everything is based on a grid of 'reality producing points' far below the level of subatomic particles (the size of one Planck lenghth) . Like the pixels on a TV screen which are constantly reproducing the picture. Reality is similarly reproduced moment by moment by moment. Thus the universe is constantly being recreated and renewed (like an interactive video game on a computer screen). We are playing roles in the scenarios on the screen, but we are composed of those pixels.

According to Seth, the universe is 'blinking'. According to Tom Campbell the universe is 'ticking' (at the rate of Planck time). According to Bashar, we are 'recreating the universe billions of times per second', i.e. the 'shifting',  and every one is in his or her own universe. At the rate of Planck time (Bashar).

According to the Kris Chronicles, the pixels are the 'units of consciousness'.

[pyromancy]

My interpretation is that there is One consciousness, so there is consciousness in everything.

It can ostensibly be more packed in to a particular area but it's like how when you fall asleep and your cat is in the next room, you shape each others minds because even subtle differences in your environment like the temperature change of your cat, even though at first seems insignificant, could have a subtle change on you in your dreams.

The whole idea about share ideas of objects makes me think of the smart question "If a tree falls in the middle of the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?"

I've always thought well, the animals hear it. It impacts the Earth so on the most minute level it modified the living Earth's geology somehow. But if nothing else was alive, not even a single insect and the tree was not conscious then I think it becomes trickier.