The Past Lives of SETH

Excerpt from the book SETH Speaks, The Eternal Validity of The Soul

It is not my purpose to go into my past existences in any great detail, but to use them to make certain points. First of all, I have been many times both man and woman, and I have immersed myself in various occupations, but always with the idea of learning so that I could teach. I had a firm background in physical existence, therefore, as a prerequisite for my present “work.”

I did not play the part of any towering personality of historical note, but became experienced in the homey and intimate details of daily life, the normal struggle for achievement, the need for love. I learned the unutterable yearning of father for son, son for father, husband for wife, wife for husband, and fell headlong into the intimate webs of human relationships. Before your idea of history, I was a Lumanian, and was later born in Atlantis.

Using your historical reference, I returned at the time of the cavemen, operating as a Speaker. Now I have always been a Speaker, regardless of my physical occupation. I have been a spice merchant in Denmark, where I knew Ruburt and Joseph. In several lives I was black – once in what is now called Ethiopia, and once in Turkey.

My lives as monks followed my experience as a pope, and in one of these, I was a victim of the Spanish Inquisition. My experience in female lives varied from that of a plain Dutch spinster to a courtesan at the time of the biblical David, to several existences as a humble mother with children.

Now when I began contacting Ruburt and Joseph, I hid from them the fact of my numerous lives. Ruburt, in particular, did not accept reincarnation, and the idea of such multiple life experiences would have been highly scandalous to him.

The times and names and dates are not nearly as important as the experiences, and they are too numerous to list here. However, I will see to it at some time that these are made fully available. Some have been given in Ruburt’s class sessions, and some, though few, have appeared The Seth Material itself.

In a book on reincarnation, I hope to have each of my previous personalities speak for themselves, for they should tell their own story. You should understand, therefore, that those personalities still exist and are independent. While what I am once seemed to be contained within those personalities, I was but the seed for them.

In your terms, I can remember who I was; in greater terms, however, those personalities should speak for themselves. Perhaps you will see an analogy here when you compare the situation with age regression under hypnosis. Those personalities are not locked up inside of what I am, however. They have progressed according to their own fashion. They are not negated. In my terms, they coexist with me, but at another layer of reality.

In several lives I was consciously aware of my “past existences.” Once as a monk I found myself copying a manuscript that I myself had written in another life.

Often I was given to the love of weight, and possessed it. Twice I died of starvation. I always found my deaths highly educational – in your terms, afterwards. It was always a lesson between lives to trace the thoughts and events that “led to a given demise.”

None of my deaths surprised me. I felt during the process the inevitability, the recognition, even a sense of familiarity: “Of course, this particular dying is mine and no other.” And I accepted even the most bizarre circumstances then, feeling almost a sense of perfection. The life could not be finished properly without the death.

There is a great sense of humility, and yet a great sense of exaltation as the inner self senses its freedom when death occurs. All my deaths were the complement of my lives, in that it seemed to me that it could not be otherwise.

If I choose, in your terms I can relive any portion of those existences, but those personalities go their own way.